Spiritual Gifts

And so I read that book, and he made a very interesting thing.

How do you know if you have a spiritual gift? How do you know if you have the gift of teaching? How do you know if you have the gift of prophecy, of all things? How do you know if you have the gift of helps or the gift of generosity and so on? So he was just...

And how do you know? And he had a three-step formula, which I think is very, very solid, very, very helpful.

And that was, he said, the first step is, do you like it? If God gives you a gift, he wouldn't give you a gift that was inappropriate to you.

It wouldn't be a gift that you would absolutely hate, normally speaking.

So the first step is to ask the question, do you like it? You know, are you happy when you are doing this? And for example, if a person feels like they have the gift of ministry, but they're 100% severe introvert, it's probably not the Holy Spirit [laughs] 'cause they will hate having to be in the pulpit, and they will hate...

They really belong in a library or something like that.

You know, whereas the person that's totally outgoing and buzzing around being with people, and you make them a librarian, and they're totally lost and miserable, et cetera.

So first thing is, do you like it, this thing that you're doing, this ministry or whatever it is? Second is, are you good at it? You might like something and not be very good at it.

So, you know, that's the second thing to consider.

But the third one was the most important.

Does the church think you're good at it? In other words, your impressions of your own gifts need to have the discernment of the wider church.

You know, the people, when they see you exercising that seeming gift, do they come away and say, "Wow, this changed my life," and things like that? Or there's just a silence, you know, [laughs] no reaction, uh, no product, et cetera.

So in a broad sense, do you enjoy something? God designed you in a particular way, and he would design you to enjoy public work if you weren't, you know, gifted for that.

So God would tend to do that.

And then does the church affirm? And that's where we get things like ordained ministry and so on, where the church is affirming a person's gifts.

So this is a subject that's really been meaningful and helpful to me.