A few people have asked me lately to plan their funerals ahead of time. That’s not usually how I like to open a conversation, but it’s been on my mind. We’ve buried people this season we loved. Some were taken sooner than any of us expected.
Here’s what a funeral clarifies. In a very short time, for some of us a year, for others fifty, only one thing will matter: whether we’re with God or without Him. Our titles won’t matter. Our following won’t matter. Who we lined up behind won’t matter.
So I keep asking myself, and I’ll ask you: does that say anything about where God sits in our lives right now?
Put people where God belongs, and things fall apart
Look around and you don’t have to search long to find the wreckage. Anger that turns deadly in minutes on an ordinary workday. Scams that rob the elderly. Leaders, even pastors, caught stealing from the people they serve. Kids getting their counsel from a chatbot instead of a person. Isolation, addiction, broken homes.
I think there’s a common root under a lot of it. When we push God out of the center, something else has to fill that spot. Usually it’s us. Our comfort, our happiness, our reputation, our heroes. Put people where only God belongs, and everything built on top of that starts to wobble.
That’s not just a cultural problem out there. It shows up in church, too. Which brings us to Corinth.
The church that picked teams
The church in Corinth had divided into fan clubs.
For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? (1 Corinthians 3:3–4)
They weren’t fighting over doctrine. They were fighting over preachers. My guy is better than your guy. And Paul says that’s just ordinary, Spirit-less human behavior.
His fix isn’t to rank himself against Apollos. It’s to put both of them in their place, and put God in His.
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3:5–9)
What, not who
Notice Paul’s question: “What then is Apollos? What is Paul?” Not who. He describes their job, not their celebrity. They’re servants. Waiters, not owners. Nobody walks into a restaurant and starts a fan club for the busboy.
And they’re servants “through whom you believed.” They pointed. God is the one you believed in. If a friend introduces you to the person you end up marrying, you’re grateful to the friend, but you don’t marry the friend.
One frame vs. the whole movie
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
Here’s a detail I love. In the Greek, “planted” and “watered” are snapshots, single moments in time. “Gave the growth” is a different kind of verb. It describes ongoing action. Planting and watering are one frame of film. God’s giving the growth is the whole feature, start to finish, on the biggest screen you can find.
That’s why Paul can say, with a straight face, that the planter and the waterer are “nothing” compared to the One who makes things grow. He’s not putting down his calling. He’s saying that next to God, nobody else deserves the spotlight.
Our logic runs backward
Here’s where most of us get it backward. We tend to think, God chose to use me, so I must be somebody. Paul thinks, God chose to use me, so He must be Somebody.
He says it plainly elsewhere: God “chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28–29).
Grace doesn’t make us impressive. It makes God’s grace impressive.
Allies, not competitors
“He who plants and he who waters are one.” Paul and Apollos weren’t rivals. They were on the same crew with the same goal. And the One who hands out the rewards is God, not the congregation.
That’s freeing for anyone who serves. You don’t have to win the comparison game. You don’t even have to be noticed. You just have to be faithful with what you were given, and leave the evaluation to Him. (I’ve written before about how pride is the most dangerous volunteer in any ministry.)
It’s His farm
“You are God’s field, God’s building.” Not my ministry. Not my church. Not my block or my program. It’s God’s work, God’s field, God’s building, and we’re just the hired hands He’s pleased to work alongside.
Pray it, then do it
At Living Faith we’ve been walking through the Lord’s Prayer, and this passage landed right on the line “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). One of the deepest temptations we face is to put ourselves, or someone we admire, in the place only God can fill.
And I’ve noticed something about that prayer. Every line we pray, we’re also invited to live. We pray “hallowed be your name,” and we show up to worship. We pray “your will be done,” and we get into a small group and practice obedience. We pray “give us this day our daily bread,” and we feed hungry people. We pray “deliver us from evil,” and we roll up our sleeves.
That last one has two parts. We care for the casualties, the people hurt by sin, theirs or someone else’s. That’s what loving your neighbor looks like, and it’s a big part of why our church fixes cars for single moms. But we also go after the cause. And the cause, more often than not, is that people have been put where God belongs.
So don’t settle for just taking care of yourself. Invest the rest of your days in other people’s souls: sharing the gospel, discipling someone, helping people put God back at the center.
A few questions for this week
- Whose name do you find yourself bragging about, or defending, a little too hard?
- Where are you thinking, “God uses me, so I must be somebody”?
- Who are you planting or watering in right now? If the answer is nobody, who could it be?
- Have you ever asked, plainly, “What is God building, and am I lined up with it?”
We’re servants. He’s the Master. And that’s very good news, because the growth was never up to us.