Plus-Six Vision
Do you have Plus-Six vision for your life? God does.
The Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 is both one of the most cited and also one of the most variably interpreted passages in all of scripture. So a warning right out of the gate: This is a prime example of a passage where you should be personally in the presence of the King to grapple with how He wants you to apply it to your life. It is a passage that is very easy to selective shape and mold into a form that fits your preferred narrative. Avoid that temptation at all costs, as this passage speaks to the crucial mandate that you and I give our best and our all in order to build not our kingdom but the Kingdom of God.
It is a sacred duty, and not one to be trivialized.
That said, it is also a passage that should light a fire of excitement and passion in you!
Here is the quick thumbnail version of the parable as a reminder:
- The master, before leaving on a long trip, gives three servants five, two, and one talents respectively (note: a “talent” was a huge sum of money, roughly equivalent to one million U.S. dollars today, so these were equivalent sums of approximately $5 million, $2 million, and $1 million).
- During the master’s long trip, the servants with five and two talents each doubled their money but the servant with one talent simply preserved and protected it.
- Upon his return, the master is very pleased with the servants who have doubled their money and very displeased with the one who has only preserved it. The talent that has been preserved is taken from the servant and given to the one who doubled his five talents to ten.
Again, there are many lessons to be gleaned from this parable, but for today, let us together consider this one:
God has a Plus-Six vision for your life!
God has vested in you unique and special abilities, and He has entrusted you with a “long” life in which to deploy those intentional giftings. There is every reason to believe that your “five talents” can yield a 100% return over the course of your life! God has designed you with multiplication capacity! He intended—and even expects—you to be fruitful and multiply in the building of His Kingdom (among Jesus’ very last words in Matthew 28 were the instruction to, “Go and make disciples”).
It is a magnificent thing to realize you are created to multiply God’s work in you. You are designed to turned five into ten. You have an embedded purpose to do “plus-five” work with your life. That is, in and of itself, an awe-inducing reality!
But what about Plus-Six vision? The first servant who doubled his five to ten was then given the talent originally entrusted to the third servant, bringing the first servant’s total “assets under management” to 11—or Plus-Six from where he started.
The point today is this: You have GREAT capacity within you to build God’s Kingdom, but God’s vision for you is GREATER STILL!
You are designed to plan and work for plus-five, but God wants to take you to Plus-Six! This is not just an incremental expansion of your capacity, or something as trivial as financial blessing on top of your life’s work. Rather, this is about the “extra” that only God can do through you. It is the “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in [you]” (Eph. 3:20).
When you go from plus-five vision to Plus-Six vision, it blows the roof off what is possible because you move from the already-expansive potential God has placed within you to the limitless possibilities of what God just might do in and through you!
So, do you have Plus-Six vision? God does, and while He is the only one who can take you there, He expects and requires you to first turn the five He has given you into ten. It is time to be courageous and do the work (1 Chron. 28:20).