Plant and Water

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.
(1 Corinthians 3:6-7 NKJV)

Sometimes we plant and sometimes we water. Sounds a little like the country song lyrics “sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.”1 Sometimes you may sow a seed which someone else will be tasked with watering, or you may be the one watering a seed planted by someone else.

We often get stressed about evangelizing, but we can rest secure in the knowledge it is the Holy Spirit who does the work. Our part is to simply be His instrument, learn to hear His gentle whisper, then do what He tells us to do. He goes before us and prepares people’s hearts; He does the saving and He does all the work. Our eloquent speech or brilliant delivery achieves nothing without Him. Paul was not great with words, as he admits in Corinthians, but he turned the world on fire for the gospel.

For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing” (2 Corinthians 10:10 NIV).

It is the voice of the Holy Spirit combined with the Word of God that releases the power of God to save.

God can and will use whatever resource is available to reach someone or get their attention. He has used a large fish (Jonah), a donkey (Balaam), and a burning bush (Moses). He will use the beauty of a sunset or, as in the case of C.S. Lewis, a person who does not believe in Him at all.

C.S. Lewis was struggling with the concept of Christianity. He had reached the point of accepting that there is a God, but the Christian belief of a God that died for him was a bridge too far. Then the words of a professor friend, T.D. Weldon, who was looking at the life of Christ, stopped him in his tracks. Weldon threw out a random comment, “Rum thing, that stuff of Fraser’s about the Dying God, it almost looks as if it really happened once.” Those words so shocked Lewis he could not get them out of his mind. Between that, and the various conversations he had with his Christian friends, including J.R. Tolkien, finally brought him to Christ. God used an atheist to reach him.

St. Augustine did not start out life as a saint. His life was “colorful” to put it nicely. One day, he heard the voice of a child singing, “Pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it.” It occurred to him that this could be a command from God, so he found a Bible and opened it. The first passage he saw was, “Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14 NASB). Augustine said reading that scripture made his heart flood with life. He totally turned from sin to pursue the things of God and ended up with the word “saint” before his name.

D.L. Moody did not attend school beyond the fifth grade. His education was sadly lacking; he couldn’t spell and his grammar was appalling. He never became an ordained minister. But through the patient kindness of his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, he finally came to Christ. It is believed that Moody may have led a million or more souls to the Lord.

A snowstorm helped lead C.H. Spurgeon to Christ. At the age of fifteen, a snowstorm stopped him in his tracks, causing him to seek shelter in a Methodist chapel. Only a dozen or so people showed up for service and the minister never made it. But one deacon who had made it to church that morning felt that as people had braved the storm to get there, they should hear a sermon. So he preached. Not well, however. It was dry and convoluted. He preached this text from Isaiah, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22 KJV). He looked down at Spurgeon from the pulpit and shouted to him, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ.” That was the moment in Spurgeon’s words that, “there and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun.” Spurgeon became known as the “Prince of Preachers.”

A seed is packed with amazing power. It will push aside a mountain to reach the sun. So plant and water. The results could be astounding. You could be the instrument that unleashes another Spurgeon or a Billy Graham on the world.