The most successful learner is the one who cherishes comprehension, treasures truth, aptly applies and attaches astuteness, and above all is diligent in such pursuits with passion. What is striking, stipulating and stifling is the antithesis, absent of ardency, lustfully lazy. Such is the battle that is waged within. Influenced by our desire and pleasure we plan placation, enjoy entropy of environmental numbness, believing this to be the natural nirvana.
Each of us has been blessed, garnished, or given at least one 'gift' to be used for the benefit of others, our neighbor, and our society. The use of this gift, requires acquisition of some tools, making it usable for the benefit of others and ourselves. Say for oversimplification, you have been given the gift of swinging your arm. Early on in life you discover that you can use this gift to hit the Fisher Price work bench making the 'nails' go down. Later, you find your gift allows you to make noise, and eventually play music on the Fisher Price xylophone. That same skill meets with another challenge and maybe you don't have the skill to make music, but only noise. So you move on.
Through out your early life, you are blessed to have a father who works with his or her hands and is a carpenter, and you discover that your gift came from genetics, as he can drive nails like few people can. So you too learn how to do the same. You also discover that you cannot use a framing hammer to do fine finish woodworking, so you need a different, more refined tool to tackle this job. You discover, as you look on your dad's tool display, that he not only has a framing hammer, but more than a dozen others, all different shapes and made of different materials. As you learn to do more and more, you realize that, while you could use just one hammer, having a specialized hammer helps you accomplish different tasks with better precision, and finesse, all using the same basic skill of swinging your arm.
Whether you have the gift of swinging your arm or not, you can examine this little story in many ways. If you are not interested in the least about tools or learning a bit about the art of swinging your arm, you may not even get this far in the reading, or if you are reading, you might as well not be, because you aren't paying attention to the details and trying to make the connections. You could even fully understand what I am mentioning because you, like me went through each of these steps, and yet, when was the last time you picked up a hammer? I have seen many people, including my wife, trying to use a hammer inefficiently, only to coach them on the proper, more efficient manner to swing it, and if practiced, they too become much better at the skill.
There are two ways to move through life. A life lived in transformational learning will have invested the time to develop adept craftsmanship with a tool, and whenever needed use not only the correct tool, but use it well. The life lived in 'just enough to get me through', however, will have to work once again to first find the tool, learn how to use it again 'just enough to get them through' and hopefully do a good job with it. While it takes time to learn to use a tool well, it takes longer and requires more work to have a tool box full of tools with only limited experience in the mastery of their capabilities.
It is the lazy person that will work hardest in the end, being able to complete tasks, but with no long term transformation and therefore when required again, will have to spend time again 'relearning' the skill once again in order to meet the present need. All the while, the one who diligently made the learning a joyful addition to their life, has only to patiently ponder for a moment, extract and use what is already within. Many are the times when tools are required, and many are the tools used to finish the job well. I find myself always asking the questions, "Am I diligent in using the tools I am blessed with? Am I also diligent in discovering and using new tools to do even better work?
Jesus said in John 14:
2 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. (English Standard Version).
The tools we have at our disposal are given by God to be used by God for His glory. My job is to acquire the tools, learn as His apprentice how best to use them, asking Him which tool to use, when, and watch as He helps me build beautiful things for His kingdom. Two thousand years later, we should be doing greater things because for two thousand years Christ has been working in His people and through His people. So why isn't this happening? It's tool time! Time to use, time to learn, time to build. Will you join Him?
Being blessed with gifts is truly a blessing even though one might not know until well within the adulthood.I was in my 40's before I even knew there was gifts.I didn't think I had any talents or anykind, heck I couln't and still can't draw a straight line with a ruler.Those are tools, ruler, pencil.........I also have a hard time screwing in a lightbulb. I don't believe there are tools for this job. I recall as a little girl looking into my dads workroom and all I saw was tools! So many I couldn't count them. I know he knew the name of each one and how to use them. He had lots of gifts with his hands but feel none were actually passed on to me. I assume I must have some talents with these things we call hands because I make a living using them. I also have cute "little tool"I think I can safely call those working tools along with machines such as lathes, handpieces, model trimmers, bunson burners and on and on I can go. I never thought of these objects and the art of using them talents before. Patients come in and say you must be an artist, I say I don't think so then I just say thank you. Why not just say thank you, what kind of fear is that? Fear of failure? I can say I have other talents that I feel are really gifts from God. Mercy, compassion, faith, service. Now these I call talents. I was able to really use these blessing this weekend and I must say serving for God and his people is one of the most fullfilling thing a person can do. I was able to give love where I never thought I could to a perfect stranger, whom if I came upon him on the sidewalk by knees would of buckled just from fear from his outer apperance. Tatoos on every 1/4 inch of his body!! What really impressed me was that Karin Williams brought in 2 pieces of wood today and a piece of sandpaper. The first piece was a very rough and jagged piece, splintery kinda the way we were before we had God in our lives. Then she showed usa a piece of sandpaper and a smooth piece of wood. This may take years but after taking good care of the rough wood it was now very smooth and thats the way people are. You can't judge people by their outer looks , we all have closets and inside can be really soft and loving and you could really miss someone special if you don't use your God given talents. God is opening many doors for me and when I use them it gives me warm fuzzies !!
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