To Pray, To Plant, To Water
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. - 1Cor 3:6
Three Questions:
What do I want to plant today?
What do I want to water today?
What do I pray that God will increase?
Look around. What is growing in your life? Inside your heart and mind, what is growing? In the people closest to you, what is growing?
Good things? Bad things? Undetermined?
To point out the obvious: What is growing is something that has been planted and is now being watered.
What seems to be increasing—either in you or in them—is it what you want to see increasing?
Let's reflect on this question positively:
What would you pray for God to increase in you, and in them, today?
Peace, joy, love? Patience, kindness, goodness? Faithfulness? Gentleness? Self-control? Comfort? Steadfast courage? Knowledge? Wisdom? (Gal 5:22-23, 2Cor 1:3f, Eph 6:11, 2Pet 3:18, Jam 1:5)
Example: "Lord, would You please grow in me a greater sense of stability? To know that, in all things, You are at work and I am safe in You? That I can, in fact, rest in You?"
And then—as an expression of that prayer—consider, What do I want to plant today, in myself or in another? Or, what do I want to water today?
In the first instance, this may be something that, as I pray for it, I perceive that they don't seem to know about. Perhaps it is God's love or the presence of Christ with them or the fullness of their forgiveness or the steadfast hope we have in the Gospel or a sense of freedom or a sense of belovedness.
So often we go about our lives without regard for what may be entering our lives, or what we may be introducing into the lives of others. We are reactive and passive. Weed seeds blow in or their roots tunnel toward us, and suddenly we're wrapped up in what is just The Most nonsense, anxiety, or foolishness. Or we convey to each other a sense of things being bad, or how they’re not measuring up, they're a disappointment, and how nothing ever works, why do we even try, who even cares. We dis-courage each other.
Since we want God to give something growth, what would it mean to plant seeds of that, and then to care for it, to water it?
What Paul prayed for to grow—because only God can bring it about—Paul planted and/or watered. This is wisdom; this is the way God works.
Related Verses:
- Think about whatever things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable--things that are excellent and deserving of praise. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me-- practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Phil 4:8-9)
- See to it... that no "root of bitterness" springs up and causes trouble. (Heb 12:15)
- Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. (Col 2:6-8)
- For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Rom 8:5-6)
- If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col 3:1-4 )
- Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1Pet 1:13)
- Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. (Luk 8:11)
- You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God (1Pet 1:23)
Prayer:
Father God,
I pray that there would grow in us a sense that You give growth to good things, and that the way things are right now is not the way it has to stay. I pray that there grows in us a sense of hope, a seed of imagination, of what is possible, of God-with-us, of the rejoicing of heaven, of the dark passing away and the true light already shining.
That there grows in us, by Your grace, courage to take risks, to take up Your armor, to try.
That there grows within us the hope of The Great Sower, our Lord Christ, to see what You have given us, containing as it does all that is good and true and beautiful, and to be willing to share it, to spend it, to sow it, to resource it. That there grows within us what The Good Tree knows—that growing things need water to flourish—so that we embrace and encourage the disciplines of good husbandry and horticulture in our spiritual lives.
You who gives seed to the sower and bread for food, who increases harvests and provides abundance, plant within our hearts such a sense of The Gift, of The Power, of The Hope, that it frees us to pray for and to participate in, with abandon and joy, that which You are always ever truly doing in love, with joy.
In Jesus' Name, may it be.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash