1/11/21 By Larry Barker
God designed you and He determined your gender, nationality, skin color, personality, etc. He has a divine purpose for your life. Self-awareness is crucial in knowing who God made you to be and what He designed you to accomplish. We are given natural gifts at birth under God’s common grace to all but when we are born-gain, I believe, we receive spiritual gifts from Him. I Peter 4:10 says, “Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God.” God has equipped you for the purpose He has assigned you.
As you discover His divine design you should consider your gifting, your passions, and your temperament. Every believer has a unique, God-given ability for service through the natural and spiritual gifts He has provided. He gives us a passion for using those gifts in our every day lives. In Being Leaders passion is described by Aubrey Malphurs as “A God-given capacity to attach yourself emotionally to a cause or a certain group of people.” Passion gets you up in the morning, keeps you up at night, and is what you think about during the day.
Passion is what directs the use of your gifts and it sustains you. You can tell what you are passionate about because when you speak about it your voice raises, your body tenses up, or your eyes fill with tears. Passion drives you daily in the direction of how you can maximize your effectiveness in bringing God glory as you make the most of your gifts. Your temperament and passion leads you to how God wants to work in your life because it recognizes your God-given inborn style of behavior. Example? How He created you to be more extroverted or introverted.
Your fit in life and ministry is definitely determined by His calling and opening of doors but we sometimes forget that we should also embrace the personality, temperament, and overall person He created us to be. God knew what He was doing when He made you and the scriptures are clear that He formed you. Psalm 139:13 says, “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” This is the unique “hard wiring” of an individual leader. It is your personality and what is true about you from birth.
Your personality doesn’t really change over time but as we follow Christ, He enables us to be the best we can be as we grow and mature spiritually. It is actually counter-productive, not to mention frustrating, to try to change this dimension of ourselves. In reality, being the best you can be is another way of saying, “Be who you are!” or better yet, “Be who God created you to be!” You are far better off discerning how God designed you first, instead of waiting for some mystical, subjective call that is complete with lightning and an audible voice.
The truth that God has ‘wired’ us a particular way speaks volumes about how our design determines our direction. Otherwise, why did He design us the way He did? Your divine design is a great way to see God’s hand in your destiny and purpose that He orchestrated in how He created you. Yes, in our weaknesses God is glorified but He has also given us strengths and gifts to glorify Him. Peter tells us to be good managers (stewards) of His gifts emphasizing our need to know what our gifts are and then using them to mutually benefit our church.
Your unique giftedness cannot be replaced and no one can replace you. Take a look at the word of God in how it describes the unique multi-faceted giftings that make every body of Christ come alive and cause each church to be stronger, deeper, and healthier. Two believers can have the same gift, such as teaching, but each believer will demonstrate it with their own passion and temperament. If you know your gift is teaching then you must develop that gift. It is not enough to just own an axe but you must also take the time to sharpen your axe for it to work optimally.
Discover your gift, develop your gift, and deploy your gift by putting it to use for God’s honor and glory. Gifts are not made to put on display and sit around like a showpiece. They were given to us to be used in the service of our King. In the book of Nehemiah we are told they had a mind to work but it went beyond knowing they had a job to do; they did it by putting their hands to the work. Knowing your gifts, passion, and temperament should go beyond the awareness level to the implementation of what you have learned for the blessing it provides.
Aubrey Malphurs defines a spiritual gift as, “a unique God-given ability for service.” It is unique because not every one has the same gift. It is God-given because He decides which gift each believer receives and it is a service because we are told to use it to assist and aid others. Since design determines direction you should consider using some of the self- awareness tools we can provide such as a spiritual gifts test and one of many personality profiles. If Healthy Church Solutions can help you in any of these areas please feel free to contact us!