Gifts and talents

Gifts and talents, both blessings from God that although they are sometimes seen as the same thing, really differ in that talents are innate abilities, we are born with them and we develop them through life or not; However, the gifts are a gift of the Holy Spirit of God, when we surrender to Him, He gives us extraordinary abilities to work in his work, to be able to serve him.

But is this an act of magic that happens when we accept Christ as the only Savior of our lives?

When we look around us, in the congregation, we see many people who are sitting passively on the benches, they just listen, we see them Sunday after Sunday, but we don't even know their name, these people, or they have not discovered what their gifts are, or they retain them for when the time is right. The sad thing about this is that we don't know how much time we have left to put our talents at the service of God's people, we don't even know if we have a few seconds left to do it.

If we reflect on this, we will realize that there is no magic, it takes a whole process of spiritual growth and permanent communion with the Lord for this to happen; In this way, if we wish to put ourselves at his service and surrender to his will to be a useful member, we must begin by asking in prayer that God will show us what our true talents are and with what gifts he is going to arm us for the military in his ranks. .

We can really have a notion of our talents, but what we will be surprised with is the gifts that God will reveal to us and that we did not even dream we would develop.

Talents have a lot to do with our personality, this does not always happen with gifts, sometimes I have been surprised seeing some brothers do things for the Lord that I did not even dream would be possible, because their personality has nothing to do with it. with the activity they have done; I'm a psychiatrist, I know perfectly well what I'm talking about.

A living example of this is my husband, he always had a withdrawn character and to some extent it was painful, however, God equipped him in such a way that he glorified himself in his weaknesses, he has even worked in plays, incredible!

God gives gifts according to his purpose and will and these should be used for his glory and not to satisfy human vanities. God gave me a voice to praise Him and for that I don't need an audience, He is my audience! And when I sing just for Him in the kitchen or in the bathroom, I feel incredible happiness; However, when I sing before an audience, I almost fall into a panic attack and here I am, working for Him on something I never thought I could do.

He showed us that it is not our will that matters, but his, if we do not submit to it, we will have many conflicts and stumbles along the way and believe me, submitting is the best option.

Of course, to be able to use these gifts correctly we must undergo a “training”, otherwise, instead of being a blessing for other lives, we can be stumbling blocks and the best training is in permanent communion with God and in the knowing how to listen to people who transmit knowledge because they have lived a lifetime in the Gospel and God uses them to “train us” and speaks to us through them, we just have to know how to listen with discernment.

In short, it all consists in deciding to be good faithful servants and to learn to listen to the voice of God. We all have talents, God wants to equip us with the gifts that He knows we need to be useful. Let us not resist obeying. Let us not hide our light under a drawer, let us shine and be a blessing for how much life God puts on our path, let us always remember that we are not the ones who generate the light, we are only administrators of it.