Good and Faithful Servant

Well, we are continuing our series on the / / Kingdom of God this morning. This series has been a little bit extended with everything going on over the last few weeks. But I think that’s ok because the Kingdom of Heaven is such a big topic, and such an important topic, we could really continue on for many more weeks yet, although we will be bringing it to a close soon.

If you think of verses like Matthew 4:23, / / Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom.

Luke 4:43, / / But he replied, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I was sent.”

And even in Acts 1:3 it says, / / During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.

Even before Jesus was born, the angel Gabriel, when he went to Mary to tell her that God wanted her to be the mother of Jesus on this earth, he says, in response to her confusion and struggling with the whole idea, / / “Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

And the angel is quoting from Isaiah 9, which says in vs 6-7, / / For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!

His Kingdom will never end. Of course I’m reading from the New Living Translation, but many of the translations say it a bit differently. The ESV of Isaiah 9:7 says it this way, / / Of the INCREASE of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forever more.

So, 700 years before He is born, to right before he’s born in the conversation between Gabriel and Mary, then during his ministry, and even after his resurrection, the topic has been the Kingdom. And rightfully so. Because / / Jesus will establish His kingdom, and he will rule and reign forever. There is no other King to sit on His throne. And His kingdom will increase for all eternity.

And we need to ask ourselves, / / Is God’s Kingdom being established in our hearts? When it comes to my life, am I king, or am I continually giving the rule and reign of my life over to King Jesus?

I’ve come to recognize that the Christian life is one of continual self-denial of our will and pursuing and seeking the will of God. It’s saying, I’m choosing NOT to be the ruler of my life because I know that Jesus is a BETTER ruler than I ever will be. That doesn’t mean God does it for me, it means I choose to get my directive from God. I don’t say God controls my life, I choose to ask God for His plan and pursue Holy Spirit to work in me the gift of self-control.

If you are following along with our Daily Bible Reading plan, which Septembers sheets are on the table, you know we finished up the book of Luke this past week. And reading about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, I settled on something I hadn’t really thought much about before. Do you ever have those moments where you read something, and maybe you’ve read it a hundred times, but this time something new jumps off the page at you? This is why we read the bible again and again, because it is the LIVING word of God! When you read the bible having invited Holy Spirit to be with you, there is no limit on how he can highlight Scriptures. There’s reading the bible, and there’s being shown by God what it’s truly saying! Remember the story of the two disciples walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem after Jesus had been crucified, and he is suddenly walking with them, but God doesn’t allow them to recognize him, and it says he opened up the scriptures to them, and after he leaves them they look at each other and say, “didn’t our hearts burn within us as he opened the scriptures...”

So, I’m reading Luke 22 where Jesus is praying in the garden, and in vs 42 it says Jesus prayed this, / / “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Of course I’ve always seen the “I want your will to be done” part, but this week as I read it, the Holy Spirit highlighted / / “not mine”… How often do we think about the fact that Jesus did actually have his own will. Jesus had a desire of his own. We read scriptures like John 5:19 where Jesus says, / / “…the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does...” and we think, well of course, He’s Jesus, and he’s perfect, so He just does the right thing all the time. He does what God wants him to do because he’s perfect. But he had a will of his own, desire of his own. And he made the CHOICE to continually gave up that will for the will of God the Father. And I realized in that moment, this is the call of the Christian life. / / The call of the Christian life is willful self-denial. CHOOSING to say, “I have a will, I have a desire, I’m sacrificing that will to CHOOSE God’s will!”

And it’s in that willful self-denial that we find life. We deny what WE see as life, what we see as pleasure, as what we want, to gain true life. And it doesn’t always feel like that’s what we are doing, because giving up what we desire, in the moment, is difficult. But by doing that we are choosing to experience the life that Jesus offers. Jesus said in Matthew 16:25, / / If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

So, this week we are continuing our look at what it means to pursue the Kingdom of God and what it means to be faithful and be prepared. We’re going to read the parable that Jesus told right after the parable of the ten bridesmaids we read last week. We’re in Matthew 25, and starting in vs 14, this is the Parable of the Three Servants or sometimes called the Parable of the Talents.

/ / “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last - dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.

“The servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more. The servant with two bags of silver also went to work and earned two more. But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master’s money.

“After a long time their master returned from his trip and called them to give an account of how they had used his money. The servant to whom he had entrusted the five bags of silver came forward with five more and said, ‘Master, you gave me five bags of silver to invest, and I have earned five more.’

“The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’

“The servant who had received the two bags of silver came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two bags of silver to invest, and I have earned two more.’

“The master said, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’

“Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.’

“But the master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn’t plant and gathered crops I didn’t cultivate, why didn’t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.’

“Then he ordered, ‘Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver. To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Again, like the Parable of the bridesmaids we looked at last week, there are levels of insight we can gain from this parable.

First of all, in a lot of ways, this is a continuation of the parable we looked at last week, not in story, but in content. The parable of the bridesmaids was asking, / / Are You Prepared? This is asking the same thing, Are you prepared, but also, are you faithful with what you’ve been given? Prepared may have got you to this point, now, what will you do with what you’ve received? / / Will You Be Faithful?

Now, probably the most important consideration we need to make is that / / this parable is not about money. Even though money is the thing used in the story, it’s not about being faithful with the “money” you’ve been given.

Another consideration that needs to be made is, / / Money does not equal Importance in this parable.

So, if it’s not about money, and money doesn’t equal importance, what’s this parable about?

Jesus says in vs 15 that the man gives his servants five bags, two bags and one bag and this is in / / proportion to their abilities. Not because one is more important than the other, but simply their capacity to work with what they are about to receive dictates what they receive.

What that means is, you might need more based on what you do. And again, we’re not talking about money here. Reading this from the NLT it says bags of silver, but in most translations it uses the word talents. I don’t think that’s a mistake! I find it interesting that they use the word talent because the definition of this word, in greek, which this was originally written in, the word is talanton, and it means a certain weight, but does not indicate an actual weight. It was a term used as a weight, that changed with the place you were in, or the time in history. It was a varying number. And N.T. Wright estimates that at the time of this story a talent was worth roughly what a labourer could earn in 15 years. Now, I don’t know what a labourer would earn in a day during that time, but if we use our minimum wage of today, which as of the end of this month will change to $10.00 / hr, that means a talent today, based on what it is worth in the time of this story, would be about $300,000. So, the first servant was giving $1.5 million, the second servant was given $600,000, and the last servant was given $300,000. But that number can easily change depending on what a labourer made at the time compared to what we make now. Was it minimum wage at $10, or was it $20? Instantly our story changes and the man with 5 talents is a multi-millionaire.

Of course the story isn’t about how much money, but the context is important, because of what this means for us now.

See, the interesting thing about this word, talanton, is that it is actually where we get the word, talent, which means natural aptitude or skill. We get our word for talent from this greek word talanton that was a weight and measure of money. See, talent is valuable, isn’t it? and when you think of the numbers involved here. Talent is very valuable.

So this is why the context is important for us. Because of vs 15, / / he gave to them in proportion to their abilities [talents].

Each is given a different amount because they have different talents, different capacities. Think about this in terms of what we have been talking about, asking the question - Are You Prepared? If you’re not prepared, if you haven’t exhibited competence in your job, you’re not going to be given much responsibility. Think of how rich this man must be that he says in vs. 21, to the man he gave 5 bags of silver to, / / “You have been faithful in handling this small amount...”

What this says to me is that God is not asking you to be more than you are. He’s not asking you to be someone else. He’s asking you to simply do well with what you’ve been given!

Even when he scolds the last servant, he says to him, why didn’t you at least put it in the bank, that way I would have gained interest! He was upset because the talent went UNUSED. Jesus is basically saying, “I’m not asking you to make as much as the one with five did. He made five more, I didn’t expect you to make five, but I did expect you to take what I’ve given you and use it to the best of YOUR ability.”

See, this isn’t about doing things to the best of someone else’s ability, that doesn’t even make sense, does it?

There’s a quote that is often attributed to Einstein, but that’s not proven, but it says, / / Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.

A fish can’t climb a tree, never gonna be able to do that. So as long as it’s comparing itself to anything else that can climb a tree, and asking itself why it can’t, it’s gonna feel inferior. But when a fish realizes that it’s a fish, and its purpose is to swim, then compared to anyone else, it’s no competition, because it’s not meant to climb a tree. And what might be able to climb a tree can probably never swim like that fish!

I think this is one of the most important things, if not THE most important thing we can walk away from in this parable. And we’ll turn to another great philosopher for this one. Dr Seuss said, / / Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than You!

Who are YOU?

Who did God make YOU to be?

What talents did He give YOU that He’s asking you to be faithful with?

And now here is a very important question that you need to ask yourself: / / Have you spent any time looking for how God created you so that you can prepare for what He’s called you to?

Kelley and I were watching a little video the other day, and it was this motivational speaker talking to a group of college age kids, and one of them asked the question, “I’m about to go to college, how do I know which school to pick? Do I pick a safe school that aligns with my belief system currently, or do I go to a school that is counter culture to my belief system and try and be a positive voice and impact in that world?”

Great question, right? But his response was different than we both thought it would be. He said: Neither, ask yourself what you are GOOD at? What skills do you have? What TALENTS have you been given? We live in a world right now where everyone wants to follow their passion, but passion without talent will get you nowhere. Find what you’re good at and do that. And if that requires learning, then go to school for it, or if it’s an apprenticeship, or whatever you need to do to develop the skills you already have, do it. Because the best thing you can do is use the SKILL you have, and build passion in yourself for it.

Some people have more skill than others. Some people have really intricate abilities. Some people have ability to do things others don’t. Like, I don’t do blood, I don’t even like my own blood, so I could NEVER work at a hospital. EVER. Forget it. Can’t do it.

I also don’t have the patience to do certain jobs. I see these beautiful bathrooms and kitchens that Juan does his tiling work for. He’s invested in that skill. He’s put time into learning how to do it better. And he’s getting really good at it. And listen to that. He’s getting better. He started out recognizing he had a talent, and with time and investment that talent grows.

God gives us talents, and expects us to use them. Which means we have to be asking ourselves: / / What are we doing with what we’ve been given?

And this does NOT mean we all have to quit our jobs and go work for the church, that’s not what Jesus is saying. This isn’t a quit what you’re doing and work for God thing. Or quit your job and become a monk, or dedicate your life to preaching. No, this is about you being Salt and Light IN the situation you’re in, in the job you do have.

Now, if you’re in a job that you have skill and talent for doing, but you’re not feeling alive, one of a few things might be happening. First, you could be doing the wrong thing. / / (1. Are you doing the wrong thing?) Maybe you have another talent or skill that you might not even know about. Like I said earlier, some people have multiple talents, and there may be different seasons that those particular talents are necessary for, and you’ve outgrown that season, or you are simply gifted in multiple areas and a different area is going to be the one that truly gives you life. I lived 35 years before I built anything, and then I built this wall and this stage and laid this carpet and the walls in the back and the sound booth.... I realized I could do some things. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to give up what I’m doing to go be a general contractor, right? But sometimes people run into a skill or talent first and they run with it. What if I realized I could build things 20 years ago? My life would be very different, and I would probably feel like I was missing something. I do graphic design and websites. I was actually going to go to college for graphic design and animation, but instead, I ended up going to ministry school and my life took on a very very different path. But, there was a season of our lives where graphic design and website development paid our bills. God used that talent to provide for us. It has also saved the church a whole LOT of money because we haven’t had to hire anyone for those particular things because I have the skillset to do them. BUT, while I was still working it full time, I realized that it was actually draining me. It was not healthy, because it was taking me away from what I was truly meant to be doing. If that’s the case for your life, If you feel like the talents you’re using are draining you, begin to pray and ask God to reveal to you if there’s something up with that.

Another reason could simply be because you’re doing the right thing in the wrong place. / / (2. Are you in the right place?)

So, a couple things need to happen. First I believe God calls us to do the best we can with what we have, where we are, which means we don’t try less if we feel like maybe we’re in the wrong place, but we do our absolute best WHILE we are there, AND look for a better place at the same time!

And Second, we are asking God what His will is for our lives, and what we are meant to be doing. If Jesus only did what He saw the Father do, was led by the Holy Spirit in what He did, then our lives should reflect the same attitude. Father, what are you calling me to? Holy Spirit, where are you leading me? Is there a REASON I am here? Do you have purpose for me here, or should I move on to somewhere else?

The goal is, no matter what the talent is, no matter how big we feel it is: If God gave it to us, He wants us to do our absolute best with it!

And the conclusion of this parable may seem harsh, but as I’ve thought about it in very practical terms, and remember, I said last week Jesus often spoke deep spiritual truths, with incredibly practical points connected to them.

To the servant who receives five talents and makes five talents the response is, / / “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!”

To the servant who received two talents and made two more, the response is the same as the guy who had five and made five more, EXACTLY the same statement, “you did well, I’m give you more responsibility, let’s go party!”

And we see both the spiritual and the physical impact of what Jesus is saying all the time.

First of all, the more prepared and faithful you are, the more dedicated you will be. And the more dedicated you are to your talents the more you will grow, the better you will become, and the result is that your life will benefit more from that talent because you’re growing in the way of skill, wisdom and knowledge, in fulfillment of purpose. And the more you use your talents for God’s purposes, the more you reap spiritual rewards of the same.

This might be some of the most practical advice you could be given: / / If you have a talent and use it faithfully you will see it develop and grow. So practical, yet so important, right?

But to the third, wow things get real, and this is where Jesus is making His main point. The servant says to his master, / / “I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.”

But the master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn’t plant and gathered crops I didn’t cultivate, why didn’t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.

Then he ordered. ‘Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver.

And here’s where Jesus gives his point that the story has getting to. He says in vs 29, / / To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

OK. Let’s tackle that last line first…

First things first, Jesus is and has been since Chapter 23 really, talking about the final judgement, the end of time, the Second Coming. And as we see in the writing style, these are not separate parables with different purposes, but they are all tied together. He starts this one in vs 14, with “Again”.... he’s continuing from the first parable about the ten bridesmaids, which we looked at last week having both eternal and spiritual meaning, but incredibly practical points as well. The same is true in this parable about these three servants.

And you can notice the similarities between these two parables. Jesus says in vs 19, / / “After a long time their master returned...” They didn’t know when he would return. “Surprise, I’m back, now, what did you do with my money?” The same warning as the first parable comes through, don’t be caught off guard, live prepared, live every day like the master could come back, and be faithful with what you’ve been given until that time so that you can answer me with, “I’ve done the best I can with what you’ve given me...”

One of the issues with this parable is that it can almost bring up this idea that we’ll be judged based on our performance. Which is literally the reason Jesus gave his life, so it can’t mean that. Jesus came to fulfill the law so that we could live free of the burden of the law. John 3:16 and 17, All that believe, inherit eternal life, I came not to judge but to save. So, is Jesus talking about works and performance here? Not likely, right? So we need to dig a bit deeper.

N.T. Wright suggests that this is pointing to the current issues of the current time period. Jesus says in Matthew 23:13, leading up to this story, / / “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.

What is Jesus talking about here? The Kingdom of Heaven. And he’s often challenging these religious leaders who are holding the people back by imposing on them a system of rules that was impossible to keep. in vs 4 of chapter 23 he says of these religious leaders, “They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.”

So, in some ways this is a warning to these scribes, Pharisees, religious leaders to not HIDE the Kingdom of God. Don’t hide the good things of God. Don’t dig a hole and bury it because you’re too afraid to use it, or don’t understand it. Because the whole point is to ENTER the Kingdom of God, and if you can’t enter the Kingdom of God, you’re literally left on the outside!

There’s this comparison as to who will embrace the Kingdom and who will not. In Matthew 8 when a Roman officer approaches Jesus to heal his servant, Jesus says he will go and do it, but the officer says, “You don’t need to actually come to my house, I’m not even worthy of you coming to my house. But I get how this works. I’m an officer, I have people under me that listen to my commands, and I have people over me who give me commands. Just say the word and that will be enough.”

Jesus responds, “I haven’t seen faith like this in all of Israel!”

And in Matthew 8:11-12 he says, / / “And I tell you this, that many Gentiles will come from all over the world - from east and west - and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. But many Israelites - those for whom the Kingdom was prepared - will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This weeping and gnashing of teeth thing keeps coming up, along with outer darkness. Well, we know the Kingdom is represented by light, so, if you’ve missed the kingdom, you’re not in the light, you’re in the darkness outside of the kingdom. And / / weeping, or wailing as it’s also translated, is a verbal, loud expression of that “We missed it”. It’s a verbal distress. Think of the stories He’s telling. The five foolish bridesmaids would be very broken up over this. While they were gone getting oil they missed their opportunity because they were not prepared. The third servant would also be pretty broken up, I missed this opportunity. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t show myself faithful. I have remorse. Weeping, wailing, sadness… / / gnashing, or basically the grinding of teeth, another expression of deep sorrow, deep anguish. This is showing visual or physical distress. These are expressions of a real deep grief for our actions. And Jesus is making it abundantly clear that some we might think would be a certainty in the Kingdom of God, those who are religious leaders, those who appear high and mighty in the ways of God, are doing it for show, doing it to try and prove themselves, but Jesus is trying to get them to see that it’s about believing in Him, not about keeping a set of rules. And the very thing that they put their trust in, the law, is what condemns them. And they miss it. And the sorrow of that is greater than anything we could ever experience. / / They were faced with the opportunity to believe in Jesus and ENTER the Kingdom of Heaven, and they willfully chose to reject it.

OK, now to the other conclusion that Jesus is making. Matthew 25:29, / / To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.

Alright, those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.

Again, we’ve seen the spiritual consequence of this, but look at the natural, practical implications of this as well. I think we all know someone that has just sat and wasted their life, not put effort in, and what happens? They seem to lose everything. Proverbs warns of this over and over again, the lazy lose it all, the diligent will reap a reward.

Jesus is calling us to life, to choose life. But in that call there is a need to work. Matthew 7:14, / / …the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

Yes, we are being offered life.

Yes, we are being offered the very Kingdom of Heaven, not just in the future, for eternity’s sake, but now!

But are we willing to go through the process? This process of willful self-denial, of sacrificing our own way to choose a better way. My experience this year with addiction to food and sugar has been exactly this recycled and repeated over and over and over again. My body, my mind, my soul desire one thing, and I kill that and choose life! I deny it and choose something else. I deny myself, my desire, my body and my mind. YES, your mind and your body will do what they must to deceive you. YES, you HAVE to deny YOURSELF. Willfully. Your Choice! / / Willful Self-Denial and choosing the way of Jesus leads to life. Two steps. Deny what kills, Choose life.

It’s easy to become comfortable, complacent, unaware. I saw an article this past week about the extra unemployment benefits ending. Now, if you’re in an industry that has been upended and you’ve been looking for work and haven’t been able to find anything, and you’ve looked outside of your industry to find work and you’re doing everything you can but it’s just not happened yet, then I understand that. But this article said, basically people have been hung out to dry, abandoned, and what are they going to do now. Except, the economy has made a turn around. Last year in the middle of this thing the unemployment rate hit 14% I think. That’s really not good. But in July, in Florida it was 5.1% and there are “We’re hiring” signs everywhere. Restaurants are having a hard time finding people to even work.

Why? Because the government was giving people up to $15 / hr, and the minimum wage in FL is currently $8.65, with it going up to $10.00 at the end of this month.

What’s my point. My point is this, it’s easy to become comfortable, complacent and unaware. This is a current, real world example of what Jesus is warning against. Be faithful with what you’ve been given. Don’t become complacent. Don’t give in to fear. Don’t sit back and wait for life to happen to you, take what you’ve been given, your talents, your skills, your abilities, and USE THEM! Because there will come a time, if you don’t, what little you do have might just be taken away.

But the flip side - / / To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance.

Take seriously the gifts you’ve been given. Take seriously the talents God has given you. Use them. And not just for your gain, but invite Him into the process. Be Kingdom minded. Be God centered. Be Jesus focused. Invite Holy Spirit to guide you and lead you. And see what God can do through you when you willfully deny yourself to embrace the way of the Kingdom of God!

I’ve been quoting John 10:10 lately, Jesus says, / / My purpose is to give you a rich and satisfying life.

The ESV says, ...life and have it abundantly. That doesn’t always mean money, because we know money isn’t what makes us truly happy. To have a rich and satisfying life is to be content, to be happy, to enjoy life. Money may help facilitate that in this world, but it’s not the source of it! The same is true in this parable. This isn’t about making more to get more. It’s about being faithful to God in this life and experiencing HIS true life.

So, the conclusion is this: / / Embrace what God has given you. Be faithful with your talents. Be led by the Spirit of God for the purpose of the Kingdom

I want to pray for you this morning, but I want to pray specifically for those who maybe feel in that place of decision, or indecision maybe, that you maybe don’t know what that talent is in your life. You’re asking, God have you called me to something? or called me to something else, something other than what I’m doing right now? God, what is YOUR purpose for my life? We know that doesn’t mean everyone suddenly becomes a minister, it doesn’t mean the job you have in the tech sector, or at that restaurant, or the hospital is bad, or wrong, that might be exactly where God wants you. But it’s in knowing that God has put something in you, and you are being faithful to that, that makes the difference. And my desire is that each and every one of you has that feeling of knowing you are where you’re supposed to be, doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

That doesn’t mean every day is going to be exciting or enjoyable, but when you know, you are empowered to be faithful. And your joy won’t come from your job, it will come from the one who made you!

If you’re in that place, I want to pray for you. That those questions are answered, that you see clearly the road ahead of you, and that you come to a place of faithfulness to Christ.

If that’s you this morning I want you to just place your hand on your core, as a representation of asking for knowing on the inside of who you are.