Food for ThoughtWhat's in Your Toolbox?
Food for Thought
An all-creatures.org Guide to Kingdom Living

Submitted by Debra Stitt - 20 May 2003

"Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee..." I Timothy 1.6

I was reading a letter in a book from an evangelist who had spoken at a women's retreat at their church. In it she says, "Remember even the best tools become rusty sitting in a toolbox."

How true that is. Many of us have been given gifts by God. We can sing, teach, preach, write, comfort one another, lead, serve and do a thousand other things. These "natural" abilities are there for a reason. They are there to be used for God.

But there is a clear teaching in scripture that that which is not invested in the kingdom of God will be taken away. The unprofitable servant in the story of the talents had his talent taken from him. The old saying "Use it or Loose it" is as true in spiritual matters as it is in the physical realm.

Okay, we all know the excuses. I don't have the time. They don't appreciate me. Somebody criticized me. I'm not that good. I'm too tired.

How do you think those excuses will play when we stand before God's throne and give account of what we have done with the tools he gave us.

"Oh," you say, "I really plan on using this talent later. You know when things settle down at work or when I retire." But what would happen to those tools in your toolbox if you let them sit there for the next 30 or 40 years to be used when you retired?

As far as that goes, how do you know that we will still be on this planet 30 or 40 years from now. The times are growing short. No, we need to make haste. We need to take out those tools, dust them off, oil them and scrape the rust flakes off and start putting them to use for the kingdom of God and we need to do that today before one more flake of rust forms.

Lord, show me a way that I can make use of my talents today in helping to build your kingdom. Amen

~Author Unknown~

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lamb-rightThe purpose of this series is to encourage people to live as loving, compassionate, and peacemaking children of God: Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) God tells us through Micah (6:8), "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God." And we know from Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more mourning, or crying, or pain, or death. Thus, Christian living requires us to set the standards of these conditions here on earth for our fellow human beings, and for the other animals, as a witness to the rest of the world. To do otherwise is not Christian.