Identifying Your Spiritual Gifts
About a year or so after I gave my life to Jesus, my youth pastor was teaching on the Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts. He handed me a Spiritual Gifts Inventory; a packet that looked exactly like personality tests I had taken before (and have taken sense). After answering 100 questions (at least it felt like it) related to spiritual gifts, I tallied up my score and looked at my results to see which one God gave me. I got the gift of Encouragement. I was so excited to identify my gift and start using it.
Fast forward a year and I took the same test only to get a different result. Gift of Mercy? Where did encouragement go? Does my gift change every year? Over the last 20 years of following Jesus I have taken many of those tests and my results have been different. I even noticed that some tests omitted certain gifts, like healing, prophecy, tongues, and miracles.
As I matured in my faith and understanding of spiritual gifts, I realized that like all other personality type tests, spiritual gifts tests are helpful, but still man made and not the end all be all. They are helpful in the process of identifying or confirming spiritual gifts. After all, when Paul wrote on spirituals gifts, the first century church wasn’t handing out tests.
Inasmuch, scripture doesn’t lay out a formula for identifying spiritual gifts in others, but speaks more on the purpose and use of such gifts. What we do know is that people identified their spiritual gifts and used them within community. Community is key to the following.
Tips for identifying your spiritual gift(s)
- Ask God. Pray for God to reveal to you your gifts. Ask others to pray for you and with you. Sometimes we have not because we ask not and we can have a gift and not know it is there because we aren’t thinking about it. We ask about things that are on our minds so ask God to speak to you about this.
- Be a part of the local church– The purpose of spiritual gifts is empowered love. Loving those Christ’s family and those not yet in his family is essential. Friendship with other believers leads to them helping you identify your gifts and you helping them identify their. When you are a part of a healthy church community who loves you and you love them, you will operate in your gifts, even if you don’t know it yet, as you volunteer, go out for coffee with someone, join a small group, and more. If you’re looking for a local church in Commerce City, we would love to have you at Landing Place Church!
- Volunteer in different ministry contexts– Sometimes you just need to pick something and start moving and as you are moving God reveals things about you that you didn’t see before. Maybe when you volunteer to feed the homeless you find out that you love sitting down with people and they feel encouraged after meeting with you. Maybe you volunteer to lead a small group and find you love teaching people about God’s Word. Maybe you volunteer for set up and tear down and realize you hated it, but while working on a team you found that people looked to you for leadership. Then God gave you an opportunity to lead in something that gave you and others lives. Pick something and pay attention.
- Ask believers who are closest to you. Whether a parent, sibling, friend, mentor, or ministry leader, ask them what they think your spiritual gift is and why. Ask multiple people and see if a pattern forms. If 4 of your closest relationships say that _______ is your spiritual gift, pay attention.
- Take a spiritual gifts inventory. Again, these have their place and their use, but they are part of the process not the end all be all. After you take the test, test your results. Do your results resonate with you? Do they confirm something others have already told you? When you ask the people from tip #4, what do they say?
Resources:
The Beginners Guide to Spiritual Gifts by Sam Storms
Understanding Spiritual Gifts by Sam Storms
Practicing The Power by Sam Storms
Spiritual Gifts Inventories: