FromNowUntilForeverBook8.5x5.5 REV.indd

Possessing gifts of the Spirit is a privilege, and with privi- lege comes responsibility . As Jesus said on an earlier occasion, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more” (Luke 12:48). According to legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, “There are players who have ability and know it;There are those who don’t have ability but don’t know it.” Then he said, “The one that makes you proudest is the one who isn’t good enough to play but it means so much to him, and he puts so much into it, that he does anyway.We’ve had a lot of those.” And, he continued, “The ones who have ability and don’t use it are the ones who eat your guts out.” Although we are not saved by works, we are certainly saved to work, “Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Sadly, the nobleman’s subjects in our story didn’t get it. As Scripture says, his, “Citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying,‘We do not want this man to reign over us’” (Luke 19:14). Such has been the prevailing response to Jesus for the last 2000 years, with the masses choosing to rebel and reject rather than repent and receive.Yet as we’ve already learned in these pages, a day of reckoning awaits, for opportunity and responsi- bility carry with them accountability. The subjects in our text found this to be true when their king returned from his jour- ney. At that time, he “Ordered that these slaves, to whom he hand given the money, be called to him so that he might know what business they had done” (Luke 19:15). Once the nobleman learned the results, he rewarded the faithful. To the servant who turned his mina into ten, he said, “Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little

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