Mar 15 - DAY 31 - Understanding Your Shape

Day 31

Understanding Your Shape

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts

… different ways of serving … [and]

different abilities to perform service.

1 Corinthians 12:4-6

We all know what talents are.

But do you know what a spiritual gift is? It is a gift, given by God, for the specific purpose of blessing the church.

I might have had a talent for basketball. I could jump high. It was a gift. But it wasn’t a spiritual gift.

Now, I’ve known of plenty of athletes who’ve leveraged their secular talents into a platform for sharing the Gospel. But generally speaking, athletic gifts are not spiritual gifts.

The first time I discerned a clear and total spiritual gift occurred on my first Sunday as a student pastor. I’ve always been horrible at names. If I’m introduced to someone at a ballgame or a party, I won’t remember their name for two seconds. On my first Sunday as a pastor, however, names of people – my new church family – stuck to my mind like fly paper. I’d flipped through the directory once, and someone would say, “Hi, my name is Bill Johnson,” and I’d finish his sentence, “and this must be your wife, Mary, and your three kids, Bobby, Joe, and Sue.” And we’d all go, “Wow” – including me.

The exact opposite happened to one of my seminary professors. He was an absent-minded theologian who decided to teach rather than preach when he couldn’t remember anyone’s name in the congregation. “When there was funeral at my internship congregation,” he’d say, “the name of the deceased would never register. I’d have to peak in the casket to see who died.”

His spiritual gift was big brain, useful for blessing the whole church by teaching a generation of pastors. Me, on the other hand, I’m a simple parish pastor. But in a congregation, God has given me the supernatural gift of remembering names and loving people – as opposed to my natural tendency of being totally forgetful.

God has given you a gift … or two … or thirteen. Yes, you have worldly talents. But how has God blessed you specifically for service in the kingdom?

And if you haven’t figured that out yet, it’s time to start trying new roles. It’s like trying on new clothes. For a season, try something new and see if it fits. If it does, it will be an incredible blessing to you … and to the whole church. And if this new role isn’t your purpose, you trudge through for a season, thankful to learn a little more about yourself.

Indeed, be like Thomas Edison. To find a suitable filament for the first light bulb, he tried hundreds of items unsuccessfully. Wait! It wasn’t unsuccessful. Rather, he took the attitude of: I discovered one more thing that’s not it … which means I’m one step closer to find what is it.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who barely made it through secular

Public Speaking and English Composition classes

and now does both of those for a living

(do you think that might be a Spiritual Gift too?)