Parable of the Talents
15"To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey.
16"Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents.
17"In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more.
18"But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.
19"Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.
20"The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, 'Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.'
21"His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'
So, this parable is pretty familiar, and I was just thinking about it the other day. At a recent conference, I was just challenged to find something new about Christ, instead of being complacent with the stuff that I already knew, and so I tried to think about this parable, and see if I could see anything I hadn't seen before. Because, sometimes, when I think I understand something, I just stop thinking about it at all.
One thing that I saw in this parable, that I didn't really notice before, was just that the servants maximum yield was only as much as the master gave them. For example, the first servant got 5 talents, and he used them to earn 5 talents, and same with the 2 talented one.
Like I shared previously, I've always been a very competitive person, and where I get really competitive is in the area of Christianity. For a good while, I think I tried to get ahead in this "race" because I wanted to be first and win the prize. I justified myself through verses like
1 Corinthians 9
24Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
And so whenever I saw a trait or quality in someone that I really liked, I would try to imitate that trait. If I saw generosity, I would want to be generous. If I saw leadership and boldness, I would want to do that too. A couple problems with that is--I'm still a sinner, so can't become what I saw as the "ultimate" Christian--and the essential motivation that I had was to basically collect as many gifts that I could and feel good about myself. But this isn't the main point...
The main point was, God gives us everything that we have, and the best that we can do is be faithful to that. What I kind of wanted was, if God had given me 1 talent, to run so hard and earn 10 talents. But then, what I would have earned at that point would be something that I had done with my own hand, and it would have given the glory to me. But, the truth is that the best that we can do (and it's a good best) is fulfill God's will for us. Looking at it now, it's not like we can surpass what God's will is for our lives--because it wouldn't be surpassing at that point, it would be degrading it because there would be the "self" mixed in.
Basically, the whole point of it is
What can I give to the Lord that I have not received from the Lord?
"His commands are His enablings" said by someone I forget
hm, I disagree with your approach, but agree that we cannot do anything without God. I don't think the point of the talents is to illustrate that some of us have a limit based on what we've been given, because the bible also says that with God, all things are possible. We should never use human logic to judge whether or not we can accomplish something, or whether or not God has given us the ability to do something, but instead always listen to God's direction for us. So yea, I do agree that if God has called us to do something in a certain way, we shouldn't try to make up our own "faster" or "better" way of doing it because we think it would produce more results or something.
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