Grow: That Part Is God's Job — You Can Study the Bible

The third move — and the one you aren't responsible for. Which takes a surprising amount of weight off you.

You’ve eaten the story and digested it. There’s a third move, Grow, and here’s the good news about it: it is not your job.

A farmer plants a seed and waters it. He doesn’t sit in the field pulling on the shoot to make it get taller — partly because it wouldn’t work, and partly because that isn’t the deal. “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is of significance, but only God, who brings about the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7, OTB).

So you are not in charge of making yourself change, and you are definitely not in charge of making anyone else change. You read the story. You said what you saw. You picked something to do and somebody to tell. That’s the planting and the watering, and it’s genuinely all of your part.

This matters more than it sounds like it does. Kids who think growing is their job get worried when it feels slow, and then they quit. It’s slow sometimes. Keep doing the cycle anyway. The growing is happening in a place you can’t see, which is exactly where seeds do it.

You plant and water. God grows it.

Try it: Say out loud the one thing you decided to obey this week. Then notice you are not responsible for how it turns out.