{"id":6685,"date":"2020-08-30T17:45:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T07:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6685"},"modified":"2020-08-30T17:45:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-30T07:45:08","slug":"the-secret-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/the-secret-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Recipe"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Talents, Blessings and Spiritual Gifts Part 2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Secret Recipe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Ereeny Mikhail<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the kingdom of heaven is like a man travelling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them and made another five talents. And likewise, he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground and hid his lord\u2019s money.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p> Matthew 25:14-18<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Three particular things strike me about this\nparable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing is the fact that they ALL\nreceived talents. He did not leave one of them with nothing. So, I think when\nwe state that we have no talents, we are offending God. We are acting as that\nfoolish servant who claims God to be a \u2018hard man\u2019. God gave us each according\nto our own ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, the way the servants and lord\nreacted to the number of talents is so important. The servant with two talents\ndid not look at his neighbour with five talents and think about how much more\nthan him he had. He focused on himself and went and made two more. And as we\nknow later in the parable, the lord of the servants rewards the servant who\ndoubled his five talents into ten, and the servant who doubled his two talents\ninto four, equally. And the servant with the one talent ends up with nothing\nand is cast out. The significant thing to take from this is the lord did not\nlook at the servants and think he only has four and the other has ten. The\nnumber of talents is not what we should be looking at and it is not how God\nwill judge us in the coming days. Rather, it is how we utilised the talents he\ngave us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s twist the story a little bit.\nImagine if the servant who didn\u2019t use his talents was the one with the five\ntalents. And the servants who doubled their talents were the ones with the two\nand the one talent. The master of the house would have reacted the exact same.\nThe servant with the five talents would have been cast out. It is in fact\nbetter for someone to have one talent but to use it and increase it than to\nhave five talents and use none of them at all and waste them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, another message we can take from this\nparable is, exploration or investment. The servants with the five and two\ntalents did not just get excited and think about how much they had. They chose\nto act wisely and put in the effort to increase their talents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about it as an investment of money in\nthe bank. You place the money there and over time it continues to increase. You\nact wisely with what you have, rather than just celebrate your talents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, the effort these two\nservants put in is essential. They went and actually explored how to increase\ntheir talents. So perhaps your talents are sport and being a good speaker. This\ndoes not mean you settle for the two talents and thank God only. It is\nfundamental that you find ways to use these talents in more than just the one\nway. I think about the sportsmen or sportswomen who sign the cross before a\ngame. This must spread waves into the world. Maybe that day someone will pray\nfor the first time in a long time. Or if you are a good speaker, don\u2019t just use\nit for your job. Use it to speak at your church or preach the name of the Lord\nto others. Perhaps if you feel you cannot expand on these talents, then it is\nessential to explore yourself more and find more talents in order to increase\nwhat the Lord gave you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must realise talents come in different\nforms. We must recognise the talents God has given us and not disregard them.\nWe must always ensure that we do not compare our talents to others. We must\nensure that we explore these talents and invest in them. This is the secret\nrecipe to all talents, blessings and spiritual gifts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talents, Blessings and Spiritual Gifts Part 2 The Secret Recipe By Ereeny Mikhail \u201cFor the kingdom of heaven is like a man travelling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according … Continue reading “The Secret Recipe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[148,437,107],"class_list":["post-6685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-blessing","tag-spiritual-gift","tag-talent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6687,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685\/revisions\/6687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}