1 Corinthians 3:6–11
King James Version
“I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6
New American Standard Bible 1995
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6
English Standard Version
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6
A farmer can break ground, sow, and water. He cannot make one seed open. He goes to bed, and something happens in the dark that has nothing to do with him.
I forgot that for a long time.
The vision for The Caffeine Experience came to me in a cell in Changi. I had lost nearly everything by then, and the idea felt like the one thing I still owned. So when it grew, I kept the mental receipt. Nobody saw it. Nobody audits that place.
Paul takes the receipt away. He does not scold the Corinthians for admiring their leaders; he simply asks what a leader actually is. A servant. A man with a watering can. Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything. God gives the increase.
I only see this properly when I count the hands.
YuenHo, San and David were the original shareholders. They put money into an idea carried out of a prison cell by a man with a record — before there was a café, a queue, or any proof. YuenHo has seeded most of what was needed across nine years since. Not one dramatic gift, but a long, unglamorous faithfulness. None of them has asked for his name on a wall.
Pastor Paul Tan watered me at Teen Challenge before there was anything in me worth watering. Crossroads volunteers posted Bible studies into Changi for a man they would never meet; I still do not know who wrote them. Jonathan Eu opened a door at The Gateway I could not have opened with a crowbar. SY has watered this for years with all of the cost and almost none of the credit. Amos, Jaydee, See Ting and Brian water it daily, one flat white at a time. The Restarters water each other in a language of shared history I do not speak and cannot teach. And now, as we prepare the Academy, Dr Shirleen and Dr Sherman are watering us — guiding me and my team over ground we have never walked before.
Count them all, and one thing becomes obvious. Not one of us made a single seed open.
We are the workers. That is the whole job description, and it is enough. God is carrying this — so we do not have to.
Prayer
Father, I have carried credit that was never mine and called it responsibility. Thank You for every hand that planted and watered. Keep me faithful in my small part, and glad that the increase — and the weight — belongs to You. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria
“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” — Psalm 127:1 (KJV)
The Caffeine Experience · Brewing Coffee & Second Chances
UEN: 201725426R
