Offering Up Your Talents

When I do rarely happen to catch an interesting posting on someone's blog, many times I'm uplifted, encouraged, convicted, inspired, etc.  However there are times when I feel the posting is written *just* for me! This is one I love and want to share with you.  It's about being willing to sacrifice and lay on the altar your gifts and strengths and those things you actually take pride in and enjoy in life and give it all to God so He can use you much more mightily than you could ever do in your own strength.  It mirrors many of the same thoughts I've had regarding where God has me at right now and the lessons He's teaching me through my situation. Maybe you can relate.

Not too long ago a young woman was over at my house for some reason that I cannot remember. Now on a typical day  at my house you would find dishes in the sink, junk on the floor, a baby unloading a drawer, laundry on the stairs, and about 410 things on my to-do list. Children are always coloring, wielding scissors, and gluing things on the window when I’m not looking. Hopefully, you would also find me running around in the midst of it, because long experience has taught me that giving up on it won’t get results. I don’t remember what exactly was going on when she came by, but at some point she commented that she was the sort of person who liked things to be really orderly. It wasn’t a criticism and it wasn’t offensive, although it did make me laugh. Because, lo. Me too.

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Opposite World courtesy of WLW Ministries

I follow a blog called Women Living Well Ministries and the blog author had a series entitled {Opposite World} where she shares how our lives as Christians are (and should be) quite opposite from how the world lives. I haven't caught all the posts, but the most recent one caught my eye.  It's about friendship between women, and I wanted to share it with you here.

"I got a phone call a few years back from a friend at church.  The girl called me to talk about our friendship that seemed strained. She called to see if anything was wrong (I LOVE that she took the time to call me).  I really had no issue with her –only that I could sense that she didn’t really like me. And I accepted the fact that not everyone in the world is going to like this fast talking, loud laughing, Bible girl…so I had made peace with it. We were polite in the halls at church but there was no real friendship.

So when she called to ask what was wrong? I didn’t know what to say…only that I felt like she didn’t like me but I didn’t know why.  Then she said it. She said her reason why."

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