The Talent I Could Not Bury

The Decision in Eighth Grade

In eighth grade, I had to make a decision.

Unlike some of the people I grew up around, I did not have to decide whether I was going to stay in school or leave after eighth grade and enter the school of hard knocks.

Believe it or not, I have plenty of friends who graduated from eighth grade and went straight to work. A classroom was not the only place a person could learn, and a diploma was not guaranteed to be the next step.

My decision was different. Would I play basketball, or would I wrestle?

That may not sound like a life-altering question.

I was not choosing a career, a wife, a city, or a business.

I was a kid deciding which sport would receive my time. But some decisions become important because they are the first time we recognize the difference between something we enjoy and something that has been placed inside us.

Wrestling was a passion. I had been grappling since second grade. It was the first sport in which I truly competed, and it was the first place my aggression and ranch-kid toughness found a useful home.

Inside the building, we were a team.

On the mat, it was one person against another.

You against the world.

That feeling was not new to me.

I naturally gravitated toward it. There was nowhere to hide when the whistle blew. Nobody could catch the pass for me, make the tackle I missed, or cover the mistake I made. My coaches could prepare me. My teammates could sharpen me. My parents could support me. But once the match began, the responsibility was mine.

My parents went all in with me. We traveled across the country for tournaments. By middle school, I was wrestling in some of the hardest brackets I could find. I had even qualified for a national-level tournament that gathered some of the best young wrestlers in the country.

Spoiler alert for a future Field Note: I did not go. That is a different story about a different decision.

This decision was about whether I would keep pursuing the sport that had already tested me or choose basketball, a sport that offered a different kind of release.

Basketball was fun. It was fast. It was a team sport, and in some ways it demanded a broader combination of athletic abilities. It did not require the same kind of weight cutting.

It did not beat up my body in the same way. The deeper I went into wrestling, the more I understood what it would demand from me—not only physically, but mentally.

Wrestling would require harder practices, more discipline, more discomfort, and a much stronger mind than I had expected. At that age, making weight could mean unhealthy choices around food and water that I now understand should never be romanticized or copied. The toughness was real, but so were the risks. Discipline is valuable.

Damaging a growing body to satisfy a number on a scale is not the same thing as faithful stewardship.

Basketball looked lighter. Wrestling looked more costly.

The decision came down to one basketball camp.

I Left It All on the Court

I had given that camp everything I had. I remember the sweat, the exhaustion, and the feeling that I had quite literally left it all on the court.

I had worked.

I had competed.

I had not held anything back.

Yet when it was over, I still felt as though I had not fully used what was inside me.

That was the moment.

I did not hate basketball. I did not believe basketball was beneath me. I was not terrible at it. In fact, during the summers, four or five of us would travel around that state playing in three-on-three tournaments.

Ironically, we were wrestlers, and we won quite a few of the tournaments. I continued using basketball as a substitute for cardio because running for the sake of running has never seemed as entertaining as chasing somebody who has a ball.

But I knew I would not be fulfilled by making basketball my competitive path.

I had given the sport my full effort, and the effort itself revealed something: I could work hard at it without feeling as though I was fully deploying what God had placed in me.

That distinction has followed me for the rest of my life.

Hard work matters, but hard work alone does not tell you whether you are in the right assignment. A person can be disciplined in the wrong direction. He can become competent at something that was never meant to consume his life. He can receive compliments for a version of himself that is still smaller than the one God is calling forward.

Sometimes the most difficult decision is not between right and wrong.

It is between something good and something entrusted.

Basketball was good.

Wrestling was where a specific part of me came alive.

So I chose wrestling.

I did not understand it as stewardship then. I did not have language about calling, spiritual gifts, or God-given wiring. I simply knew there was something in me that the mat demanded and basketball did not.

Years later, I would recognize that God had begun teaching me how to pay attention.

Good Is Not the Same as Entrusted

There is something to be said for following your God-blessed talents—the skills, instincts, passions, and abilities that allow you to serve at a level you cannot reach by effort alone.

That sentence can sound arrogant if it is separated from stewardship.

It can become an excuse to chase whatever makes us feel naturally powerful. It can become a way of announcing that we are more gifted than the people around us. It can also produce a false theology in which talent proves favor, success proves obedience, and struggle proves that a person missed God.

I do not believe any of that.

Talent is not a trophy.

It is a trust.

Natural ability does not make one person more valuable than another. It gives that person a particular responsibility. The question is not whether my gift makes me impressive. The question is whether my gift makes me useful in the hands of God.

First Peter 4:10 says that each person should use whatever gift he or she has received to serve others, as a faithful steward of God’s grace in its many forms. The verse does not tell us to use our gifts to construct an identity, dominate a room, collect admiration, or prove our superiority. It connects gift to service and service to stewardship.

That changes the whole measurement.

If communication is a gift, the goal is not merely to become the loudest voice. It is to use words to create truth, clarity, courage, and connection.

If leadership is a gift, the goal is not merely to gain authority. It is to accept responsibility for people and outcomes, organize what is scattered, and help others move toward a worthy mission.

If vision is a gift, the goal is not merely to see what other people missed and congratulate yourself for seeing it. It is to make the unseen possibility useful to somebody else.

If problem-solving is a gift, the goal is not merely to prove that you are the smartest person near the problem. It is to enter the mess, find the path, and serve the people who could not find their way through it alone.

The gift may belong to your design.

The glory does not.

That is the difference between talent as identity and talent as stewardship.

Football Was in My Blood

When I left high school, I faced another major decision.

Wrestling was—and probably always will be—one of the most important sports in my life. It taught me how to suffer alone without believing I was alone. It taught me to prepare before anyone was watching, to accept responsibility after the whistle, and to understand that the condition in which you enter a fight influences what you can do once it begins.

But wrestling was in second place. Football was in my blood.

I remember playing catch at a very early age. I remember adults on the ranch playing football in the cornfields during get togethers. Every once in a while, they would give the ball to the small kid and let me sprint past a field of full-grown men.

In my head, I was simply better than everybody.

Looking back, I know they were pulling their punches.

At the time, I believed I had just embarrassed a collection of adults with elite speed and flawless field vision. I did not yet understand that sometimes grown men let a child score because the joy on his face is worth more than winning a game in a cornfield.

Those moments still mattered. They gave me an early experience of speed, space, movement, collision, competition, and freedom. Football led me toward other sports, but no other sport produced the same feeling.

Eventually, I was blessed with the opportunity to join a college football team in Montana, about seven hours from home. I played strong safety. The position fit me. It allowed me to fly around the field, use my speed, hit people, float back into coverage, and make plays on the ball.

It gave my aggression an assignment and my instincts room to operate.

For a while, it felt like I had found the largest arena yet for what was inside me.

Then I injured my shoulder during a spring scrimmage.

The realization was painful and immediate. I had to hang up the shoulder pads.

One of the strongest parts of my identity had reached an ending I had not chosen.

Athletes know that grief. One day, the schedule, the team, the preparation, the pain, the locker room, the next game, and the version of the future you have rehearsed all make sense. Then a body part fails, a coach decides, an opportunity disappears, or the final whistle sounds. The identity that was built around the next season suddenly has nowhere to go.

But God shifted my focus almost instantly.

In the middle of college and football, I had already started building businesses. I was learning that the same wiring that made me love the field came alive inside entrepreneurship.

There were problems to solve.

There were risks to read.

There were people to organize.

There were plays to call, openings to see, plans to change, and outcomes that depended on preparation and execution.

There was no helmet, but there was still a field.

There was no scoreboard hanging above it, but there were still consequences.

There was no opponent lined up across from me, but there were problems standing between people and where they needed to go.

I realized I would never become a professional football player.

But I could become a professional entrepreneur.

The Field Changed, but the Wiring Did Not

Entrepreneurship took many of the abilities I had discovered in sports and gave them a larger, longer, more complicated arena. Communication mattered. Leadership mattered. Adaptability mattered. Discipline mattered. Resilience mattered. Preparation mattered. Reading people and situations mattered. Acting before certainty mattered.

Most of all, problem-solving mattered.

If I could spend the rest of my working life doing one thing, it would be solving problems. Put me inside a struggling company, a broken process, an unclear offer, a stalled team, a complicated negotiation, or an idea that cannot find its path to reality, and something in me comes fully awake.

That is not a skill I created from nothing. Experience has sharpened it. Education has expanded it. Failure has humbled it. Repetition has made it faster. Other people have taught me frameworks, disciplines, and language that help me use it more effectively.

But the instinct was already there.

I see patterns quickly. I see connections between things that appear unrelated. I can usually find an alternate route when the obvious one closes. I can move through uncertainty without requiring every answer before taking the first step. I can communicate a possibility in a way that helps other people see it too.

If I am being completely honest—and this may not be the most humble-sounding paragraph I have ever written—I believe God has given me unusual strength in several parts of entrepreneurship.

Time management, sales, marketing, pitching, communication, leadership, and delegation are areas in which I can operate at a high level. If I had to score myself, I would place most of those around a nine out of ten. Problem-solving is the most natural and most blessed ability I have. On that scale, I would call it a ten.

Financial management is different.

I understand cash flow. I can build and read a budget. I can interpret financial statements and see what the numbers mean for a business. But knowing what the numbers say is not the same as consistently stewarding money well.

I am naturally a spender and an investor. Risk can feel more comfortable to me than restraint. I have learned—sometimes painfully—that I need structure, accountability, and people whose strengths cover my weakness. I would call myself a seven out of ten in financial management, and even that seven depends on whether I am willing to submit my instincts to a system instead of assuming insight makes me immune to error.

Real stewardship requires that honesty.

It is not humble to pretend you are weak where God made you strong. False humility can bury a gift just as effectively as fear. But it is also not faithful to announce your strengths while hiding the places where those same strengths become dangerous.

My ability to take risks can become courage—or recklessness.

My communication can create clarity—or manipulation.

My intensity can create momentum—or damage.

My vision can help people see a future—or make me impatient with the present.

My problem-solving can serve a team—or convince me I never need help.

My ability to make money can provide—or make money the measurement of my worth.

Every gift carries a shadow when the servant forgets the Master.

Learned Skills and God-Given Wiring

There are practical skills every entrepreneur must learn.

You must learn to communicate an idea clearly enough that customers, employees, partners, and investors understand it. You must learn enough financial management to know whether the business is healthy or merely busy. You must adapt when markets, technology, people, or plans change. You must lead, delegate, sell, market, prioritize, and solve problems without panicking every time reality refuses to follow the spreadsheet.

Those abilities can be taught and practiced.

But beneath the learned skills, I believe God also places particular wiring inside people.

Some people can see possibilities before anyone else can see a path.

Some can organize people and resources in a way that turns confusion into movement.

Some can speak to a room and make the mission understandable.

Some can endure uncertainty, rejection, failure, and risk without losing the willingness to get up again.

Some carry unusual wisdom, discernment, generosity, administration, hospitality, craftsmanship, mercy, encouragement, teaching, or faith.

The purpose is not merely profit.

Business can create value, solve problems, provide livelihoods, support families, fund generosity, restore dignity through work, and carry useful ideas into the world. Profit matters because a business that cannot sustain itself eventually loses its ability to serve. But profit is fuel, not God. Revenue can measure part of the business. It cannot measure the faithfulness of the person running it.

This is where calling becomes more than career preference.

I do not believe entrepreneurship makes me more spiritual than someone working faithfully inside a company, raising children, teaching a classroom, repairing equipment, building a home, serving a church, or caring for a person who cannot repay the effort. I believe entrepreneurship is one of the primary fields in which God expects me to steward what He placed in me.

Another person’s field will look different.

The Master does not hand every servant the same amount, assignment, responsibility, opportunity, personality, history, or reach.

That is the point of the parable.

The Parable Was About Money Before It Became a Metaphor

Matthew 25 records Jesus telling a story about a master who left on a journey. Before leaving, he entrusted his property to three servants. One received five talents, another received two, and another received one—each according to his ability.

In the parable, a talent was not originally a natural skill such as wrestling, communication, leadership, or business vision. It was a very large unit of money. The NIV notes that one talent represented roughly twenty years of a day laborer’s wages.

That makes the scale of the trust difficult to ignore.

The first servant put the five talents to work and gained five more. The second put the two to work and gained two more. The third dug a hole and buried what had been entrusted to him.

After a long time, the master returned and settled accounts.

The servants who had acted received the same praise:

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” — Matthew 25:21, 23 (KJV)

The servant with five did not receive a more loving sentence than the servant with two. The master did not compare the second servant’s four with the first servant’s ten and call four a disappointment.

Both had been faithful with what they were actually given.

That destroys comparison as a valid scoreboard.

I am not responsible for multiplying somebody else’s five.

I am responsible for what God placed in my hands.

The third servant returned the original talent. He had not spent it on himself. He had not lost it in a bad trade. From a purely defensive perspective, he preserved the principal.

But he had buried the trust.

When the master asked why, the servant answered with fear.

That is one of the most dangerous sentences in the story: “I was afraid.”

Fear convinced him that doing nothing was safer than risking faithful action. He mistook preservation for stewardship. He protected himself from the possibility of failure by guaranteeing that the entrusted resource would produce nothing.

The parable is larger than a motivational speech about maximizing potential. It sits inside Jesus’ teaching about readiness, accountability, His return, and the Kingdom of Heaven. It does not promise that every Christian who uses a skill will become rich, famous, or visibly successful. It does not teach that financial profit purchases salvation. It does not allow gifted people to point at results as proof that God approves of every method they used.

It teaches that what is entrusted matters, the Master will return, and servants will give an account.

First Peter makes the application to gifts explicit: use what you received to serve others as a faithful steward of God’s varied grace. Together, the passages confront every part of my life—money, time, opportunity, influence, relationships, lessons, pain, voice, abilities, spiritual gifts, and the assignments I would rather postpone.

I cannot claim ownership over any of them.

I can only decide whether I will bury them or put them to work in service of the One who entrusted them.

The Difference Between Good and Great

I have often said that the difference between good and great is passion aligned with God-given talent.

I still believe there is truth in that statement, but I understand it differently now.

Passion without talent can create tremendous effort with limited effectiveness.

Talent without passion can remain dormant.

Talent and passion without discipline can produce flashes of brilliance that never become dependable.

Talent, passion, and discipline without character can build something large enough to hurt a lot of people.

Even talent, passion, discipline, and character are incomplete if they are not surrendered to God.

The difference between good and great is not merely that a person found the activity he could dominate. Kingdom greatness is not domination. Jesus repeatedly moved greatness toward service.

So when I say I believe I am a great entrepreneur, I do not mean every company I touched succeeded, every decision I made was wise, or every outcome proves God’s approval. I have failed. I have misused strengths. I have made decisions from ego, appetite, fear, addiction, speed, and the belief that seeing the opportunity made me entitled to take it.

Results cannot erase that.

Giftedness cannot excuse it.

The stronger the gift, the greater the responsibility to submit it.

What I mean is that entrepreneurship is one of the places where passion, wiring, experience, skill, and assignment align so completely that I can feel myself operating near the edge of what God placed in me.

I can say that honestly without worshiping it.

The ability came from God.

The sharpening came through parents, coaches, teammates, mentors, teachers, partners, employees, clients, adversity, mistakes, consequences, repentance, and years of practice.

The opportunity to use it came through doors I did not create alone.

The people served by it are not props in my story.

The result belongs to more hands than mine.

And the final verdict does not belong to me at all.

That is why “great entrepreneur” can never be the ultimate identity.

Servant comes first.

Faithful is the standard.

“Well done” is the verdict I cannot award myself.

Same Praise, Different Results

The first two servants did not produce the same total.

One returned ten talents. The other returned four.

They received the same praise.

That is difficult for anyone trained by scoreboards.

Sports taught me to look at the final score. Business taught me to watch revenue, growth, margins, rankings, reach, conversions, and return on investment. Those measurements are not evil. A coach who refuses to look at the score cannot help a team improve. An owner who ignores the numbers may be calling negligence faith.

But every useful measurement becomes dangerous when it tries to become the final verdict on a life.

The scoreboard can tell me who won the game.

It cannot tell me whether I became faithful.

Revenue can tell me whether a company is producing income.

It cannot tell me whether the income was earned honestly, whether people were served well, whether my family was sacrificed to produce it, or whether I obeyed God in the process.

Public success can tell me that people noticed.

It cannot tell me what God thinks of the motives nobody saw.

Winning faith is not faith that always produces the result I wanted. It is faith that keeps trusting, moving, learning, repenting, repairing, and obeying after the scoreboard refuses to validate me.

The servant with two did not apologize for receiving less.

He did not try to manufacture ten so the room would respect him.

He did not compare his assignment with the person beside him and decide his own work was insignificant.

He was faithful with two.

That was enough for the Master to say the same two words.

Well done.

When the Talents Became Literal

There is another part of this story that makes the connection to Winning Faith almost uncomfortably literal.

God blessed me with an ability to perform math calculations quickly. I can process numbers, probabilities, patterns, changing conditions, and risk faster than most people around me. He gave me the ability to pray and hear Him in places where many people would never expect someone to be praying—including while I was sitting at a card table. And He gave me a willingness to take risks that would paralyze many other people.

Fast calculations.

Prayer and discernment.

Risk tolerance.

Then He allowed actual money—actual talents—to pass through my hands.

Put those things together at a card table, and the Parable of the Talents stops feeling like an abstract business lesson.

There is money in front of you.

There is incomplete information.

There is a decision to make.

There is risk in acting and risk in refusing to act.

There is no way to know the end of the hand from the beginning.

I know this language will make some people uncomfortable. Some will hear the word casino and decide God could not possibly meet a person there. Others will hear a story involving faith and cards and assume I am claiming God promised every win, revealed the next card, or approved every wager I ever made.

I am not saying any of that.

The casino was not holy because it was a casino. A card table does not convert recklessness into faith. Prayer is not fortune-telling. Risk is not automatically obedience. Winning money is not proof that God approved the decision, and losing money is not proof that He was absent.

I have experienced the shadow side of this wiring too.

Risk tolerance can become addiction.

Confidence can become presumption.

Fast calculations can convince a person that he has control over something still governed by uncertainty.

A powerful ability can become a powerful way to rationalize what appetite already wants.

That is exactly why stewardship matters.

The issue was never merely whether I was willing to place a bet. I have rarely struggled with the willingness to act. My danger has often lived on the other side: acting too quickly, risking too much, and calling intensity faith before I had surrendered the appetite behind it.

For me, refusing to bury the talent did not mean taking every possible risk.

It meant learning the difference between a risk I wanted and a risk I believed God was directing.

It meant praying in the middle of an unlikely environment instead of assuming God remained outside the casino doors.

It meant using the mind He gave me instead of asking emotion to impersonate discernment.

It meant accepting that hearing Him did not give me ownership of the outcome.

And when I believed the direction was clear, it meant being willing to act with actual resources rather than praising faith in theory while burying the money in practice.

There were moments when taking the risk was the faithful act. Refusing to move would not have been prudence; it would have been fear burying the trust.

That is the connection to Winning Faith.

Faith does not remove uncertainty from the hand. Faith changes whose voice governs the decision.

Sometimes the risk is putting money into play.

Sometimes the faithful risk is standing up from the table.

Sometimes stewardship means pressing forward.

Sometimes it means protecting what remains.

The same God-given abilities can serve obedience or addiction. The difference is not the existence of talent. The difference is whether the talent is surrendered.

In Matthew 25, the servants were not praised merely because they enjoyed risk. They were praised because they acted faithfully with what belonged to their master. The third servant’s fear buried the trust, but the first two servants’ action remained accountable to the one who had entrusted it.

That is a far more demanding standard than “be bold.”

It asks:

Did I pray?

Did I listen?

Did I use the mind God gave me?

Did I mistake appetite for instruction?

Did I risk what was actually mine to risk?

Did I remain obedient if God’s direction contradicted the outcome I wanted?

Did the decision serve the assignment—or merely feed the feeling?

I believe God used the card table because He knew how I was wired. He knew numbers made sense to me. He knew risk made me feel alive. He knew I could hear Him amid noise, pressure, and incomplete information. He also knew that the same environment could expose every unsurrendered part of me.

The table became both an arena and a mirror.

It showed me the power of putting entrusted talents to work.

It also showed me how quickly a servant can begin acting like the money, ability, and outcome belong to him.

Winning faith is not demonstrated by the size of the pile at the end of the night.

It is demonstrated by whether I remain a servant while the cards are still in the air.

A Gift Can Be Buried in More Than Dirt

Most people will never walk into a field and physically bury a bag of money. We have more modern ways to bury what God placed in our hands.

We bury a gift under fear because we do not want to fail publicly.

We bury it under comparison because somebody else appears to have more.

We bury it under false humility because admitting strength feels uncomfortable.

We bury it under comfort because putting it to work would require discipline.

We bury it under distraction because scrolling is easier than practicing.

We bury it under addiction because numbness temporarily quiets the responsibility we do not want to feel.

We bury it under resentment because the opportunity did not arrive in the package we expected.

We bury it under perfectionism because “not ready yet” sounds more respectable than “afraid.”

We bury it under a job we blame for consuming us while refusing to use one faithful hour outside it.

We can also bury a gift beneath success.

That version is harder to see. A person can become so rewarded for one expression of his talent that he stops listening when God redirects it. He keeps playing basketball because people applaud, even though the deeper assignment is waiting on a wrestling mat. He keeps chasing football because it formed his identity, even though an injury has closed that field and another one has opened.

Sometimes burying the gift means never starting.

Sometimes it means refusing to let the gift change fields.

I did not lose the wiring when I hung up my shoulder pads. The field changed. The responsibility remained.

The aggression became drive.

The ability to read a play became the ability to read a problem.

The willingness to collide became the willingness to confront.

The discipline to prepare became the discipline to build.

The instinct to create space became the instinct to create opportunity.

The desire to win had to become a desire to steward.

God did not waste the athlete when He called forward the entrepreneur.

He repurposed the training.

Stewarding the Weakness Too

Faithful stewardship is not limited to deploying strengths. It also means protecting the assignment from predictable weakness.

If financial management is not my strongest area, faithfulness does not mean pretending God will cover every impulsive decision because I am gifted elsewhere. It means building guardrails. It means listening to people who see what I miss. It means separating the ability to generate opportunity from the authority to risk every resource attached to it.

If my intensity can outrun wisdom, stewardship means slowing down long enough for discernment and counsel.

If communication can become persuasion without listening, stewardship means becoming quiet enough to hear the people affected by the decision.

If confidence can become self-reliance, stewardship means remembering that the servant does not become the master simply because the work multiplied.

There is a version of entrepreneurial culture that celebrates strengths while treating every weakness as a branding problem. That is not freedom. It is performance.

The parable ends with an accounting.

An honest accounting includes what grew and what was damaged, what was completed and what was neglected, what was entrusted and what was assumed, what served others and what served ego.

I want the final verdict to be “well done,” but wanting those words requires more than celebrating what I do well.

It requires allowing God to correct what I do poorly.

It requires repentance when a gift was misused.

It requires repair when my choices harmed someone.

It requires restitution when stewardship failed financially.

It requires discipline when passion wants to run without boundaries.

It requires returning to the assignment after failure without using grace as permission to repeat the pattern.

Faithfulness is not a spotless history.

It is a surrendered life that keeps responding to truth.

The Only Win That Matters

The song “Well Done” by The Afters imagines the end of earthly pain, the presence of God, and the welcome of a beloved child who has finished the race. Its power is not found in pretending death is easy or that every broken thing makes sense from where we currently stand. It gives language to the verdict a believer hopes to hear at the end of a surrendered life.

I have spent years around winning.

I know the feeling of having my hand raised on a wrestling mat. I know the sound of a football field. I know what it feels like to close a deal, solve a problem, build something, earn money, influence a room, and watch an idea become real.

Those wins can be good.

They are not the win.

The final book in this series is called Well Done. because survival is not the ending. Healing is not the ending. Sobriety is not the ending. Provision is not the ending. Building something impressive is not the ending. Even finishing ten books is not the ending.

Every rescue creates responsibility.

Every gift creates stewardship.

Every lesson creates something worth passing on.

Every ending places another assignment in reach.

The point is not to preserve what God gave me in perfect condition by refusing to risk obedience. The point is not to manufacture results large enough to force Heaven to applaud. The point is not to become great at everything.

The point is to recognize what has been entrusted, put it to work in service of others, accept correction when I misuse it, and continue until the Master says the work is complete.

I chose wrestling because basketball could not draw everything out of me.

I chose football because it was in my blood.

I left football because my body forced me to release it.

I stepped into entrepreneurship because God showed me another field where the wiring could serve.

Now the calling is larger than business.

The calling is to steward the entire life—the strengths, weaknesses, money, relationships, opportunities, influence, pain, lessons, repentance, repair, and story.

I am not waiting for the end of my life to begin living for those two words.

I want them to govern the decision in front of me today.

Not “well known.”

Not “well paid.”

Not “well defended.”

Not “well admired.”

Not even “well accomplished.”

Well done.

Prayer

Father,

Thank You for every ability, opportunity, lesson, relationship, and resource You have placed in my hands.

Forgive me for the times I treated a gift as proof that I was greater than somebody else. Forgive me for the times I used what You gave me to serve ego, appetite, fear, image, or control. Forgive me for the gifts I buried because I was afraid to fail and the weaknesses I hid because I was afraid to be known.

Show me what You have actually entrusted to me. Give me the humility to name my strengths without worshiping them and the courage to name my weaknesses without hiding them. Teach me where I need discipline, counsel, accountability, repair, and restraint.

Redirect any ability I have attached to an arena You have already closed. Help me recognize the new field without despising the training that came from the old one.

Keep me from comparison. Make me faithful with what is in my hands rather than jealous of what is in someone else’s.

Let every gift become service. Let every success return glory to You. Let every failure become truth, repentance, wisdom, and restoration. Let my life produce fruit that blesses people I may never meet.

When fear tells me to bury the assignment, remind me that safety without obedience is not stewardship.

Lead me until the work is complete.

And when every earthly race is finished, let the verdict I hear be the only one that lasts:

Well done, good and faithful servant.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Scripture to Carry

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” — Matthew 25:21 (KJV)

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” — 1 Peter 4:10 (ESV)

“Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” — 1 Corinthians 4:2 (KJV)

Closing Charge

You do not need somebody else’s assignment.

You do not need somebody else’s amount.

You do not need somebody else’s scoreboard.

You need the courage to look honestly at what God placed in your hands, the humility to admit where you are weak, and the faith to put the trust to work.

The talent was never given so you could prove you were great.

It was entrusted so you could become faithful.

Dig it up.

Put it to work.

Serve somebody.

Finish the assignment.

Live for the only verdict that lasts.

Well done.