What Has God Placed In Your Hands?

What Has God Placed In Your Hands?

The servant with the one bag of gold came and said, “Sir, I know you are a hard 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 and here it is.” But the master replied, “You wicked and lazy servant!” –Matthew 25:24-26

Since I’ve worked in publishing for years, many people asked me after Hope died if I was going to write a book. I thought about it, but honestly I was afraid. Over the years I had seen many people have incredible experiences and then seem to exploit them through the pages of a book. The idea that I might do that with the precious experience God had given me with Hope, and the awareness that I was not above it, kept me from it.

Then one day, Diane Cobb, teaching on the parable of the talents at Bible Study Fellowship, said, “What God entrusts to us is valuable to him. He requires that we do all we can with what he has given us—time, talents, gifts, energy, personality, life experience, material resources.” Then she asked the question, “Will you invest or squander what you’ve been given?”

Suddenly I saw myself in the story. I was the servant who had buried what God had put into my hands, so afraid of doing the wrong thing that I didn’t do anything. That day I saw all that God had placed into my hands—my knowledge of the publishing industry, an understanding of Scripture, communication gifts, and an experience that gave me insight and credibility. I realized that God wanted me to invest it, to use what he placed in my hands for his glory. So I went home and began to write. Four months later I sent my manuscript for Holding on to Hope to the publisher.

Once I realized that it was all about being a faithful steward of what God had placed into my hands and not about exploitation, everything changed. It might look the same on the outside, but inside me, in the area of my motives and methods, it is all about stewardship. God has taken what I offered up to him and used it in the lives of others for a spiritual return far beyond what I could have ever imagined. So I must ask you: What abilities, opportunities, and resources has God placed in your hands? Will you invest them for his glory? Now is not too late.

Master, I realize that I am accountable for everything you have given to me. How I long to hear you say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

DIGGING DEEPER