Your Calling - Godly Counsel

Even if you spend hours doing a thorough self-analysis, you may not accurately discover your spiritual gifts. Tests and quizzes can help you understand gifts, but ultimately won't provide the final answer. The only way to truly discover your gifts is through revelation and experience. However, it is often very helpful to actively seek outside advice in order to find and affirm your gifts and calling.

As you grow involved in the body of believers and serve the Lord in your daily life, you will come across situations and circumstances that both test you and encourage you. The complete collection of these experiences form the body of your understanding of your role in this world. But we are biased when we explore ourselves. Often we desire certain gifts and push our experiences to try to fit into those molds.

For instance, we often respect pastors and other leaders with gifts for teaching. As a result, some find themselves desperately seeking opportunities to lead discussions or teach topics they are not qualified to teach. Just because you have an expertise in a topic does not qualify you as the most appropriate person to teach that topic to others.

That's just one very specific example to demonstrate my point: we need outside experience and insight to find out the most important facts about ourselves. This sounds fairly counterintuitive, especially in a society that fights desperately for personal validation and expression. But when you get right down to the heart of it, God has a purpose for our lives that plays perfectly into our abilities and gifts, and we should be proud to be defined by our creator.

Seek those individuals with the experience and understanding to help you find your path. They can often confirm and affirm the gifts you have and help you find new ways to use those gifts. But remember to do the same for others. Provide words of encouragement to believers you interact with, giving them reassurance of their gifts or providing insight into the gifts and callings you see in them.