Releasing the Need to Make Things Happen — and Learning to Trust the One Who Makes Things Grow
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
1 Corinthians 3:7 (NIV)
The Garden That Wore Me Out
I remember the season I decided I was going to grow things.
I bought the seeds. I bought the soil. I researched the best planting times, the correct depth, the exact amount of water. I set reminders on my phone. I watched YouTube videos about companion planting. I was committed — maybe a little obsessed.
Every morning I was out there, pressing my fingers into the dirt, looking for any sign of life. Every evening I'd water carefully, talk to the soil like it owed me something, and go to bed with the quiet hope that tomorrow I'd finally see a shoot, a sign, a breakthrough.
Weeks passed.
Some things grew. Most didn't. And the things that didn't? I blamed myself. Not enough sun. Too much water. Wrong soil. Wrong timing. Wrong me.
And then — exhausted, frustrated, slightly sunburned — I stopped. I sat down in the dirt. And in that stillness, I noticed something.
The weed in the corner of my garden that I'd never planted, never watered, never thought about once — it was thriving.
Of course it was.
There's a version of this story playing out in most of our lives — except the garden isn't in the backyard. It's our relationships, our work, our ministries, our dreams, our children, our plans. And somewhere along the way, we learned that if we just work hard enough, strategise enough, show up enough — things will grow.
But here's what Paul understood, and what I'm slowly, stubbornly learning:
Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything. Only God makes things grow.
This isn't a verse about doing nothing. It's a verse about who's actually in charge. And if we're honest, surrendering that — really surrendering it — is one of the hardest things we'll ever do.
Into the Word: What Was Paul Actually Talking About?
The Corinthian Church — A Garden Full of Division
When Paul wrote these words, the church at Corinth had a problem that sounds painfully familiar: they were comparing leaders, taking sides, and using their spiritual allegiances as status symbols.
Some were saying, "I follow Paul." Others: "I follow Apollos." Paul, who had planted the Corinthian church, and Apollos, a gifted teacher who came after him and watered what Paul had planted — these two had become brands. Camps. Sources of Christian pride.
Paul's response is almost shocking in its humility. He doesn't defend his position or argue his superiority. He says: we're both nothing. We're just workers. We hold the seeds and the watering can — but the life? That comes from somewhere else entirely.
1 Corinthians 3:5–7 (NIV)
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe — as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
Notice the phrase: "as the Lord has assigned to each his task." Paul and Apollos each had a role — planting, watering — but neither was the source of growth. They were faithful to their assignment. God was faithful to His.
This is the rhythm Paul is trying to restore: faithful obedience in your lane, total trust that the outcome belongs to God.
The Parable of the Sower — Not Every Soil Is Meant to Hold Every Seed
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a story about a farmer who scatters seed. Some falls on the path and is eaten by birds. Some falls on rocky ground — it grows fast, but has no root and withers in the sun. Some falls among thorns and gets choked out. And some — some falls on good soil, and it produces a remarkable harvest.
Notice what the farmer does not do: he doesn't force the seed into the rocky ground and demand it take root. He doesn't stay up all night transplanting thorny soil. He scatters. He trusts. He keeps farming.
Sometimes we water things that God never intended to grow. We pour ourselves into soil that isn't ready, relationships that aren't aligned, dreams that belong to a different season or a different person's story. And when they don't grow, we assume we did something wrong.
But what if some seeds just weren't planted in our field? What if some growth was never ours to produce?
Matthew 13:23 (NIV)
But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Our job is to scatter faithfully. God decides what takes root.
Mary and Martha — The Tension Between Doing and Being
You know the story. Jesus comes to visit. Martha is in the kitchen, doing everything, holding the whole hospitality operation together. Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet, listening.
Martha, exhausted and a little stung, asks Jesus to tell Mary to help. And Jesus says something that probably felt like a small wound in the moment:
Luke 10:41–42 (NIV)
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed — or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
This isn't a passage that devalues work, or says hospitality doesn't matter. What Jesus is gently pointing out is the interior condition behind the work. Martha is worried, distracted, resentful. She's serving, but her eyes are on the task — and quietly, on what her sister isn't doing.
Mary's eyes are on Jesus.
Both women are physically present. Only one is truly with Him.
I think about this a lot when I look at my own tendency to work, strive, produce, and hustle — and how often I'm doing all of that while barely paying attention to the God I say I'm doing it for.
What if the whole point of following Jesus isn't the harvest we produce for Him — but the friendship we cultivate with Him?
The Deep Dive: Three Struggles, One Root
1. The Striving Struggle — Why We Can't Stop Working So Hard
There's something in a lot of us — maybe you recognise it — that genuinely believes if we stop pushing, nothing will happen. That rest is irresponsible. That stillness is laziness dressed up in spiritual clothing.
So we plant. We water. We check on the seeds seventeen times a day. We analyse the soil. We rearrange the garden. And when we finally collapse from the effort — when we hit the wall of exhaustion — we sometimes find ourselves sitting in the rubble of our own striving, and something shifts.
In that exhaustion, there's an invitation. Not to quit. But to release.
Paul doesn't say planting and watering don't matter. He says they're not the source. They're participation, not production. There's a beautiful and humbling difference between being a co-worker with God (which He actually invites us into) and being the CEO of outcomes that were never ours to manage.
God is not your silent business partner waiting for you to drive the vision. He is the author, and you are a character He loves deeply — one with a role to play, not a kingdom to build.
The striving often comes from a good place — we love what we're building. We care about the people we're serving. We want to be faithful. But there's a version of faithfulness that looks like hustle from the outside and is actually control on the inside.
True faithfulness plants with open hands.
2. The Comparison Struggle — Someone Else's Garden Looks Better
Here's the one we don't always say out loud: sometimes we look at what God is growing in someone else's life and we feel left behind.
Their ministry is growing. Their family looks peaceful. Their creative work is being seen. And we're over here, faithfully watering our little corner of the world, and it feels like nothing is happening.
The Corinthian believers were doing this exact thing — measuring themselves against Paul, against Apollos, against each other — and it was fracturing the community. Paul saw it for what it was: a fundamental misunderstanding of whose garden this actually is.
Every person's growth is between them and God. His timing is not a competition. His faithfulness to someone else's field is not a commentary on yours.
When we compare our behind-the-scenes to someone else's highlight reel — spiritually or otherwise — we're essentially telling God His timing in our story is wrong. That He's behind schedule. That He should be doing in our life what He's doing in someone else's.
Comparison is a form of unbelief. It says: I don't trust that what God is growing in me is enough — or that it's coming at all.
What if instead of measuring your garden against theirs, you leaned in and asked: God, what are You growing here? What's under the surface that I can't see yet?
Because here's the thing about gardens — the most significant growth happens underground, invisibly, long before there's anything to show.
3. The Surrender Struggle — Being OK With What God Chooses Not to Grow
This is perhaps the hardest one.
What if you did everything right — you were faithful, you showed up, you prayed, you served — and the thing still didn't grow?
What if the relationship didn't heal? The ministry didn't take off? The dream didn't happen? The door stayed shut?
There's a painful possibility in Paul's words that we sometimes glide past: God is the one who makes things grow — which means He is also the one who chooses what doesn't. Not everything we plant is meant to flourish. Not every seed we water was designed for this soil or this season.
This doesn't mean God is withholding from you. It means He is protecting a larger story that you can't fully see from where you're standing.
Paul and Apollos each had their assignment. They didn't get to decide what grew — they got to be faithful to their piece. And that had to be enough.
Surrender isn't giving up. It's giving over. It's the moment you stop white-knuckling the outcome and open your hands to the One who already knows what this story needs.
Being at peace with what God doesn't grow in your life is an act of profound trust. It says: I believe You are good. I believe You are for me. And I believe that what You're not growing here, You're growing somewhere better — in me, in this season, in Your timing.
The Bigger Idea: This Was Never About the Garden
Somewhere in our faith journey, many of us absorbed a subtle but damaging theology: that the goal of following God is to produce something. A changed life, a growing church, a healed family, a fruitful ministry, a good outcome.
And while fruit matters — Jesus talks about it often — it is never the point. It is the byproduct of the point.
The point is this: to know God. To be known by Him. To be in friendship with the One who made you.
Jesus doesn't say, "I am the vine, you are the branches — now go produce." He says abide. Stay. Remain in Me. The fruit comes from the connection, not the effort.
John 15:4–5 (NIV)
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Apart from me you can do nothing. Not "less." Not "not as much." Nothing.
This is not meant to make us feel powerless. It's meant to free us from the exhausting fiction that we were ever supposed to be the ones making it happen.
God is not a genie. He is not a transaction. He is not sitting in heaven waiting to see if we do enough to unlock His blessing. He is a Father who is already for you, already working, already in the field — and He is tenderly, persistently inviting you to stop striving long enough to notice.
The Christian life is not a productivity system. It is a love story. And love stories aren't driven by outcomes — they're built on presence, trust, and the willingness to stay when you don't understand what's happening.
Reflection & Study
Read It Again — Slowly
1 Corinthians 3:7 (NIV)
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
Read it once more, and this time — notice where you feel resistance. Which word snags on something? "Neither"? "Anything"? "Only God"?
That resistance is worth sitting with. It's often where the invitation lives.
Reflection Questions
1. Where in your life are you currently working hardest to "make something grow"? What would it look like to loosen your grip on that outcome?
2. Have you experienced the exhaustion of striving — that moment where you finally sit back? What did you notice in that stillness?
3. Is there a garden in someone else's life you've been measuring yours against? What does that comparison tell you about what you're afraid of?
4. Is there something you've been trying to grow that God may not have intended for this season? What would it look like to release it?
5. Honestly: is your relationship with God more transactional or relational right now? What's one small thing that might shift that?
6. Mary chose "what is better" — presence over productivity. What might it look like for you to choose that this week?
Living It Out
This isn't a passage that lets us off the hook for showing up. Paul and Apollos still planted and watered — they still did the work of faithfulness. The shift isn't from action to passivity. It's from control to trust.
Here's what that looks like practically:
This Week's Practice
- Name one thing you've been striving over. Write it down. Then write beside it: "God, I release the outcome of this to You." Say it out loud if you can.
- Notice this week when you feel the pull to check on the seeds — to manage, control, or anxiously monitor something. Pause. Breathe. Pray: "You make things grow. I trust You."
- Find one moment each day to simply be with God — not asking for anything, not doing anything. Just present. Mary-style. Even five minutes.
- If comparison has been a theme, take a break from whatever surface it's happening on. A feed, a conversation, a metric. Replace that time with gratitude for what's alive in your own soil.
- Ask God directly: "What are You growing in me right now that I can't see yet?" Then listen. Journal what comes.
A Closing Word
I'm still learning this. I suspect I'll be learning it for a long time.
Some days I'm Martha in the kitchen, doing everything and subtly resenting the Mary in the room. Some days I'm white-knuckling something that was never mine to hold. Some days I look over the fence at someone else's flourishing and feel the quiet ache of comparison.
But increasingly — in the moments I'm paying attention — I'm finding something that feels like rest. Not the absence of work, but the absence of the terrible weight of believing the outcome depends entirely on me.
It doesn't. It never did.
God makes things grow. He always has. He always will.
Your job, my job, is to stay close enough to the Gardener to know what seeds to carry — and to trust Him with everything else.
A Prayer
Lord, I confess that I've been acting like the outcome depends on me. I've been planting and watering and checking and striving — and somewhere in all of that, I've been trusting my effort more than I've been trusting You. Forgive me for the seasons I've mistaken busyness for faithfulness. Forgive me for the moments I've compared my story to someone else's and decided You were behind schedule in mine. Teach me to be a faithful planter — to show up, to do my part, and then to open my hands. Teach me to want Your presence more than Your productivity. Teach me that You are not my genie, but my God, My Friend, My Father — and that You are already working in ways I cannot see. I release the outcomes. I release the timeline. I release the need to make things happen. You make things grow. I trust You. In Jesus Mighty Name, Amen.
Add comment
Comments