Grow Your Gifts

Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more… His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Genesis 37:5, 11 (NIV)

The Bible says that, while the brothers get jealous, Jacob keeps in mind what his son’s gifts mean, and what the shifting implications could be. He ponders what his son’s purpose might be, what God may have set him apart for, and what this elevation above them all means for their collective future.

Regardless of what his brothers felt, or even how Joseph might have felt about his gift, his gift needed to be grown. His gift had to breathe, had to eat, had to be exercised.

There are many reasons why we might resist growing our gifts. You can confuse or suppress your gifts because of the pain of rejection or in a futile attempt to simply fit in or get along. You can delay your gifts’ maturation because of fear of what exposing your gift may mean for other people. You can stagnate your gifts’ growth because you don’t want what being purposed or called really means. You can resent your gifts because every progression comes with a grieving of what you had to leave.

Your gift may start out seeming boring or embarrassing, but if you nurture it in its infancy, its maturity can bless generations. For Joseph, it might’ve been the worst place and to the worst people to share his dreams, but what God had planned for him was far beyond anything he could have envisioned.

The lesson here is to give your gifts intentional latitude—meaning, give your gifts space, scope, and freedom to move, to operate, to think, to grow, and to fail. Don’t narrow your vision. Don’t let anybody constrict your dreams. Don’t let anyone dampen your willingness to grow and learn and see and hear and experience.