Religion and Spirituality

The Balance of Gift and Growth

We are born with gifts. Sometimes we know about them early and sometimes they don’t appear until later. Either way, we have gifts.

For the most part, these gifts are from God for us to use for His glory. Some can sing. Some can write. Others can encourage. Whatever it is, it is a gift.

Then there’s growth. This can be in two forms.

One form of growth is the growth of your gift. As time goes on, you take your gift and expand it. You try out various techniques.

The other form of growth is a little more tricky. It sort of flows from the first version except that it’s something dealing with a non-gift.

Some people are naturally gifted to do or be. And then, you have people that have to work hard to reach this same level. And that’s sort of the second growth.

In my opinion, both areas are important. Either way, you have to grow. But, then you have to accept limitations.

Yeah.

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Wednesday Word: Do you have a Jonah spirit?

Yes another week of Wednesday Word is here. It’s been a very successful feature here at DALANEL. No reason to try to spice things up. If you’re new here, Wednesday Word is where I grab a short sermon from the internet; about no longer than 10 minutes long, and then I write some commentary.

Are ya ready?

Those of you that have been following this blog for several months now know what my Jonah spirit is: Lighting director of my church’s cantatas and plays. I don’t really want to do it, but I know I have to. In fact, I talked about such an event where I was swallowed by a “whale” that God sent.

Anyway, running away from what God wants us to do is rather foolish. Anything that God wants us to do, it’s for our benefit. God is God. He doesn’t need you. He would rather have you play a role, but, He’ll go to somebody else if need be. He may not always send a whale to bring you back.

Like the pastor said, let’s do a better job of embracing/accepting what God calls us to do.

-DALANEL

Wednesday Word: Living for God

I have another word for ya! Here is the video:

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Wednesday Word: Accepting criticism

Criticism. Mainly, constructive criticism. How do we handle it? Check out the video:

That’s the key. Or, keys. For one, we need to be willing to accept being corrected. And we need to surround ourselves with people who are willing to do that correcting.

I’m one of those guys who can take and deal out criticism. I probably get that from my mom, who has a large reputation of not having a problem talking to people about themselves. And, what I’ve noticed over the years is that people turn to her for advice and “what should I do?” because they value her honesty.

As the verse said, it’s basically better to be around people who may not be a friend but will tell you what you need to hear vs someone close to you who tells you what you want to hear. If we’re keeping it real, that second part could imply that people close to you are willing to lie to you to risk not hurting your feelings. Is that what you would want in your best friend? Spouse?

That’s the only way we can grow. Pride in ourselves can turn us off to it. If we think we’re fine and don’t have to improve, we’re doomed. God already hates pride. We need to humble ourselves. We need to take criticism. Consider it. Like Blake said, check and see if it lines up with the Word of God and His standards.

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Thoughts on Wednesday Word and being a Christian blogger

Wednesday Word has been a good success. It consistently gets likes and is even one of the top liked posts of all time. I’m really excited about this because this was a post I had been putting off for almost a year now.

So, what happens now? Well, the video and my commentary remains. I’m not doing anything to it. I just wanted to talk about it a little bit.

Wednesday word is really the only thing on this blog that shows off my “religious” side. Sure, I have the “Accept Jesus” page and I’ve shared my book with you which is entirely Christian themed. Still, I didn’t have a feature that gave off that type of vibe. In my Daily Good Stuff posts, I did always share a scripture. That was it.

I used to have a Christian blog, which was suppose to be a continuation of my book in a sense. But, I ended up just pulling it into this blog.

This blog is a positive themed blog and, I can’t necessarily say that this also means that it’s a religious blog. I can’t say they go hand in hand, ya know?

So, does Wednesday Word have a place in this blog? Does Christian blogging have a place in this blog? Did I make a mistake?

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Wednesday Word: Do we question God’s sovereignty?

Boy, this was a good one in my opinion. Here’s your Wednesday Word:

So, what was he saying? One thing he said in there was that, by Children of God complaining, we can look like we are indeed not satisfied with God’s performance. And, in a lot of instances, that’s true. We tend to complain and, a part of it is us thinking we could do a better job.

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