Are You Gifted

There's something lying on a massive table. It's a huge picture. You move closer 

Now imagine that some bits are missing from the design. If some- one hides their pieces, loses them, doesn’t bother to unwrap them or keeps them in their pockets, the perfect picture will be spoiled. The other pieces will need to be adjust- ed so that the flow of God’s love is uninterrupted. The isolated pieces might find it harder to reflect God’s character on their own. Their images might slowly fade. 

Experiencing God

This incredible jigsaw puzzle is a metaphor for our interconnected- ness as Christians. No human being can be a perfect reflection of God’s character, because we’re all flawed and none of us can ever be just like Him. More importantly, none of 

Love can only be seen and experi- enced when it’s put into action. God created us to live in relationships— families, churches and communi- ties—because He knew it isn’t good for us to be alone. We need each other so we can experience God’s love with human arms, ears and voices. We need each other so we can experience God’s love flowing from them to us and from us to them. 

So every Christian is like a small piece of the puzzle that helps people to understand and experience more of God’s character. When we put our pieces on the table in the places where God has created us to be, we portray a more complete picture of His love. 

Unwrapping spiritual gifts 

Spiritual gifts are the special pre- sents God gives us when we choose to belong to His family. It’s as though He takes the huge jigsaw puzzle of His love out of the box, including all the things He does for us such as being generous with us, helping us, teaching us and guiding us, and divides them into bite-sized chunks that human beings can man- age more easily. Then He distributes them like spiritual birthday presents, specially selected to suit each one 

It’s a mystery how God distrib- utes these gifts, but He can always see the ever-changing megapicture, the one on the lid of the most amaz- ing jigsaw puzzle in the universe. He keeps His eye on each of us, on each church or fellowship, and on each community, and He’s continually remixing and giving out His spiritu- al gifts to create the greatest web of blessings for the whole world.

How God choreographs all of our gifts is beyond my comprehension. But I don’t need to know how it all works; I just need to make sure that my piece in the jigsaw puzzle is vibrant and growing. 

My piece of the puzzle 

I was six years old when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and eight when a piece of my creative writing was published in our local paper.

At first writing was just something I enjoyed. Then I thought maybe it was a talent God had given me. When I learned about spiritual gifts, I didn’t see “writing” on the Bible’s lists (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 

I sit in front of my laptop, word- less, not knowing where to start or what to say. All I can do is pray, 

When I write, I want to commu- nicate with my readers, so maybe it’s a modern-day version of speaking in tongues. Sometimes I write articles that are helpful, encouraging or teaching, so maybe my writing is just a channel for other spiritual gifts. 

Your piece of the puzzle

You can search the internet for dif- ferent descriptions and various ques- tionnaires to help you identify your spiritual gifts. But sometimes the biblical names for the gifts can be confusing, because they are generic names, describing a range of gifts and you might not be quite sure where your gifts fit. So how can you know? 

Think about what you do just because you love God and you want to help others experience His love. Think about the times when you’ve experienced a peaceful, joyful sense that you’re doing just what God cre- ated you to do. Think about those times when you’ve felt fulfilled, when you had a sense that you were being 100 per cent used by God and a sense that you were living out your purpose through every vibrant inch of your unique piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It’s in those moments of sheer, connected inspiration that you can truly discover your spiritual gifts. 

Where do you fit?

God will help you to discover your gifts. You’ll feel happy when you use them and other people feel specially blessed by them. And the more you use your gifts, the stronger and more effective they’ll be. Once you’ve identified the ways you share God’s love with oth- ers, you’ll begin to see where they fit into one of the biblical categories of spiritual gifts. However, there may be other gifts emerging today that don’t fit neatly into the original bib- lical categories, like the gifts of com- munication, graphic design, music, art, crisis management, disaster relief, conflict resolution, counselling and yes, writing! 

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, Corinth and Ephesus, his lists of spiritual gifts were different, so maybe they’re meant to be suggestions rather than a constraining list of specifics. 

Maybe the best way to make sure your pieces fit into God’s jigsaw puz- zle is to let Him reveal His charac- ter to you and through you to those around you, every day of your life, in whatever way He chooses, so that He can use you to create a clear pic- ture of His love in a confused and hurting world.