The Joy of Labouring

posted by Navigators on March 31st, 2026 in Joy

By Paul Baily, Melbourne Labouring Community. This article was first published in our newsletter, Compass, Autumn 2026.

The Great Commission and the call of sending out labourers into the harvest has been echoed from pulpits for centuries. As each generation pleads these causes, I imagine the same statements are made in response: “The labourers are few”, “I don’t know how to get started”, “I can go, I can labour,” “I see fruit in my labouring,” “I’m burnt out”, “It’s too hard” “it’s just not for me”, “I have laboured, someone else can do it”. As scripture forewarns, there is nothing new under the sun. Imagine the burden every generation has felt hearing the same thing from the pulpit. Each labourer weary from the good work, begging for more labourers. How do we who are already labouring persevere through the weariness? How do we who maybe haven’t begun get started? How do we become a solution to Christ’s statement, “The labourers are few”? There are many ways to answer this question, so I’ve decided to take them from the words of David.

The restoration of [our] joy in the gospel … fuels [our] labouring …

In the middle of David’s prayer of confession in Psalm 51:12b, we find a simple yet profound line, “restore to me the joy of your salvation”. Now this restoration isn’t asking for him to be born again or to be brought from death to life, lost then found in the terms of his salvation. But rather, David acknowledges that he has gone astray and has not found joy in the hope that is God, who has already redeemed his soul from eternal judgment. It is an acknowledgement that his focus had changed from God to something else. As David prays this, he continues in Psalm 51:13, “Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you”. When his joy is returned, then (meaning when this happens) he will declare the gospel – making known to sinners their ways and urging them to return to God. The restoration of his joy in the gospel and his own salvation fuels his labouring and his return to proclaiming that same gospel.

The gospel is, was and always will be the greatest message of all time. A thrice-Holy God, whose perfection is incomprehensible and whose wrath is being stored up against sinners due to His divine justice, sends His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to walk this earth and deal with all temptations, trials and sufferings. Yet, unlike us, Christ lives righteously and perfectly according to God’s Holy Law and dies on a cross. God’s divine justice is then unleashed on Jesus, bearing and taking the punishment we deserve, the stored-up wrath of God, and in exchange we are credited with His righteousness. We now find ourselves forgiven of sins, our debt wiped clean, and given eternal life in heaven with God. This is the message which saved us in the first place, yet it must also be the message that we daily live by. This gospel is not a door we enter through and live on the other side; we never move past it. Rather, it’s the centrepiece of the joy we need for labouring for a lifetime.

This gospel … is the centrepiece of the joy we need for labouring for a lifetime.

Now stop. Before you continue reading, answer these questions. Who were you before Christ made you His own? What was your life like before you were purchased by His blood and redeemed? How are you applying His Gospel to your life daily, knowing you sin daily? Have you unknowingly slipped back into trusting your good works? Has that become your focus?

When we grow daily in the reality that the gospel is the centrepiece of joy, Christ becomes sweeter to our lives, and the joy ever increasing. Surely in this life, we will experience seasons of fruit which bring joy in our harvest. Yet as this life goes on, we will experience seasons of despair and drought. Our circumstances will ever shift, yet our eyes must stay fixed on Christ. Joy is something fixed on the truth that comes from the gospel. The joy of your salvation! Saved and redeemed. We come to Christ weak, poor and needy; He brings joy. We display fruit, experience blessings; He again brings joy. We, who are in a deep sense of gratitude, live out of this motivation that comes from the gospel of hope found in Jesus Christ, the steadfast anchor for our souls.

Christ is our Hope, and Christ is our Joy who has given us our salvation. If you are a weary labourer, look to the gospel and ask God to restore to you this joy of His salvation. If you have yet to begin labouring, you too should look to Christ and His redeeming love – that it would bring you joy, and stir your heart to proclaim to sinners that there is hope in Christ, and that they too would experience the joy of His salvation.

Paul Bailey leads the student ministry work at Monash University. If you would like to know more about &/or would prayerfully like to consider supporting Paul and his ministry, visit his Profile Page.

We are praying for more labourers to join our team. If you are interested or would like to know more, please contact us at [email protected].