Telling the Truth for Women

Guest (Male): We are talking about the Kingdom, life in the Kingdom with the King. And life in the Kingdom with the King involves all sorts of things. Of course, it involves knowing the King to get into the Kingdom, having your sins forgiven. And once we know Him and we get into this wonderful Kingdom of God, then we have to discover how to live there. And what resources does God give us in order to live in this Kingdom?

Well, I'm going to talk about gifts and talents today. And I'm taking all the teaching about the Kingdom from the parables that Jesus taught about it. Stories, earthly stories with a heavy or heavenly meaning. So if you would turn in your Bible with me to Matthew 25. Matthew is the Gospel where most of the parables Jesus tells, He begins by saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like."

He is using these stories to tell us what it's like to live in this sphere of spiritual experience called relationship with God. And so each of the parables tells us another aspect of this Kingdom living. And in Matthew 25, there are three very famous parables, but the Parable of the Talents is what I want to concentrate on today.

"Again, the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.

So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master's money. After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with five talents. See, I've gained five more.'

His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' Well then, the man with the two talents also came. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with the two talents, and see, I've gained two more.' His master said, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You've been faithful with a few things; I'll put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness.'

Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew you're a hard man, harvesting what you haven't sown, gathering what you haven't scattered. So I was afraid, and I went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here's what belongs to you.' His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant. So you knew I was harvest what I have not sown and gather where I had not scattered seed?

Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned, I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. Throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"

Jill Briscoe: I remember growing up in a world war where everywhere there were big posters. You couldn't go shopping, you couldn't go down the freeway, you couldn't go anywhere without this great big poster of a symbol of England with a British hat on and the flag wrapped around him, pointing. It was just a big hand and a finger; you probably saw that poster. And underneath it said, "I want you."

And what the British government was doing was saying we were in a war to end all wars and every single person in the country was needed. Every single person in the country was needed. So every single person in the country, as far as I know, was volunteering to do something. Of course, the men were away fighting, and it was in those days when the women didn't fight alongside the men, although they would be there in support roles, some of them. And most of the women would have home-based jobs.

Every woman in England would take a turn at helping in the factories to make ammunition and all of that. My mother, along with every other mother that I knew, would spend so many hours a week in the war effort because that poster said every single person was important if the war was going to be won. Every single gift and talent was needed if we were going to make a dent in what was happening in the whole world.

And in a sense, that's what God says to the human race: "I want you. I want you. I believe you're valuable. We're in a war to end all wars, the war between good and evil, and I have given you the tools to finish the job." I remember listening to many of Winston Churchill's speeches, even though I was only five. I was five when the war began; I was nine when it finished. But I remember listening to all the famous speeches.

And I remember him saying to the world at large, and to America in particular, "Give us the tools and we'll finish the job" because we didn't have the tools. We didn't have ammunition, we didn't have planes, we didn't have anything. We were so unprepared for that war. Of course, the allies came around and gave us the tools and joined us in that fight, and of course, good won out in that particular conflict.

And what I want to talk about is how God has given us the tools to finish the job. What is the job? The job is rolling back the effects of the Fall. The job is bringing in the Kingdom of God. That's what we're supposed to be doing as a race of people, of human beings. And how do we do that? Well, those that belong to the King are supposed to be bringing other people into the Kingdom, and they're supposed to be using the tools that God has given them.

He has given us tools. Now let me first of all talk about natural gift and talent. In fact, there is a dictionary that has said, Macaulay's Expository Dictionary says, this parable has given to the English language a new adjective, talented. We use it all the time. Where did that word come from? It came from the Scriptures and specifically from this parable.

Because it denotes more than money, as is obvious. It denotes gift, it denotes natural resource, it denotes personality, it denotes everything that God weaves into a human being. That's what it denotes. So general gifting, the general grace of God has gifted generally every human being that is ever born. People are talented whether they are in the Kingdom or not.

There are many, many, many people that are not believers, never claim to be believers, who are incredibly talented because of the grace of God and the common gifting of all men. Talents, natural human talents. James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, comes down from the Father of heaven, who does not change like shifting shadows."

God in His grace gifts everyone. It's what you do with these talents that He will hold the human race accountable for. And the figure in the story is undoubtedly a figure that Jesus used to represent God the Father, or God in this sense, the merchant, using a different figure of speech, who gives his servants gifts and then leaves them to it. He gives them free will, gives them free choice as they're born with these talents as to what they will do with them.

Now spiritual gifts are only given to the people in the Kingdom. When the King comes in, He brings His gifts with Him. The Spirit of God brings His gifts, the spiritual abilities that you do not have as a naturally talented person without Christ. And so not everybody has spiritual gifts. Everybody has talents, but not everybody has spiritual gifts.

Of course, the most important of all the gifts that God gives is the new birth. He chose to give us birth through the Word of Truth, Ephesians 1:13 says. He's a giving God. He chose to give us, to gift us with life by giving us the Spirit of God. And when the Spirit of God comes in, He brings His gifts with Him. If you turn to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 7: "To each one of us," those in the Kingdom, born-again people, "grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says when He ascended on high, He led captives in His train and gave gifts to men."

It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastor-teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

So what happened when Christ went on high, ascended on high, then He sent forth the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those who would believe Him and they became born anew in the Kingdom of God. That Spirit of God brought with him certain spiritual abilities, certain spiritual gifts. So natural gifts, we all have them, every single one of you. You've all got talents.

And secondly, you've all got, if you have the Spirit of Christ, spiritual gifts. Two very, very different things. It doesn't mean that spiritual gifts are always different from your talents. In fact, spiritual gifts often run alongside your talents, invade, inhabit your talent. Certainly, that's been in my case. I was a good teacher before I knew Jesus. It was what I was teaching, what I was doing with the gift.

When the Spirit of Christ came in, He actually invaded the talent, the natural talent I had, and used it in a spiritual Kingdom work. And so that often happens, but it can also happen that you were a lousy teacher before you knew Jesus and He gives you the spiritual gift of being able to do that. And so it's not always the same as your talent when you're looking inward and trying to say, "Lord, how have You gifted me and how have You talented me?"

So the most important gift is life through the Spirit. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now Ephesians tells us that God gifts men and then He gifts the church with those men and women. I'm using men generically. He gifts the church with men and women who He has already gifted. So He gifts us individually and then He takes us as an individual and He gives us to the body of Christ, to the church, the local body of believers.

And He says, "This is My gift to this body of believers and you're intended to build them up." And did you notice that the leadership gifts which are talked about in this particular passage are not to be exhibited and used for the benefit of the person that has the gift? The pastors and leaders are here to do one thing: to train the laity to do the work of the ministry.

To mobilize the pew. That's what we're supposed to be doing. And if you are gifted in leadership, that's what you're supposed to be doing. Not to, as many people think, to pay the pastor to get up there and kill himself doing everything. But to certainly minister to him materially so that he might have full rein and ability and time to train people to do the work of the ministry.

And not an awful lot of churches have that right. Not saying we have it right; we're working at it. But that's what we're supposed to be doing: to train the body to do the work of the ministry. And that's your Ephesians passage that I have just read to you. So under the generosity of God, He gives those who are leaders the great joy of helping people discover their gifts and discover their talents and put them to use for the Kingdom's sake and for the King's sake.

Now notice in this parable that we're all equally responsible. We're all equally responsible. When the King came back, and this is a picture of the Second Coming if you like, when Christ will return and call His servants to account, every servant on earth, whether he has been a rebellious servant or whether he has been a good servant, will have to give an account.

The man with the ten talents, the man with the five talents, and the man with the one talent were all treated equally and all of us will be treated equally. We're all equally responsible for the gifts that God has given us. A talent is evidently like any other coin; it has two sides. On one side is written endowment and on the other side responsibility.

So think of a coin; it has two sides. And think of a talent; that's why it's using this illustration. On one side of the coin is written endowment: What have you that you did not receive? Nothing. A gift from God. On the other side is written responsibility. And if you read this parable again, you'll see that through and through and through: the master came back and he held them responsible.

So we're all equally responsible but we are not all equally gifted, which is obvious. We are not all equally gifted. It says in another passage of Scripture that the Spirit gifts as He wills. He chooses what gifts to give to people. We don't choose that; He does. He divides severally as He wills the gifts of the Spirit of God.

And so even in this talent: one has ten, one has five, one has one, but they're all expected to do the same thing. The one with the one is not expected to produce ten. And the one with the five is not expected to produce ten. The one with the ten is expected to produce ten. So to whom much is given, much is going to be required. Don't envy people who are multi-talented.

However, the one with one talent is expected to give as much back as the one with ten: 100%. Did you notice that? He's expected to give 100%. And that's the point. 100% of what? Of his one. And so instead of comparing ourselves to other people, which is what Christian women do a lot—"Oh, I wish I had that talent" or "I wish I had that gift"—don't wish that.

What you need to do is realize that God will require of you according to your gifting, according to the talents that He has given you. Now incidentally, you might have thought when I was reading this story, "Well, you know, it doesn't sound very much, one talent, and then he goes away for a lifetime and comes back, and it doesn't sound very much."

Let me just point out something I forgot to tell you: that one talent in Jesus' day was equivalent to the wages of a working man for ten years. And basically, it was approximately $250,000. One talent. So don't be sorry for the man that had one talent. And I think what God was doing, what Jesus was doing in this story, was saying that the one who is the smallest talented person is wealthy beyond measure in resource and gift and ability.

And so sometimes we look around and we think, and women often say to me, "I don't know, I don't have any talents, I don't have any gifts." Nonsense. And it's always my delight to sit there until we've figured out what those gifts and talents are and they say, "Oh well, yes, oh yes." And you suddenly realize how wealthy you are. Even one talent.

The impact of one man's talent in the hands of one man's God is incredible. Absolutely incredible. I see that all over the world. I see pastors who can't read or write who've planted 80 churches and nurtured them into growth, and they can't read or write, and they've never been trained.

Some of them have never had a Bible until somebody put one in their hand. And God has taken their one talent and gifting and He has turned their world upside down. So what He wants basically is 100%. That's fair enough. He gave us those tools and gifts to receive it back. All equally responsible, all unequally gifted.

All men are created unequal in this sense. All men are created unequal in this sense, their gifting and their talents, but all men are equally responsible to God for what they do with their lives and the tools that they have. So let's get a little bit practical for a bit. How do we find them? How do we find them? Well, first of all, we have to recognize that talents are just as precious commodities as spiritual gifts.

And that's where you begin. It's easier to find your talent than it is to find your gifts. I bet you if we did a survey at this point or I asked you to write down on a piece of paper, just write down one of your talents, all of you would be able to do it because you know it's what you got A's for at school, it's what you developed, maybe you won a little prize when you were eight. "Oh, this is a very talented little girl."

Maybe you were tinkling on the piano and you got first place, whatever it was. Yeah, you could do that. And so what you do is start with your talents. And those of you that are in the Kingdom that know the King and want to use your talents, just put it down and then sit there and think, "Now how can this particular talent help in the Kingdom? Where would it fit? What could I do with this particular talent?" And it doesn't matter what it is.

I was talking to a young woman, actually it was last year in Moms and More, and I don't know what I'd said—I wasn't teaching on gifts but I must have used an illustration—and she said to me afterwards, she said, "I am so depressed." She said, "Everybody I know has wonderful talents and gifts, but all I can do is crafts. Crafts. Crafts." And she sort of went into a heap. And I said, "Well, that's all Jesus did for 30 years: crafts."

And her eyes just lit up. I said, "He worked with wood. He's a master craftsman. That's all He did for 30 years. Then He spent three years in the ministry, but for 30 years He worked in crafts." And I just watched her begin to swell with pride. And I said, "I don't have those gifts, so you're a lot better off than me. You've got the gifts that God gifted, talented His Son with, that He chose to use when He was here on earth."

And what you have to realize is talents are just as important as spiritual gifts. The tendency is to go after spiritual gifts specifically, the dramatic ones, the miracle ones, the otherworldly ones. But gifts are not toys; gifts are tools. And what happened in the Corinthian church is Paul had to write to them and said, "Gifts are tools, not toys. Babies play with toys and you're a whole lot of babies in this church.

What you've got to do is start and realize that gifts are not for your enhancement or your enjoyment; gifts are for God and for His glory," etc. And so let me encourage you to start with your talents. Now how do you even do that? At this convention that we've just been to, I gave an illustration of Jesus walking along the waterside and the crowd pressing Him into the water and He had nowhere to go but to get wet.

So He looks along the beach and He sees Peter in his boat washing or mending his nets, and He says to Peter, "I want your boat." He gets in the boat and then Peter holds the boat and Jesus sits in the boat and addresses the crowd on His shore. It's a fabulous picture and I love pictures. I work in pictures; God gifted me to do that.

I thoroughly enjoy using the gift. However, look at the picture: Our life is meant to be a living pulpit out of which the Christ within addresses the crowd on our shore. Isn't that neat? And what He says is, "I want your boat." Your boat is absolutely ideal. Every little boat I'm looking at looks different to God and is different to God.

Some of you are Titanic. Some of you are just little skiffs. Some of you are submarines; you do all your work out of sight. That's how God made you. Every boat is different. And God says, "I want your boat. It's ideal," and He wants to come within and then address the crowd on our shore using what? Well, using everything in that little boat. What did Peter need?

It was just a little fishing boat, Peter's boat, but it just needed some oars, it needed some equipment. And what I suggested to those 7,000 kids is they took some time that night and made a list of the equipment in their boat and then give it to God and say, "How are You going to use my equipment?"

And then practically start and look around the need of the world and say, "Well, you know something? This piece of my equipment could really match this." And that's one way you can start and discover your talents and actually your spiritual gifts, but specifically your talents. Make a list of your equipment.

Let me give you an example: I used to play tournament tennis and I played for my college at Cambridge as well, my school. When I became a Christian, the girl that led me to Christ used something like this illustration and told me to make a list of my equipment. I said, "What sort of things?" And she said, "Well, just start off with what you're good at." So I said, "Well, drama, art, sport, all the things that don't need any brains."

And she said, "Well, put them down." So I said, "Is that my equipment? My tennis racket?" She said, "Yes, your racket." "Okay," so I put my tennis racket down. I thought, "How is God going to use this?" And then I well remember her gripping hold of my hand, saying, "Now we're going to pray about this. You just ask God to use all this equipment." So I said, "Oh God, please use all this equipment, even my tennis racket."

Well, I went home that summer and I had, ever since I was this high, spent the whole summer playing tournament tennis right across the nation. I mean, that's all I did, even from a little girl. As I was praying one morning and realizing that I had a crowd on my shore, if you wish, that had never heard about the King or the Kingdom, I thought, "Now how am I going to reach them?"

And I thought about my tennis racket. And so I got some non-believing friends around that I played tennis with all my life and I said, "Why don't we put on a different sort of tournament and let's do everything we want to do to have a wonderful tennis tournament and then at the end, I would like to do something really different. I'd like to have a pig roast and I'd like to get a band and I'd like to get a speaker. How about it?"

And they said, "We'll do it," even though they weren't believers. And so we did. I can't remember, 600 kids we got and we did it. We had a wonderful tennis tournament; we ran it how we wanted to, we had the cups made and we had all this. Then I went and hired the Salvation Army band. I didn't know where to go; I was a very new Christian. But I was fishing with my tennis racket.

So I got the Salvation Army band, which was fine. And then I borrowed a preacher. I did that simply by going downtown where I knew there was a Hyde Park corner and listening to some of the speakers and picking one called Pastor Kayes and walking up to him. I'd never met him and said, "How'd you like to talk to 600 kids about Christ on Saturday after a pig roast?" And he said, "I'll do it."

He'd never met me either. And so he took the risk and we took the risk and we went fishing—or I went fishing because there wasn't another Christian in sight—with my tennis racket. I want to tell you that some of my closest friends were absolutely with me in this. They were so excited. They said, "This is the most different thing we've ever"—well, it certainly was different. It was different. But that's part of my equipment.

And you know, you don't have to organize a tennis tournament; you just have to make a list and then you have to intentionally, creatively start and say, "Now God, how can I impact this mess with the talent or talents and gifts that You have given me?" So you find them. Every man has some talent. No one's left empty-handed; remember that.

Let me say a little word about transferring what you do well in the world to the church. It's very important you are the best whatever it is God has gifted you to be in the workplace. As Stuart often says, "a disciple disguised as" whatever you do. Your first calling is your calling to discipleship. Your callings are what you do for your job or what you do at home, or in the home, or out of the home, or everything else, but your first calling is as a disciple of Jesus.

And so getting all that in place and beginning to find your talents, what you then need to do is say, "How can I transfer some of this to the work of the church?" And you might need to sit down with a leader or a pastor and say, "This is what I can do and this is what I do do in the world, or in the home. How can this be used in the church program?"

I'm being as basic and practical as I can. But some of you have never got involved because you've never quite known how to take that first step. It's very easy thing: just go and say, "Put me to work." Just walk up to a pastor and say, "Put me to work." Now he'll drop dead, but don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Volunteer yourself, your gifts.

Remember they're God-given gifts; they are valuable. Don't put God's gifts down. You go offer them to be put to use in the church. I think a marvelous example of that is my dear friend Carolyn Blish. She had a daughter called Valerie, beautiful girl, who was transferred to Milwaukee a week after she found the Lord Jesus. She did not want to come to Milwaukee.

She was born and bred Southern, and "where's Milwaukee?" and "how do you spell it?" and "what do you mean it's up there near Minneapolis and the cold?" But anyway, Valerie and her husband were transferred here. She came to Elmbrook and she came to Bible studies and began to be nurtured. She took every tape that was ever made, I think, and started to send it to her mother, Carolyn, who is a well-known artist living in America.

And so she started sending these tapes and Carolyn began painting and listening to these tapes. And somewhere along the line, Carolyn Blish gave her heart to Christ and came to the King. Now we had no idea of this and Valerie did not tell us this. But when we walked up on the stage at a meeting we were taking, this gorgeous, beautiful woman walked up with this painting of three birds called "Trinity" and said that she'd like a word and wanted to present Stuart and me with this gift.

This is the first time I'd ever met her or seen her. And then she simply gave her testimony, how she had come to faith in Christ listening to our tapes, and this was her gift to us to say thank you. Now Carolyn uses her art; her book, Drawing Closer, is absolutely phenomenal. How did Carolyn make the transition? Well, she's still in the world.

But there isn't a moment when she does not remember that her first calling is as a disciple of Jesus Christ disguised as an artist. And it is really almost embarrassing, if you're ashamed of Jesus, to be with her. We brought her here and got the whole arts community to a thing at the PAC for her, a lunch honoring her, and she brought her art. And my idea was that she would give one hour on art and then we'd have lunch and then she'd give her testimony.

So she gets up to give this hour on art and she gives her testimony. She just babbles on about Jesus for an hour. And I am sitting there, I dare not look around. I'm thinking, "Talk about art. Talk about art. Just a little paintbrush, just something, please!" Then she sits down next to me and says, "How did I do?" So I said, "Oh, wonderful honey, but maybe after lunch you could talk about art."

So she gets up and does she talk about art? No, she talks about Jesus for another hour. That's Carolyn. But she is such a personality and she is so in love with God, that's who she is. "How can I help? How can I use my talent for God?" and of course, there's all sorts of ways she can do that. What I want to tell you is this: I'm going to read you what nearly happened to this artist.

Children and artists have a special way of looking at things. "When my mother brought me a coloring book, there wasn't room for all my ideas. So instead of coloring inside the lines, I filled the margins of the pages with drawings of my own invention: houses, trees, flowers, even my pet cat colored hot pink."

"My mother laughed and praised my originality. Unfortunately, my junior high teacher, art teacher, was less understanding. She had asked each student in the class to paint a horse. With great joy, I painted a purple and pink polka-dotted pony. Just before class ended, the teacher collected our artwork, perused it, and held up my painting. She said—if you can believe this—"Anyone who looks and really sees knows there's no such thing as a pink and purple polka-dotted horse. Carolyn has not painted the truth. There's no talent here."

Then to my horror, she tore my painting in two and dropped it in the wastebasket." Can you believe this? "I dragged myself home from school that dark day, too crushed and shy to protest. But the day before, my father had taken me to a carnival where there was a merry-go-round and I had ridden on a pink and purple polka-dotted pony."

Well then, the end of the story is that crushed, she went to her attic. She didn't even dare tell her mom because she had to paint. And she started to paint. She painted the floor, she painted the ceiling, she painted the sides. And one day her mother went up to get some clothes, opened the door, and said, "Oh Caroline, you're an artist!" And in her words, an artist was born. An artist was born.

It's very, very important that you do not bury your talents. It is more important you do not bury anybody else's. More important that you do not bury anybody else's. And I really want to bring that thought home to you when you look at your children, when you look at the people in that Bible study that you're responsible for, that you're leading: that you do not bury anybody else's talents.

Because God, I believe, is not going to be very pleased if that happens. If He was not pleased with the man that buried his own, He would certainly not be very pleased with the one who buried somebody else's. In that regard, I think of my own gifts and talents, my spiritual gifts specifically, and how my husband, who was brought up to believe that women should not do the things that his wife was doing or was gifted to do, really had to struggle with these things.

Stuart had to struggle with these things. If he had not done a 180 on gifts and talents, I would not be here today teaching you. I would never have written a book. I would never have taught Sunday school class. I would never have done anything. My gifts would have been sitting with hats on, I often say, demurely, hands folded, in a silent prayer meeting.

But he came scripturally to believe that God had given him a gifted wife and He'd also given him a talented and gifted daughter. And as he read this particular parable, he said, "God, I don't know, I'm not going to stand in front of You one day and have You ask me, 'Did you bury the gifts of your wife and daughter?'" And at that point, he began to encourage—yea, more than encourage—thrust me out to do the things he saw in me that I had never done.

And he takes a lot of heat for his position on women. He's our advocate. So find your talents and gifts, and I haven't even addressed the spiritual gifts, but find them anyway. See a need, meet it. That's the way you find out if you're gifted. If you can do it, you're gifted. And if you can't, you're not. Easy way. Easy way. It just means you've got to be willing to try, okay? Got to be willing to try.

Just do it badly. Stuart always says that to me: "Just do it badly, Jill, if you can't do it goodly." And if you're talented, you'll find you start doing it goodly instead of badly. You know, that's the way you find out. So just be willing to do it badly and find out. You've got a sneaking suspicion, "Maybe I could do this. Maybe I'm gifted. I'm a good listener. Maybe I've got a gift of mercy."

And incidentally, the two gifts that I don't have time to go into, the two I chose of the spiritual gifts are of helps and mercy because I think they're two of the most important gifts that there are, the gift of mercy. And I think many of us have that gift, but I sometimes think that women have an extra dose of the mercy gift.

Incidentally, I would like to recommend another book to you today: A Promise Kept by Robertson McQuilkin, which is the story of him resigning from Columbia Bible College as president to care full-time for his wife who has Alzheimer's. And it is one of the most moving, incredible books. If you've got people in trouble, if you've got people that are wrestling with suffering, you need to get this gift book and give them A Promise Kept, story of unforgettable love.

And in the middle of it, he has a little phrase: "I don't have to care for Muriel. I get to." And he discovered the gift of mercy. He said if this had never happened, I would have been exercising all those gifts of a world-renowned Christian leader, president of one of the most prestigious Bible colleges in the world, and I would never have known I had the gift of mercy. But God gave me the opportunity.

So with all of that, I don't know where you fit, I don't know where you link in, but just ask the Spirit of God to show you which part of this message is for you and what you should do about it. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your good gifts. Thank You for the gift of life and health and shelter and clothing and food. Thank You for every good and perfect gift we take so much for granted.

And then on top of all of that, You gifted us with talent, with ability. Education—what a gift. Two-thirds of the world don't have it and we have it and have had it. All these wonderful gifts. Training, abilities, natural abilities. And then on top of that, You gifted us with Jesus, the Spirit of God coming into our hearts, bringing with Him the spiritual gifting, the tools we're going to need to build up the body of Christ and help other people. And on top of all that, You simply ask, "Now all I'm asking for is 100% return." You have every right to expect that, Lord.

And so help us to search our hearts, help us to look at our lives, help us to make that list of equipment in our boat, in our life that must become that living pulpit out of which You address the crowd on our shore. Teach us how to do that. And then help us take initiatives, help us to offer, to volunteer, to meet a need, to do it badly, to get going, to work.

That man with ten talents at once went out and put it to work. And Lord, I pray that everybody listening to this talk today at once will go out and start to work. We ask it not for our own sake, but for the glory of the Kingdom of God. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Kingdom come. For Christ's sake, Amen.