By Odon Bulamba
We are half way through the year and before we realize
it will be the end of the year. This
morning I was thinking, if I was called to evaluate what I have done since 1st
Jan to now, how will my evaluation look like?
I can say I have been eating and I haven’t missed a meal since
January. I haven’t missed my time to go
to bed and I have enjoyed my sleep. I didn’t
miss out on going for my walks. But when
I think about my tasks God that gave me, did I do it?
This made me think that it might be good to remind one
another about our gifts. How do I manage
my gifts? Before becoming a manager we
have to go to a school to learn how to do that role. It’s easy to learn how to manage money or
companies but it’s hard to learn to manage ourselves. Many managers can manage a business or even a
country but can’t manage themselves.
A gift is something very important especially to the
donor. The gifted person often thinks
the gift they have is not important. God
our Father gives us everything that we have, all that we see and surround us is
a gift from God, even the way you are sitting is a gift and you got it
free. In this country when someone is
preparing for marriage, they will send invitations but in my country people
have to contribute to that marriage before to get an invitation to the wedding. Meaning that you give and then you receive. The bride and groom might send out hundreds
of invitations for their friends and family to contribute but maybe only half will
come back. The bride and groom will impose
in the invitation what they must give to them before coming to the wedding
ceremony. That is not a gift, it is an
order.
When people go to the wedding they complain. They contributed to the hiring of the music
or the food, so they complain about the food and music. Because they gave, they expect to get back. With God that is not the case, He is our Father
and gives without thinking about what He will get back.
God gave us life in exchange for nothing. I’ve seen people on Trade-me selling unwanted
gifts. Imagine if you give someone
something from your heart and then you find it on trade-me as an unwanted
gift. The bidding starts at one
dollar. If you are the one who gave it,
how will you feel? Maybe you will think,
“What is wrong with him, I gave him that gift for a purpose and now he is
selling it”.
There is a sign of love behind that gift but we don’t
see that love but only focus on the material.
Once I saw someone say, “oh, is that all that you are giving to me, you
can’t do that to me, no way”. Sometimes
we give and the person is not grateful because they expected more. Maybe God gives you the gift of prayer and
you say, “No way God, I am after a big gift, the gift of miracles, to bring
back the dead” just so people can see you performing your gifts.
Proverbs 18:16, “Your gift makes room for you and will
take you in front of great men”.
We have two types of gifts, physical and
spiritual. Some people were just born
with abilities, they can think quickly and naturally they are gifted with
that. Some can sing and when they sing
it is like “wow” and someone else will practice all year and they won’t be able
to sing. Some are just naturally
gifted. Some can dance and others
not. When you get a gift it can be physical
or spiritual but you have to perform, if you leave that gift somewhere, nothing
can work.
You can be intelligent but if you don’t study you will
have nothing. You can have money but if
you don’t know how to look after that money, you will lose it. You can be very beautiful but if you don’t
know how to look after your body then you will lose it. One of the prettiest girls in the world, “Miss
Universe” has a terribly messy room.
Oprah and other actors, we know them because of their gifts but we don’t
know those people.
Some people before to see the fruit of their gifts,
they have to work hard. For example, our
one hour service, how long did it take to prepare the songs, the communion, the
preaching and leading? It will take a
long time to prepare something that only takes a few minutes for a human being
to be satisfied. We can watch a movie
that takes only two hours but the movie took years to produce. We don’t understand why they spend many hours
to prepare something that we will only benefit from a very short time. If you don’t practice and practice again, you
won’t satisfy the need of the church, those who surround you and what God
expects form you. We need to practice
our gifts.
To be a medical doctor, is a very good job. You will get appointments with patients and
if you get many, you will know that means you are a good doctor. The same with a beautician. You are not only making money and receiving
people but sacrificing yourself because you don’t have time for yourself. People are pleased by your gift but you don’t
have time for yourself anymore. The more
you are gifted, the more you have to work and the more you work, more people God
will send to you and the more situations will come for you to sort out and you
will feel like, “oh, no the phone rings again” or “oh, no someone at my door”. That is normal. Your boss puts pressure on you because you
are gifted.
Once you have your gift, God stands next to you and
looks at you. What was Samson’s gift? To
preach to bring justice. He was not only
intelligent but physically strong. He
saved an entire nation and he killed a lion.
His secret was in his hair. What
is hair? We all get our hair cut and
sometimes we feel that it annoys us and when it falls out we don’t care but if
the fingernail falls out we care.
Samson’s gift had a condition, to not shave his head. Maybe Samson’s wife used to play with his
hair when he laid next to her.
The gift we have maybe sometimes appear small but it
is very important for God. Last time
when Robbie gave to us this microphone, he gave it to the church for all of us
to use for the glory of God. What if I
said to Robbie, “no I wanted a different type of microphone”? First of all, I know nothing about microphones
and Robbie knows very well about microphones, much better than me. Robbie went to the store and researched and
found the right one. My job was just to
receive it but my way of receiving it wasn’t correct. Children often say, “I don’t want this one,
give it to my sister” because they want something better. Then the mother says, “I’m not giving you
anything”. Because He loves us, God
rebukes us.
When I was a child, my father would rebuke me on the
spot. I would feel angry and say, “I
will kill you”. I’ll walk away and my father
will call me back and rebuke me in front of my friends who would laugh at me
and at school they will mock me and I won’t have peace at school at all. God sometimes will rebuke you and you feel
that the situation lets you down, “why am I here, in this job, next to this
person” etc. This is all because He is
making you stronger. In the long term
what my father did for me has helped me.
Without my father’s rebuke I couldn’t become what I am today.
I have friends who have not grown up in a good way,
they have become bad people because their parents treated them like precious
eggs and now these friends don’t respect their parents.
Now we can see our God who gave David his small
gift. In front of Goliath, David was
supposed to work with that situation.
Goliath with his big army. The
giant is there. How will you fight? Saul took off all his tools. Imagine a king
giving you his jacket and sword and promising you all that you want if you win
the battle. But David couldn’t walk with
all that armor on him because it wasn’t his gift. He said, “These tools are not mine, they are
too big and heavy for me”.
David took off all those gifts from man and used what God
gave to him which was a slingshot and stones.
Goliath mocked him. David knew
his gift and he knew how to use a slingshot because he had been practicing. Many people will tell you they don’t want to
use a slingshot because it is boring, they want to use a gun which is
easier. Your gift, no matter how useless
it looks, it is your gift and you need to practice. By practicing it, you will become the master
of it and God’s glory will be seen through it.
David killed Goliath.
After killing him, everybody was happy.
He took the sword and chopped off the head of the giant. He had victory. Your gift can support an entire nation. Maybe your gift is to move the chairs on a Sunday
at church. It might be small but don’t
neglect it.
How do you manage your gift? To manage you have to first discover the
abilities God has given you physically and spiritually. Pray and ask God how you should use that
gift. Then plan how you will use that
gift today.
For example, Tyrone is good in painting and before he
starts to paint a house, he plans how he will go about it. He knows he has to remove the spider webs and
put a sheet down on the floor and he wears overalls to protect his clothes. We will look at Tyrone and think it is good but
we don’t know the amount of effort he put into painting the house. When Robbie plays at church, he practices
maybe for hours to play a three minute song.
When he finishes he praises God because many practice but still fail. Robbie
plans how to be ready to play for church on Sunday.
After planning we have to be ready. We have to ask ourselves, “Am I ready to
deliver what I have? Many people don’t
want to deliver but just to supervise others.
Hebrews 12:16,17.
Esau gave away his birthright for a bowl of soup. He then started to cry and search with tears
to get it back. Because he was hungry (which
is a temporary situation) he accepted to give away his birthright for a bowl of
soup. To be the first born is an amazing
gift. We were supposed to say Abraham,
Isaac and Esau but he sold his birthright so now it is Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Esau didn’t look in the long term and ask himself what
would happen if he gave away the gift God gave him. We often don’t think what it means to be
chosen by God to be saved. We often
exchange the birthright God has given us for
a two minute pleasure.
I don’t blame Jacob for being tricky. I’ll say Esau is stupid. Would you exchange your $10,000 vehicle for a
$100 cellphone? It’s up to you to decide. Would you exchange a microphone for a
house? Would you exchange a bowl of soup
for everything? Stupidity makes us
sometimes to lose our gift. All of us
are stupid and do things wrongly but sometimes it makes us lose what God has
prepared for us. When Esau drank the
soup, his brother was thinking, “yes, I get you”. Esau maybe enjoyed the soup but it wouldn’t
have stayed in his body long.
Eventually, he would have lost it in the toilet while Jacob got the
birthright forever. Esau cried and
wanted his birthright back but it was too late.
In order for your gift to be well managed, you need to
use your mind.
Col 2:3, if I do this what am I going to get? Is your mind consulted and do you evaluate
what you want to do? In our lives there
are circumstances and challenges that can’t be avoided. I remember meeting a pair of twins. One was smoking marijuana. I asked him why and he said it was because he
was brought up in a family that all smoke it.
The twin brother does not smoke and he said doesn’t smoke because his
whole family smoke it. He could see the
consequences and decided not to do it.
He set his mind that this is something he will never do while the other
one thought it was enjoyable. For your
gift to work effectively, you need to set your mind, to make a decision.
For example, in the Bible there is the prodigal son who
left home. He was given a gift (money)
and he couldn’t manage it and finally lost all the money. He started to feed himself with the food of
pigs. Pig food is horrible. I once crossed a situation where I had to eat
rotten kumara given to pigs because I was so hungry that I was seeing double
vision. I praised God and as I tried to
put my hand down among to grab the pig food, the pigs pushed me and if I wasn’t
careful, I could lose my arm.
The prodigal son thought enough is enough and decided
to change his mind, “Although I lost the gift I was given, I have to make a
decision” He said goodbye to the boss of
the pigs and decided enough is enough and did a u-turn and went back to his father.
Once you do a mistake, make a decision. You can’t just say sorry to God and then go
back again to it two days later. We can
see the church today is drunk with sin because they don’t want to manage their
gift properly. Repentance means to
change the mind and never go back to it again but the church continues to say
forgive me and then go back to it.
One time I peed when my dad was tickling me and people
would mock me. Then I made a decision
that when I get tickled, I would shut my mind down and it would not annoy me
anymore. For your gift to be effective
you have to do that and then God can take you to a higher level. David who used a stone became a king later
while Goliath was stronger but became nothing.
Computers have a default which is something inside
your computer so you can go back to it. It
is like a reference point to go back to. What is your default point in your
life? Is it your gift, your talent, is it God or something else? You can take a pig and a sheep and put them
together in a field of mud. The pig will
enjoy it but the sheep won’t stay there for long. The sheep will baa and tell you they have to
leave. The pig can be washed but it will
go back again to the mud.
The church today is collapsing because we don’t want
to manage our gift but prefer to go back to the rubbish. Satan is not afraid for you to preach or sing
or go to church on Sunday because he knows when you go home you will do the
same sin again. But when you change your
mind to follow your gift, that is when satan is shaken.
We have to look after our gift and know how to manage
it. We have to use our minds and decide
to not go in the wrong direction. If you
make a mistake, then make a decision to change and then continue on the
journey. Many of us in churches have
degrees or even PhD’s but we are still stupid in front of God. You can be a prime-minister but be found drunk
on the street. You can be director of a
company but sleeping with prostitutes.
Regardless of what people appear to be, we can still know the reality.
The Church focuses on the sins we see but there are
sins inside of us that are killing the church today and that is why the church
is becoming weaker. The sin of the
heart. For example, I can be with you
and laugh but inside I can hold something that doesn’t come out: hatred, pride
etc. Or the pastor decides not preach
about a certain topic being afraid he will offend people. The church starts to limit the gifts of God. Set your mind on things above. Don’t look at man and things around but God
and let what God has given you to be useful.
Those who mocked you will say you are right tomorrow.
Ask God to reveal our gifts to us and how to manage
them and use them for God’s glory
