Challenge 44. Blog 26

This is the second blog of a two-part series about discovering and using your spiritual gifts. Click here to read the first blog in the series, including biblical background about spiritual gifts.

Three Stories

Penny

Several years ago, when I was a pastor of discipleship and leadership at a church in Pittsburgh, Penny (not her real name), a new church member, told me she didn’t think she had any spiritual gifts. When I asked Penny what gave her that impression, she told me that she took an online spiritual gifts assessment from a reputable website, but no spiritual gifts stood out among the rest.

Penny was a new believer, young, eager to serve God and others, and somewhat shy. She had a successful career, and she dearly loved her husband and children. But she did not feel drawn to serving in any particular way in the church.

However, she began to tell me the names of several people she admired in the church, and she spoke remarkably perceptively and positively about them. After we talked for a while, she agreed that she might have the spiritual gift of prophecy, which is speaking God’s encouragement and direction for people.

I asked Penny if she had ever told these people what she thought about them, and she had not. She decided to do that and see what happened. After that, God did indeed start developing her spiritual gifts of prophecy and encouragement. Soon, Penny felt God’s prompting to join the prayer team, through which she signed up to be available after church services to pray for people. Praying out loud was out of her comfort zone, but her desire to encourage people was so strong that she decided to try it. God blessed her and grew her, and He blessed other people through her.

Barb

Barb was also a relatively new believer, in her sixties. She led a small group with great wisdom and love.

Seemingly out of the blue, as I prayed for God to provide new teachers for the foundational class in our discipleship training program, Barb’s face kept coming to my mind, even though she had never taught before. She would not be a teacher in the traditional sense of lecturing, but she was a perfect fit for the relational, lead-by-example environment we needed for that class.

When I asked Barb to teach the class, she literally gasped and sputtered her amazement. Barb and I had served together in other contexts—and we had great mutual respect for each other—so she didn’t immediately decline, instead thanking me and saying she’d pray about it. Her first comment was that she thought she was too old to start teaching now. My reply was that she’d been teaching her entire life, even before she started following Christ, through relationships and by example.

Barb became one of our most fruitful teachers. Her story beautifully illustrates the fact that different people express the same spiritual gift in uniquely different ways. What a joy! And all for God’s glory and His purposes!

Ruby Jane

Ruby Jane grew up in the country, exploring the woods on foot—and the backroads on her bicycle—when such things were safer than they are now. She delighted in the beauty and order of God’s creation, so that decades later, she continued to prefer going barefoot to wearing shoes. Ruby also loved books and learning, the written and spoken word, and the new worlds opening to her through her imagination. For decades, she wrote down her thoughts, plans, and goals in journals, first in handwriting and then on computers.

I am Ruby Jane, even though I go by “R.J.” now. Even as a child and through the present time, God birthed and grew my spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and teaching.

Take First Steps for Discovering Your Spiritual Gifts

The three stories above illustrate how God starts developing spiritual gifts within us and how we can begin to recognize them in ourselves.

Below are 4 First Steps for discovering your spiritual gifts:

1. The best way to discover your spiritual gifts is to try doing things you believe you would enjoy that would also bring people closer to Jesus or accomplish His purposes in the world. 

So that you might realize what it looks like to "try doing things," below are some examples of “first serves” for some of the spiritual gifts:

• Teaching: Ask someone—a Sunday school teacher or another leader—if you could try teaching a class or a part of a class.
• Evangelism: Tell someone at work something about Jesus or your experience with Him.
• Helping: Volunteer to help someone in your church or community in a way that might help people experience the love of Jesus.
• Giving: Give some extra money to your church or to an organization or a cause that helps people to experience the love of Jesus.
• Leadership: Realize that you might influence other people to meet or grow in Christ, and take the next step to do that more—i.e. asking another leader how you might help him or her lead in some way.
• Encouragement: Tell someone how you think God wants to encourage him or her.
• Administration: Volunteer to help organize something in your church or community that shows people the love of Jesus.
• Apostleship: Ask your pastor or another Christian leader how you might explore your desire to be a pastor or another kind of spiritual leader someday.
• Hospitality: Host something, i.e. a small group in your home, a front door at your church as people arrive for worship services, a meal in your home for someone who needs Jesus, etc.
• Prophecy: If you sense God wants someone to know something from Him, tell the person.

2. Don’t be discouraged by spiritual gifts assessments.

In the story above, Penny was discouraged because the spiritual assessment she took didn’t identify any spiritual gift at all for her. But there’s a good reason for that.

If you do not yet have experience with your true spiritual gift, it won’t show up on a spiritual gift assessment—because those assessments measure your success at doing things, and they measure other people’s confirmation of your skill. Therefore, if you haven’t yet tried a spiritual gift, the spiritual gift assessment has no data to confirm.

That’s why trying a spiritual gift—literally doing something and seeing what happens—is the best way to confirm it!

3. If you’d like to do something related to a spiritual gift, even though you don’t believe you can—or because it requires you to step outside your comfort zone—try it anyway and see what happens!

Both Penny and Barb, in the stories above, had to step outside their comfort zones in order to discover and use their spiritual gifts. So, also, will you!

4. Don’t be intimidated or discouraged because you can’t do something the way someone else does.

Indeed, you definitely will not do your spiritual gift like anyone else. In the example above, Barb was a very different kind of teacher than the so-called norm. But she was just as effective!

Confirm Your Spiritual Gifts

After you have taken the important first steps of trying some “first serves” in a spiritual gift, below are 4 ways to further confirm whether you indeed do have that spiritual gift.

1. Passion

If you indeed do have a particular spiritual gift, then you'll get excited about doing it—or even thinking about doing it! In the examples above, Penny was moved to tears whenever her word of God’s encouragement encouraged someone else, and Barb was blown away whenever God spoke through her teaching to change someone’s life.

2. Fruitfulness and productivity

If you have a particular spiritual gift, you will indeed do it well, and it will bear fruit for helping draw people to God or accomplishing His purposes. You might describe how that feels as being “in the zone.” For example, if people often respond to your witness about Jesus by accepting Him as Savior, you probably have the spiritual gift of evangelism. Another example is that if you successfully organize the details of a mission trip, and you loved doing that, you probably have the spiritual gift of administration.

3. Affirmation by other Jesus-followers

If other Christ-followers consistently tell you that you are helping them to experience the love of Jesus, grow in Christ, or accomplish His purposes through what you are doing, you probably have that particular spiritual gift. For example, your brothers and sisters in Christ frequently tell you that God speaks to them through you when you teach, or that they experience joy when you serve, or you say things that cause them to grow because of your wisdom. They are confirming those spiritual gifts that they see in you.

4. Life-long connections

Most of the time, after you discover what your spiritual gifts are, you can look back and see evidence of their development in your past. For example, in my story above, my love of order, imagination, planning, and learning foreshadowed my spiritual gifts of teaching, wisdom, and knowledge.

Use Your Spiritual Gifts

After you know what your spiritual gifts are, what’s next?

Use your spiritual gifts! Below are 5 steps for doing that:

1. The best way to use your spiritual gifts is to do just that—use them! Again and again! 

Use your spiritual gifts in different ways, different places, and with different people. When people give you opportunities to use them, do so, especially if you haven’t used them much yet.

2. Learn all you can about how to do your spiritual gifts well.

Read books, attend conferences, and find free or paid online training resources related to your spiritual gift that will inspire and equip you.

3. Find mentors who will help you grow in your spiritual gifts.

Be teachable, and learn from many other Christians who do your spiritual gift well.

4. Serve with others who have the same spiritual gifts, learning and encouraging one another.

For example, if you have the spiritual gift of leadership, read leadership books, attend leadership conferences, hang around and learn from experienced leaders, and learn to lead in teams with others. Or if you have the spiritual gift of prayer, read books about prayer, attend or lead prayer retreats, hang around and learn from prayer warriors, and pray with others.

5. Pray and think about how your expression of your particular combination of spiritual gifts is unique, and boldly live that!

My main spiritual gifts are teaching, wisdom, and encouragement. I currently do that through coaching, writing, and speaking, to help people find and fulfill their Christian calling.

Example: My Next Steps

I'm excited that God has prompted me to take the steps above to improve my ability to write. Writing is one way I am currently expressing my spiritual gifts of teaching, wisdom, and knowledge. Therefore, I plan to apply the above 5 steps in the following ways:

1. Keep writing regularly after Challenge 44 is over by writing a blog every 3 business days. (Challenge 44 is my writing of 44 blogs in 90 days: 30 blogs during the first 30 days, 10 blogs during the second 30 days, and 10 blogs during the last 30 days. Each 30-day segment has specific purposes. You're currently reading Blog 26 of my Challenge 44.) Also, convert one of my blogs into a devotional reading that I will submit for publication in The Upper Room.
2. Find and take an advanced writing course. 
3. Pray for God to connect me to a Christian writing mentor.
4. Find a small group of Christian writers—locally or online—for mutual encouragement and help.
5. As I'm doing Challenge 44, I'm learning to build upon biblical and experiential knowledge to contribute uniquely to the fields of Christian calling and growing in Christ. I'm also learning that I am good at writing stories to drive, clarify, and inspire biblical teaching in uniquely personal ways. 

What Are Your Next Steps for Your Spiritual Gifts?

• If you don’t yet know what your spiritual gifts are, what first steps does God want you to take so that you discover your spiritual gifts? (See “Take First Steps for Discovering Your Spiritual Gifts” above.)
• If you believe you know what your spiritual gifts are—but you’re not completely sure—what steps does God want you to take to confirm them? (See “Confirm Your Spiritual Gifts” above.)
• If you are sure what your spiritual gifts are, how does God want you to use them, perhaps in different ways than you have in the past? (See “Use Your Spiritual Gifts” above.)

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