What do you base your following of Christ on? Personally, it was my father who originally led me to Christ, but I owe the majority of my spiritual growth to pastor Daron Earlewine before he left our church to pursue other opportunities. In reading 1 Corinthians 3, however, I see that it is not them whom I should follow. Sometimes we make the mistake of following those who lead us to the faith. As we see in this chapter, this is not a new mistake. Those in Paul's time made the same mistake by saying they followed Paul or Apollos.
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. – 1 Corinthians 3:5-9
I am currently trying to carry this over to my own life not just in matters spiritually, but in normal life. I tend to try and do everything. If a seed is planted I immediately become obsessed with how it is going to be watered and grown regardless of if it is within my capacity to do either. Right now a seed that is being planted is the discussion of when my wife and I will have children. We do not have any after four years of marriage, nor is it something that we definitely haf to face immediately, but the inexorable march of time is starting to catch up with us. We recognize that if it is going to happen, it will have to happen sooner rather than later because of numerous factors. I turn 30 this year and my wife hits it next year, so time is unfortunately one of the factors we must consider.
Lately I have asked myself the question of if I am ready for this. There is no guarantee it can even happen, yet I question if God has made me ready for this point in my life. That is where this allegory with the seeds come in to play. Ultimately, it is not I that will be doing the growing here. It is God that has to do the growing on all fronts. I am merely the field. If I try to wrap my head around this I quickly become so overwhelmed I can barely function. To me, it is the ultimate test of faith for us. I cannot handle it on my own, so I must trust God to handle it for me.
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