Using Your Talents

Onward and Upward

E. A. Roy

“Without His love I can do nothing,

with His love there is nothing I cannot do.”

-Unknown

Greetings, Fellow Missionary:

A new year, a fresh slate, like a blanket of new-fallen snow, this pure, unscathed year lays before us. Live, my friend, live! Be not content to watch others live. Be not content to imagine living, go ahead and live! Step out by faith and do what you know your Lord has placed in your heart to do. Live! Live and love without reserve. Be not afraid of learning and of trying new things. Don’t rest with being spoon-fed the Scriptures—learn to cook the meal yourself! Learn how to run that kitchen and discover for yourself the mechanics of digging into the preparations for the feast. It’s a wonderful, challenging, totally rewarding, life-long pursuit that brings you closer to your Lord.

God has made you and saved you for a purpose. What is it that He has particularly placed in your heart? What are you longing to give to Him? Is it a service you long to do for others? Is it the gift you have of encouraging others that He calls you to do? Is it the gift of teaching little ones with patient hand and tongue? Is it the gift of sharing creations from your kitchen that would go a long way in relieving a weary mother? Perhaps you are being called to take an interest in someone; you never know how far those ripples of love will reach. Surely, showing our love to someone our Lord loves dearly (and both the lost and saved are loved by Him), must bring joy to His heart. And, oh, the thought of bringing joy to His heart above all hearts!

Dear Christian Believer, find your one song and sing, sing, sing! You have been wired in a particular way for a particular purpose. Seek to know what that purpose is! The “simple” acts that come “naturally” to you are easy to despise and to regard as nothing. However, it seems that these are precisely the gifts and talents that God has placed in your care to use to serve Him.

Perhaps you have the ability to spread sunshine wherever you go. You find it easy to strike up a conversation and leave a person feeling lighter than when you found them. This is a precious gift. It’s a very portable one, too, as all of them usually are. A nursing home can be a dark place in need of just that sort of sunshine. Even your Sunday school table can benefit. And most certainly your own abode can use the gift and warmth of that blessed sunshine.

Perhaps your compassion for others causes prayer requests to come to your mind continually. Your ministry of prayer will have results not to be seen but before we dine with our Saviour in heaven. Lest you think lightly of this, it’s certainly not satan who brings these request before you.

Maybe it’s natural for you to relate to others what the Lord has taught you through your reading. This is a gift that should be nurtured and cared for as a precious means of edifying one another.

Are you a good listener? God can use this gift as you take opportunity to pray while the other is speaking and seek to turn your friend’s eyes back to Scripture and back to a resting place under God’s wing.

Organizing things is your specialty? There’s a place for you if only you would see your gift for what it is and minister to others with it.

You truly are a missionary and you are currently on the field. May I ask you, how is your work going? Your “support” comes from God Himself. He has supplied your basic needs and furnished the tools you require. As wife and mother, or daughter and single woman, God has surely laid your “people group” on your heart. Take time to examine your field. Learn their language. Know the people, seek to meet their needs and minister to them with all fervor.

As wives and mothers, our family is our field. Where they are, is where our heart should be. Our lives are to be totally engulfed in seeking God’s moving amidst these people and seeking to reach them through our words and our actions. Our lives can and should be “spent for Christ” on this blessed field of service. It is a temporary post, however, and our energies must be focused according to the present situations. This current people group will move on and we will have grown and changed through this process. We will then take the lessons that we learned with us as God moves us to our next post.

You are perfectly suited for your particular post. God has outfitted you with all things necessary, though some may be only in “seed form” and will require nurturing and care to grow into maturity. Action is required on our part as we work with God to accomplish His purposes.

Total dependence on God is a necessary prerequisite to any and all tasks you perform. The more we realize we are indebted to God, the more grateful we should become, and the more joyously dependent we should be.

Can I challenge you to allow yourself to be desperately dependent on Him; desperately dependent on His hand to move in your home and in your life; desperately dependent on His Word to calm your heart and lead you forward.

It’s a new year; take on a new challenge. What if this was to be your last year to leave a mark in the hearts of others for Christ? Pick up your tool, my friend, and start carving! Find your niche, your talent and lavishly give. “And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.” Give a graceful touch to all you do; do it for Him and as unto Him.

Hide not your light under a bushel, let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven!

“Only one life

‘Twill soon be past;

Only what’s done for Christ will last.”