Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Spiritual Gifts

In conversation yesterday Jenn and I were talking about spiritual gifts - or well really she was giving me encouragement and revealed that it's one of her top spiritual gifts. I asked her how she knew that and found out that her old church has an online survey that you can fill out and find where your gifts lie.

1 Peter 4:10 (NLT) God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God's generosity can flow through you.

In taking the quiz - I didn't have any one gift stand out apart from the others. I had several come in at about the same score, but three that came in with the highest score... so I'll just call them my top 3 gifts.

I would say that it's fairly accurate because my talents lie more in the intangible things rather than something outward that is easily spotted. (Like John's musical talents)

My top three were:
  • Exhortation - the ability to offer encouragement, challenge, or give advice in appropriate ways. (hmmm... I'm not sure if everyone would agree here... but I'll take it)
  • Giving - the ability to earn, manage, and spend money wisely for the Lord's work. (I'd say that is probably a good reason why I'm in the line of work that I am... fundraising.)
  • Service - the ability to assist in behind the scenes ministry work. (Oh that is totally me... 100% behind the scenes... hate to be in front of the scenes!)

In some ways - I wonder about the accuracy of this type of test because it's hard to score yourself appropriately with questions that have no definitive answer. If the questions were more of a yes or no format - then there wouldn't be any way to skew the answers incorrectly. The only reason I mention that is because I know that in a lot of instances - I describe myself differently than others see me... so I can see that coming into play with a survey of this type.

At any rate - if you'd like to take the Spiritual Gifts Survey - please go here and answer the questions to the best of your ability. Ultimately remember:

1 Corinthians 12:4 (NLT) Now there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but it is the same Holy Spirit who is the source of them all.

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad you took it! I'm sure there are different types of surveys, but I believe in this one. It pretty much hit the nail on the head - my friends would attest to all of the gifts that ranked highest on my survey.

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  2. Hmmm...can't say I agree with you guys on this one. It's not the most comprehensive one I've taken, and I think the results are kind of off for me. I was Knowledge, Discernment, and Faith at the top three...

    Renee

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  3. That was a pretty cool survey. I scored Knowledge, Teaching and Faith. It sounds about right, although the test was kind of hard.

    "I have the ability to plan learning approaches." What on earth does that mean? I could guess if it was dealing with teaching kids, but not so much with adults.

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