We all have gifts.  Gifts that we are born with and given by God.  The beauty of it all is that each of our gifts is different from the next person.  We have a purpose in glorifying God and He has blessed us with specific gifts that enable us to further do work for His kingdom, to glorify Him, and help lead others to Him.  What’s wild to think about, and I was meditating and praying this morning, is that our gifts are sometimes staring us right in the face over the course of our lives, yet all too often we don’t realize it, or we may but not use those gifts to glorify God.

Something that I have found in my life is that these gifts we have don’t really come to fruition until we begin to come alive in our faith and truly seek out the Lord in full surrender to Jesus Christ.  When we come into our faith and are filled with the Holy Spirit, God can really begin to bring out those gifts.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:6 that “God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.” In verse 7 he continues with “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.”  So each of our gifts we are given are meant to help our fellow man and to advance the Kingdom of God.  Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3 regarding the Father that He “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.”  Being in Christ brings us the blessing of the Father including bringing out our gifts.

Here is where my mind went this morning as I read through those verses and then reflected on my life in relation to these verses.  First the idea that God has already blessed us with spiritual gifts is quite something.  So here I am working on professional counseling degree to become a Christian counselor and my writing has continued to take-off.  All of this has happened over the last year as I really began to come alive in my faith and surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus.  It was like a switch went off and the God said it was time to dive into those gifts.

When I look back on life, they’ve always been there in some way, even before I came to my faith.  Going back to my teenage and early adulthood years, I have often been that person that people could confide in or help with various problems including marriage issues that people close to me had.  I was always a good sounding board and could provide some needed advice.  As far as writing, I have been doing this as long as I could write in some way, although it was not always shared.  I had small books in my elementary school that I wrote, one that won some cool recognition in the 2nd grade.  I wrote lyrics in high school to some degree and as an adult, I have been blogging in some capacity for the last 10-15 years about various things.  I now realize that it’s always been there.  I just didn’t know what to make of it all as life and the world was in the way.

Fast forward to 2015 and into 2016.  My life is transformed and God is beginning to bring out those gifts how.  All of our gifts are different, but we may not get to truly realize them and their potential for the Kingdom without coming into our faith.  It may not even have to do with a profession or assignment we are in.  It could be how we relate to others in a variety of capacities.  Just as Paul wrote though, it is all meant to help one another.  That’s what we have to do as followers of Jesus Christ.

So take some time and look at your life.  Have you found or realized the gifts that God has blessed you with.  We are all His image bearers, imago dei.  He has created each one of us as relational beings to live out our lives seeking Him and to help each other seek Him.  Make disciples.  Realizing our gifts and how we can use them to advance the Kingdom and make disciples of Jesus Christ is huge and goes a great deal to bring healing and restoration to more and more people.  This is freely given to everyone through Christ, but we have to be willing to seek it out. Each of you has a gift…Have you found your spiritual gift(s) and are you using them?