Talents
Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with athletes of all levels. Ive had the opportunity to share the Gospel with high school, college, professional and Olympic athletes. You can say that I am obsessed with working with athletes. It's my passion and mission to help athletes see life clearly without the cloudiness of the world blocking what it looks like to honor God in life and sport.
On one had athletes are conditioned to give total effort and to literally give their lives away to their sport. But what happens when the sport isn’t there anymore? What about an injury?
Jesus asks a piercing question in Matthew 16:26: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” If you win in all the temporary areas of this life, and yet lose your soul for eternity, then what have you really gained?
The Scriptures give us great insight as to what this looks like in Matthew 25:14-30. This parable of Jesus is referred to “The parable of the talents” and this illustration Jesus utilized in his teachings give us a blueprint of what it looks like to live for God’s Kingdom rather than our personal interests.
In this story Jesus lays out the scene… there is a master who entrusts his “talents” (an unknown amount of money) to three of his servants. Whats interesting is the master gives each servant a different amount of money, we aren’t exactly sure why he did this, but Jesus tells us that it was dependent upon their ability. Each of the servants does something different with them.
The 1st two servants go and immediately invest and double their master’s money but out of fear the third servant chooses to burry the money so he doesn’t blow it and loose the talent he was given. The master then returns and wants to settle accounts with his servants. He is delighted when he hears that the 1st two servants immediately invested their talents and doubled his money, they are invited to come and “Enter into the master’s happiness”. Yet, when it comes time to settle accounts with the third servant we hear the master’s disappointment because of this servant’s lack of action. The servant is not only made an example of, he is sent off to be punished for his lack of investment.
It kind of sounds harsh, however, Jesus was trying to make a point to his followers about the “talents” God entrusts to us. God requires total investment today for eternal returns tomorrow. The opportunity for us as athletes that desire to follow Jesus is that we have the opportunity (today) to invest our sport and our life into God’s Kingdom and his purposes, when we do this we are then aligned with God’s mission for us in the world. The opportunity to play a sport is like a double sided coin. On one hand, we get to enjoy the beauty of competition and use the bodies he has given us to play and on the other side we get to engage in the beautiful opportunity to worship out-loud with the way that we play.
As God’s servants we have a choice to invest (use) or bury (hide) our talents. Looking back at this parable we see a few points on how God expects us to invest:
Invest your talents immediately (Matthew 25:14, 19)
- You are given talents for a purpose.
- You have responsibility for your talents.
- You dont know how long you have before your clock stops.
Invest your talents completely. (Matthew 25:16, 17)
- God wants you to love Him with ALL of your heart, ALL of your soul, ALL of your mind, ALL of your strength. (Matthew 22:37)
- Loving Him means living obediently for His glory...with all you’ve got.
Invest your talents faithfully. (Matthew 25:20-30)
- It will take courage to faithfully use your talents for the glory of God your entire life.
- You will get discouraged. You will get tired.
- But you must be faithful, because God evaluates your investments.
Every day, every conversation, every game, every practice, every lap, every step, every minute, every breath is an opportunity to honor God with the talents that He has entrusted to you. Don’t get so wrapped up in yourself and your sport that you lose sight of God’s ultimate plan for you. You have been given talents from God. You have also been given an unknown numbers of days to invest those talents. Invest wisely. Compete today like it is your last game, your last day. It may be.