FINDING PURPOSE THROUGH SPIRITUAL GIFTS (Part Two)

Welcome to part two of this series - Finding your Purpose through Spiritual Gifts

In the last blog post (I will link it below) we explored how spiritual gifts are given by God through the Holy Spirit when we become followers of Jesus Christ to be used for the PURPOSE of building up the Body of Christ and to serve one another.

In this post we are going to look at how to USE those gifts to further God’s purpose.

The Bible doesn’t specifically give us a user’s manual telling us how to use our gifts but if we read between the lines we can see how Paul used his gifts and use this as our template.

First let’s differentiate natural talents and skills from spiritual gifts. natural talents are the God given gifts you were born with, what you are naturally good at and a skill is something you have developed.

Talents and Skills.

For example let’s say you have a natural talent for music and you decide you want to grow that talent by learning to play piano, you might memorize the notes on the keyboard, learn to read music, hire a teacher to teach you proper technique. In doing these things you develop the skill to play piano.

You may decide to develop a skill that has little to do with a natural talent. You may have a natural talent for music, but maybe being a musician doesn’t prove to be a practical way to make a living, so you decide you need to develop a skill other than your natural talent that can provide you with a constant pay check. Maybe it’s electrical work, maybe it’s, landscaping, or legal work. Whatever you choose, with commitment and effort, you would develop that skill.

Spiritual Gifts.

A spiritual gift is something that was given to you by God through the Holy Spirit, as a Christ follower, to use specifically to build up and serve God’s Kingdom. See part one of this series

Putting it Together.

In the Book of Acts, we learn about Saul, or as we know him now, Paul. We get a glimpse as to how he used his natural talents and skills along with his spiritual gifts to fulfill God’s purpose.

Paul was a tentmaker; we also learn that he was a pharisee, who was taught by Gamaliel, a well known pharisee and leader in the Sanhedrin. We can assume that Paul had innate passion and conviction because we read in Acts that he was zealous his persecution of the early Christians, before becoming one, himself.

Paul’s Talents and Skills.

We could assume that Paul’s was born with a high level of intelligence, because we see him as a young man becoming a personal student of Gamaliel, who was a very highly respected teacher, pharisee and leader in the Sanhedrin. Paul would have had to have been very bright to have been a personal student of Gamaliel. He also seems to have had a natural abundance of passion and conviction, we certainly see this in his fervor for persecuting the Christians. He may have also had a natural ability to communicate and for languages. We know he spoke both Greek and Hebrew.

Let’s take a look at Paul’s skills. We know he was educated because he was a pharisee. He would have been skilled in reading writing, orating, scripture, and probably debating.

Paul was a Roman citizen from what we believe to be an upper class Jewish family, so he would have known both Jewish and Roman cultures, which would have provided him with the skill to socialize with both cultures and as an educated man he had the ability to have dialogue with scholars.

By trade, Paul was a tentmaker, which probably made him a proficient leather artisan.

Paul’s Spiritual Gifts.

Well, he was the Apostle Paul, so he may have had them all! But we surely see the gift of evangelism, knowledge, wisdom, missionary, Exhortation, Leadership, Discernment, Faith, Mercy, teaching, etcetera!

Merging it All.

So, how did Paul use his spiritual gifts? From what I can see he merged his natural talents along and skills with his spiritual gifts.

For example, we see in Acts 18 that Paul used his tent making skills with Aquila and Priscilla as a way to financially survive while he was ministering.

He merged his spiritual gifts of knowledge and evangelism with his ability (natural talents and skills) of orating, communication and debate convincing scholars, both Greeks and Jews of the Gospel (Acts 14).

It is no stretch to say that Paul had the spiritual gifts of “Missionary” and “Evangelism”. He used his natural passion to preach the word of God! He was able to clearly and effectively “Teach" the Gospel to the Gentiles because he was more than likely a natural communicator.

Paul planted churches: He used his spiritual gifts of “Exhortation”, “Leadership” and “Teaching” to teach, encourage and strengthen the early Christians.

Paul was beaten, oppressed, imprisoned (in some of the worst conditions), ridiculed, laughed at, shackled, and yet he did not waiver in his faith (Acts 21:27-40). Because Paul had unshakable faith, and many witnessing his trials were converted to Christianity, including his jailers.

And of course, this is only a pittance of what Paul did and experienced throughout his ministry. I encourage you to read the complete book of Acts to get a better understanding as to how Paul used his natural talents, skills and spiritual gifts to accomplish God’s purpose.

Summary.

Let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far as to how we find our purpose through spiritual gifts:

#1 - Pray - Ask God for direction and clarity as to what your spiritual gifts are and how He would have you use them.

#2 - REMEMBER your PURPOSE, as a Christ follower, is to use your gifts to build up the body of Christ (the church) and serve one another.

#3 - If you don’t know what spiritual gifts you were given. Take a look at the list of gifts set forth in the last blog post and do a little digging of your own as to in depth descriptions of each.

#4 - What are you naturally good at? What skills have you developed? Consider how you can use these talents with the spiritual gifts God has given to you. And again, only through prayer can you know how God wants you to use your talents - whether it be connected to your natural abilities or not.

#5 - If you aren’t sure what your gifts are - have a little fun and take the quiz at giftstest.com this may shed some light on what gifts you were given.

#6 - Pray again!

Okay, that’s it for part two - next video will be the final in the series and we are going to look at the parable of the bags of gold and see that God doesn’t take the gifts he gives us lightly! He expects us to USE them!

________________________________________________________________________________

Here is my last video - part one of this series

And if you want to read more as well as download the companion reference guide to part one, just click on the photo below!

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and I hope you will join me for part three!!! We will be looking at the Parable of the Bags of Gold!!

God Bless!

Joellen