Faithful People Serve Others

God uses your talents to test your unselfishness.

You have to decide in life who or what you’re going to live for. You’re either going to live a self-centered, miserly life or you’re going to live for something greater than yourself—the kingdom of God.

Faithful people don’t live for themselves. They realize that the talents God gave them are not for their own benefit. They’re meant to make the world a better place.

When God made you, he gave you all kinds of gifts, talents, abilities, and experiences. Those things make you you. And God made you you. There’s nobody like you in the whole world, and he wants you to be you for his glory.

God shaped you to serve him, and there’s only one way to do that: by serving other people.

You may have a talent for art and say that you do it “just because you love to do it.” That’s nice, but that’s not a good enough motive. God didn’t give you artistic ability just so you can love to do it. He gave it to you so you can use your art to help other people in some way.

Some of you have an ability to fix things. Some of you are good at math. Some of you are good at closing deals. Some of you are good at music. Some of you are good at organizing. And some of you are good at gardening.

God made us all different so that everything in the world gets done. If we all liked to do the same thing, then there would be a whole lot left undone.

The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:10, “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another” (NLT).

You are the steward of your talents, and God is watching to see if you use what he gave you on earth to bless other people. If you use them effectively on earth, then he’s going to give you more responsibility in heaven—and those responsibilities will bring you joy forever!