JANUARY 3 "ARE YOU STEALING FROM YOU?"

     Zig Ziglar tells of a thief, a man named Emmanuel Nenger. The year is 1887. The scene is a small neighborhood grocery store. Mr. Nenger is buying some turnip greens. He gives the clerk a $20 bill. As the clerk begins to put the money in the cash drawer to give Nr. Nenger his change, she notices some of the ink from the $20 bill is coming off on her fingers which are damp from the turnip greens. She looks at Mr. Nenger, a man she has known for years. She looks at the smudged bill. This man is a trusted friend; she has known him all her life; he can't be a counterfeiter. She gives Mr. Nenger his change, and he leaves the store. But $20 is a lot of money in 1887, and eventually the clerk calls the police. They verify the bill as counterfeit and get a search warrant to look through Mr. Nenger's home. In the attic they find where he is reproducing money. He is a master artist and is painting $20 bills with brushes and paint! But also in the attic they find three portraits Nenger had painted. They seized these and eventually sold them at auction for $16,000 (in 1887 currency, remember) or a little more than $5,000 per painting. The irony is that it took Nenger almost as long to paint a $20 bill as it did for him to paint a $5,000 portrait! It's true that Emanuel Nenger was a thief, but the person from whom he stole the most was himself.
     We have a warped sense of what to invest our talents & energies into. We see this all the time in The Church, The Kingdom of God. People who take their God given talents and use them for selfish gain and profit and end up destroying their lives; along with the talents and giftings God gave them.
     People say, "beauty & talent are a curse". Well if that's true, I can tell you that God never meant it to be a curse. If it has become a curse, it's because we have a warped mindset of what to invest our talents, time & energy, into!