Don't Weary God

I’ve seen the look of weariness in the face of people that I’ve disappointed – again. I’ve seen the look of weariness as I’ve looked in the mirror after someone disappointed me – again. I’m not talking about weariness that comes from a ten mile uphill walk to school in the snow. I’m talking about the weariness that you feel when the physical and emotional investment that you’ve made in the life of someone else seemingly fails. When you are this kind of weary, the energy scale in your heart, your mind, and your muscles registers zero. Your shoulders stoop and the brightness in your eyes fades like it has been overcome by spiritual cataracts. Most of us have experienced that kind of weariness. Did you know that God has, too?

God’s people spent seventy years in captivity as punishment for their idol worship and immoral lives. Yet when they returned home through the intervention of God in national affairs, they married people in the land who were idol worshippers, the priests practiced corruption, and the general population followed sinful paths. God sent Malachi to call the people back to God. He told them that they had wearied God.

“How have we wearied him?” they asked.

“By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’” (Malachi 2:17).

You don’t want to weary God, do you? You don’t want him to feel like his investment in you – which is huge, by the way – is lost. Don’t close your eyes, then, to what God wants so that you call good evil and evil good. God has told us what is good, and now he has shown us what is good through Jesus. Don’t confuse evil with good. Second, don’t question whether God is just or fair when you experience some difficulty in your life knowing that self-evaluation would reveal that you haven’t had a mindset for doing his will. It wearies God when those who are supposed to follow him, don’t; and then criticize him because they experience the pain of their path. That’s Life at Work!