Plants are a hobby for me. The last time I moved I had to give away all of my houseplants, and it didn’t take long for me to begin accumulating new ones once we’d settled a bit. There’s something satisfying about tending, watering, fertilizing, and pinching off so that I can then watch a plant grow.
My aunt, also a plant-lover, shared a number of plants with me to help build up the greens in my new house. Recently, one kind I’d never had before began to wither and fade. The leaves fell off, and the vine got woody and sparse. So…I texted my aunt, then we Googled until we could figure out the problem. I’m trying something to revive it, and we’ll see what happens.
About the same time my plant started to turn, some people I’ve invested in to help them grow began to show some signs of wilting and dying, too.
What did I do? I didn’t text someone or try Google to look for a solution. Of course not—I tried to solve it myself.
After all, I’ve spent much of my life helping people grow. Having always been in some kind of helping profession, much of my time is spent investing into people from whom I’m hoping to see some kind of growth as a result of my efforts.
So…my natural response was to do something to fix the fact that this person wasn’t growing.
Then God stopped me short. Through various circumstances and the wise words of others He said, “I give the growth.”
In 1 Corinthians chapter three, Paul admonishes the Corinthian believers not to follow the “servants through whom you believed” (v. 5). Instead, he clarifies that Jesus Christ was the One whom they should follow. Paul makes clear the role that he and Apollos and others had in them coming to faith. They each had a part in tending the seed of faith in His Son, but it was God alone who made it grow.
In all my busy tending of people – in mothering, in teaching, in discipling, in serving, in ministering – I forgot something. I can’t make them grow.
All my good intentions, all my careful training and nurturing, although good and necessary, will never guarantee growth. Only God can make growth happen. Like Paul and Apollos, I am the servant. I must not mistake my tending for growing.
The growth belongs to God, and if I hold too tight or try to force growth where He’s not ready to work (or with someone who isn’t ready to be taught), then may I have the grace to serve by letting go of something that was never really my right in the first place.
To God be the glory and the growth. Amen.
Taking it Further:
Are there any ways you are trying to force growth in someone you are currently tending? How can you release this work to God?
