Our Talents Are Treasures—Guard them Well

But the devil is always looking for ways to pervert God’s creation. Always looking for ways to take what’s beautiful and ruin it. Of course our talents are a target for the devil too, same as any other area of our life.

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Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another post.

I’m reading The Confessions of Saint Augustine right now, which is such a great book to read during Lent. The book is about confessing, after all, and this is the season for doing that. This book is a classic of Christian literature. It played a major role in shaping Western Christianity from the Dark Ages onward. The Confessions of Saint Augustine is one of the most important Christian writings ever. Besides the Holy Bible of course, which must be read everyday and holds a special category of its own.

I haven’t finished Confessions yet, but it’s already very thought-provoking. It gave me the idea for today’s topic.

God created us, and He gave us every good thing we have. This includes our talents, skills, abilities and knowledge. All our strong points, He gave those to us. So what happens if we misuse our talents?? And how might that happen??

Let’s find out what Augustine of Hippo has to say.

Sacrificing Our Talents

Augustine wrote a few times about misusing our talents. Our good, God-given talents. Because every good thing we have comes from God (James 1:17), and of course that includes our talents.

Augustine is serious about not misusing our God-given talents. He calls it a form of sacrifice to the fallen angels (demons).

And this makes sense because if God gave us our talents, God not only wants us to use them, He wants us to use them for good. He wants us to use them to glorify God and help our fellow man. Any other outcome would be misusing our talents. And we must see misusing our talents as the sin that it is.

So how did Augustine think he misused his? He gives a few examples. The first one starts in childhood, in elementary school. He regrets that he devoted his talent for reading and learning to poems, fiction, mythology, and other things that don’t matter. Augustine didn’t care so much about God or the Scriptures, he was more interested in entertainment. And that’s what he devoted his God-given talents of reading and learning to.

Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them. […] we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, […]
Actually, was not all that smoke and wind? Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have exercised my wit and tongue? Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by the Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a shameful prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.

Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Pages 16-17

We can see he regrets not putting his talents to more use in studying the Scriptures. And that misusing our talents is one way to sacrifice to the fallen angels. That may sound extreme to some, but isn’t it true? I’ll come back to that. Let’s continue for now.

He studied many subjects as he got older. He also fell in with the Manichean heresy—a Gnostic sect with demonically-inspired false theology. They viewed their founder Mani as a divine person imbued with the Holy Spirit on a different level from us. They mixed elements of nature worship into their religion. It was a full-blown heresy; not Christian at all. You can research “Manichean” yourself for more detail.

Looking back as he wrote Confessions, Augustine saw none of what he learned then was for his good. Since it was leading him farther away from God, this knowledge was actually harmful to him, though he didn’t know it then. Because what good is all the knowledge in the world if we get turned away from God and lose our Salvation?? This is another example of how he misused his talents for reading, learning, and study.

And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called “liberal arts,” when I was actually a worthless slave of lust? I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my back toward the light, […] All this thou knowest, O Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts. Yet for such gifts I made no thank offering to thee. Therefore, my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a part of my substance into my own power. And I did not store up my strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite. And what did these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use?

Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Page 63

If we don’t use our talents, and if we don’t use them for good, then what do they profit us? It’s a good question, but the answer isn’t complicated.

God gave us all our talents. So He wants us to use them to glorify God, to show the Power of God and beauty of His Design through our talents. When we shine through our talents, God shines too, because He made us with those talents.
God also wants us to use our talents to help others. This is the other way of pleasing God with our talents.
That answers the question. Our talents were meant to be used for good and glorifying God. That’s why God gave them to us. If we use our talents for other reasons, we sin against God.

Since God gave us our talents, our talents are good and we must give thanks for them. And … we must use them, and use them properly!! We won’t glorify God if we keep our talents to ourselves, hidden from others. It’s important that we figure out what our talents are, and develop those.

God has gifted every one of us with a talent for something. When we don’t feel talented at anything, we must keep looking and trying new things, because we will find something. God gave us our unique talents so we can each Glorify Him through what we can do. But Satan and his demons want to pervert our talents and stop us from using them for God’s Glory. There are many ways Satan can deceive us into misusing or talents.

So now let’s talk about some of the ways Satan can trick us when it comes to our talents.

How Satan Twists Our Talents

Let’s remember the general principle of what Satan’s trying to do. His main goal of course is to drag as many souls into damnation with him as he can. He does this by spreading lies and deceiving the world. Other than that, what the devil wants to do is take God’s beautiful creations and ruin them.

God likes to take what’s ruined and make it beautiful. Satan likes to take what’s beautiful and ruin it.

-Found on social media, unknown source

Satan wants to pervert the purposes of God’s creations, and turn them to evil uses. By the way, the first definition of the word ‘pervert’ is to “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” In other words, Satan wants to corrupt God’s Order and Designs.

Naturally, our own God-given talents offer a choice opportunity for Satan to corrupt and pervert God’s Design. God gave us our talents, whatever they may be, for a reason. The talents He gave us are sure to be an important part of His Plan for our lives (which is why it’s important we each discover what our talents are). It’s God’s Will that we use our talents for good—to help our fellow man and Glorify God. As for how we do that, well, that all depends on what our individual talent is.

This is why Satan so often targets our talents and tries to corrupt us in that area. If he can succeed in tricking us into using our talents for evil, he’s making us sin against God while also perverting something God Intended for good (our talents). That’s the exact kind of win-win (for Satan) outcome he’s looking for.

Anyway, there are a few ways I can think of that Satan might try to pervert our talents.

Turning Good to Evil

The most obvious way is when Satan gets us to actively use our talents for evil. When we take our skills and knowledge and use them for evil deeds.

Here are some examples:

• Using our talents of financial knowledge to commit scams, frauds, or steal money
• Using our writing talents to write satanist books, New Age books, or other Spiritually dangerous material
• Using our music talents to make songs that glorify sex, drugs, and violence
• Using our physical beauty to create porn (including OnlyFans porn, etc.)
• And so on

In all these examples, we’re taking the good, positive talents God gave us and using them for evil. We might use the talents for crimes, like in the first example. Or we might use them to spread deception and lies like in the second and third examples. As for porn (and beauty isn’t a talent, I guess), that’s something that offends God’s Design for sex and marriage, so we should never be involved with that in any way.

If Satan can trick us in any way into doing things like this, he has succeeded in perverting our talents. What God meant for the good of ourselves and others has now been actively turned to sin and sometimes even crime.

Lying to Us

The devil is a liar, and everything he says is a lie. He and his demons whisper in our ear, telling us we’re not good enough, we’ll never measure up. Telling us we’ll always get rejected if we try to display our talents.

If we make the mistake of listening to those lies, then we will stop ourselves from putting our talents to a use that glorifies God. We’ll believe we aren’t good enough at what we do. That we won’t ever get anywhere with our talents and we’ll always get rejected … so why even bother?? Why bother going through the pain of rejection??

We’ll end up keeping our talents hidden to ourselves, or even let them go to waste by not practicing them. We don’t show our talents to the world, and we don’t use them to Glorify God and help our fellow man.

Even though Satan didn’t make us actually use our talents for evil in this case, he still stopped us from using them for God’s Glory. So this situation still suits Satan’s goals while stopping us from doing what both we and God wanted to do. Maybe even something we dreamed of doing.

It’s a sad situation when our talents stay hidden and go to waste like this, and it’s not God’s Will for our lives. He wants us to use our talents to shine, so everyone can see us shining and we can give Him the Glory for it.

Taking Our Chances away

If the devil can mislead us into sin in other areas of our life, it will bring more and more chaos into our life. If this goes on long enough, our lives can become so chaotic and out of control that we won’t have a chance to practice our talents or use them at all. We’ll be too busy trying to keep our chaotic lives from falling apart even more to worry about talents.

For example: Drug addiction. We know that drugs are one of Satan’s traps, a lure he uses to get people into slavery and ruin their lives. Once an addiction takes hold, a person’s life starts falling apart at a steady and increasing pace. In severe cases the poor addict will have to face crises such as homelessness, broken marriages or relationships, near-fatal overdoses, and more. There are many tragic things that could happen.

Well, how can someone trying to deal with those problems have time to focus on using the talents God gave them? They have to put all their time and energy into desperately trying to hold their life together. When will they have time to even practice their talents, much less use them for God’s Glory or the good of others?

Again, like with the above example, even though Satan hasn’t made us actually turn our talents to evil uses, he has still managed to stop us from using them. And that isn’t God’s Will for our lives. In this case though there’s the added element of the addiction and/or the other sins that are causing our lives to fall apart. That isn’t God’s Will for us either.

Fun, but Pointless Distractions

The last example I can think of is the one from the first Augustine quote, above. Satan and his demons can trick us into using our talents on vain pursuits that mean nothing. In Augustine’s case he talked about how he enjoyed learning about myths and fables so much, but he didn’t put the same effort into learning things that were actually real and useful. He especially regretted not studying the ways of God with the same effort he put into poetry and fiction.

This is a common mistake, one which I think we’re all guilty of. Think of hobbies, for example. Hobbies are good, and healthy to have. They help relieve stress and make us more well-rounded people. But they also don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, and although God does want us to have enjoyment in our lives, He doesn’t want us to spend all our time on hobbies.

So imagine if we devoted all the energy of our God-given talents to hobbies? For example, writing about our hobbies, watching tons of videos about our hobbies, or reading about no topic other than our hobbies … that kind of thing. Although hobbies aren’t a bad thing, they can become bad for us if we put all our time, energy, and talent into them.

God Wants us to use our talents for the good of others and for Him. If we use all our talent and energy on our own hobbies, we’re using our talents for our own enjoyment and gratification. This goes against God’s Will for our lives and our talents.

So we need to be alert for Satan also trying to use our hobbies to trap us and pervert our talents. Because again, hobbies are a good and healthy thing to have. But Satan can use anything to get us if we’re not aware, and he loves to take the good things God gifted us and turn them to evil.

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These are all examples of ways for Satan to pervert our God-given good talents. Things that should create positivity in our world. But what about if we actually have a talent for doing bad things? What can we say about “bad talents?”

“Bad Talents”

Is it possible for us to have “bad talents” too? For example, being skilled at manipulating people. Being good at manipulating, intimidating, deceiving, or seducing others into doing what we want.

If we were good enough at it, we could call manipulation and other evils a talent of sorts. But God did not give us these talents for evil. God did not put sin or the sin nature inside us. That’s a result of mankind’s corruption from the fall. God did not give us any talents for evil, but it could be that some talent of ours meant for good was corrupted, like I talked about above.

Whatever the case, let’s take these evil talents Satan wants us to use and turn them for good.

For example, if we have a talent for manipulation, it means (in part) that we have a talent for persuading people. We can turn that to legitimate, good uses. We can turn that into a talent for honest negotiation if we put effort into studying that topic. And that’s only one option, there are many more.

The point is, anytime we have a talent for something evil, we don’t need to use it the way Satan wants us to. It’s within our power to repurpose that talent and use it for something else, something good. What could anger the devil more than turning his schemes around on him?? It’s a big win, for us, when we do this.

Guard Talent Closely

God gave us all our talents, and they are all good. Each one must be used to glorify God through the amazing talents of His creation, and each one should bring good and positive things into our lives and the lives of others.

But the devil is always looking for ways to pervert God’s creation. Always looking for ways to take what’s beautiful and ruin it. Of course our talents are a target for the devil too, same as any other area of our life.

So we must be aware of this, and remember the various ways Satan could succeed in perverting our talents. The most obvious way is turning our talents to active evil, but there are other ways too. We must be on guard against them all, because our talents are good gifts from God, and we don’t want to waste them.

To help yourself stay on guard, pray: Lord, help me to be faithful with my talents. Add that to your regular prayers

Talents are a good gift from God. Don’t let the devil steal them, and don’t let him ruin them!!

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Until next time, be strong and do good!

Your new best friend in Christ,

99:9

<<<EXALT THE LORD OUR GOD AND WORSHIP AT HIS HOLY HILL; FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS HOLY>>>

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