Some Thoughts to Help Guide Your Journey of Serving and Living into Your Gifts and Purpose
Recently, we were clearing out a huge portion of our basement to make room for things from my (now late) Mom’s as well as provide storage to our adult daughter living overseas. In that process, I ran across a metal card file box that I had not seen in years. It likely got moved in the 2013 flood, never to reappear, that is, until now.
This box was full of 4x6 index cards each with a typed quotation that I wanted to save/use for teaching/writing. I determined not to take the time/energy to retype them into my “Quotes General” Word.doc file on my computer, but to put the cards in my scrap paper pile for quick notes/messages. Along the way, as I’ve pulled them out to jot down a number or a reminder, I have reread them.
In fact, the three I ran across just today seem particularly relevant to this ongoing blog conversation about gifts and calling and purpose:
“The Holy Spirit is a humble spirit and those who are truly filled with Him always display the meekness and gentleness of Christ.”—John Stott
“Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. it is, or should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which [s/he] finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which [s/he] offers [her/himself] to God.”—Dorothy Sayers
“A lot of people waste their time failing to use what they are, because they are longing for what they are not. You’re not responsible for your environment or your heredity, but you are responsible for your response to your environment and your heredity.”—Rev. Robert H. Oerter, Jr., February 26, 1989, from Good News About Our Hurtful Past sermon.
Reflection:
· How often do you reflect on humility and meekness being marks of Christlikeness?
· Ask the Spirit to fill you and make you humble and gentle.
· Do you see value in your work, and know that, whatever you do, you are serving God by using your gifts and talents?
· How often do you wish you were someone else or had different gifts and talents than you have?
· How can you embrace and be grateful for how God has “fearfully and wonderfully” made you—His “masterpiece”—created to do the works He has designed for you to do (Psalm 139; Ephesians 2)?
If you don’t know your gifts—or, if it’s been a while since you did a gifts assessment, please avail yourself of these free resources:
Downloadable Resources--See Sample List of Interest Areas; Your Spiritual Gifts—A Study Guide; Knowing Your Unique Calling and Purpose Study Guide; Whole-Life Ministry: A Form of Worship, Grace-Giving, and Living into Your Calling.
Shirley Giles Davis, author of the God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design workbook, Your Unique Design Class Guide, Your Unique Design Facilitator Guide, and Gifts-Calling-Purpose blog, is a consultant, coach, facilitator who has worked with faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and leaders in a diversity of fields for over 30 years. She has also been Equipping Ministries Director at her church since 1999.
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© Photo by Shirley Giles Davis, all rights reserved. Henri Matisse Parrot Tulips close up.