Sometime ago, I watched a movie titled, "The Ultimate Gift". The movie portrayed the picture of a man whose grandfather left with the grandest inheritance; yet, he was not aware, neither was he prepared for it. Prior to his full possession of the Ultimate gift, he had the privilege of collecting some gifts – but not the ultimate. I learnt a lesson from that movie that the ultimate gift will ultimately be received at the ultimate period of preparation.
While that movie relates with our subject matter here; it is not the same. Every man has assignment: sometimes such assignment comes from the parents, elders, civil authorities or even friends – but the most important assignment that every man must know and accept to live and die for is what we will be discussing in this article.
According to the book of Genesis 1:26, God CREATED man in His image and likeness and gave him dominion over everything on the earth. In the book of Genesis 2:7, God FORMED (MADE) man from the dust of the ground and gave him a portion of His own Spirit – the breathe of life. From that moment, man became a living being – a spirit creature of God that has a soul and lives inside a body of clay(or earth).
If you are very inquisitive, I believe the question that should be welling up in your mind is, "why all this?". If you recollect a little, you would realize that man was CREATED and given dominion; and later, man was FORMED and given the Spirit of God. The question is, what for? The answer to that question is also written in the same chapter of Genesis 2. In the book of Genesis 2:15, God then TOOK the man and PUT him in the garden of Eden TO TEND and TO KEEP it. In you are familiar with the mission statement of many organizations, you would have seen that each statement usually begin with "To". That "to" is not an accidental usage, it describes the assignment or better still, the mission that must be accomplished in time.
Therefore, according to the Scriptures, the most important assignment of man is to tend and to keep his (and her) garden. You may then want to know the implication of the garden. The garden is simply the gift of God. Remember, Adam did not build this garden, neither was the creation of the garden his knowledge – he was simply taken and put there by God. Therefore, every man's garden is every man's gift. Indeed, every man is gifted by God for relevance on the earth – and the most important assignment of any man is to tend and to keep his (or her) gift.
Some people are gifted in teaching, some are gifted in engineering, while some are gifted in artistic works – however, every man is gifted in something. Your most important responsibility is therefore to tend and to keep your own gift. To tend is to care for something, we may also say that to tend is to grow something or to cultivate something; while to keep is to guard or protect or sustain a thing. Hence,the most important assignment of every man is to grow his gift and to sustain it for his or her relevance on the earth.
According to the book of Proverbs 18:16, "A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men." If we understand that Scripture carefully, we would realize that prayer is not meant to substitute for our gifts; neither is fasting. All that are meant to help us connect effectively with God; however, to connect effectively with our God-given purpose on the earth and to become relevant in the scheme of things; we must not only discover our OWN gift, we must grow it and sustain it for life – far be it from us that we become an EX in our own area of gifting – our relevance on this earth must be for life!
