{"id":37357,"date":"2021-06-25T11:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/honoring-our-gifts\/"},"modified":"2021-06-25T11:24:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:24:00","slug":"honoring-our-gifts","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/honoring-our-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Our Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Actor Charlie Hunnam has recently begun a transition to writing. About to turn 40, he had reached a place in life for some evaluation. Hunnam knew he would be out of work for a while due to COVID-19. And in his heart, there were stories that he had been carrying around. He shares, &quot;They had been sort of given to me like gifts. And I wasn&#39;t honoring the gifts.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>As he started the process of honoring these gifts, Hunnam found new energy. He started to get up around 4:00 am daily to go on a short hike. He would be back home, showered, and ate breakfast by 6:00 am. Then he would sit down to write until 7:00 pm. That&#39;s 13 hours! He explains the sensation this way:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I just started to get this really &ldquo;now&rdquo; feeling of life. Like there&#39;s nothing else in the world that would be better for me than what I&#39;m doing right now. And the result of it was more positive than anything I&#39;ve ever done in my career. &#8230; And I&#39;ve worked really, really hard to cultivate this gift and be proud of the work that I&#39;m able to do now. But part of me feels like it&#39;s an uphill struggle.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>But when I write, I feel as though I&#39;m honoring the innate gifts that God gave me. I feel like I really can do this [stuff] at a high level. And that&#39;s a feeling that I&#39;ve never had in my life before, in any regards. I feel like we all have one or two innate talents, and a task of life is to identify those and then do that as much as you possibly can. Because that&#39;s where the joy and the presence is going to come from. That&#39;s where the grace is going to come from.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3372,3552,3749,3773,3868,3895,3962,3997,4052,4053,4054,4441,4442,4748,5048,5077,5078,5120,5312],"tax_ctp_topics":[384,393,403],"class_list":["post-37357","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-accountability","tax_ctp_tags-celebrities","tax_ctp_tags-dedication","tax_ctp_tags-development","tax_ctp_tags-energy","tax_ctp_tags-evaluation","tax_ctp_tags-family-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-focus","tax_ctp_tags-giftedness","tax_ctp_tags-gifts","tax_ctp_tags-gifts-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-meaning","tax_ctp_tags-meaning-of-life","tax_ctp_tags-purpose","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-gifts","tax_ctp_tags-stewardship","tax_ctp_tags-stewardship-of-abilities-gifts","tax_ctp_tags-talents","tax_ctp_tags-writing"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Honoring Our Gifts - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/honoring-our-gifts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Honoring Our Gifts - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Actor Charlie Hunnam has recently begun a transition to writing. About to turn 40, he had reached a place in life for some evaluation. Hunnam knew he would be out of work for a while due to COVID-19. And in his heart, there were stories that he had been carrying around. 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