In Galatians 6:9 Paul exhorted, “Let us not be wary in well doing.” the term weary (Gk. egkakeo) basically means to lose courage; faint; despair; give in or give up. It covers a tiredness inside and outside. In our busy, demanding, challenging world, have You been there? Are You there now? Paul’s plea is, “Don’t do it!”

First of all, Paul qualifies the circumstances or activity where we dare not “lose courage, faint, give in or give up.” Paul’s charge to avoid this weariness is in the area of “well doing!” If you are currently “weary,” is well doing what made you that way? The world and all of its allurements (the lust of the flesh; the lust of the eyes; the vain glory of life—I John 2:16) can wear us out, but that is not the weary about which Paul is writing.

What is the “well doing?” Note Galatians 6:1,2, where Paul charges us to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Paul adds in verse 5 that each person “shall bear his own burden.” When we work and worship, when we help brethren grow and go, lift them up and help them live happy and holy lives—we are then involved in the burden bearing that Paul refers to as “well doing.”

Now if you, or some of your brethren don’t do well, some reject your interest, concern, and good deeds on their behalf, become indifferent or rebel, it could make you lose heart, give in, or determine to give up! That is when Paul (and the Holy Spirit) strongly cry, “Don’t be weary in well doing!”

Why not? Because in “due season we shall reap if we faint not” (v.9) - and what a reaping that will be—reserved in heaven for You (I Pet. 1:3, 4; Rev. 21:2-5). G.K. Chesterton wrote of some gallant men who served well, giving freely of themselves in worldly deeds, but it all ended up as foolish effort and in vain: 

“Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath   (Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath).  And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,  Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain!”¹

In contrast, be sure your skills and energies are to “fulfill the law of Christ” (cf. Phil. 4:13). Then Isaiah 40:31 can be Your story: “...those who wait on the lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary!”

¹ John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1980, p. 742.