My husband and I have been moving my office furniture to make a nursery on the first floor of our house (we have steep stairs to the upstairs bedrooms, so baby won’t move up there for a few years). In that process, I’ve been taking all my books off the shelves and, in some cases, being reminded of some that I’d forgotten I had.
One of those is Live Your Calling: A Practical Guide to Finding and Fulfilling Your Mission in Life by Kevin and Kay Marie Brennfleck. The focus of this book is on finding your God-given purpose in life, which they break into six assessments: transferrable skills, core work values, preferred roles, personality type, compelling interests, and spiritual gifts. I mentioned the spiritual gifts assessment briefly in my “Finding Your Gifts” post from 2015, which probably means I first read this book about 10 years ago.
Finding this book on my shelf reminded me how passionate I used to be about spiritual gifts. I’d even had plans for an ambitious interactive seminar (back when I’d given two seminars and thought I might end up doing more) about discovering your spiritual gifts, though I didn’t get much beyond the note taking and idea gathering phase. I still think about it every once in a while, like last year when I heard someone at a church gathering hesitantly say they didn’t think they had any spiritual gifts.
Many of us wonder what our spiritual gifts are. If we don’t know our gift–or don’t think we have a gift–and we hear that everyone with God’s spirit is supposed to have a gift, we might feel discouraged or question if there’s something wrong with us. if we do know our gift and don’t know how to use it–or struggle finding opportunities to use it–that can also be frustrating. Figuring out what our gifts are and how to use them can help strengthen our relationship with God and feel more comfortable or confident in our role within His church.
How To Find Spiritual Gifts
My interest in my own spiritual gifts started with a Bible study at church when I was in my late teens or early 20s. Our pastor at the time handed out a printed questionnaire that, when you answered honestly and scored it, was supposed to indicate which gift or gifts you’re most likely to have. One of mine was, by quite a high score, identified as prophecy. That was super confusing for me, so I started looking for other assessments and more information (I also wrote about this in a 2014 post). I eventually decided that I had teaching-related gifts, which could be described as prophecy/inspired speaking, instruction, or teaching depending on the assessment and which verses or translations they used as the basis of their resources. This blog is the main output of my spiritual gift.
If you want to learn what your spiritual gift is, an assessment like that can be a good place to start (if you’re curious, a Google search will turn up several options). But tests like that are just a starting place. They guide a self-assessment of what might be your gifts; they don’t provide a definitive answer, but they can give us ideas and insight.
I suspect that often, the gifts that we have are so natural to us–they become so much a part of our nature–that we struggle identifying them. We might not think of them as gifts; it’s just who we are. With that in mind, it can also be helpful to ask people who know us well what they think our spiritual gifts are. For example, I know someone who probably wouldn’t say he has a spiritual gift of service, yet if anyone in the congregation expresses a need he could fill or talks about a project that in anyway aligns with his skillset, he enthusiastically volunteers to show up and help. You might also have a gift that’s obvious to the people around you, but from your perspective is just something you do.
Gifts In Community
One of the key things, which I think is often overlooked in discussions about finding your spiritual gifts, is the importance of community. The gifts are meant to be used within the body of Christ, and I think it’s not too much of a stretch to say that they are best (perhaps only?) discoverable in a community of faith. In the famous passage on spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians, Paul said, “To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the benefit of all” (1 Cor. 12:7, NET). They’re individual gifts, but the purpose is to benefit the entire church community.
We’re so individualistic in the Western world; it’s baked into our cultural heritage. But if we approach our spiritual gifts from a perspective of I want to learn my gift so I know how God has blessed me and what He wants me to do, we’re missing a vital “we” aspect to spiritual gifts. As I talked about last year in “Reading Slowly Through 1 Corinthians 12: Contextualizing The Spiritual Gifts,” Paul emphasizes over and over that God is building a unified church led by Jesus Christ (with many groups scattered around the world, all acknowledging Jesus as Head), not merely working with individuals or separate church groups that follow human leaders with showy gifts. We are all in this together.
It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things. For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body—though many—are one body, so too is Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks or slaves or free, we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. For in fact the body is not a single member, but many. …
On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential … God has blended together the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member, so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s body, and each of you is a member of it.
1 Corinthians 12:11-14, 22, 24-27, NET
God is careful about how He puts His church together. Everyone He calls into His family has a place in that family, and they all contribute to the health and unity of the body. All their gifts are essential to the healthy body. Paul reiterates this in another spiritual gifts passage, this one found in Romans. It comes immediately after Paul tells his readers “to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1, NET).
For just as in one body we have many members, and not all the members serve the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another. And we have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If the gift is prophecy, that individual must use it in proportion to his faith. If it is service, he must serve; if it is teaching, he must teach; if it is exhortation, he must exhort; if it is contributing, he must do so with sincerity; if it is leadership, he must do so with diligence; if it is showing mercy, he must do so with cheerfulness.
Love must be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another. Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord.
Romans 12:4-11, NET
The “Why” Helps Us with “What”
When we wonder what our spiritual gifts are, I think the “why” of the gifts can help us figure out what God is enabling us to do within His church. The gifts God gives are “the manifestation of the Spirit” and He shares them with us “for the benefit of all” (1 Cor. 12:7, NET). We can’t separate our gifts–or ourselves–from the body of Christ, since “we are members who belong to one another” and our gifts are used in that context (Rom. 12:5, NET).
I, therefore, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live worthily of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, putting up with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. … And he himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, that is, to build up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God—a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature.
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13, NET
The specific gifts discussed in this passage are mostly ministerial and teaching ones, but the context is Paul urging everyone in the Ephesian church to “live worthily of the calling” from God, to love others and “put up with” them, and to make “every effort to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” Pair this with the gifts passage in 1 Corinthians, and it’s not much of a stretch to say we’re all responsible for using our gifts to “build up the body of Christ” and to contribute to “the unity of the faith.”
In relation to faith, we need to move away from thinking of and focusing on ourselves as individuals, and move toward thinking of ourselves as part of the church that Jesus and the Father are actively building. This might be very hard if we’re among the many people who don’t have a church group to fellowship with, whether it’s because there aren’t any nearby or we can’t travel because of personal circumstances (e.g. age, illness). It can also be hard when we have a church group we can attend, but we don’t feel safe, comfortable, or welcomed there. We have a caring and compassionate God, and He is our lifeline to the body of Christ when we genuinely can’t connect with other believers. We can still conceptualize ourselves as part of something bigger even if we can’t physically gather together for some reason.
For those of us who can fellowship with other believers, we might find that our spiritual gifts are easiest to identify when we engage with that community. Perhaps rather than studying ourselves trying to figure out our spiritual gifts, we should simply look for opportunities to serve. If you start asking what needs there are in your church that you could fill, you might find yourself asked or drawn to fill the needs that most match your gifts (for example, someone with a teaching gift could lead a small group, and someone with an administrative gift could help manage finances). You could also ask close friends what they think your gifts are. You might learn that they notice a side of you that you didn’t even realize was there (for example, people might consistently tell you you’re encouraging, and then you could start consciously using that gift more often). The more we seek to build up and benefit the body of Christ–remember, that’s the reason God gives His people gifts–the more likely we are to realize that God really does equip us to fill the roles He’s given us in His family.
Featured image by Claudine Chaussé from Lightstock
Song Recommendation: “Here I Am Lord” by Chris Bray
Like An Anchor 