But there is an opposite temptation that threatens us also: namely, the temptation to an exclusive concern with divine sovereignty...thought
God uses men as means for achieving his purposes, in the last analysis nothing depends on man; everything depends, rather, on the God who raises men up to do his will. They see, too, that God is handling every situation before his servants come on the scene, and that he continues to handle it and work out his will in it through each thing that they do- through their mistakes and failures, no less than through their personal successes...
They see that, since God is always in control, they need never fear that they will expose him to loss and damage if they limit themselves to serving him in the way that he has appointed. They see that any other supposition would in effect be a denial of his wisdom, or his sovereignty, or both. They see, also, that the Christian must never for one moment imagine himself to be indispensable to God, or allow himself to behave as if he were. The God who sent him, and is pleased to work with him, can do without him. He must be ready to spend and be spent in the tasks that God sets him; but he must never suppose that the loss to the church would be irreparable if God should lay him aside and use someone else.
He must not at any point say to himself, "God's cause would collapse without me and the work I am doing" -for there is never any reason to think this is so. It is never true that God would be at a loss without you and me. Those who have begun to understand the sovereignty of God see all this, and so they seek to efface themselves in all their work for God. They thus bear a practical witness to their belief that God is great, and reigns, by trying to make themselves small, and to act in a way which is itself and acknowledges that the fruitfulness of their Christian service depends wholly on God, and not on themselves. And up to this point they are right.-J I Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God Pgs.38-40)
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