Jesus finished the work of redemption, but the harvest continues. For believers worn down by unfinished seasons, His message offers both strength for today and freedom from the weight of tomorrow.
By EEW Magazine Online Gospel Editors
Weariness can sit right in the middle of faithfulness. (Donald Iain Smith/Getty Images)
Some days you are bone tired. Maybe you are caring for someone whose condition is not improving. Maybe you have prayed about the same thing for years without a visible answer. Maybe you are trying to stay faithful to a calling while carrying grief, a tight budget or a body that will not cooperate. The question on your heart is how to keep believing when you have so little left to give.
Jesus knew bone-deep tiredness. John says that when He reached Jacob’s well, He was “wearied with his journey,” and He sat down (John 4:6). What happened at that well, and what He said there, speaks to every woman who is tired in the middle of something unfinished.
While His disciples were in the city buying food, a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink. Before long, He was offering her “living water” and telling her, “I that speak unto thee am he” (John 4:10, 26). The disciples returned as the conversation ended, and the woman left her waterpot and went into the city (John 4:27-28). Meanwhile, they urged Him, “Master, eat.”
He answered, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” When they wondered whether someone had brought Him food, Jesus explained: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:31-34).
“Meat” in the King James Version simply means food. Jesus’ body still needed sustenance and rest. He was describing a deeper satisfaction, the nourishment of doing what the Father sent Him to do. In that encounter with one woman, Heaven’s purpose was being done, and it fed Him.
Jesus offered a weary woman “living water” at Jacob’s well. (Vlad Georgescu/Getty Images)
Then He pointed His disciples to what they had missed while they were buying food: “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35). The harvest came that same day. John writes that “many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman.” Jesus stayed two days, “and many more believed because of his own word.”
They told the woman, “we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (John 4:39-42). A weary Savior gave His attention to one woman. Her testimony sent her neighbors out to hear Him, and they confessed Him as the Savior of the world. What looked like an interruption was the Father’s harvest.
The work Jesus called His food reached far beyond one day in Samaria. The night before the cross, He prayed, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). “Finished” there comes from teleioō, to bring something to its intended end, the same verb He used at the well when He spoke of finishing His Father’s work. With the cross still ahead, He spoke in anticipation, so certain of its completion that He could already call the work finished.
At Golgotha, He said, “I thirst” (John 19:28). The Living Word, whose meat was to do the will of the Father, now thirsted on a cross. He was finishing the work that secured the life He had offered the woman at the well. Then He cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30). That cry is tetelestai, from teleō, a closely related verb that also speaks of completion. The work only He could do was done.
The road from Jacob’s well led to Calvary. (Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
Jesus’ saving work is complete. The harvest is still in progress. Understanding that truth can lift the weight off a tired woman’s shoulders. What remains is a harvest He invites you into, and He supplies the strength for it Himself. At the well, He spoke of the food that sustained Him. Two chapters later, He offered Himself as food for everyone else: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
You receive strength for the unfinished season by coming to Him, again and again, the way a hungry person comes back to the table. Weariness can sit right in the middle of faithfulness. It sat with Jesus at Jacob’s well. A tired believer can still be a faithful one.
The same truth reaches the burdens that have nothing to do with a harvest field. If you are caring for a mother whose health keeps slipping, or waiting on a prayer God has not yet answered, the same principle applies. You are not the Savior. You cannot control every outcome. You are called to trust Christ and stay faithful with what He has placed in your hands. The outcome rests with Him.
Paul understood the difference between the harvest and his part in it. He set his life on one aim, “that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:24). His word for “finish” is teleioō, the verb Jesus used at the well.
Near the end of his life, he wrote, “I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7), using teleō, the verb behind “It is finished.” Paul finished his course, and the harvest remained in progress after he was gone. Your course is the portion God has given you, and faithfulness in it counts whether or not you see the full harvest. You may be sowing seed someone else will reap. Jesus said that “both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together” (John 4:36).
So bring Him the prayer that has gone unanswered for years and the assignment you cannot see the end of. The harvest belongs to the Lord of the harvest. He finished what only He could finish, and He strengthens you for your part of the rest.
When your soul is weary, come to the Bread of Life. He finished the work that feeds you, and His grace will sustain you through every step of your course.
