Another locked door (or two)…
Jul 17th, 2010 by ljkim
Another reason why some of us don’t know our spiritual gifts is because everything we do normally is for ourselves. We only spend money on ourselves. We only use our time for ourselves. Sometimes… But the spiritual gifts are “for the common good,” they benefit others first, and only indirectly benefit us. So if you only think of yourself (which is easy to do if you’re anything like me…sinful), your gifts don’t get called to action. So if you had a teaching gift/leadership gift/service gift/a gift of mentoring – none of those things would ever come out while you’re just looking to please yourself…they only come out as you start to love others as yourself.
One more locked door that goes along with this is: you won’t discover your spiritual gifts if you’re always running away from community. So if you’re in your twenties and have traveled to every continent twice – I can pretty much guarantee that you don’t know what your spiritual gifts are. How do I know? Because you’re never in one place long enough to form community. So you don’t have people that you’re trying to love as yourself…and therefore no real opportunity to call out your spiritual gifts.
So here’s what you do… Want to find your SG’s? Start caring about your community (don’t go out an find a community, but start with the one you already have – the one you’re not quite serving) and care about the people enough to serve them. You’ll probably try a lot of things you’re not good at – but then something will come along that clicks… After a while other people might start to notice: “thanks! you’re really good at that!” And voila! You got your first SG you probably didn’t know you had.
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