All of us were created by god and God knows every bit of us, including every aspect of our personalities. In fact, god knows you better than you know yourself. In His wisdom and by His grace, he has given each of us a spiritual gift above and beyond our natural talents, inclinations and abilities. It only makes sense that like the rest of His creation, our personalities and gifts should be orderly and in harmony. In this post, we’ll do a little exercise to identify a little bit about ourselves and begin to make a sort of composite drawing of who we really are. In doing the exercise, please bear in mind that nobody is asking you to put your answers on a billboard anywhere; this is your information, so don’t worry about what others might expect or think.

To begin, I’ll ask four simple questions and provide two alternative answers, and you need to pick the best of the two. Yes, I know that each might apply, but you need to pick the best one.

No! Don’t pick a different one!

You’ll see why later…

1. I prefer to work with: People (direct people contact) OR Projects (tasks, systems, events)
2. I work best in situations that are: Planned (structured and organized) OR Progressive (fluid and free-flowing)
3. I most prefer situations in which I can be: Precise (accurate and factual) OR Playful (high spirited or creative)
4. I most prefer situations in which I can be: Pioneering (inventive or innovating) OR Patterned (established and stable)

Take your four responses and write them down; they begin to paint a picture of the unique person that God created you to be. If you are currently involved in ministry and/or you have been thinking you have this or that spiritual gift, these selections should confirm that ministry or thought. In any case, this list of responses will come up again later on…

From here on out, you will notice that I will be writing about ministry, but let’s not be confused about what that means. After all, this is a Bible study on spiritual gifts; I’m not talking about “ministry” in any clergy – laity context; there is no such thing in the New Testament, it came much later, and we can discuss whether that is good, bad or indifferent some other time. Right now we are talking about ministry, which is service, and we are all called to serve. Remember what the purpose of spiritual gifts is?

To glorify God

To build up the body of Christ

To develop unity in the body of Christ

To develop maturity in the body of Christ

And… let’s not forget that the spiritual gifts were given for the common good of the members of the body of Christ, thus the gifts are to be used in service within the body of Christ, and that is what “ministry” is.

Next time we’ll look at areas of service and your personality, then we’ll take the test, and after that we’ll put it all together.