HIS CHURCH MY HOME
BUILD OR BURY
God has called us, positioned us, and graced us all with a part we can play to build His Church! Let’s be a church that align our perspective with God’s vison to reach people and play our part to outwork His plans.
REFLECT & DISCUSS
- Share something that God revealed to you from Sunday’s message ‘Build or Bury?’
SCRIPTURE
The Parable of the Talents – Mathew 25:14-19
Mathew 25:14 ‘Again (the kingdom) of God will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.’
Talent Context In the parable of the talents Jesus took something cultural for these first century people and used it to teach a lesson about how God views the importance of using what they have been entrusted with to build his kingdom.
At this time, a talent was a weight that was used to measure gold and silver. One talent in this context was worth 20years of an average salary of wages. In today’s worth, that could equal anywhere from 1.4million!
Given the life expectancy of a man, at that time was 35-55 years, one talent would be equal to a lifetime of wages, a lifetime of security.
Jesus is making a point that what they had been entrusted with held great value.
Today, what does that means for us? What is our talent?
Our mind can take us to the show “Australia’s Got Talent!’ Where they have people with skills in performance, a skill or natural ability – dancing, singing etc… and it is that, but it’s so much more. In fact, our talent is everything we are and have.
Our talent that has been entrusted to us, by our master – Jesus – is our time, our health, our money, our house, our cars, and everything that has been given to us has a kingdom purpose, and our personal talent has Kingdom purpose.
A quote from J.C Rial says, ‘Anything whereby we may glorify God is a talent. Our gifts, our influence, our money, our knowledge, our health, our strength, our time, our senses, our reason, our intellect, our memory, our affections, our privileges as being a part of His church, our advantages as owners of God’s word, all are talents.’
So, everything is a talent! And we have been entrusted with our talent for Kingdom Purpose.
- Do we see what we have as being entrusted, or that it is ours and we get to choose what we do with it?
- We have been entrusted with our time, resource, skill. How does it change how we live our life knowing we have been entrusted with talent for kingdom purpose?
- What would be a natural strength in your life to build kingdom with your talent?
- Looking at the quote by J.C Rial, what doe sit look like inner lives to use these talents to bring glory to God?
DO WE BUILD OR BURY?
Mathew 25:19-24 After a long time, the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’
We see two responses from the guys in the parable. The first two, their response was to build with what they had been given, and the third guys response was to bury what he had been given.
Guy one and two These guys valued what was entrusted to them and he knew they had the ability to multiply it, not for their own benefit, but to increase the master’s house. They knew how the master worked and what was required of them and the talents that we’re given.
We could say they trusted their master and had the right mindset of the part they played to build his house.
Guy three This guy used what he had been entrusted with and he buried it. The scripture says that he had ‘fear’, and that ‘he had a distorted perspective on his master’. Maybe he didn’t think he had what it took to build like the others had, a little insecure, maybe he bad experience in the past or compared his one talent with the others and though, what I have is so small in comparison. Maybe he didn’t trust his master.
We could think of so many different scenarios! Maybe he was too busy, was indifferent to the master’s request, or didn’t know what to do with the talent!
And likewise, we can bury because of comfort, offence, disappointment, fear, insecurity etc… I wonder if we’ve ever held back sharing Jesus with others (this could be one of our most valuable talents!) because of insecurity, or just not knowing how to!
How this parable can relate to us, is that we can all have times where we build or bury. And it takes us to have moments to reflect, and to be intentional about our choices and ask ourselves, do I build or bury with what I have been entrusted with?
- Do we build or bury with what we’ve been entrusted with?
- What area of kingdom do you have a passion to build? How can you outwork this?
- Have you found there to be patterns of areas you bury? How can you move forward from this?
- Share testimonies of how you have used what you have been given to build and bury.
JESUS CALLS US TO BUILD
Through this parable Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us.
Don’t BURY your talent.
Don’t BURY your time.
Don’t bury your skill.
Don’t bury your resources.
BUILD God’s church
BUILD God’s plan
BUILD God’s Kingdom
Imagine what the impact in our church, our community, our city would look like to have our church groups and teams multiplying, our reach increased as we plant more churches, ready to go with teams passionate to serve and play their part.
Making space for more and more people to come and discover Jesus in their life, and for us to be taking Jesus to people through our community teams.
Imagine all the meals provided, the conversations had, breakfasts, dinners through our Community Kitchen and groups.
The single mums facing unplanned pregnancy that we walk alongside through Embrace Grace.
All of this happens when each of us chooses to use our talent to build God’s kingdom.
- Have time to pray for each other and for our church, that we would know what God has entrusted us with, and that we would use it to build for kingdom purpose.
- Pray that we would have the courage to dig up anything we have buried, and instead use into build.
ACTION
Knowing, we live with kingdom purpose causes us to decide, cause us to act, to respond. Do we want to keep what God has given us to build, buried? Do we want to increase our capacity to build in a greater way? To increase impact.
Let’s be a church that PLAY OUR PART!
Our heart at LIFE is that we would each play a part that fulfills us.
Playing our part is not a recruitment drive!
We believe that each of us have a call and commission to build Gods Church.
We are all apart of Gods church, it doesn’t belong to a selected few, the leaders or those on staff. We each have a role, a gift and a grace to outwork Gods plan to reach people through the local church. When we serve, we are not just filling a team, but fulfilling a call that transforms us, and our walk with God.
Check out the Play My Part Resource together as a group.
Lifeau.org/playmypart
As we prepare to cross over to the Promised land – Sims!
We need you! We need volunteers in all areas of church life.
Which part can you play?!