Celebrate it!

Last week I received a call from my daughter at school, very excited!  The teacher had read her essay in class.  I understood her excitement, I was equally happy.  We have always told her that she writes beautifully, but she wanted recognition for it from school.  It made me realise how important it is for all of us to receive recognition for what we do.  Even when we deny its importance, most of us will go to great lenghts to achieve it.
I myself have been a victim of my own need for recognition for many years, but my fear of not getting it have kept me from venturing anywhere with my God given talents, until I came to another realization.  More about this a bit later.
From the minute we are born we are conditioned to receive recognition.  Parents and grandparents ooh and ahhh over every little achievement little Johnny accomplishes.  "He's given his first smile, he's said his first word, his eating solids now, he's sitting by himself, he's crawling", etc., etc."  Nothing wrong with that at all, but it sets the stage for little Johnny looking for, and needing recognition.  Later on we start thinking that we are only successful if enough people ooh and ahhh over us.  We start to measure our self-worth by how many people know about my achievements, how many talk about them, how many "likes" or "tweets" we get in these technological times.  It becomes our new believe system about ourselves.
Today I want to tell you that if this is what you believe, you are wrong.  You are not a writer because millions buy your books, a musician because you have sold-out concerts, a good doctor because you appear on Oprah.  Afterall, Vincent van Gogh, to me one of the world's most brilliant artists, sold only one painting during his lifetime! You are first of all what God says about you, and secondly what you believe about yourself.
For many years, actually most of my life, I have believed very little about myself, I have believed the words important people in my life have said about me, and have burried my (God given) "talents", with the result that I had a gaping hole in my soul.  Then somebody came along and opened that treasure chest, and everything changed.  I came to realise that those "talents ", were more than a word in quote marks.  They were talents, but I also for the first time understood I had no reason to be ashamed of them as they were not mine, but the Lord’s.  He deemed it good to entrust me with them.  Suddenly it all changed.  I had to ask the Lord to forgive me for having been ashamed of them for so many years, hiding them, neclegting them.
If we are waiting for the world to give us recognition, or to invite us to share our talents, we will have a long wait ahead of us, yet the Lord wants us to us our talents, big, small, ordinary or extraordinary to glorify Him in everything.
The end of last year I shared with somebody that I am writing, because I have come to realise that it is a talent which the Lord have given me.  When she heard this she gave me such a dirty look and sneered.  I felt so hurt and ashamed that I almost packed it all in again, in fact I did, but then I realised, that it did not matter what she said, it only matters what the Lord says.  Thus, my friends, I encourage you, whatever it is you are doing, writing, making music, art, sport, academics or whatever, do it with all your heart, because you have been wonderfully made and your talents are needed in God's bigger plan.  Celebrate it! Maybe it is that simple poem, that tiny little painting that leads the way to the Lord, even if it is just for one person.  Not all of us will be great, but we can do little things in a great way!

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