Spiritual Gifts: Finding Your Position on Team JesusSýnishorn

Discovering your Gift

When you are a child, one of the most fascinating things to learn is how base colors are mixed to form a hue of other colors. For example, if you take three primary colors – red, yellow, and blue – you can mix them to make millions of colors with different colors and combinations. 

Spiritual gifts are a bit like base colors. God the Holy Spirit gives each Christian believer at least one (and usually numerous) spiritual gifts. We are each also given different portions of a gift, along with a different combination of gifts that combine to give us our unique proverbial color for Christian service. 

Not every Christian is called to vocational ministry, but every Christian is called to the “work of ministry”. This ministry work includes your job, your family, church, and community, and loving and serving people in your life on behalf of Jesus Christ.

The goal of this study is to help you find how God has uniquely made you to glorify Him by serving others in ministry. To find your place on Team Jesus a few questions are helpful to get started: 

1. What things do you find joy in the Spirit doing? 

2. What things have people said you are innately good at? 

3. When people ask you for help, is there a common reason they are inviting your help? 

4. What people or things do you have a burden for and care about? 

5. What people or things do you see that need attention that other people tend to overlook? 

6. What abilities has God given you (e.g. athletic ability, sharp mind, natural rhythm or perfect pitch)? 

7. What resources has God given you that could be part of your ministry (e.g. wealth to give, a company that you own, technical training, job experience, etc.)?

8. What life experiences has God used to shape your character that could be helpful in ministering to others going through similar things (e.g. an injury or illness, marriage or divorce, parenting or loss of a child, deliverance from an addiction, etc.)? 

9. What things energize and motivate you that might deplete or overwhelm someone else? 

10. What other things have you learned about God’s divine design of you through other resources (e.g. personality tests, vocational assessment tests, etc.)? 

As we have established, there are gifts, talents, and abilities that God gives us for ministry that are not listed in the Bible. However, as a general rule those spiritual gifts listed in the Bible fall into three broad categories: 

1. Serving gifts – deeds that build the Kingdom of God 

2. Speaking gifts – words that build the Kingdom of God 

3. Sign gifts – supernatural acts that point to the Kingdom of God 

In the remainder of this study, we will examine these categories.