Working with God

Hi there, and welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading titled Working with God was written by So Chi Dixon. During his 1962 visit to Mexico, Bill Asch helped fix windmill hand pumps at an orphanage. Fifteen years later, inspired by a deep desire to serve God by helping provide clean water to villages in need, Bill founded a nonprofit organization. He said, God awoke me to make the most of the time by finding others with a desire to bring safe drinking water to the rural poor.

Later, having learned about the global need for safe water through the requests of thousands of pastors and evangelists from more than one hundred countries, Bill invited others to join the ministry's efforts. God welcomes us to team up to serve with Him and others in various ways. When the people of Corinth argued over which teachers they preferred, the Apostle Paul affirmed his role as a servant of Jesus and a teammate of Apollos, fully dependent on God for spiritual growth. He reminds us that all work has God-given value. Acknowledging the privilege of working with others while serving Him, Paul encourages us to build each other up as He transforms us in love. Though our mighty Father doesn't need our help to accomplish His great works, He equips us and invites us to partner with Him.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 1 through 9. Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.

Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?

Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos, and what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord has assigned to each 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.

The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God's service. You are God's field, God's building.

Let's pray. Dear God, some of us are called to do big things for you that receive great recognition, but most of us are called to do ordinary, everyday things. In whatever you have called us to today, help us to do our jobs well and to give you all of the glory. Thank you for providing us all we need as you continue to accomplish great things in us. Thank you, Father. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.