Talents

The reason the last 2 blogs have not been posted till the morning is because the Wi-fi at the hotel is not working and I have to come down and plug into a hard line. I talked to one of the workers here and they are going to get a technician and try to get this fixed sometime today. Yesterday we talked about talents. What are talents? Back in Bible times a talent was a unit of measure, but today talents are what God has blessed and entrusted us with to be used for His glory. The talents we have or don't have God gave us or did not give us for a reason. It's important to Him so it should be important to us. He gave them to us for a purpose, and if He's concerned we should be also. Our biggest problem with talents is that we are not satisfied with how God made us. It comes down, really, to two problems. The first is that we are lazy with our talents. Look around it is evident just about every where. Mike Tyson could have been the best heavy weight boxer ever, ever! He had SO much talent and just threw it away. Think about all the athletes, actors, singers, family members, friends that fall in this category. The ones that had so much potential and so many gifts and talents, and they just threw them away. It's because we are lazy and abuse them. With ability comes responsibility. The second problem is that we want to be like Mike, meaning that we want to be someone else more than we want to be ourselves. The wanting to be like Mike comes from this generation with Michael Jordan. We all strive so hard to be something we're not, to be better, to be like someone else. This is probably what I struggle with the most. Not that I want to be someone else, don't get me wrong, I love being me. I do though always want to be better, and when I mean better, I mean not being satisfied with how God made me. I want to be more athletic, I want to be faster, I want better genetics. What I should be is thankful, and realize that God made me this way for a reason, His purpose. I am just the way God wants me, and He knows better, He knows much more than I do. He doesn't make mistakes, He sees the bigger picture. God made you just the way he wants you! What you do is just as important as any other job, no ones job is more important than yours. That is where God put you and it is where you belong. He made you that way for a reason. We say, no God you made me wrong, I should be like this. When I do this, when you do this, when we do this, it is dishonoring to God. It is showing your lack of faith in Him and what He is doing in your life, and I am extremely guilty of it. The best way to be a good steward of your talents is to stop trying to be someone else. We even try to push people into trying to be someone their not, and that is wrong too. The story of David is one of the best examples of this. Samuel goes and finds David and anoints Him as new king, over several of his older, bigger, stronger, "better choice" brothers. David was the youngest, the little one, the runt, the "last choice". In God's world, in which we live in, he was first choice. He was going to be the next king. We think we know whats best or who is best for which job when God is the only one who really knows, and we need to trust that. If you're not embracing how God uniquely made you, then you're not using your talents to the full. It's not easy, but that's how God made us, and it should be more than enough. Pray for all of us on project down here in Panama City Beach, that we all can accept who we are through Him. That we honor the way He made us, accept our talents, not be lazy or abuse them, and being satisfied with ourselves.

Serving Him,

Daniel