God Promises to Make Room for Your Gifts and Talents

Suggested Reading: Acts 16:12-15

A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before the great—Proverbs 18:16

Before you were born God knit so many awesome talents into you. As he breathed life into you, put all your little bones and tendons together, thought of a name for you, painted the color of your eyes, formed the shape of your mouth and nose, the size of your ears, the color of your skin, and the number of hairs on your head, he fashioned you into his likeness and knit wonderful talents into the fiber of your being. Talents: those things you are naturally good at doing, those things which may come easily for you though they may be hard for others. Those skills that make you happy and bless others. The things you or others have recognized you are good at and have a knack at doing.

Talents are different from our spiritual gifts, although they will compliment our spiritual gifts and can seem to bleed over into our giftedness. God knits our talents into us at the same time he is forming us in the womb and the Holy Spirit gifts us spiritually at the time of our Baptism. They all come from God and converge in beautiful and magnificent ways making them useful for Christian service!

Lydia, whom we meet in the Book of Acts was skilled at dying purple (scarlet) fabric and was well known and respected in her community for her talent. She is a good example of what Solomon writes in our focus verse for today. God does not waste our talents or gifts, nor does he want us to waste them; in fact he will make room for us in this great big world so we can use them to his glory. Sometimes our gifts and talents will be the thing that helps us make our living and sometimes they will do as Solomon wrote, “bring us before great and powerful people.”

When we don’t recognize our God-given talents or Spiritual gifts it’s not because we don’t have any—that is impossible—but because we’ve never been made aware of them. In Proverbs 16 Solomon instructs parents to “train up their child  in the way he or she is “bent” (talented, good at).  Those things and ways a parents sees in their child from birth, invest in them, support them in those things, and when the child has grown up he or she will remember and hold fast to those ways and skills. Even if we have not been poured into as children and have gone through a great deal of our adulthood without being told or recognizing our talents and gifts now is never too late. Never too late to discover, learn about, grow into, or use to God’s glory. As long as we are alive we have time and God will provide opportunity to use our gifts and talents.

What are you good at? God has promised to make a place for you! This is a wonderful, inspiring, affirming, assuring, emboldening promise God makes us. Because he has promised it we know we have a place; God will make a place for us in this world. There is always a place, people, industry that has need of the talents and gifts we have. Be bold to pray this promise over your life, over the life of your family, your children and grandchildren (if you have them). If you know people who have never found their “place” in this world (regardless of how old they are) or never experienced fulfilling work that came about because of their natural talents and gifts, pray that they will experience this kind of work and joy in their life. Let’s Pray,

Heavenly Father, so much you do even while we are still in the womb! You do more than give us flesh and bones, you knit incredible talents into the fiber of our being, to be used when we are born and, in our lifetime, and often use those same talents to set us in places where we will come into contact with important and great people. Help us to recognize our God-given talents, to spend time exploring and honing them. May we always be ready and available when you call us to use them no matter where and how we need to use them. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.