This question seems like a silly question. Who doesn’t want more? We all do, but the issue is, can we handle it? Stop and think for a moment what has happened to all the money that has passed through your hands in the last ten years, can you give account for most of it?
Consider the parable of talents in Matt 25: 14 – 30. A man going on a journey entrusts wealth to his servants to manage while he is away. The amount of wealth each servant got depended on their capacity to handle it. The three servants were given five, three and one bag of gold or talents respectively. The first two proved beyond reasonable doubt that they can handle it, while the last one met the master empty handed. You know the rest of the story. The ones that showed they could handle it got more while the last one went away empty handed, probably murmuring and complaining as he went about how unfair life is.
If you look at a company, especially big ones, you will notice that people hold various positions that go with varying levels of responsibility. At the bottom are folks who do what they are told, and as you go up, you meet folks who have more responsibility, supervise others and have a bigger capacity to handle various tasks. The man at the top is not more brilliant than the man at the bottom. As a matter of fact, the man at the bottom may be a first class degree holder while the overall boss made a second class lower degree in a non technical area. What makes the difference is their capacity to handle tasks and execute them successfully. A Project Engineer is in charge of one project while the Manager can have up to 30 projects under him. It all boils down to capacity to handle more.
Having more money is not the problem. Growing the capacity to handle more is the crux of the matter. If you currently do not have enough money, chances are that you are in that situation because of your lack of capacity to handle more. Money has already entered your hands time and time again, a series of one bag of gold, but like the last servant, you failed to turn it into two bags of gold. You keep giving away the one bag of gold time and time again. Imagine you turned the one bag into two, and two bags into four, and four bags into eight, and eight bags into sixteen, and on and on. The issue would not be asking God to give you more; the issue would be what good to do with what God has blessed you with already.
As you multiply what you have, you open the door for more to come in. There is more than enough. The challenge is that precious little is coming our way because we have not demonstrated the capacity to handle more. Have you ever wondered why banks beg Dangote to take loans but tell you ‘No’? It is not that they love rich people and hate poor people. As a matter of fact they are looking for whom to give loans to. They give targets to their officers to give out loans. Banks make money through interest income from loans given out, so the more loans they give out, the more turnover and profit they make. The challenge is – Dangote will multiply the money and give back while for most of us, it becomes bad debt – the bank cannot get their money back. That is why they are so scared of giving us loans. We have no track record of turning what we touch into gold.
God and banks have one thing in common in a way – they have lots of money to give out, but are looking for who they can trust it with. Who can they give 5 bags of gold to turn to 10 bags of gold? Are you the one? What have you done with the bags of gold that have come your way – some in the form of salary, bonuses, lump sum payments etc. Do you complain it is not enough and bury it in the ground or double it? Can you handle more money? Can you handle abundance? That is the question.
Usiere Uko is editor of www.financialfreedominspiration.com and author of Practical Steps to Financial Freedom and Independence – www.amazon.com/Practical-Steps-Financial-Freedom-Independence/dp/147006832X .2013
Leslie was born mentally retarded, without eyes, and with cerebral palsy. Vegetable like, he was totally unresponsive to sound or touch. At the age of six months, he was expected to die shortly. A nurse, May Lemke, was asked if she could care for him at home until that time. She did… for more than thirty years.
When May accepted baby Leslie, she accepted him as just that, a baby – no different from others – to be taught and loved. Year after year she cared for him, but there was no movement or response. Even so, she never stopped talking to him, singing to him, or praying for him. Music filled their home… still, no response. She and her husband bought an old, used piano and put it in his bedroom. She pushed his fingers against the keys. With quiet faith, she knew God would someday help Leslie to break out of his prison. She rejoiced when he began to walk at age 16.
Several years later, May and her husband were awakened one night by the sound of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto No 1. Startled, they arose to find Leslie at the piano with a smiling glow on his face. Shortly thereafter he began to talk and to cry… and to sing. And at age 28, he began to talk in earnest.
Dear reader, I think by now we would’ve seen, heard or read enough to convince us that the only sure way not to succeed is by giving up. I believe in miracles, but I think it happens faster when we decide to hang on. All we need is faith that it will come to pass. There are times our situation will look hopeless, but pause and remember that men and women havepassed through worse situations and still made it to the top.
Man can achieve anything he strongly believes in. I remember reading the story of Prince Albert. Prince Albert of England once visited the laboratory of a scientist named Lyon Playfair. According to Playfair’s biographer Sir Wemyss Reid, as the Prince and Scientist stood near a caldron of boiling lead, Playfair asked, “Has your royal highness any faith in science?”
“Certainly,” answered Prince Albert. Playfair washed the prince’s hand in a special solution and then told him to use his hand to ladle out some of the hot metal. The prince plunged his hand into the caldron and scooped up some in his palm – and he wasn’t injured.
For those of us who are in positions of leadership, give others a chance to develop. Don’t be quick in judging others. Those who do not perform today, with little assistance and motivation can perform tomorrow. Is there someone God has entrusted in your care? Go the extra mile to make it possible for that person to discover his potentials and put it into good use.
The key is in your hands. Use it!
– Uju Onyechere
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
