My new favorite!

Have you ever read a scripture that ‘screams’ at you so loudly that it seems as if you’ve just heard it for the very first time?  That happened to me today.  My reading today included  1 Corinthians 3:7 – “So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” (NKJV)  This is my new favorite verse!!

This is the version from The Message – “It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow.”

Those who buy the seed are important.  Those who plant the seed are important.  Those who water the seed are important.  But they are not the center of the process.  God is.  (The “I AM.”) 

It is for God that we do all these things.  Each one of us have been given different gifts to help in God’s process of Kingdom growth.  The important thing to remember is that it is “GOD….who makes things grow.”  All we are required to do is what God leads us to do – nothing more – nothing less.

If you have the gift of giving, Do your giving.
If you have the gift of planting, Do your planting.
If you have the gift of watering, Do your watering.
(And so on and so forth…)
But whatever you do, do it all for God; and let HIM take care of the rest!

Matthew 6:1-4 – “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven.  Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.  But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,  that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.