God has used these verses to help me differentiate between what God has assigned for me to do vs. what responsibility lies instead on His shoulders. What I’ve learned is that it is up to me to be faithful in spreading the gospel (“seed”) to those who God has placed on my path. However, it’s up to God to actually make His message take root in people’s lives and grow into real-life transformation. As I wait to see God do that in the lives of people close to me who have yet to receive Him, I’m reminded to give those people over to God and to trust Him with them wholeheartedly. What a humbling process to know that even in all of my efforts of “planting” and “watering” in other’s lives, it’s only God who actually makes things grow. Is there anyone in your life that you need to entrust to God and release into His hands? He is trustworthy.
“Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.””
Mark 4:20
“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
1 Corinthians 3:7