Written on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 10:11am
About a month ago I was visiting Jakarta and when on the way passing thru Gelora Bung Karno, my eyes suddenly captured an advertising billboard on the left side of the street.
It was a basketball competition event informed on the billboard, and they have a tag line said: "When skills meet power!"
Something suddenly came to my thought and heart.
Imagining what will happen if skills meet power.
I read a book that told me that everyone has AT LEAST 100 skills in their lives. But sometimes we don't know about those skills or have just not discovered them yet. It's like an iceberg. You only know the 10% appear and the other 90% are hiding under the sea.
But let say you only got one.
Matthew 25:15
Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a man who going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another ONE bag.
But he wasn't only giving them the money (read: talent), but also the job (read: vision).
Luke 19:13
So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas, "Put this money to work, until I come back." He said.
He gave the vision to his servants to put the money to work.
But he never mentioned, what is the reward to those who gained profit, neither the punishment to those who didn't get anything.
He also never mentioned how much the profit they have to give him in return, nevertheless he gave each one of them according to their ABILITY.
But after he came back from his journey, this is what he did:
- Took the servants who gained something (read this carefully: it didn't matter how much money they gained for the master, remember, the master knew their ability) to come and share his happiness because of their faithfulness and their good effort, not only that, but also gave them bigger authority/put them in charge of many things because they have been faithful with a view things.
- Took the money from the wicked and lazy servant and gave it to the one who has ten bags, and then throw him into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (read: live separated from the master.. how miserable!).
So, what's the point of these things happened above? What is skill and what is power?
Skill is the talent God has given to us. And power is the vision, which drives the skills (talents) to be something for His glory.
1. God does not also give you the talents, but also the vision. In other way, He is not giving you the vision, but also the talents for you to fulfill the vision.
Last Sunday I listened to Ps Kevin Loo's story about how God's calling him to be a pastor in amazing way whereas in fact since he was a young boy he wasn't talking as a normal kid in his age. But I understand that just like the master has command to the servants to put the money to work, he gave the money!
Jeremiah 1:4-19
God appointed Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah replied that he didn't know how to speak and meanwhile he was too young.
But do you know what God said about this?
"Do not say, 'I am too young'. You MUST go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you."
Read the whole chapter and you will find out how God kept his words, God promised Jeremiah to always be with him and rescue him, God even reached our His hand and touch Jeremiah's mouth and put His words into it!
Jeremiah got the vision first and then the talents.
The servants got the talents first and then the vision.
So we should know this, God created us for a purpose, we not something accidentally created!
He gives us vision along with the talents.
He gives us talents to fulfill His vision.
But the problems are we sometimes feel like we know the purpose of God for our lives, but we have no idea how to reach it. So we become desperate and trapped in the spirit of mediocrity.
In other side, we many times found that there are so many talents we have in our lives, but we do not know where to go. So we become powerless in everything we do. We do many things but never feel satisfy in life. We crave some more and don't know what exactly we are craving for!
So what should we do?
- Encounter with God
The words of God that Pastor Nala delivered on last Prayer Meeting was giving me a confirmation. That there is a stairway to heaven. Jacob knew about that but he needs to encounter with God to find his destiny.
Genesis 32:28
“Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”
God is the one who created us, since we were in our mother’s womb, even since the world is not created yet, He knew us already. So the one and only way to know God’s vision for our lives is to encounter with Him.
Find Him and His vision for you.
- Unwrapped your talents
Romans 12:6a
“In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well.”
Rick Warren said in his book The Purpose Driven Life, “To discover God’s will for your life, you should seriously examine what you are good at doing and what you are not doing at.”
Yes, I agree that God will never ask us to dedicate our lives to a task we have no talents for.
So it doesn’t matter what kind of talents you have, the bible says that God has given us different talents. The most important thing is TO KNOW AND REALISE that every talent should be used for God’s glory.
We might be sometimes like a wicked and lazy servant, who thought that we only have ONE talent otherwise others have more. But I tell you this, it is not about the talent itself, but it’s about our obedience to use the talent(s) as our Master has command us to.
Our abilities come from God, so use them for God’s glory (1 Co 10:31)
2. Success is not a goal, it's an effect.
How many of us are chasing the success life today? I raised my hand!
Yes, who doesn’t? Everyone wants to have big houses, fancy cars, money, being married and live happily ever after.
We study so hard, work so hard, do business so hard, even some of us do cheating to gain all of these things! We take risks and pay the price; sometimes we ignore our personal life and family. But I repent again to God when I found myself was just like that. Chasing something called success. But poor me, success in fact is not a goal, it is only an effect that happened if we seriously doing what our God’s command.
Do you remember that the good and faithful servant got those things without planned it all. All that they do was BEING OBEY to their master and as the reward (read: effect) the master invited them to come and share his happiness and gave them the bigger authority.
Wow! It’s only a wrong paradigm but has big impact to our lives!
So let’s we learn these two things to get the success:
- Obey to God.
He is our master. So it’s a must to obey His command.
We might sometimes do not understand His will. But obey means cooperate with God. Let’s believe that God is working in your life even when we do not feel it.
We might sometimes think like the wicked and lazy servant, that our God is asking too much besides He only gives us ONE talent. But hey, just do it. Sometimes we do not need understanding just to obey. God took 80 years to prepare Moses include 40 years in wilderness. God spent a night fought with Jacob.
It’s all about the obedience, but yet, God made everything is beautiful in His time (Ecc 3:11).
- Occupy with God
One word about occupy ourselves with God is HUMILITY. Yes, humility is one of the primary characters.
Means, good character rules! Yes, attitude is everything!
It is always involved character for everything happened to our lives.
To be the greatest you need to be humble.
I discovered a great thing yesterday and I was shock!
You might know already who Jesus named as the greatest person ever born?
It wasn’t Moses of the Red Sea and Ten Commandments fame.
It wasn’t David, who was a “man after God’s heart”
It wasn’t Abraham, the father of the nations,
Or Joseph who braved grave injustices to rescue the Israelites from the grip of a famine.
Rather, it was the scruffy, wild-eye hermit, John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone GREATER than John the Baptist." Matt 11:11
Wow! Why is that so? John the Baptist focused his life to the vision God has given to him. To be the voice!
Jesus said he is the greatest person ever born but he also was a very humble person. It doesn’t mean he was very shy guy and has no confident to do anything. But he had a formula for what the true humility is. That is to occupy with God!
John 30:26-30 explained how humble he is!
26 So John’s disciples came to him and said, “Rabbi, the man you met on the other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, is also baptizing people. And everybody is going to him instead of coming to us.”
27 John replied, “No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. 28 You yourselves know how plainly I told you, ‘I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.’ 29 It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the best man is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success.
30 He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
It’s a big WOW! We all know that what did he do, preparing the way of Jesus to save the world! And as Jesus fulfilled God’s vision, John the Baptist did as well.
Let’s realize this, peeps.. We got the skills (talents) but it must be powerful drives by God’s vision!
Even you have only one skill, do not dug a hole in the ground and hid it.
Let your skills meet the power of God..
We will see, the world will change, when skills meet power!
