The Diamond in You

Many years ago in Sub-Saharan Africa, a farmer who owned a vast portion of land on a certain day, heard other people talking about diamonds. Everybody was searching for diamond, as you know it is a very important mineral that soon makes its owner very rich.
This farmer had a stream which passed through his farm. Now he had never seen a diamond before and so could not recognise one. But since everybody was looking for a diamond, he too decided he was going to search for it too, for he was so much in need of money to take care of his home. So he said to himself “why should I stay here in the farm when all my colleagues, neighbours, and countrymen are running after diamond?” he thought.

So he sold his farm someone else and embarked on the on the journey in search of diamonds. On a certain day as the new farmer was tilling the soil very close to the shores of the stream, with his tool he struck a very beautiful stone and then he picked it up, and then placed it close to the fire as he had had his rest towards the setting sun. A friend later came around and, picked it up and said, “Do you know what you have here?” The farmer said, No. His friend declared, “This is a Diamond!!” With so much resounding joy and enthusiasm, they hurried back to the farm and found quite a lot more. In no distant time, both farmers became very rich.

Now the first owner of the farm was still going about looking for diamonds not knowing that what he was desperately looking for was in the farmland he sold. Later on he got to know that the farm he sold had enough diamond that could have made him a billionaire for life. The news came as real shock to him so much that he committed suicide. The Truth is this, there’s a diamond in You!.

We are living in a time where everybody is struggling for their lives, distressed and depressed, searching for greener pastures and happiness in other places, people or even things. Many people just like the poor farmer have many good things deposited in them which are more than enough to make them successful in life, but somehow they are ignorant of this. Instead they these great potentials in them to waste away by believing that maybe they don’t have what it takes yet, maybe they are unqualified for the task ahead, maybe they don’t fit in to the situation they find themselves in.

This is ignorance – the lack of vision. Where there is no vision – insight and foresight - there will be no goal, purpose or direction. Those who accept their present position as permanent, have no vision. Dead minds have no vision. There is the need to possess a mental awareness of the immeasurable potential in you, for this alone is a standing force that will help you to greater hieghts and affect the world around you.

GET A VISION

God is the giver of the right kind of vision. You discover yourself in God. He helps you know your worth, your potentials and your destiny. When God gives a vision, it is a good vision, he makes you to understand who and what you are “…..fearfully and marvellously made….” He helps you to understand that you have been born to show forth his praise through your success and achievement in life.

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The day a man discovers something in him worth dying for, that is the day he is reborn and worthy to live. If all you have ever been doing is to merely live a life of mediocrity and nonchalance regarding the affairs of your goal and focus in life. If all you ever want to be is to achieve the success of others and live in their shadows, if all you ever want to be is a replacement of someone who had been in like manner, if all you want to do in life is to build the same structures that have been built over and over again, then you must believe that you are merely trying to become a living re-incarnate of a dead man in a living body. The destiny of every individual is never tied to the past of another but to the future of the potential deposited in him.

Your Talent – a Diamond

God has endowed everyone of his children with one talent or the other. You have a talent, skill, potential that can make you really successful. Talents are natural abilities, special and peculiar to individuals. One who has a talent for something finds it easy to do that thing with free flowing interest. You will therefore have to discover that God given ability in you – your talent. For these could be your diamonds – indeed, they are!

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Do you know what your talents truly are, have you ever taken time to discover yourself and your divinely endowed talent, or are you acting like the ignorant and desperate farmer, going about with different people of different destinies with the aim of trying to discover yourself and your in-born talent. For you must take a pause at this very juncture and ask yourself before you make that one final irreparable mistake of selling out the treasure in you, take a moment and discover yourself.
Do you know what your talents are? Think of the things you love to do. The things that interest you the most and you derive joy and pleasure in them. I mean positive and useful things, no matter how mundane they may seem to you.
Maybe it is painting, or writing, or organising or just fixing things up. That could be your talent. You may be the type that may never be able to figure out exactly what your talent might be due to difficulties and struggles in life, hence you choose to doubt yourself and the seed in you. But you’ve got to know this, that whatever challenges we face in life are only shields and amours that we have to put on as our strengths and experiences. Just as a gift is a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it, whatever it touches prospers.

Develop your Talent

You should not just stop at knowing that your talents are there. For it will do you no serious good to just know that you have an acre of diamond without moving ahead to develop and use them. When you discover your talent, there’s a need to develop them, for they are not useful in the raw natural state. Imagine if crude oil were to remain in its raw form, then the world would still be transported by chariots and horses. So it is with an undeveloped talent, you need to improve on your skill, you need to know more about it. Try to find out all you possibly can about that gift and everything that can be learnt about it.

This is where education and training becomes necessary. For they tend to make you more proficient in the use of that talent. Note that I said education and not school. For there’s a big difference between schooling and getting educated, for a properly educated talent could pioneer and empty schooled mind.
Also there is a need to practice. “Practice” they say “makes for perfection”. You may never be able to play that musical instrument well if you don’t practice often. You can’t be a star at basketball if you don’t visit the court to practice. So, try doing that one thing you love to do.

Demonstrate your Talent

This is the point in which your diamond can turn you to a billionaire. You can never become a billionaire if you have those diamonds washed and refined and stocked up in your closet without letting anybody see them and without trading them off for money.

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If you have a talent and have developed it but won’t allow people to know about it, and you do not demonstrate it, it will get you nowhere. For your gift will make room for you and bring you before great men only if you demonstrate it for others to see.

So use your talent, start whatever opportunity you have. Let’s not lose another person to a senseless death, substance abuse, gang violence, suicide because of low self-esteem and the inability to discover the useful talents embedded in us. Let us not negatively demonstrate our talents for the hurt and destruction of our fellow man. For it fails to become a talent if it hurts someone else unjustly.

Go ahead and do what you can, if there’s no opportunity to demonstrate your talent, try looking for one. You could even create one. Do something everytime. However you must know that your talent will only do you good and the entire world only if you choose to demonstrate it, use it in the right way and with the right intentions. I you do not want to lose your God – given talent, then you must use it aright.

Author: D.E Abraham