Mud

A God thing happened to me this week. On a few separate occasions, people came and told me that they’re getting frustrated with their ministries, and for good reasons. The thing that was common between these people was that they felt like they weren’t getting a response from the people they’re ministering to. One of these guys told me that he was getting the feeling that everything he said went into one ear, and out the other, his group has no facial expressions, no apparent life in them, pure apathy. It seems that regardless of the effort he puts into his ministry, he sees no results. The other guy told me that he has been praying for a Godly renewal for his family, and that he is getting really frustrated, even depressed, because he’s not seeing any results, regardless of how hard he prays, or how hard he tries to talk with his family about God. So, I decided that because this theme was appearing so often in my life, it was probably a God thing, and I should meditate on it a bit. So I looked through my Bible and found an awesome passage. In 1 Corinthians 3: 5-9 Paul writes about his ministry with Apollos. It seems that the two had a disagreement, but that’s irrelative to the point. Paul writes:
“What, 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. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.”
This passage blew me away. Look at it. Paul describes how he planted the seed of Christ/ God/ Christianity into the people, and how later, Apollos watered that seed, but only God made it grow. Going along with this analogy, I think that we're so harvest oriented that we tend to forget the process required for the harvest to come. I find that as I look back on my Christian life, the people I remember most are the ones who planted the seed of Christ in my life, and the ones who ‘reaped the harvest’ when I finally became a Christian. I tend to overlook the hundreds of people who ‘watered’ me. As I look back, I think that these people were perhaps the biggest overall influence on me, yet they got the least credit and felt the least joy out of these three groups. Think about it. The planter sees a physical seed go into the ground and get covered by dirt and fertilizer; he sees that there is promise in his work. Similarly the harvester sees the final product that all this hard work has gone into and is happy because the final result is awesome. But what does the waterer see? Mud. Nothing but pure, gooey, stinky, brown mud. Though he can’t see it, something is happening below that mud. Ever so slowly, that seed is growing roots, and getting ready to break through. But the only one who knows when that seed will sprout is God, the one who makes it grow. So have faith guys. God is at work, we just can’t see it right now because the mud’s in the way. But when that seed finally sprouts, we’ll have a real good salad. Mmmmm, salad... good.

1 Corinthians 15:58