In Order to Grow you need to Nurture Your Gifts

This is a reflective post from today's sermon by Abi at church. The sermon was centered around Colossions 1 1:14 and on the theme of fruits and plants. Abi used an analogy of two plants, one that was thriving from the attention it had recieved, and the other one that had withered away. The aspect of the sermon that i want to reflect on is the five M's that were laid out on what make up the different areas that we need to nurture. Nurturing gifts even in the worldly sense, is by giving them attention and spending time on them. For instance if you aim to be a musician, playing the piano, you can't grow the skill simply by starting it age 7 then leaving it for 20 years and expecting yourself to be a master. The same thing applies for godly gifts. The first is modelling Godly Character. The best scripture for this is Galatians 5: 22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." These are what the Bible says are constitutes as fruit that need to be nurtured, but also what makes Godly character. I won't go into all of them but look at just Self-control. The world at the moment is quite materialistic, impulsive, there's lots of advertising and marketing trying to get your attention, to try and make you buy stuff. I struggle sometimes with impulse, buying things even games sometimes on impulse. And sometimes those impulses don't always work out, i remember buying a game one or two years ago, i bought it on impulse without being certain it was something I wanted. I ended up returning it just a few weeks later. Now I've grown in more self-control, i can wait more patiently for those kind of things by looking if its as good as its made out to be. Self control is not just purchases but how we treat each other. It can be self control when it comes to friendships, exercising patience rather than get frustrated, or angry when people upset us, it can be in a marriage setting with spouses, or it can be when we're witnessing to other people and we can see that they just can't quite grasp the gospel. In those times we have to excercise self-control and be patient with people, and in doing so excercises the godly gift. The opposite of self-control is reckless, impulsive and can be irrational behaviour. As proverbs says, Proverbs 25:28 "A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls." By exercising these fruits it also leans into the other M's that were mentioned, Making good work, Ministering Grace and Love, Moulding Culture and a Mouthpiece for Truth and Justice and all these things are intriniscally linked together--if your moulding a godly character--you will be a mouthpiece for truth and justice while also ministering grace and love. Of course these gifts can grow at different times, depending on the works we do. Good works, can be anything from raising children, the work place, volunteering, ministry, going on mission and many other things I imagine. Each comes with its own challenges, and at times we will struggle and fall, but the grace of God will help bring us back up and mould us to be more like Jesus and speak life and truth to people to bring them into the Kingdom.