Tunji was eleven the first time he played for a Sunday service. The regular keyboardist had travelled, and nobody else in the small church in Mushin could play. Tunji had been picking out tunes on an old Casio at home for a year, entirely by ear. That morning he climbed onto the bench, found the key the choir leader was singing in and followed her through every song. When the service ended, the pastor laid his hand on the boy’s head in front of the whole congregation. “This one is anointed,” he said. “He will go far.”
For the next twenty-five years, people kept saying it. At youth camps, at weddings, at the parties where he played for the dancing late into the night, someone would always come up to him afterwards. “You are so gifted. God has really blessed you.” Aunties pressed folded naira notes into his hand. Visiting ministers asked who the boy on the keyboard was. He grew up inside a cloud of compliments.
What nobody noticed, Tunji included, was that he had stopped growing at about fourteen. He never learned to read music. He never practised scales. He played comfortably in three keys and avoided the rest. When a song moved somewhere unfamiliar, he covered it with volume and a few confident chords. He knew he was talented. Everyone told him so. It did not occur to him that talent might need work.
When he was thirty-six, the church appointed a new music director, a young man named Ikemefuna who had studied music formally. In his second week, Ikemefuna handed every instrumentalist a set of written charts for the Easter cantata. The arrangement was in E flat, with two key changes.
Tunji looked at the page for a long time. Then he folded it and put it in his pocket. At the first rehearsal he tried to play by ear and lost the choir twice. After the second rehearsal, Ikemefuna asked to speak to him. He was kind about it. He suggested that, just for the cantata, a seventeen-year-old girl in the youth choir who had been taking lessons for three years would play the main keyboard. Tunji could play the second keyboard on the simpler songs.
PunchlineOn Easter Sunday, Tunji sat at the second keyboard and listened to a teenager play music he could not read. He told me he did not hear a word of the sermon.
Living on potential
Most of us know someone like Tunji. Perhaps you are someone like Tunji. You were the bright student who never had to study, the natural speaker who never prepared, the gifted footballer who never trained as hard as the others, the child who could draw anything and stopped drawing at fifteen. People told you that you had potential, and they were right. But potential is a promise. It is not a fulfilment. A seed has the potential of a tree, and if it sits in a drawer for twenty years, it is still a seed.
The danger of a gift that comes easily is that it can convince its owner that development is unnecessary. Compliments become a substitute for growth. And because the gift is real, its owner can live for years on the reputation of what he might become, without noticing that he has stopped becoming it.
This teaching is about the responsibility that comes with receiving something from God. What God gives is a gift of grace. Nobody earns a natural ability, a spiritual gift, a sound mind, an opportunity or a measure of health. But what is received is meant to be cultivated. Gratitude for what God has entrusted becomes real when we take the trouble to develop it.
That is not a burden laid on top of grace. It is grace taken seriously.
The servant who kept it safe
Jesus told a parable about a man who went on a long journey and entrusted his property to his servants. “And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability” (Matthew 25:15). Much has been written about this parable, and in another teaching we have considered it from the angle of faithfulness in small responsibilities. Here I want to look at it from a different side: what the servants actually did with what they were given.
A talent was a very large sum of money. Our English word talent, meaning a natural ability, comes from this very parable, because readers over the centuries saw in it a picture of everything God gives us to use. Notice that the master distributed the talents “according to his several ability.” Ability and entrustment are related but distinct. The master gave each servant an amount suited to his capacity. What happened next was up to them.
“Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents” (Matthew 25:16). The word traded describes active engagement. The servant put the money to work. He bought and sold. He made decisions. He took risks. He did not sit on the money waiting for it to multiply by itself. Development required effort, attention and time.
And notice the time. “After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them” (Matthew 25:19). Growth does not happen overnight. The faithful servants had years of steady trading behind their doubled returns. There is no shortcut to developed ability. It is built over a long time by people who keep showing up.
Then there was the third servant. He “went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money” (Matthew 25:18). When the master returned, he dug it up and handed it back intact: “lo, there thou hast that is thine” (Matthew 25:25).
Think about what that servant had done. He had not lost the talent. He had not spent it on himself. He had kept it perfectly safe. In one sense he had preserved it exactly as it was given. And that was precisely the problem. The master had not entrusted the money in order to have it preserved. He had entrusted it in order to have it increased. “Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury” (Matthew 25:27). Even the most modest growth would have been something.
Tunji had kept his gift safe for twenty-five years. It was the same gift at thirty-six that it had been at fourteen. He had not lost it. He had simply never traded with it.
What happens to an unused gift
The master’s response to the third servant is severe:
Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This passage needs to be read with care. Jesus is not teaching that a believer’s acceptance before God rests on how productive he has been. Salvation is by grace through faith, not by the return on our abilities. The third servant’s deeper problem was what he believed about his master. “I knew thee that thou art an hard man” (Matthew 25:24). He did not know the master’s heart, and his fear produced paralysis. The parable warns against a life that claims to serve the Lord while having no real trust in Him at all.
But within that warning sits a principle that applies to every believer: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
Anyone who has learned a skill knows this is true at a very practical level. A language you use grows richer. A language you stop using fades. A musician who practises finds that each new technique makes the next one easier to learn. A musician who stops practising finds his fingers slowing within months. Abilities that are exercised expand. Abilities that are neglected shrink. God has built the world so that development builds on development, and neglect compounds neglect.
That should both warn and encourage us. It warns us that an undeveloped gift does not stay where it is indefinitely. Over time, it diminishes. But it also encourages us. The servant who began trading with what he had was given more. The way to grow is to begin using what you have, however modest it seems, and keep using it.
NuggetPotential is a promise, not a fulfilment. What God gives by grace is meant to be cultivated, and gratitude becomes real when we take the trouble to develop it.
“Neglect not the gift”
Paul wrote two letters to Timothy, his son in the faith, who was leading the church in Ephesus. Timothy was young, possibly timid, and facing opposition from older and more confident men. Paul wrote to him:
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
“Neglect not the gift that is in thee.” The Greek word translated neglect means to be careless about something, to fail to give it attention. It is the same word Jesus used in the parable of the wedding feast for those who “made light of it” (Matthew 22:5). Paul was not accusing Timothy of rebellion. He was warning him against the slow drift of inattention, which is how most gifts are actually lost.
Timothy’s gift had come to him in a remarkable way: “given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” It was a spiritual gift, confirmed by the elders of the church. And yet even a gift given this way needed attention. Grace does not remove responsibility. A gift that came through prophecy still had to be cultivated.
Paul’s instructions are practical. “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them.” The word translated meditate carries the sense of practising, attending to carefully, being occupied with. Give thyself wholly to them means to be absorbed in them. Development requires focused, sustained attention. A few verses earlier Paul had told Timothy, “give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Timothy 4:13). Timothy was to read, study and practise his gift of teaching.
Then comes the purpose: “that thy profiting may appear to all.” The word profiting means progress. It was used of advancing along a road. Paul expected Timothy’s growth to be visible. People in Ephesus should be able to see that their young leader was a better teacher this year than he had been last year.
And the final verse shows why it mattered: “for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.” Timothy’s development was not about his own reputation. It was about the people he served. When a gift is neglected, others suffer. When a gift is developed, others are helped.
“Stir up the gift of God”
In his second letter, written near the end of his life, Paul returned to the same theme:
Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
“Stir up the gift of God.” The Greek word here pictures someone rekindling a fire, blowing on embers until they flame up again. The gift had not gone out. But it had burned low. Paul was urging Timothy to fan it back into flame.
Then Paul gives the reason why gifts burn low: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear.” Fear is one of the great enemies of development. It was fear that made the third servant bury his talent. And it is often fear that keeps people living on potential. As long as you never really try, you can never really fail. You can go on being “gifted” without the risk of discovering how much work you still need to do. Many talented people avoid training precisely because training would expose what they do not yet know.
Tunji admitted this to me later. “I knew I could not read music,” he said. “But if I went for lessons, people would know too. It was easier to keep playing by ear and let them keep calling me anointed.”
Against that fear, God has given “power, and... love, and... a sound mind.” Power is the enabling of the Holy Spirit. Love is the right motive: a gift is developed for the good of others, not to protect our image. And a sound mind translates a word that includes the idea of self-discipline and self-control. The Spirit does not only give us passion. He gives us the steady discipline to practise, study and grow.
Sharpen the edge
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes has a short proverb that every gifted person should hear:
If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
“If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength.” A woodcutter with a blunt axe can still cut down a tree. But he will have to swing harder and longer. He will exhaust himself. A woodcutter who stops to sharpen his axe will do the same work with less strain and better results. “But wisdom is profitable to direct.” Wisdom tells you when to stop and sharpen.
Undeveloped gifts are blunt axes. They still work, after a fashion. Tunji could still play. But he had to work much harder to cover what he did not know, and the results were often uneven. Training is the sharpening of the edge. It feels like a delay when you are eager to work. In the end it makes the work better and the worker less weary.
Scripture describes believers whose maturity has come “by reason of use” (Hebrews 5:14). Senses are exercised. Skills are practised. Even Jesus, in His true humanity, “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Growth is not a sign that something was wrong with you. It is the normal pattern of life in God’s world.
Scripture also shows us what developed skill looks like when it is offered to God. When King Saul needed a musician to play for him, his servants went looking for someone skilled:
Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well. And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him.
The first thing said about David here is that he was “cunning in playing.” In the King James Version, cunning means skilful. The servants were not looking for someone who could merely make noise. They wanted a man “that can play well.” And David, who would become Israel’s great psalmist and king, was first known for a skill he had developed in obscurity, playing to sheep on the hills of Bethlehem long before anyone in the palace had heard his name.
Notice how the servant describes him: skilful in playing, valiant, prudent in matters, “and the LORD is with him.” Skill and God’s presence are mentioned in the same breath. They were not in competition. David’s anointing did not make practice unnecessary, and his practice did not make him less dependent on God.
The psalms themselves call for this combination: “Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise” (Psalm 33:3). Notice the word skilfully. God is worthy of our best, and our best includes developed ability. When Solomon built the temple, he sent for a craftsman named Hiram who “was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass” (1 Kings 7:14). The house of God was built by people who had worked hard at their craft. And Proverbs observes, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings” (Proverbs 22:29).
This applies far beyond music. The teacher who studies how children learn, the accountant who keeps up with changes in regulation, the preacher who learns to read the Bible in its context, the mother who learns what she can about her child’s health condition, the trader who learns to keep proper records: all are developing what God has entrusted to them.
The field of the slothful
Proverbs contains a quiet description of what neglect looks like over time:
I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.
Solomon walked past a field and noticed that it was overgrown with thorns and nettles, and that its stone wall had fallen down. Nobody had set out to ruin that field. Its owner had not made a dramatic decision to abandon it. “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.” It was a little at a time. A rehearsal skipped here. A book never opened there. A training opportunity declined because next year would be more convenient. Then, suddenly, “So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth.” The consequences of gradual neglect arrive all at once.
Notice what Solomon did: “Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.” He learned from someone else’s field. That is part of the purpose of this teaching. You may be able to look at your own gifts honestly and see where thorns have begun to grow, before the wall falls down.
What does trading with a gift look like in practice? It is usually less dramatic than people expect. It means finding someone who does the thing better than you and asking them to teach you. It means practising the parts you find difficult, not only the parts you already enjoy. Tunji could have played his three comfortable keys for another twenty years. Growth would have meant spending time in the other nine. It means asking for honest feedback and receiving it without defending yourself. It means taking the small opportunities to serve that stretch you a little, and reviewing afterwards what went well and what did not. And it means doing these things regularly, over a long time, rather than in one burst of enthusiasm after a conference.
None of this requires a large budget. Some training costs money, and where it is wise and affordable it is a good investment. But much development happens through borrowed books, free resources, a mentor’s time and the discipline of daily practice. The woodcutter does not need a new axe. He needs to stop and sharpen the one he has.
Developing without striving
PunchlineSome cautions are needed, because this subject can easily be turned into another kind of pressure.
First, development does not earn God’s love. You are already accepted in Christ. You develop your gifts as a child who wants to serve the Father well, not as a servant anxiously trying to keep his job. If the motive becomes fear of God’s disapproval, you have fallen back into the third servant’s mistake about the master.
Second, development requires rest. A gift is not served by exhaustion. Practising until you burn out is not faithfulness. Rhythms of work and rest, of effort and recovery, are part of how abilities grow.
Third, you cannot develop everything. Some people have many abilities, and it would be impossible to cultivate all of them seriously. Part of wisdom is choosing which gifts to give your main attention in this season, often in consultation with people who know you well.
Fourth, limitations are real. Illness, disability, age and circumstances may prevent a person from developing an ability as fully as they once hoped. God does not hold us responsible for what we cannot do. The master gave “to every man according to his several ability,” and he expected returns accordingly.
Fifth, it is not too late. If you look back on years of neglect, do not bury the next talent out of shame. God’s mercy is greater than your wasted years. When Israel had lost harvest after harvest to plagues of locusts, God promised through Joel, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). That promise was first spoken to a nation recovering from devastation, but it reveals the heart of a God who delights to restore. Begin today with what you have.
Two months after the Easter cantata, Tunji went to see Ikemefuna. He told me it was one of the hardest conversations of his life. He asked whether the young music director would teach him to read music.
Ikemefuna said yes, on one condition: Tunji would join the beginners’ theory class he was running for the youth on Saturday mornings. Tunji was thirty-six. Most of the class were between twelve and sixteen. On the first Saturday, he sat at the back and said nothing. One of the boys recognised him and whispered to the girl beside him, “That is Brother Tunji. He plays for weddings.” Tunji said he wanted to disappear.
He did not disappear. He kept going. He practised scales at home every night for thirty minutes, on the same old keyboard he had owned since he was a teenager, while his children did their homework at the dining table. It took him eight months to read comfortably in all twelve keys. Some weeks he wanted to quit. Some weeks he felt as if he were going backwards.
The following Easter, Ikemefuna handed out charts for the cantata again. This time the arrangement moved through three key changes. Tunji read it at the first rehearsal and played it through without stopping. The seventeen-year-old girl, now eighteen, played second keyboard beside him. At the end of the rehearsal, she leaned over. “Brother Tunji,” she said, “you are reading.”
“I am reading,” he said.
He told me later that playing for that service was different from anything he had experienced in twenty-five years of compliments. “When they used to call me anointed, I felt like a fraud,” he said. “Now I know what I can do, and I know what I still need to learn. And I know God was not finished with my gift. I was.”
Perhaps God has given you something real that you have been keeping safe for years. People still tell you how gifted you are. You know, if you are honest, that you stopped growing a long time ago. The master’s money is intact in the ground. Today, dig it up. Neglect not the gift. Stir it up. Sharpen the edge. Find someone who knows more than you, and humble yourself to learn. The God who gave it is not a hard master. He is the One who rejoices to say, at the end of a long time, “Well done.”
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What gift or ability has God entrusted to you that people often praise but that you have not seriously developed?
- The third servant kept his talent perfectly safe. In what ways have you mistaken preservation for faithfulness?
- Paul links neglected gifts with “the spirit of fear.” What fears have kept you from training, learning or practising?
- Where is your axe blunt? What would it mean to stop and sharpen it?
- Who could you humble yourself to learn from, even if they are younger or less experienced in other ways?
This Week
Choose one ability God has given you that you have neglected. Write down one honest sentence about where it stands today and one concrete step you will take to develop it this month: a course, a book, a teacher, a daily practice. Set aside a specific time each day this week, even fifteen minutes, to work on it. Tell one trusted person what you are doing and ask them to check on you in four weeks.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for every gift You have entrusted to me. Forgive me for the times I have lived on potential, enjoying the compliments while neglecting the growth. Forgive me for burying what You gave me out of fear or pride. I receive Your Spirit of power, love and a sound mind. Help me to stir up the gift that is in me, to give myself wholly to it and to learn with humility from those who can teach me. Let my progress be seen, not for my glory, but for the good of the people I serve. Where I have wasted years, restore what the locust has eaten. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.