Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 29. Are You Spiritually Gifted? (ask God how)

(click here to listen now)

Hello human.

Let me answer the question. Yes, you are spiritually gifted. And asking God to reveal and activate your spiritual gifts will change your life. It will change your perspective, your purpose, and your presence on this earth.

And yes, you are a seeker. Or you wouldn’t be here. I want to bear witness today to the simple, but clarifying steps you can take to affirm and accept the spiritual gifts God has given you. Thank you for joining me on the buoy today.

Accepting God’s Sovereign Will Comes First

My primary identity is as a follower of Jesus Christ. It is not my spiritual gifts.

Accepting the spiritual gifts God has given me starts with accepting His sovereign will.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul says,

7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

And Peter says, in 1 Peter 4:10

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.

The common good.

His Sovereign Will.

Faithful steward of God’s grace.

That’s the purpose of our spiritual gifts. Last year, I took one of our church’s Growth Track sessions, to discover my ministry. For those who may just be joining today, the purpose of a growth track is to mature as a follower of Christ.

Although these steps are my take on the ministry growth track of my local church, I encourage you to pursue a growth track in your church body if you are part of one, or talk to your pastor about it. Maybe you aren’t connected to a local pastor. I am sharing these principles for anyone who may not have access or who is jumpin’ on this buoy in your own way… seeking your purpose yields a change in how we live.

Are you tracking on the WHY of this? Because sometimes we procrastinate that which seems spiritually monumental when it is really just clearing the mental airwaves to hear God. For me, this is a “finally” moment having delayed it from my college days. It is a very different thing, a wildly powerful thing to accept divine orientation in your life.   

Seek Your Spiritual Gifts

1. Pray about it. Not just once, but through a succession of appeals. Make this one of your prayer cadences, a rhythm always running through your requests to God. Do not pray for a certain It is not a multiple-choice question. God has the gifts you will need. He is the source.

James 4:2

2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

 

2. Know what the spiritual gifts are in scripture. Read Romans 12: 6-8; 1 Corinthians 12:7 – 11

When considered on a timeline, there were what are called “sign” gifts of the early church.  Apostles, Prophecy and prophets, tongues and their interpretation, miracles, and healing. 

But today, we are looking at 10 permanent gifts addressed in Romans and 1 Corinthians scriptures I noted. They are used in our present-day church body for evangelism and edification.

Consider these spiritual gifts from this quick rundown:

teaching is the ability to educate God’s people by clearly explaining and applying the Bible in a way that causes them to learn the ability to equip and train other believers for ministry.

exhortation is the ability to motivate God’s people to apply and act on biblical principles, the ability to bring out the best in others and challenge them to develop their potential. As I like to define it per its Greek definition:  to call to one’s side, call for, summon.

word of wisdom is the ability to understand God’s perspective on life situations and share those insights in a simple understandable way.

word of knowledge is the ability to rightly interpret the word, especially the difficult passages, make right conclusions about it and convey it to others.

ministry is the ability to recognize unmet needs in the church family and take the initiative to provide practical assistance quickly, cheerfully, and without a need for recognition.

giving is the ability to give material resources and or money beyond the norm so that the body may grow and be strengthened; the ability to manage money so it may be given to support the ministry of others.

ruling is the ability to see an objective and recruit and mobilize a group of people to reach that ministry objective and ability to coordinate details and execute plans.

mercy is the ability to detect hurt and show heartfelt compassion and support to the hurting in the church family.

faith is the ability to trust God for what cannot be seen and to act on God’s promise regardless of what the circumstances indicate; the willingness to risk failure in pursuit of a God-given vision expecting God to handle the obstacles.

discernment is the ability to evaluate or judge the spirit and distinguish the real versus the counterfeit; the ability to discern whether the source of an experience is Satan, self or God’s spirit.

As I have shared, my primary spiritual gift is exhortation. My secondary gifts are word of wisdom, faith, teaching.

3. Make a short, super honest list of your pivotal life experiences in these four categories: Spiritual, painful, educational, ministry. This should result in 3 -6 bullets in each category. It is a snapshot of what has shaped your life perspective. If you need more prompts, email me.

4. Then answer: What do I have a heart for? (top 2 or 3) My answer is: Writing inspirational nonfiction based in God’s word and nurturing the spiritual life, the creative life, and the philanthropic heart in others.

5. Walk controlled in the Spirit, this is the “fruit of the spirit” maturity kind of thing, Gal 5:22-23 – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – I think of this as how I dress spiritually every day.

6. Do something now. It was said in my growth track that “it’s easier to discover your gift through ministry than to discover your ministry through your gift.” I take that to mean God works when we move. He makes connections, He clarifies – I call it the divine confluence of what He has told me to do through His Word, and His Sovereign Will bringing my purpose into focus.

I take no credit for what I am sharing. It’s all God. I joined a ministry team at my local church that, on the outset seems unrelated to my spiritual gifts. I have certain areas of the church I clean. People are not clamoring to be on our clean team, but let me say, I love it. It gives me a finite task once a week, that I begin and finish. I am in the Lord’s house at a quiet, intimate time. It brings me peace. This is important in my daily world where I call all the creative shots that, on some days, seems to go on endlessly. It’s hard to turn the creative faucet off. The never-ending artistic drip. Through this ministry I have made more personal connections, especially with a few people I want to know better. And I have a very strong connection of this task to my birth mother, that I am writing about in a longer memoir work. Just a whole spiritual flurry of things that are important to my spiritual gift. When you do something, God will talk in your ear along the way. Obedience is the first step.

7. Watch for what you spiritually desire: It’s a cue. You can’t help yourself. I danced for a good portion of my younger life; when I hear a rhythm it is a real struggle for me to stay still. I want to move.

8. Name what you spiritually “enjoy” – because you will delight in ministering your gift. The joy that God instills within my heart when I use my spiritual gifts, is indescribable. Especially the peace, yeah, I am spiritually content. I am spiritually home.

9. Listen, because others in the church body will recognize your gift. God speaks to us through others.

10. And the final step, an affirmation: You will see evidence of Divine Blessing as you exercise your gift. Blessings upon your spiritual condition. I am so excited about this one from this week’s reading and research, so it’s Episode 30, our next buoy.

That’s Our Jesus

By the way, the Lord and Savior we follow has all of the spiritual gifts. That’s our Jesus. God wants you to use your gifts in ministry, projects, and situations. In other words, your opportunities to use your spiritual gifts will run through your days like a river.

Your spiritual gift(s) will bring you closer to Him and the person He created you to be.  Your spiritual gifts will bring others close to God. Using my spiritual gifts as unified my life in a new way, shining a bright light on what my daily priorities should be.

• Our primary identity is as a follower of Jesus Christ.
• The Fruit of the Spirit show our maturity.
• Spiritual “gifts” represent our ministry.
• And it is in this context, this divine orientation that God clears the path for our purpose.

There are endless voices to hear in this world, with amazing spiritual challenges, Biblical lessons, worthy through God’s infinite wisdom and grace, but at the end of our spiritual day, we are left to discern. I ask you again, are you tracking on the WHY of this, of wanting more than anything to live your life as God intended?

Because our spiritual gifts are how we faithfully steward God’s grace. I’ll say that again.

Because our spiritual gifts are how we faithfully steward God’s grace.

So, your first step is right now: as you pray for revelation and for guidance, lead with a request for humility. Because what we think we should be doing with our lives is always limited to what we understand as humans.

We do not think like God. His ways are not our ways. His Way is Truth. His Way is Life.

Isaiah 55:8-9

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.