Take courage!

The LORD bless you and keep you!  The LORD let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you!  The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!

If you feel left out, ignored, forgotten, devalued or unappreciated, take courage!  "Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart."

Notice how unimportant the great King David was in the beginning (1 Samuel 16:1-13).  He was so unimportant that his dad, Jesse, didn't even invite him to Samuel's big ceremonial sacrifice!  Maybe he was too valuable in the work of sheep herding to be considered important for anything else.  Jesse didn't even inform Samuel of David's existence when the holy man asked to see all of his sons.  If your heart is with God, if your heart loves to serve Him, if your heart trusts God to do what is best for your life, and if your heart wants to be obedient to His ways, God will raise you up.  God is, in fact, already preparing you for something important to do.

Don't underestimate how important you are to him right now!  The responsibilities you have today are very important for the kingdom of God.  Even if all you're doing is earning money in a job to put food on your table and a roof over your family's head, which is extremely important to God.  If you do little more than care for the children that He's given you, the importance of what you are doing is beyond measure.

But be ready!  What you’re doing today is a preparation for a special anointing that God will give you in a surprising tomorrow.  Because that's the way He works all the time.  He uses everything about today to prepare us for a future mission, even though we're not aware of being prepared, so that we can do greater and greater works for His kingdom.

The Lord has much need of your gifts and talents, experiences and skills, training and wisdom.  There is no one else who can offer to the kingdom of God exactly what you have to offer.  He can put it all to very good use.  And He wants to!  He plans to!  But too often we say no; we fail to understand how much He's already prepared us, and so we feel intimidated by the possibilities.  We need to trust in God rather than our limited understanding.

If a hundred years from now you were to be canonized a saint, what specialty would your patronage be? That’s a serious question!  We are called to be holy, even saintly.  Even if we’re never officially canonized by the Church, we are in fact headed for heaven because of our love for Christ.  What would the people on earth ask you to pray for when you reach the throne of God? 

This is what we’ve been anointed to do now, serving God with our life here on earth.