With whom are you craving an audience?

 Doing what with that...

Whether a gift is spiritual in nature or learned as a talent or seemingly natural to a person's genetic, environmental or trained individuality, it IS from God. You see, friend, if it is spiritual in nature, well, it is spiritual! It is a gift directly from the Lord of the Lord. If it is learned, it has been God that has sustained the life of such a one who has learned it. If it seemingly part of who someone is, they are how they are because made them who they are. Capisce?

So, no matter how one has come to have a talent, skill or gift, the question is not where it came from. The question is what is a person doing with what God gave them?

What do we do with the gain from our talent, skill or gift?
What do we do with the exercise of our talents, skills or gifting?
Whose glory do we seek with our talents, skills or gifting?
Who do we bless with our talent, skill or gifting?
Who do we credit for these things?

Let me press into a thought (in other words, be patient)...

The proverb writer says, "A man's gift makes room for him and brings him before the great." (Proverbs 18:16 ESV) In this case, I might paraphrase this verse like this: "A man's money can get him an audience with people he could never meet if he were poor."

Even our money is a gift from God. Sure, someone is thinking, "I earned that! No one gave it to me!" Such attitudes always stem from self-centered pride. IF you have "earned" it, it is because God has given you aptitude, health, willingness and opportunity, without which of any part you would not have made gain. So, surely, I can say, what we "earn" also comes from God.

Finally, then, whether we are talking a talent with which we barter or money with with which we buy, who do put ourselves in front of? Who do we desire audience with?

It can be as simple as taking what we have been given by God and wasting it on frivolity, or it can be as complicated as taking what God has given us and building a sanitary life filled with sanitary people, and it can be anything in between, and it can be worse.

The point is, who do we desire to be in front of with what we have been given? Why? The subject is worth the effort of meditation.