Chapter 5
The instinct to do
The instinct to increase
When you are gifted, and it is from God, wherever you go, your gifts go with you. This is because Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the presence of the Holy Spirit are always with you when you enhance the atmosphere of togetherness through gratitude, praise, worship, inviting the Holy Spirit to abide and obeying His prompts.
Your gifts have been inbuilt in you, so, when you step into a room, you step in with your gifts and anybody who has you has also got your God and your gifts.
To whom much is given, much is expected. The diverse gifts that God has given to each person show the level of responsibilities and the emotional quotient of a person. Great gifts mean great responsibilities and greater gifts mean greater responsibilities.
The emotional quotient of a person determines whether a person is able to understand, use, and manage his own emotions in a positive way to reduce stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse any form of conflict.
A person's emotional quotient is the person's ability to build meaningful relationships that yield success and achievement in that person's personal or professional life. It may also help a person to turn God-driven intentions into actions, and also to make informed decisions about what matters most in life.
As good as it sounds, your emotions and feelings should not be the determinants of how you are to use your gifts or talents. The mind out of all the components of your body is the most deceitful of all, it is like a puzzle that no one can ever figure out, and only the truth which is the word of God can help you tame your emotions to override your feelings to be able to accomplish anything in life.
Feelings such as tiredness, fear, laziness, insecurity, hopelessness, are all negative feelings that can hinder you from doing the right things. The word of God is a weapon that can destroy every one of these feelings and it will be your responsibility to get to know what the word of God is saying. Knowing what God is saying and thinking like God will help you eliminate all sorts of negative feelings.
If you use the gifts that you have, you will be accountable for them, if you do not use them, you will also be accountable for them. What if you do not even know what gifts God has embedded in you? Part of your responsibilities will be to seek God first and ask Him to show you your purpose in life. Knowing your purpose will bring out the creativity and gifts inside of you.
The parable of the three servants and the talents in the scriptures (the word of God) is a story that illustrates that people have responsibilities over their talents and will be accountable for the gifts that they possess and how they are used.
To one servant, the master gave five talents, to another servant, the master gave two talents and to the last servant, the master gave one talent, all to the proportion of each servant’s abilities.
The moral of this story is that, when God gives you a talent or gift, it is required of you to bear fruits and show an increase, the more you utilize your gifts, the more you realize from it.
Also, your demonstration of the use of your gifts for God's purpose in the advancement of His kingdom shows that you are ready to partner with God, and if you can take care of less, God will certainly entrust you with more.
Remember! Your gifts are not to be used to oppress or lure somebody away from the path that God has chosen for that person. You are to help someone realize his purpose with God in life.
There is no need to be jealous
Each person would be gifted in different ways and in unique ways, and also according to the proportion in his or her ability to create and cause an increase.
When you see someone who has more than you in various aspects of life, never get jealous, instead, be grateful for what you have, then ask God to grant you His grace to use what you have to produce more. "For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away".
It is in the process of you doing more, that you will receive even more than expected. God always blesses us more than we can imagine. The strategy for receiving more is simply to acknowledge God, the God of increase, do more, and have a heart of gratitude.
People who grumble, compete or compare their gifts with the gifts of other people always seem to be unhappy and not content. A grateful person does not compete with anybody, he or she competes with himself or herself, ensuring that tomorrow is always better than today.
With each step taken, one should acknowledge the giver of the gifts who also gives the ability to grow daily. A creative-minded person aims to be a better person and does not aim at being better than anybody else.
So, why did the master give to one, more talents than the other? Was the master just? Or was the master being partial? You can say that the master, in a similar context, God is not partial but just in the ways that He distributes His talents.
God gives out His talents and gifts together with wisdom if you seek it to maintain the gifts that you possess. God will only give you what you can truly handle.
You have to thank God for giving you not more than what you can handle or carry on your shoulder otherwise it would be too heavy and it may wear you off.
Some are gifted to do great while some are gifted to do greater. You do not want a husband, wife, a job, a friend, or anything that is too much for you to handle. You have to first grow up and show that you can handle a situation or manage people before you can be trusted with someone's destiny.
The common thing among the servants who were given talents was that every one of them had an opportunity just like each one of us. When you are not dead, you have a reason to hope for and attain what God has for you. It is what is done with the opportunities that you have that will separate you from a victorious person and a victim.
The opportunities that come your way in life will put your faith to the test. It will demonstrate that the word of God is indeed true. When you do according to the word of God, you will get the rewards which are the many promises and blessings of God. To know what promises God has for you, you will have to begin a treasure hunt in the word of God.
The servant who got five talents gained five more with a 100% return. The servant who got two talents gained two more with a 100% return but the servant who got only one talent hid his gift and had no return, in the end, the opportunity that was given to him was taken away from him. Are you using your gifts rightfully?
Gifted or forsaken
If you look deeply into the parable of the servants and the talents, you would notice that the master left the servants alone with their gifts and went on a very long journey. The term “alone” here means a lot.
The price that you would have to pay for working in partnership with God to advance His kingdom would be the initial rejection from people and solitude. You have got a choice, you can either play the pleasing people role to be accepted or you play with your gifts to make the change that God wants.
The thoughts and plans of people are different from the thoughts and plans of God, and as a result, what people consider to be important is different from what really matters to God. God wants to use all possible avenues through people's talents and creativity to reach out to people so that they can have salvation through Jesus Christ.
Your loneliness in times of solitude is not for you to be isolated, depressed, or to be an outcast. It is for you to advance, it is your “behind the scenes” where you get a chance to steward your creativity and talents. It is that time where your gifts and talents will be perfected or mastered. Truly gifted people work their extraordinary in solitude.
Real stewards of God's gifts do what they were born to do. In their solitude period is when they get a clear vision and guidance from God. This does not happen just like that, it requires time and dedication in forming a personal relationship with God. The more you seek God, the more you know what His plans are and what is required of you in your partnership.
When you get that clear vision from God, trust in the same God who gave it to you, this is because God's vision may overwhelm you, and instead of saying "YES" to God and asking for the next step, you may end up being at the mercy of people, lobbying for what God is willing to give freely and with ease.
When the Master (Jesus) comes back, He will come back with the expectation that you have utilized all that you have been given, well and rightfully. You will be accountable for what you were blessed and gifted with. You will need to answer to the Master, not to the people who helped you, mistreated you, or rejected you.
We allow so much of what we do in life to be affected by who we think we are, where we come from, our generation, and our ideas. So much of all these are based on the external forces around us and even on our own inner thoughts.
So, when is the right time to shift? When do I do it? How do I do it? Who should come with me? Who shouldn’t come with me? Or where do I move to? These are the questions a steward of God's gifts should ask God.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do in life, there will be a time when a change will be needed, and taking the right step towards that change is just as important as the change itself.
There is always that fear when change is needed but, when God is in you, working through you, that fear should be replaced with confidence in God. You should be able to critique and evaluate yourself. If there has been no increase after evaluation, there has to be a move to change that longstanding and stagnant situation in your life.
Are you wasting days just going through motions or are you guided by your Godly instincts (The Holy Spirit)? Are you living life more abundantly or are you just surviving? Is it getting worse or is it getting better? Your thoughts should be able to answer these questions. Don’t make a bad situation your comfort zone.
Love is truly the message behind the gifts that God has blessed us with, it weighs more than the gifts you have been given. It signifies the personal relationship that you have developed with God over time.
There are different kinds of gifts. There are natural gifts and there are also spiritual gifts. God’s spiritual gifts are demonstrated everywhere, but all of them originate from the same Spirit of God, they include wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. All of these spiritual gifts can be displayed also using one's natural gifts and creativity.
References
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:33
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. Ephesians 1:17-18 NIV
But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Luke 12:48 NIV
The human mind is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it is. I, the LORD, search minds and test hearts. I will reward each person for what he has done. I will reward him for the results of his actions.Jeremiah 17:9-10 GW
The Story About Investment. Matthew 25:14-30 The Message
The Parable of the Talents. Matthew 25:14-30 ESV
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. 1 Corinthians 12:4-11Nkjv
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