Seeing the Gifts God Has Given Us

At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is Sanyin. She is a CEO Coach, Author, and the Executive Director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at Duke University where she helps leaders launch and create value by focusing on mindset, behavioral change, and team and culture building

1 Peter 4:10

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

I’ve just gone through the book of Acts with my church. There's a lot there. And so some of the things I've been thinking about in relation to that is the sense of control. And this relates to leadership, too, because the more successful we become or the more validation there seems to be, the more we start to think that we actually have control over everything.

But that's such an illusion. God has control, we don't. And it's about being in the moment and being responsive to what he's calling us to do. And part of that is also just really being appreciative of the gifts that we have around us. This is also in 1 Peter. How often do we take the gifts we have in and around us for granted until we can't anymore? How often do we think about that? You know, our children's health. That's a gift.

And I think when we see more of the world as these gifts given to us by God, we're going to have a sense of wonder. And with that sense of wonder, the sense of gratitude will turn to a sense of stewardship. And we are stewards. We’re stewards. So how do we want to be good and faithful stewards? 

So those are some of the things that have been occupying my mind quite a bit as we're going through the Book of Acts and as I think about the world and the things I'm struggling with. Asking myself how do we be menders, how do we be stewards, and how do we retain the sense of seeing the goodness and the beauty that God has gifted us. It's all around us.