Have you nurtured your secret abilities?

Abilities can be nurtured or neglected. They can be activated by the Holy Spirit or wasted on personal glory. An old country song comes to my mind when I think about this reality: “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” by Freddy Fender. 

I’ve seen so many sad examples of athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, and artists who wasted their God-given gifts, talents, and anointings. Many of them had more talent, better looks, or higher IQs than me. Some had stronger bodies or better connections, but somehow they ended up shipwrecked in a sea of failures or dissatisfaction. 

Have you maximized your talents, passions, and gifts? I believe the difference between success and failure, maximizing potential or underachieving, being fulfilled or frustrated, is the ingredient I call “nurturing.” From my experience as a counselor and leader, you must learn how to nurture your gifts for the anointing to be revealed. Here are a few practical steps for you to start this journey: 

1. Discover your passions and gifts. I’m always watching my grandkids in order to discover their God-given potentials. Is it sports, dance, science, math, business, politics, pastoral ministry, or administration? 
2. Focus on your strengths and develop them through study, seminars, Sunday school, lectures, or school.
3. Practice. The 10,000 repetitions rule makes sense to me. If you repeat something 10,000 times, you will master it.
4. Bathe your life in prayer in order to be saturated in the anointing. 
5. Serve others. If you apply your life to serving others, God will pour more oil on you.

Your gifts and anointing must be protected, practiced, and positioned so that you can maximize your potential and purposes for Christ. Paul the Apostle understood this well: “Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all.” (1 Timothy 4:14-15, NKJV)

You can nurture your anointing and others’ anointings because you are a miracle.