Co-workers with God
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
“We are called to be “friends of the bridegroom” and “co-workers with the Lord…God loves His creation and has a special love for humans who are able to interact with Him and to choose to cooperate and love Him. Humans are not created merely to be obedient. God could have created a race of robots if He wanted that. We are not simply “things” in God’s eyes or one more thing among many in creation. Rather God bestows free will upon us humans and invites us to cooperate with Him (synergy). We aren’t created simply to obey God, but rather are given opportunity to love Him and to choose to deny ourselves in order to do His will.” (Fr. Paul Kucynda, Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“A person who is serious about spiritual life should understand that he can do everything in terms of the tools he has, but the result of spiritual work is in God’s hands. The Lord, seeing the efforts of a person if he is sincere, will surely send him His strengthening grace. But it happens that God, for some reason known to Him alone, seems to be slow and does not give us what we ask Him for. But when we do get what we have put so much effort into, of course, we should rejoice. Not because we are so wonderful, but because, by the grace of God, we were vouchsafed to become His co-workers and the Lord responded to our efforts. We feel the fruit of spiritual work like fragrant strawberries. And we do not rejoice because we are so brilliant and talented, but because the Lord has shown us His mercy. This is what the Apostle Paul call us to—to rejoice: not in our own perfection separated from God, but in the fact that we have managed to become co-workers with the Lord.” (Priest Anthony Borisov)
“Be consistent in prayer. This is what the apostle Paul tells us to do. Success in any work depends upon our zeal and consistency—but not only on this. To be sure, the rolling stone gathers no moss. But we also have to remember that we are only God’s co-workers. So then neither is one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow (1 Cor. 3:7). It is essential that God bless our labors. The holy fathers talk about synergy—about our consistent labor in prayer and grace-filled help from on high. This is the pledge of our success. There can be no pauses in the labor of prayer. The labor of prayer reminds us of riding a bicycle or rowing upstream—only unremitting effort and work ensure our forward movement. The same laws are at work in prayer: Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). For the sake of our constancy in the work of prayer, dryness of heart and emotional boredom will with time give place to a robust spirit and the desire for prayer. This is a sign of progress and grace-filled help from above.” (Archpriest Andrei Ovchinikov)
“…we have two divine gifts to fortify and comfort us in our present distress. The first is the down payment on our hope, the Holy Spirit. And second is the gift of prayer. These two aids come together in St. Paul’s thought that the Holy Spirit prays for us (Romans 8:27) and in us (Galatians 4:6). With the help of prayer and the Spirit, we now have a part to play in the saving work of God…Our “synergy,” our cooperation with God’s redeeming action, is to offer the world our hope in the midst of its hopelessness and the persistence of our faith amid its pervasive despair.” (Fr. Basil)
“As we cooperate with Christ in making all things new, we need to realize that the good things of this world are, at best, anticipations or first fruits of what is yet to come. Working to make the world a better place, or enjoying the good and beautiful things of creation, quickly lapses into idolatry if we treat these realities as our heart’s final resting place.” (Robin Phillips)
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