How have you used the resources God has given you? I’m thankful for my father who worked hard to ensure I had a roof over my head and food to eat. I’m also thankful for a mother who loves me unconditionally. I’m especially thankful for my wife who chose to do life with me. Who has been by my side through better and worse. Who knows my weaknesses and refuses to quit on her commitment. These are just a few of the physical resources God has given me. But I am most grateful for eternal life that God has given me through the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ. The spiritual blessings are too numerous to name.
With that in mind, what have you done with the physical and spiritual resources God has given you? Have you multiplied those blessings? Have you shared them with others? Or have you built bigger barns to store them in? Have you forgotten that life is like a vapor here one minute and gone the next? We must all work while we have time (John 9:4). Time will run out and an accounting will be demanded.
In Matthew 25:14-30 we read about a man that calls his workers and gives them different amounts of money. The first man receives 5 talents, the second 2 talents and the last one 1 talent. As we read on, we learn that the first two men received a blessing because they doubled the resources they had been given, while the man with 1 talent was cursed because he didn’t reproduce any gain. He buried his talent, and, in the end, he lost everything. You might say it’s like the old saying, “user it or lose it.”
We need to become an assembly of believers that find ways to multiply our resources. One reason the man with one talent failed, was because his view of God was tainted by fear and failure. Yet, the God we serve is the God who loves us so much he gave his only begotten son. He’s a God that is longsuffering that none should perish (2 Peter 3:9). Our God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love (Psalm 103:8).
While I don’t know exactly how God has blessed you, I do know, every believer has received at least one gift (1 Corinthians 12:1-11). As disciples of Jesus, we all need to use our gift or gifts to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace (1 Peter 4:10). Otherwise, we might become like the man with one talent and have it all taken away. And this is Jesse Walker with the Glenwood Church of Christ.
