Almighty God has been merciful to us and that is why we have made it into 2018.
\nLet\u2019s all realise that God has given us one common blessing to utilize for our success or even abuse for our failure.
\nThe common blessing God has given us is time. Some of us will use the same 24 hours we have every day to catapult ourselves to success while others will use the same time to complain and whine about our own misfortunes.
\nSome will be using the same time to criticize and insult others. I know of folks who have time to criticize anyone else from the State President to their party president, from their church leaders to their praise teams, from their spouses to the children.
\nWhat am I twisting here? The way we use our common blessing of time in 2018 will determine our success or our failure.
\nThis being the first week of the New Year, let me allow our Lord Jesus Christ to twist this issue of using time and resources we have through a Parable of the Three Servants as is recorded in Matthew 25:14-30.
\nHere is the narration of the parable by Jesus Christ.
\n\u201cAgain, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last\u2014 dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.
\nThe servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more. The servant with two bags of silver also went to work and earned two more. But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master\u2019s money.
\nAfter a long time their master returned from his trip and called them to give an account of how they had used his money. The servant to whom he had entrusted the five bags of silver came forward with five more and said, \u2018Master, you gave me five bags of silver to invest, and I have earned five more.\u2019
\nThe master was full of praise. \u2018Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let\u2019s celebrate together![\u2019
\nThe servant who had received the two bags of silver came forward and said, \u2018Master, you gave me two bags of silver to invest, and I have earned two more.\u2019
\nThe master said, \u2018Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let\u2019s celebrate together!\u2019
\n\u201cThen the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, \u2018Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn\u2019t plant and gathering crops you didn\u2019t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.\u2019
\n\u201cBut the master replied, \u2018You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn\u2019t plant and gathered crops I didn\u2019t cultivate, why didn\u2019t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.\u2019
\n\u201cThen he ordered, \u2018Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver. To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.\u201d
\nThat was Jesus Christ himself narrating that parable. There is one question for us to answer. By the end of this New Year, will we reap the sweet fruits of our productivity?
\nWhether we are employees, entrepreneurs, students, farmers or loafers, the same question applies. Will we double our productivity, or will we remain at the same level of development. Will we be like the wicked servant who used all his time calling his master and his rivals all sorts of names?
\nIn 2018, how will you use Facebook, Twitter, Whatsap to improve your productivity. Will you be spending hours on these social media platforms criticizing others or posting your own pictures so that you can solicit cheap comments from your followers such as \u201cthat\u2019s nice, you look cute?\u201d Is that the best way to use your time when others are being productive?
\nWishing you a very productive 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almighty God has been merciful to us and that is why we have made it into 2018. Let\u2019s all realise that God has given us one common blessing to utilize for our success or even abuse for our failure. The common blessing God has given us is time. Some of us will use the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58658,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58654\/revisions\/58658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}