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We may relish moments of solitude—but a lifetime of it?  No way. Many of us, however, are too fluent in the language of loneliness. The kids used to need me…the business once needed me…my spouse never needs me.  Lonely people fight feelings of insignificance.

What do you do? How do you cope with such cries for significance? Well, some stay busy; others stay drunk. Some buy pets; others buy lovers. Some seek therapy. Yet only a few seek God. He invites all of us to do so. God’s ultimate cure for the common life takes you to a manger. “…and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). There’s no withholding tax on God’s with promise. He is with us. God is with us!

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God gives gifts, not miserly, but abundantly! And he doesn’t give gifts randomly, but carefully– “to each according to each one’s unique ability” (Matthew 25:15). Remember, no one else has our talents. No one. God elevates you from common-hood by matching your unique abilities to custom-made assignments.

“Well done, good and faithful servant,” Jesus will say to some (Matthew 25:23). Maybe your dad never praised you or your teachers always criticized you, but God will applaud you. And to have him call you good… well, when he does, it counts! Only he can make bad sinners good. And only he can make the frail faithful. “Well done, good and faithful…” The point? Use your uniqueness to take great risks for God! The only mistake is not to risk making one!

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Tucked away in the cedar chest of my memory is a Sunday school teacher in a small West Texas church.  She gave each of us a can of crayons and a sketch of Jesus torn from a coloring book. We didn’t illustrate pictures of ourselves, we colored the Son of God.  We used what she gave us.  No blue crayon for the sky? Just make it purple. If Jesus’ hair is red, the teacher won’t mind. She taught us to paint Jesus with our own colors.

God made you to do likewise.  He made you unique so you could illustrate Christ.  Make a big deal out of him.  Don’t waste years embellishing your own image. Who needs to see your face? And who doesn’t need to see God’s? Besides, God promises no applause for self-promoters.  But great reward awaits God-promoters. “Good work!  You did your job well.”  (Matthew 25:23).

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For the love of more—you might lose your purpose! Just because someone gives you advice, a job, or a promotion, you don’t have to accept it.  Let your uniqueness define your path of life.  Isaiah prayed, “You, LORD, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

Before you change your job title, examine your perspective toward life.  As the Japanese proverb says:  “Even if you sleep in a thousand-mat room, you can only sleep on one mat.” Success is not defined by position or pay scale but by this: Doing the most what you do the best.

Parents, give that counsel to your kids.  Tell them to do what they love to do so well that someone pays them to do it. “Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have” (Hebrews 13:5).

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Jesus warns, “Be on your guard against every form of greed” (Luke 12:15).  John D. Rockefeller was asked, “How much money does it take to satisfy a man?” He answered, “Just a little more.” Wise was the one who wrote, “Whoever loves money never has money enough money; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

Urge your mate to choose satisfaction over salary.  Better to be married to a happy person with a thin wallet than a miserable person with a thick one. As Proverbs 13:7 says, “a pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.” Pursue the virtue of contentment because “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). Consult your design.  Consult your Designer.  But never consult your greed.

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Be careful!  In a desire to be great, one might cease being any good. Not every teacher is equipped to be a principal.  Not every carpenter has the skill to head a crew. Not every musician should conduct an orchestra.  A promotion might promote a person right out of their sweet spot.  For the love of more, a person might lose their purpose. Greed makes a poor job counselor.

Examine your gifts; know your strengths. Romans 12:3 says, “Have a sane estimate of your capabilities.”  Proverbs 15:16 says, “It is better to have little with fear for the LORD than to have great treasure with turmoil.”  So, don’t let the itch for things or the ear for applause derail you from your God-intended design!

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Listen to the way God described the builder, Bezalel, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, giving him great wisdom, intelligence and skill in all kinds of crafts…” (Exodus 31:3-5). Can you hear the pleasure in God’s voice?

When you do the most what you do the best, you pop the pride buttons on the vest of God. In the movie, Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell defended his devotion to running by telling his sister, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.” When do you feel God’s pleasure? When do you look up into the heavens and say, “I was made to do this?” When it comes to being you, you were made for the part. So speak your lines with confidence!

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The apostle Paul said, “Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life” (Galatians 6:4-5 MSG).

Before Thomas Merton followed Christ, he followed money, fame and society. He shocked many of his colleagues when he exchanged it all for the life of a Trappist monk. Many years later a friend visited the monastery and could see no important difference in him. “Tom,” he said, “you haven’t changed at all.” “Why should I?” Tom responded. “Here, our duty is to be more like ourselves, not less.”

God never called you to be anyone other than you. But he does call you to be the best you that you can be. The big question is, at your best, who are you?

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God made you and broke the mold! Every single baby is a brand-new idea from the mind of God. Scan history for your replica; you won’t find it. God tailor-made you. You aren’t one of many bricks in the mason’s pile or one of a dozen bolts in the mechanic’s drawer. You are it!  And if you aren’t you, we don’t get you. The world misses out.

You offer a gift to society that no one else brings. When you and I do the most what we do the best for the glory of God, the Bible says that we are “marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body” (Romans 12:5). You play no small part, because there is no small part to be played. God “shaped each person in turn” (Psalm 33:15). We need you to be you. And YOU need you to be you!

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Are you living in your sweet spot? Doing what you do well—what you’ve always loved to do? That last question trips up a lot of folks. God wouldn’t let me do what I like to do—would he?  Yes, he would. “God is working in you to help you want to do and be able to do what pleases him” (Philippians 2:13).   Scripture says, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

Your Father is too gracious to assign you to a life of misery. See your desires as gifts to heed rather than longings to suppress. What have you always done well and loved to do? Read your life backward. Re-relish your moments of success and satisfaction. In the merger of the two, you will find your uniqueness!

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“The child is the father of the man,” wrote William Wordsworth. Want direction for the future? Then read your life backward.

Job placement experts asked over seventy thousand people this question: “What things have you done in life that you enjoyed doing and believe you did well?” In every case people reverted to the same pattern of functioning. Or to put it succinctly, our past presents our future.

The Bible says,  “it is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others” (Ephesians 2:10). You are heaven’s custom design. What God said about Jeremiah, he said about you: “Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work!” (Jeremiah 1:5 NCV).

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You are more than statistical chance, a marriage of heredity and society. Thanks to God, you have been “sculpted from nothing into something.” (Psalm 139:15). He made you you-nique. Secular thinking, as a whole, doesn’t buy this. Society simply says, “You can be anything you want to be.” But can you?

God never prefabs or mass-produces people. “I make all things new,” he declares! Revelation 21:5). So, you can do something no one else can do in a fashion no one else can do it.  “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that” (Galatians 6:4). When you do the most what you do the best, you put a smile on God’s face. What could be better than that?

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Scripture says “There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

I just heard a groan. “But Max, my work is simply that—work! It pays my bills.” “Job satisfaction? I have no clue how to find my skill.” “Honor God? After the mess I’ve made of my life?”

Here’s the big idea: Use your uniqueness to make a big deal out of God every day of your life. At the convergence of all three– what you do; why you do it; and where you do it– is the cure for the common life. It’s your sweet spot! You have one, you know. Your life has a plot; your years have a theme. You can do something in a manner that no one else can. And when you find it and do it, another sweet spot is discovered!

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God views your work worthy of its own engraved command. “You shall work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest” (Exodus 34:21).

Whether you work at home or in the marketplace, your work matters to God. And your work matters to society. Cities need plumbers. Bones break. We need people to repair the first and set the last. Someone has to raise kids, raise cane, and manage the kids who raise cane. Whether you log on or lace up for the day, you imitate God. Jesus said, “My Father never stops working, and so I keep working, too” (John 5:17).

Your career consumes half of your lifetime. Shouldn’t it broadcast God? Don’t those forty to sixty hours a week belong to him as well?

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God endows us with gifts so we can make him known. Period! God endues the Olympian with speed, the salesman with savvy, the surgeon with skill. Why? The big answer is to make a big to-do out of God. To brandish him…to herald him.

God has given gifts to each of us from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well, then God will be given glory. Make it your life’s encore to the end of time that “he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything! (I Peter 4:10-11). When you magnify your Maker with your strengths, your days will grow suddenly sweet. And to really sweeten your world, use your uniqueness to make a big deal about God—every day of your life!

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The Bible says that each person is given something to do that shows who God is! (1 Corinthians 12:7). When God gives an assignment, he also gives the skill. Look at your life. What do you consistently do well? What do you love to do? And what do others love for you to do?

So much for the excuse, I don’t have anything to offer. Enough of the self-deprecating, I can’t do anything. And enough of its arrogant opposite, “I have to do everything.” Imitate the Apostle Paul who said, “Our goal is to stay within the boundaries of God’s plan for us” (2 Corinthians 10:13). Extract your uniqueness. “Kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you!” (2 Timothy 1:6). And do so to make a big deal out of God!

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Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you! God custom-designed you for a one-of-a-kind assignment—“to each according to each one’s unique ability” (Matthew 25:15).

“The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Did the apostle Paul say, The Spirit has given some of us?…or a few of us?  No! “The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others.”

You don’t have to do everything! You are not God’s solution to society, but you are a solution in society. Don’t worry about the skills you don’t have. Don’t covet the strengths others do have. Just extract your uniqueness—to God’s glory!

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God has clothed us. He protects us with a cloak of love. Wouldn’t you love to do the same for him? Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me” (Matthew 25:36-40).

Have you ever heard anyone gossip about someone you know?  Well, I heard that she. . .  Oh, but didn’t you know that she. . . or Let me tell you what a friend told me about him. . .”  Then all of a sudden it’s your turn. Everybody is picking your friend apart. What have you to say? Here is what loves says: Love says nothing. Love stays silent. “Love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8).  If love says anything, love speaks words of defense; words of kindness; and words of protection. Do you know anyone who could use some protection? Of course you do.

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Love always protects! (1 Corinthians 13:6-7). We hide; God seeks. We bring sin; He brings a sacrifice. We try figs; He brings the robe of righteousness. And we are left to sing the song of the prophet, “He has covered me with clothes of salvation and wrapped me with a coat of goodness, like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding, like a bride dressed in jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

Do you own a cloak of love? Do you know anyone who needs one? When you cover someone with concern, you are fulfilling what Paul had in mind when he wrote the phrase, “love—always protects.” A root meaning of the word is “to cover or conceal.” Protect conveys the ideas of covering with a cloak of love; covered with encouragement; covered with tenderhearted care. Ever thought of your Creator as a clothier? He has given you your finest cloak of love!

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Wouldn’t it be great if love were like a cafeteria line? Endless options to pick and choose what we want. But it wouldn’t be love! Scripture says, “Love. . .bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

But how can we love those we find difficult to love? Such love isn’t easy. Not even for Jesus.  “You people have no faith. How long must I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19). To know Jesus asked such a question reassures us. But to hear how he answered it will change us.  How long?  Long enough for every sin to soak in my sinless soul so that heaven will turn in horror until my swollen lips pronounce the final transaction– “It is finished.” How long? Until it kills me.

Jesus bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, and endured all things. Every single one.

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