Discovering Our Spiritual Gifts (5)
It’s time to discover the characteristics of the individual motivational gifts. God’s Holy Spirit gives good gifts to His children, born-again believers in Jesus Christ. He gives these gifts to us so that we will use them for His glory, to build up the Body of Christ. We need to pray that God will reveal our gift to us and listen for confirmation (or lack of it) from others. As we discover the characteristics of each gift in the future Blogs, we will recognize some of the traits in ourselves and in others.
Begin the process by being more sensitive to your own self. Get to know yourself by looking back and discovering the things that you really enjoy and the reason for it. Also, consider the things that don’t interest you very much – the things that don’t really get you motivated.
There are some things that can hinder the progress. If there are sins in our lives that we won’t let go of – sin that God has convicted us of again and again – we will need to resolve those issues in order to be in a position where God can use us as He wants. This doesn’t mean we are perfect, nor can we be. However, there are things in our lives that hinder us from moving forward with our Lord. God is long-suffering – He will give us plenty of time but He does expect us to walk in the light He gives us and He will help us to work out the unacceptable issues in our lives.
The recognition of the gift God has given us won’t manifest if we are isolated from others in the church. His gifts are for others, not for our own benefit.
We admire and respect others we observe in our midst. We can’t discover our God-given gift if we decide for ourselves we want to do what we see someone else doing. It is important that we understand our personal likes and dislikes and is helpful to know why, if possible.
There may be a hindrance because we don’t understand the difference between motivational gifts and ministry gifts. Or, we may be confused about the differences between spiritual gifts and natural abilities. (Stay with me as we learn about all these subjects and as we learn to clearly identify them in our lives.)
Our own feeling of not being good enough, a lack of interest, or improper motives will also hinder this process. Our proper motive is to bring honor to God by building up others.
We can identify some of our traits as we continue through this teaching and we can identify others in the process. But, just because we can identify them does not mean we can be used of God without His Holy Spirit and our obedience to Him.
This is a good stopping place for now. This subject is deep and wide. You will gain insight in each Blog Post, so stay with me as we go deeper into it so that God can use us as He has planned from the beginning.
I will leave you with the following Scripture for meditation as we continue our study.
ph 4:11-16
1 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
NKJV
Today's Word From God 