From the Voice Translations, Matthew 25:14-17<\/p>\n
Jesus:<\/strong> 14<\/sup>This is how it will be<\/em>. It will be like a landowner who is going on a trip. He instructed his slaves about caring for his property. 15<\/sup>He gave five talents to one slave, two to the next, and then one talent to the last slave\u2014each according to his ability. Then the man left.<\/p>\n 16<\/sup>Promptly the man who had been given five talents went out and bartered and sold and turned his five talents into ten. 17<\/sup>And the one who had received two talents went to the market and<\/em> turned his two into four. 18<\/sup>And the slave who had received just one talent? He dug a hole in the ground and buried his master\u2019s money there.<\/p>\n The two who increased the talents, were praised and rewarded.\u00a0 They choose to use what was given to them by the master and try to make more for the master.\u00a0 The one that buried the single talent, was scolded.<\/p>\n Talents in this case were money of the time.\u00a0 Talents can also be today not only money but the gifts that God has given us.\u00a0 Which to be honest, even the air we breathe is a gift.\u00a0 We are given much, but what do we do with what God gives?<\/p>\n We are challenged and charged with doing mission in the name of Christ.\u00a0 We are given all and therefore we must use all.\u00a0 To burry our self or our money in the sand is not acceptable.\u00a0 On the other hand, to run and gamble it all on long shots is not appropriate either.\u00a0 We can choose to invest in mission so we can do mission and ministry.<\/p>\n There are some approaches that are very safe with money, yet the gain is little to none.\u00a0 Do we invest wisely of the talents God gives?\u00a0 Not if we put it all in one basket.\u00a0 That is why we might want to invest some safely, but other talents in things that have moderate and high reward.\u00a0 Is there some risk?\u00a0 Sure, there is.\u00a0 You have heard I am sure, \u201cno risk no reward\u201d.\u00a0 The Bible speaks about taking risks for the sake of God.\u00a0 There are many verses throughout the Bible that speak to this.\u00a0 It must be grounded in God.<\/p>\n Mission and ministry are the primary goal, at least it should be, for any congregation.\u00a0 That mission and ministry is to be beyond the four walls of any church building.\u00a0 We are called to serve beyond the four walls.<\/p>\n Did you know that you can invest the monies that God gave in other congregations and it will help this one?\u00a0 Did you know that the moneys that come back to help us, help us to help others?\u00a0\u00a0 I am not endorsing either of these options, but you can invest in ELCA mission funds and you can invest at Thrivent.\u00a0 Both are mission based, that we can take advantage of.\u00a0 You can also invest in our Foundation, which invests in mission funds that help us to do mission.\u00a0 It is a win\/win\/win.\u00a0 Contact Lee Novak for information about the Foundation.\u00a0 He would love to speak with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Voice Translations, Matthew 25:14-17 Jesus: 14This is how it will be. It will be like a landowner who is going on a trip. He instructed his slaves about caring for his property. 15He gave five talents to one slave, two to the next, and then one talent to the last slave\u2014each according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,40,110,97,81,106,130,98,6,20,99,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attitude","category-blog","category-change","category-discipleship","category-faith","category-fear","category-foundation","category-giving","category-jesus","category-reflection","category-response","category-talents"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8agoY-MD","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flcssc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}