Using What God Gave You

What you are is God’s gift to you; what you do with yourself is your gift to God

Danish Proverb

God deserves your best.

He shaped you for a purpose, and He expects you to make the most of what you have been given. He doesn’t want you to worry about or covet abilities you don’t have. Instead He wants you to focus on talents He has given you to use.

Begin by assessing your gifts and abilities

Take a long , honest look at what you are good at and what you are not good at. The best way to discover your gifts and abilities is to experiment with different areas of service.

Until you are actually involved in serving, you’re not going to know what you’re good at. You have dozens of hidden abilities and gifts you don’t know you’ve got because you’ve never tried them out. So I encourage you to try doing some things you’ve never done before. No matter how old you are, I urge you to never stop experimenting!

Consider your heart and your personality

Paul advised, “make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.”

Ask yourself questions: what do I really enjoy doing most? When do I feel the most alive? What am I doing when I lose track of time?

Examine your experience and extract lessons you have learned

Review your life and think about how it has shaped you. Extracting the lessons from your experiences takes time. I recommend that you take an entire weekend for a life review retreat, where you pause to see how God had worked in the various defining moments of your life and consider how He wants to use those lessons to help others.

Accept and enjoy your shape

Since God knows what’s best for you, you should gratefully accept the way He has fashioned you. The Bible says, “What right have you, a human being, to cross-examine God? The pot has no right to say to the potter: ‘Why did you make me this shape?’ surely a potter can do what he likes with the clay!”

Your shape was sovereignly determined by God for his purpose, so you shouldn’t resent it or reject it. Instead of trying to reshape yourself to be like someone else, you should celebrate the shape God has given only to you.

Keep developing your shape

Jesus’ parable of the talents illustrates that God expects us to make the most of what He gives us. We are to cultivate our gifts and abilities, keep our hearts aflame, grow our character and personality, and broaden our experience so we will be increasingly more effective in our service.

Don’t settle for a half-developed gift, stretch yourself and learn all you can.

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