Biblical Self Awareness

²⁴"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. ²⁵So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'

1. Jesus tells a parable in chapter 25 of Matthew about the talents. A leader gives three men talents and tells them to put it to use. After a long time, the leader comes back and wants to see what the men do with the talent. The first two put the talents to use and got a return. The third came with the following report. "I was afraid....." Fear. If you read the verse, the servant believed something about the master that was not true. There is nothing in the parable that says the master was a hard man. He actually accused the Master of stealing, and again, there is nothing in the parable that says the Master was the way the servant portrayed him. In fact, he was joyful and rewarding towards the men who brought a return. The servant was fearful and obviously had misinformation about the Master and misinformation about himself. He believed a lie about the Master and he did not realize the power of the talent the Master did give him. Safe to say, the Master in the parable represents God and the servant can be any one of us; and thus, the parable provides information about how fear hinders our growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, fear is the nature of our undoing. The servant believed in the Master, but his belief was based on lies rather than truth producing fear and thus paralyzing the servant like a deer caught in the headlights. He buried the talent freezing it's effectiveness. The need here is for Biblical Self-Awareness. The more our view of God is based on lies, the more the view of ourselves will be based on lies. When we see God for who He really is, we begin to get a proper view of ourselves. God is good; God is love; If God is for us , who can be against us. He has settled the sin issue once for all and loves us with an everlasting love; He will never leave us nor forsake us. We can not lose. If we don't have this assurance we will act out of fear. We have eternal life; not probationary life. It is finished and nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Likewise, just as the servant failed to understand the empowerment he received from the talent given by the Master, many times we, God's children, fail to understand just who God has made us to be in Christ. Consider Paul's admonishment to see ourselves the way God has defined us: ¹Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ, who is your^{a]" style=" line-height: 0.5em; ">[a]} life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (COl 2) Christ is or life; He is our source; He lives in us and we live in Him. We need to learn to live out of that union, but if we don't believe it, we will continue to believe we are on our own, having to prove ourselves to God, and the result will be fear resulting in one step up two steps back and so on and so forth. God has given it all to us in Christ Jesus; He is our very Life. We can't be more gifted than we are right now; you can't improve on the Creator of the ends of the earth living His Life through you. Romans 8 says "⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.^{g]" style=" line-height: 0.5em; ">[g]} And by him we cry, "Abba,^{h]" style=" line-height: 0.5em; ">[h]} Father." ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, Being an heir of God and co-heir with Christ means that our life is as important to God as Jesus Christ's Life when He lived on earth and then some on into eternity. That is the truth about who we are; not need to hide in fear. Go love others with that authority.