Thought for the Week: Feb 10, 2012

An encouragement for this week from "The Creative Call” by Janice Elsheimer:

Job 32:18-20... says, “For I am full of words, and the spirit within me compels me; inside I am like bottled-up wine, like new wineskins ready to burst. I must speak and find relief; I must open my lips and reply”
If we have neglected to develop and use the talents God has given us, we feel incomplete, unfulfilled, unfinished, even depressed. We are “like new wineskins ready to burst.” We devour books, we travel, we acquire possessions, or we busy ourselves in relationships and careers. We engage in diversions of all kinds in an attempt to find that elusive thing called fulfillment. We spend our time and money in a fruitless search to “find ourselves” instead of finding out how God wants us to use the talents He has given us.  

Praying that if you can relate to this today that you will be able to take the next step...asking God what that might be...to rediscover, use, and/or develop the talents He has given just to you. Praying you will find the fulfillment of knowing you are being whom you were created to be & using your time and talents the way you were created to as a result of taking that next step.

I was so encouraged to hear from some of those who attended the Creative Writing Retreat last weekend when they shared that they were getting back to their passion/talent for writing for the first time in a long time and that God met them in that place...just by taking that next step of just going to the retreat & seeing what would happen. (For some of them that meant climbing the hurdle of the “negative voices in their head” telling them not to go...what was the point, what were they thinking, they weren’t good enough to write, etc. But they knocked over that hurdle & prevailed!!!) Things awoken in their heart and soul again and blessed them in a powerful way as a result of going to that retreat and picking up a pen again and meeting with God.

There is a place for you too, whatever your passions and talents are, to take that next step as these writers did when offered the opportunity. Praying God will reveal that place, or step, to you this week as you spend time listening and asking Him to do that.

Praying for you,
Stacey