Skip to main content

Credit where credit's due

If you’ve grown up in church, you may have had a situation similar to mine occur at least once: someone gets up to sing a special. Occasionally afterwards you wonder to yourself who ever told this person they should be singing in public, but you keep the comment to yourself. In the words of Tim Hawkin, a Christian comedian, you want to tell the person who probably is claiming that “God gave me this song” that maybe you should give it back. But in a more positive light, you step into a church service where the individual singing the special is truly blessed by God and obviously put a lot of hard work into developing their gift. And if you’ve been around “church people” enough, there’s usually the one talented special singer who humbly responds to every compliment with “I can’t take any credit. I owe it all to God.”

While I’m not downplaying the important of giving credit where credit’s due and being aware that ultimately everything we have is from God (James 1:17), we are individually responsible for what we do with what God gives us. Stewardship is a very biblical principle and I believe it also applies to humbly taking credit for the hard work we put into whatever we do in life. God ultimately and indirectly gives us everything we have in life, but we are directly responsible for how we make use of those things (Col. 3: 22-24). Food for thought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections for Election Day

It's an unfortunate reality that not only does politics divide our country, it divides Christ's church. In this blog, I'm not going to try to persuade which candidate to vote for, but rather I am going to attempt to urge any and all professing believers to vote responsibly. If you are voting (and I hope that you are) I encourage you to prayerfully consider your decision. I encourage you to use divine discernment in which candidate you mark your ballot for. Please, do not simply vote for the candidate that most benefits what your itching ears want to hear, but rather prayerfully invest in the candidate that will uphold God's standards in his leadership of this nation. Like Israel, the Christian community in America has fallen into the trap of relying on political structures to provide for our needs and even our desires. In 1 Samuel 8, we find that Israel has grown tired of the Judges and Priests that God has given to advise them and demands that they have a king. Sam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Don't Get Comfortable

It’s a running joke among my co-workers that I never stay in town on weekends I’m not working. I guess it’s not so much a joke as it is reality. The truth is: I love to travel and get restless staying in one place very long. I was pondering this on a recent trip back from visiting my parents in Mississippi for Thanksgiving. Since leaving New York to attend college in Indiana, I’ve struggled with settling anywhere and really making a place “home”. This especially became difficult most recently when I moved from Lexington, Kentucky, where I had really established a great church family—to move to Macon, Georgia responding to the call God has placed on my life. I remember having some very emotional moments with Jesus in the midst of the move and shortly after. It seems like every time I get comfortable somewhere God shakes things up and moves me somewhere new. God revealed something to me on my drive back from Mississippi about this; Christians are not supposed to get comfortable....
Post a Comment
Read more

Faith Stories

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not depend on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5 "But I am not ashamed of it [the Gospel], for I know the One in whom I trust, and I am sure that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until the day of His return." - The apostle Paul from prison, 2 Timothy 1:12 For anyone growing up in a Christian context, Proverbs 3:5 is a well quoted verse. In my own life, I often find myself quoting it to give myself comfort in frustrating and uncertain circumstances or find others in my life quoting it to me for the same intention. Honestly, however, very rarely does it give me true comfort nor do I find myself truly focusing on letting the meaning of it sink it. In the Christian community it has almost become a cliche; a pat answer Christians give others and themselves when they are facing a trying situation they can't make sense of. But I do not believe this was God's intention in giving us this truth in Hi...
Post a Comment
Read more