How Do You Know What Your Spiritual Gifts Are?

How Do You Know What Your Spiritual Gifts Are? | Millennials with Meaning

Happy March! I’m jumping back into another post on personality after taking a break for February’s more relationship-oriented posts.

If you want to catch up on other personality posts, here are a few links:
How Do You Know What Your Strengths Are?
What’s Your Personality Type? {Part One: MBTI}
What’s Your Personality Type? {Part Two: DISC}
What’s Your Personality Type? {Part Three: The Five Love Languages}

Spiritual Gifts

Spiritual gifts. They’re mentioned in the Bible, they come from God, and we all have them.

It can be hard to know for sure which gifts you have, though, so let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say first.

Spiritual Gifts in Romans

The Bible talks about spiritual gifts in a few places. Romans 12 lists the following gifts:
Prophecy
Service
Teaching
Exhortation (Encouragement)
Giving
Leadership
Mercy (Showing compassion)

God’s marvelous grace imparts to each one of us varying gifts and ministries that are uniquely ours. So if God has given you the grace-gift of prophecy, you must activate your gift by using the proportion of faith you have to prophesy. If your grace-gift is serving, then thrive in serving others well. If you have the grace-gift of teaching, then be actively teaching and training others. If you have the grace-gift of encouragement [exhortation], then use it often to encourage others. If you have the grace-gift of giving to meet the needs of others, then may you prosper in your generosity without any fanfare. If you have the gift of leadership, be passionate about your leadership. And if you have the gift of showing compassion [mercy], then flourish in your cheerful display of compassion.

Romans 12:6-8

Spiritual Gifts in 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 12 adds these gifts to the list:
Wisdom
Knowledge
Faith
Healing
Miracles
Discernment
Tongues
Interpretation of Tongues
Administration (Some versions of the Bible use this interchangeably with “leadership”)

The Spirit gives to one the gift of the word of wisdom.
To another, the same Spirit gives the gift of the word of revelation knowledge.
And to another, the same Spirit gives the gift of faith.
And to another, the same Spirit gives gifts of healing.
And to another the power to work miracles.
And to another the gift of prophecy.
And to another the gift to discern what the Spirit is speaking.
And to another the gift of speaking different kinds of tongues.
And to another the gift of interpretation of tongues.

1 Corinthians 12:8-10

God has placed in the church the following:
First apostles,
second prophets,
third teachers,
then those with gifts of miracles, gifts of divine healing,
gifts of revelation knowledge, gifts of leadership [administration],
and gifts of different kinds of tongues.

1 Corinthians 12:28

People Given as Gifts According to Ephesians

Finally, Ephesians 4 mentions five people who are given as gifts to the church (commonly referred to as the fivefold offices, which are also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 – see above). Some consider these to be spiritual gifts:
Apostleship
Evangelism
Shepherding (Pastoring)

And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers,

Ephesians 4:11 NASB

The whole list

When you combine the spiritual gifts from each of the above passages, you end up with these (in alphabetical order, because I’m an alphabetical order kind of girl 😊):
Administration
Apostleship
Discernment

Evangelism
Exhortation
Faith
Giving
Healing
Interpretation of Tongues
Knowledge
Leadership
Mercy
Miracles
Prophecy
Service
Shepherding/Pastoring
Teaching
Tongues
Wisdom

What are YOUR spiritual gifts?

That’s all well and good, but how do you know what YOUR spiritual gifts are?

Easier said than done, I know.

For a long time, I didn’t realize what many (or any) of my spiritual gifts were. I remember the word “prophet” resonating with me as a teenager when my pastor explained that prophecy was simply “speaking truth,” because I thought to myself, That’s what I do to my younger siblings all the time! Ha.

But that’s about it. Honestly, I really didn’t think I had any spiritual gifts for a long time. Even when I took GPS, which includes a segment about spiritual gifts, I struggled to identify which gifts I might have. I learned then and still firmly believe that EVERYONE has spiritual gifts – we just don’t always know what they are unless someone else identifies them in us and tells us what they see.

First things first: I recommend asking the people around you – those who know you best – to suggest what they think might be your spiritual gifts. Sometimes we’re the ones most blinded to our own gifts because we are our own worst critics! We tend to see gifts in others but not always in ourselves, so ask your family and friends where they think you’re gifted.

I also recommend taking a spiritual gift assessment (or a few of them!). After a lot of searching, I’ve found several I like. Most of them are also free, which is always a plus in my book!

One of my favorites is from Canvas Church. [Update: The link I had no longer works, so I uploaded the PDF here!]

Jamie Rohrbaugh also offers a great spiritual gifts inventory for free when you sign up for her e-mail list.

A third and inexpensive option is this assessment from Christian Book Distributors.

I have gone through each of the above assessments and have benefited from all three. Pick one (or more than one, if you’re extra like I am! 💁🏼) and discover for yourself what unique set of spiritual gifts God has given you.

In case you haven’t caught the recurring theme in all of these personality posts, let me simply say this: You are special. You’re one-of-a-kind, you’re gifted, and God has given you a distinctive set of traits, abilities, and gifts that nobody else has in exactly the same way. If you ever doubt that you have something to offer, take one of these assessments and let the results enlighten and encourage you. You have something special to offer the world, and YOU are something special, too!

End sappy rant. 😉

Have a great week, my friends, and if you’d like to share what some of YOUR spiritual gifts are with the rest of us, comment below! I always love to hear what makes other people unique, and I know others do, too!

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