Through the Seasons

Gifting

What’s your gifting?  What are you good at?  How could God use you?

I’ve asked myself those questions and honestly never could come up with an answer.  I’m not a people person and I’m not creative.  I’m not particularly good with kids and I’m not a born leader.  I don’t dance or sing or paint. 

In one of our training classes we had to go through a process of discovering our gifts.  Each time I have this opportunity I approach it with a hopeful heart but usually leave as lost as I when I started.  But this time was different.  The trainer of the class was a lot like me so when he listed off his gifts I thought, “Those are gifts?  Well, those things I do like second nature.”  Things such as planning, organizing, going step-by-step through processes, working with numbers, and thinking critically.

Exciting, right?  Not for me.  I want some fun gifts – like playing music or teaching or hostessing.  But at some point I have to realize what I’m good at and do that – with all my heart.  That’s why I’m gladly going to Tanzania to do accounting.  I realized that they desperately need someone with my gifting and right now they have no one with what I could bring naturally.  Amazing.  It makes accounting almost sound exciting, doesn’t it?  I’ll be able to take the ‘numbers’ load off the project managers so they can focus on translating and developing literacy programs.  They’ll be able to use their gifts to full measure because I’m using my gifts to support them.

At our Christmas Eve service at Elevation one of the staff approached me about helping him set up their accounting system and get it up and running.  I’ll help him as much as I can because I want to use the gifts God has given me.  I won’t be preaching the gospel, going on hospital visits or a mission trip.  I’ll be sitting in an office all by myself entering data – but still making a difference.  That’s pretty cool, I think.

I realize now that I couldn’t discover my gifts because I didn’t think of my gifts as gifts.  They were there all along.  I was blind to them because they came so naturally and at the same time felt bad about how I wasn’t gifted in any of the areas I saw as really important.  But God gave me the gifts I have and uses me how He intends to use me.  Amazing!

A friend told me one time, “God wanted one of YOU and nowhere on earth was there one of YOU so He carefully made YOU.”  That’s an interesting way to look at it.  Sometimes I can get wrapped up in how special our pastor is… or Beth Moore… or Elisabeth Elliot…  But He wanted one of ME.  I have things these great people don’t have – even if my gifting doesn’t appear all that glamorous to me or even to others.  I’m exactly who God made me to be so I am grateful and determined to be the best ME as possible.

So what are your gifts?  Is there anything you are naturally good at that God can use but you’d rather be like someone else?  God also wanted one of YOU and nowhere on earth was there one of YOU so He carefully made YOU.  Whatever your talents are, commit them to Him and allow Him to use and multiply them for His kingdom.  If He can use an accountant for His glory, He can use anyone, any skills, any gifts.  He invented those gifts and gave them to you.  Be grateful for who you are and what you’re good at.  If the world says you or your talents are insignificant, they’ll have to take it up with the Creator. 

Go in peace, serve the Lord.

And whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.  ~Colossians 3:17