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| Getting Motivated series |
- What’s Our Motivation?
- What if I’m Not the Best?
- What If I Don’t Succeed? (Fear of Failure)
- How Does God Define Success?
When we’re considering whether we should do something, whether we should work hard at it, the first question that often enters our mind is this: “Will I be any good at it?” To consider that question, we’ll look at the people who are the best at it and make the honest assessment: “I’ll never be as good as them”. To make matters worse (forgive my honesty) there’s a good chance we’re right.
Before I started writing for Loving Theology, I looked at all the Christian speakers and writers who were incredibly gifted and successful and came to the very accurate conclusion that I would never be that good.
Here’s what’s happening: Because of the way we consider the question, we aren’t just asking if we will be any good at it; we’re really asking if we will be the best at it. We trick ourselves into thinking we won’t be any good at it because we know we won’t be the best at it. There’s no more sure way to kill any motivation than this line of thinking. But what, specifically, is wrong with it? Does the Bible give us a better way to think about it?
Is God Calling Me?
I had this idea in my mind (and I suspect I’m not alone) that because I wasn’t going to be the best at it, I probably hadn’t found what God was calling me to do. I felt there was some niche calling for me out there that God had uniquely gifted me to be the best at if I could just find it. While we might not all acknowledge it in those words, I think this thought affects all of us, making it difficult to feel confident in what God has called us to.
This line of thinking led me to a conclusion: Since I’m not going to be the best, I probably haven’t found my calling and I need to keep searching. God corrected me for the pride in my heart that was underlying this way of thinking. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but He showed me that my own delusions of grandeur were holding me back from embracing His calling because it was more modest than what I had built up in my mind.
The Parable of the Talents
When God first corrected me in this way of thinking, He brought me to the Parable of the Talents which is found in Matthew 25. It starts like this:
In reading this story, our focus naturally goes to the servant who had five talents and the servant who had just one. It’s easy to forget about the servant who was given two talents, but that is where God drew my attention. In fact, I think that a lot of believers (whether we like it or not) can identify with this servant.
The Servant with Two Talents
He saw that he hadn’t been entrusted with the most talents. Further, because the parable tells us that the servant with five talents immediately (“went at once”) started trading with what he had been given, the one with two talents probably realized he would never catch up. So, he had to decide what to do with the two talents he was given.
The servant with just two talents knew he hadn’t been given what he needed to make five more talents like the first servant had done. If he followed that example, trying his hardest, the other servants would probably put him in his place. They’d be all to happy to point out that he wasn’t as good as the guy with five talents.
Maybe he saw the servant with one talent digging behind him and was tempted to do the same. Ok maybe that wasn’t the best idea, but he could simply invest the two talents in the bank so they could earn interest like was suggested a little later in the story (verse 27). That would probably be enough. After all, why put in all that effort, take all that risk trading it himself when he could never make five talents. If we’re honest I think that’s the option that is most tempting for us.
Should We Leave it to the “Professionals”?
When we realize that we won’t be the best, that we won’t be as successful as others who have gone before us, this can make it hard to be willing to still go after it with all we have. It’s a lot easier to just open an account and leave the investing to the professionals at the bank; it’s a lot easier to just write a tithe check and leave the evangelism to the professionals at the church.
Maybe even worse than the work that it takes to trade the talents is the risk that comes with it. In banking, the servant wouldn’t have to worry about losing money on the investment, but if he traded it on his own some of those trades wouldn’t work out. Similarly, it can be tempting to take this same “do no harm” approach to Christianity, because if we get into that conversation with our neighbor, we might say the wrong thing and make things worse. But we weren’t called to a life of doing no harm, we have been called to a life of doing good!
Answering Inadequacy with Humility
At some level we all face this. It’s the struggle more typically described as feeling inadequate. While we’re often told that the cure to this struggle is a healthy dose of self-confidence so that we no longer feel inadequate, I’m suggesting that the solution we all need is a bit more subtle and uncomfortable than this: A willingness to serve where we can, even if it’s a smaller role than we had hoped, with everything that we have to offer even though we will likely never be the best at it. The answer to feelings of inadequacy isn’t more self-confidence; it’s more humility. Because it takes humility to risk being humiliated.
The servant who only had two talents stands out as a shining example for what we are called to do. To go all in, to put in everything we have in to living out what the Bible calls us to as Christians. We are called to embrace the work and to ignore the humiliation that inevitably comes with it even though we know we will likely never be the best at it.
But here’s the good news: God doesn’t evaluate the results of our work the same way we would. Even though the servant with two talents didn’t make as much as the servant with five, the response they are both given from the Master is exactly the same, word for word:
(If you want to hear more about this joy and how we experience it even on this side of eternity, check out our series on hope and the hope we have in heaven!)
The Fear of Failure
In fact, it’s this last truth that holds the secret to overcoming another struggle we face as we try to get motivated. While we’ve talked about feelings of inadequacy here, we still need to talk about the fear of failure. Because both of these keep motivation out of reach, holding us back from taking action. The root of this fear comes from an incorrect understanding of how God sees us and how He evaluates our work. Next time we’re going to find the answer together in the Scripture. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out as we continue this series on Getting Motivated!