Matthew 25:14-30
Several years ago, Donald Trump said this in an interview: "I'll be 36 next year and I've done everything I can do. Sometimes I think it was a mistake to have raced through it all so fast. What's the next level up? The grass isn't always greener . . . I work, and I don't worry. How can you top that? . . . I protect myself as well as anybody can. I prepare for things but ultimately we all end up going . . . I don't believe in reincarnation, heaven, or hell. But we go someplace. Do you know? I cannot for the life of me figure out where.'"
That is a picture of a man who is so busy possessing this world he is making no preparations for the next. Before we point a finger, we ought to realize it's easy for us to do the same thing. The fact is — most people have absolutely no idea what life is all about.
There are three things you can do with your life: you can waste it, you can spend it, or you can invest it.
You can waste it.
There are plenty of things to waste it on. You can spend it on your career, on your hobby, on acquiring certain possessions, or you can invest it. Jesus taught that the greatest use of your life is to invest it in that which outlasts it. He told a story called the parable of the talents. In it he gives seven principles for investing your life:
1. Everything I have belongs to God.
2. God has given me some talents.
3. God expects me to use those talents. Someday he's going to ask me, "What did you do with what you were given?"
4. It is wrong to bury what God has given me.
5. Fear keeps me from using my talent. When you cut through all the excuses, it's fear that keeps you from using your talents.
6. If I don't use it, I'll lose it.
7. If I use it wisely, I'll be rewarded.
The study of these seven principles will make a major difference in your life.
God made it all. You really own nothing. You didn't come into this world with anything and you're not going to take anything out of this world. What you have you simply get to use for 60, 70, 80, 90 years. It's God's. You just get to use it. God made man to manage his resources.
The Bible says, "Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them."(Matt. 25:14, NIV) Whose property was it — the servant's or the master's? It was the master's. God has entrusted some things to you. God owns everything.