Daily Affirmations - Day 4 - Heavenly Gardener - Only God - Who Makes Things Grow
- Alisa B.
- Jul 22
- 2 min read
Day 4: Only God - who makes things grow
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 (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).
All Your saints come to You and rest on You, O Christ, and in You all the building, fitly framed together, grows unto an holy Temple in the Lord. You are the Stem from which it branches, the Head in which it lives, the Shepherd by whom it is fed, the Captain by whom it is marshaled, the Husband to whom it is married!
You are, indeed, the All in All of the Church which You have redeemed with Your own blood.
As churches we are not legislators, but subjects. It is not for us to frame constitutions, invent offices and decree rites and ceremonies–but we are to take everything out of the mouth of Christ and to do what He bids us, as He bids us and when He bids us.
Parliaments and kings have no authority whatever in the Church–Christ alone rules! If any portion of a Church is not based upon Christ, it... mars the temple which God has built. What a blessed thing it is to feel that you belong to a Church which has the Rock under it because it is constituted by Christ’s authority!
...There is in His authority no change–His Word is forever settled in Heaven and He is, in Himself, the same yesterday, today and forever. Steadfast is that Church which carefully follows His guiding line, but that which departs from His fixed rule and authority has left the Foundation and therein ceased to be a Church.
A foundation is indispensable to a building and so Christ is indispensable to a true Church. In a house you could do without certain of the windows. You might close in a door and you might remove parts of the roof and it might still be a house, but you cannot have a house at all if you take away the foundation! And so you cannot have a Church of Christ if Jesus Christ is not there as the Foundation and Cornerstone.
And as for priests and preachers we say, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man”? ...There must be no glorying in men, nor blind following of them... The Church is not built on Paul, nor upon Apollos, nor upon Cephas [Peter], but upon the sole authority of Jesus Christ!
“God has a sure Foundation given,
Fixed as the firm decrees of Heaven!
The changeless everlasting Rock,
That braves the storm, and bides the shock.
Against that Rock their war maintain.
Christ is the Rock, the Cornerstone,
God rears His beauteous house thereon.”
~ Spurgeon
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