Your Community is Calling for Your Talents

When you look around at all the challenges that are happening in our communities and neighborhoods right now sometimes it's easy to throw your hands up in the air and feel helpless to make any positive changes. Some people just shake their heads, cross their arms, and look around waiting for the calvary to come to the rescue. But guess what? The calvary is ALREADY HERE and they look just like YOU!

If God has allowed you to be in a community or around people where you see the issues and challenges up close, more than likely He has a plan for using you to bring answers and solutions. So how is that supposed to happen? It happens through the talents He placed inside of you before he sent you and into the world and positioned you to be in proximity of the problem (Ephesians 2:10).

Your community needs your talents. In fact God set it up in such a way that your talents are assigned to specific people who need them. Your talents are meant to address specific needs and problems.

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control [sound mind]. ~ ‭‭2 Timothy‬ ‭1:6-7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

So based on Paul's guidance to Timothy, let's look at these three key aspects of how you're supposed to engage your talents in your community...

1. Power - The ability to make choices. Everyone has power because everyone has choices (even if they don't seem like good choice). How you use your power - positively or negatively - is your choice. You have God-given abilities to impact other people's lives. How will you use your power? Will you choose to engage your community room change to standby and just watch what happens?
2. Love - Selfless concern for the needs of others that causes you to act on their behalf and in their best interests. When you embrace how much God loves you, it compels you to share that love with others and you're willing to care for their needs deeply with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
3. Sound mind - Clarity of focus and purpose. When your mind is clear of fear, stress, and frustration, your creativity and imagination will be unhindered. You will be able to conceive of effective solutions that could only come from the mind of God.

If you're waiting for God to send someone to rescue your community you're going to be waiting for a long time because He already sent you. Christ in you is the hope and greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. And one great benefit of you using your gifts is that you help others unlock theirs in the process.

So your community is waiting on your gifts. It's time for you to give them what they need and have have been waiting for.