It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.
Interpretation
True greatness comes from emulating the character of Jesus rather than exceptional talents.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes that the qualities that make a person truly great are not their natural talents, but rather their ability to reflect and embody the virtues and character of Jesus Christ. It suggests that striving to be like Jesus—through love, humility, compassion, and righteousness—brings one closer to true greatness in life, overshadowing mere talent alone.
In practice
During a church sermon discussing the importance of character over talent.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
All information is good, even when it is bad.
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.
No matter what, you must let your inner _x000D_ light guide you out of the darkness.
You may look upon some providences once and again, and see little or nothing in them, but look "seven times," that is, meditate often upon them, and you will see their increasing glory, like that increasing cloud (1 Kings 18:44).
If I had lost a leg, I would tell them, instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was 'over it'. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
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