spiritual gifts

Ahh...spiritual gifts. I have been studying them lately and I was stoked to learn that when we become Christians, we not only receive the Holy Spirit, we receive the spiriual gifts he has already chosen for us. Trippy! But so dang cool. I guess I never thought about that. I mean, I knew all Christians had spiritual gifts. But I never thought about where they came from (or when) and how they were already pre-determined for us. I love that.

So, I took one of those "spiritual gifts" tests. I know these tests are man-made (not divinely inspired) so they are a tool, not an end. But I still thought it would be cool to get some direction on identfying my gifts. So I added up my answers and my top three gifts are: hospitality, exhortation, and pastor/shepherd.

I can definitely see the hospitality and exhortation (encouragement) gifts in my life. But it wasn't until I got the results back that I realized, "Wow! I really do have the 'shepherd' mentality!" And what else is interesting is that I never really used it or felt it this strongly in my life....until I became the college director.

According to those tests, here are some words associated with being a pastor/shepherd: "the ability to care for the spiritual needs of a group of people on a long-term basis, protecting, feeding, leading, nurturing, etc." I truly feel like a pastor/shepherd with my college students. I care so much about them, I feel protective of them (in a good way), I get such joy from loving them, "feeding" them, being a leader training them to be leaders, wanting to encourage them in their relationships with the Lord, and other things like that.

I feel great joy to think about God's soverignty and how He knew I would be in this position one day (even though I NEVER would have dreamed I'd be here) and gave me the gifts I would need for this ministry. I am weirded out by that thought, but again, in a good way. =)

If you have never taken a spiritual gifts test and you have 30 minutes to kill, here's one you can take. It's not the one I took, but it looks pretty similar:

http://www.kodachrome.org/spiritgift/

Have fun!