All Growth is from God

Human nature dictates that we take credit for all the good things we accomplish. At work, at home, even at Church, when something goes well, we take the credit. When something goes wrong, don’t you dare accuse us of doing something wrong. Human nature is wrong.

I was inspired by today’s reading from Saint Paul, not because I have done anything good, but because I struggle to remember any progress I have made in the past fifty-seven years of life, and nearly thirty-five years of ministry is from God, not what I have accomplished.

Brethren, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Holy Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely men? 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 equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor.

1^st Corinthians 2.9-3.8

We pray in the Divine Liturgy, “every good and perfect gift is from above,” yet we never say, “Thank you God. I have done so many wonderful things.” We pray, “For blessings manifest and hidden that have been bestowed on us,” but we never take credit for these blessings.

Be thankful but don’t be prideful. Spend more time repenting from the things you get wrong than bosting about things that ‘go right’ in your life. God already knows the good you did. Your friends and coworkers already know what you’ve done. Move on and credit God.