God

"I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him. I ended up by asking God to do His work though me." -Hudson Taylor

By God here we can mean whatever higher power we find in our life. We all start out by asking God to help us. Our life on Earth seems so overwhelming. There are so many things we want to do, and we seem so incapabale of them. And then there are all the things that other people want and expect of us as well. Even the earliest religions were for the purpose of asking God for help (with the rain, crops etc). We have learned that we are a victim of circumstances God controls, so we must ask it for help if we need to change things.

Once we really learn to love the world and to appreciate all the wonderful things God has created for us, the next question we have is how we can help God. We want to create beautiful things just to honor it, to show it our gratitude. We sing God's praises. We start to see God more as a helper than something threatening. We begin to want to do our part to make the world a better place to live.

Finally, we ask God to do his work through us. This is the point where we realize our true capabilities. We learn that we can do God's work and we can create a better world; but only when we operate under God's advice for us. We tried to do it on our own in the previous stage and that didn't work too well. When we really start accomplishing things and being successful, is when we know that we can succeed because we really do have the capability ourselves and we listen carefully to God's guidance when it comes to us as inspiration or hunches or ideas. This is how we can change the world.