Latest / CEO Kingdom Seekers / Ep 34: How Your God Given Gifts Develop...or Don't. (Romans 12:6)

Transcript

Ep 34: How Your God Given Gifts Develop...or Don't. (Romans 12:6) · CEO Kingdom Seekers

• 0:00
  Hey, y'all.
• 0:00
  Welcome to this week's solo episode.
• 0:03
  So in episode 31, I had an incredible conversation with Vanessa Alcântara, and we talked about how you can be genuinely gifted and successful and even useful to other people, all while operating in an expression of your God-given gifts that is close but no cigar to your primary gift.
• 0:24
  And I wanted to dive deeper into this today for a few reasons.
• 0:29
  Number one, As we've been building out High Responsibility Humans and this community, I am realizing that my primary motivational gift of the professor, of teaching, of discipleship, and helping people to practically embody wisdom is...
• 0:49
  it is so easy to be close but no cigar in that gift.
• 0:54
  And I talked about this in the episode with Vanessa that there were so many moments in several seasons of my life where I tried to coach or to motivate or to judge or to console or to take responsibility for another person's transformation.
• 1:11
  And I found that my deepest intrinsic joy, like the thing that motivated me most to do this work, to do God's work, was helping somebody to understand what they couldn't see before.
• 1:27
  And when I was a nurse practitioner, when I was a professor, and even when I was a business coach and a mindset coach and teaching about trauma and nervous system regulation in a more secular setting, all of that oftentimes was close but no cigar.
• 1:46
  I would end up in these spaces where I would be coaching, but it wasn't being done through my love of teaching, where I would be offering advice or building, and it wasn't done through my love of teaching.
• 1:57
  Basically, my gifts were disordered.
• 2:00
  They were not being used in alignment and not being ordered in a way that allowed them to be the most effective and most efficient and to also be something that I then had capacity for.
• 2:14
  I'm gonna spend a little bit of time in a moment talking through the seven motivational gifts that Paul talks about in Romans 12:6 through 8.
• 2:23
  I've talked about this on the podcast before, and I'm gonna take a slightly different lens to it today, and we're gonna talk about our spiritual formation, and also our professional formation, and how gifts are related to that.
• 2:35
  And What I have found over the last several years is that when we operate out of order, when we try to grow and develop and divinely direct all seven of these gifts, and we do it in a way that doesn't honor the gift that we are most intrinsically motivated by, we're gonna have a problem.
• 3:04
  Our capacity actually increases, and our ability to co-create with God and to do some pretty supernatural things, and, and when I say that, for us to do them, I mean for God to do these incredible things through us, In order to have that happen, we've got to have our gifts in order.
• 3:22
  What I have seen for a lot of people is that they can identify their gifts, so they've taken our primary motivational gift assessment, or they've done a spiritual gifts, uh, questionnaire, or they've done some sort of training outside of our space.
• 3:39
  Maybe they haven't put it into the words of spiritual gifts from a Biblical perspective, but they can tell you what they're good at.
• 3:45
  They can tell you what they're talented at.
• 3:47
  And that identification of this is what I'm good at and this is what the world says I'm good at versus formation is really looking at how were those gifts developed and how were those gifts ordered, and was that really done in the way and in a direction that God wants?
• 4:10
  Because oftentimes that close but no cigar feeling we can have where we know that we are really good at what we do, and we've seen the fruits of being really good at what we do, and yet there's still some restlessness.
• 4:27
  There's still uncertainty.
• 4:28
  There's still exhaustion.
• 4:29
  There's still burnout.
• 4:30
  There's still overwhelm.
• 4:32
  There's a lot of these pieces that we're seeing, okay, the fruit, the outcomes of me doing this work, yeah, that's benefiting everybody else.
• 4:39
  It's great.
• 4:40
  And the fruit internally that's being produced by me ordering my gifts in this way and operating in my gifts in this way is not fruit that I'm really excited about.
• 4:52
  I don't feel exhausted from this place of joy and satisfaction and peace when I fall into bed.
• 5:00
  I feel, burned out, restless, overwhelmed.
• 5:03
  And so oftentimes that comes from a disordering of our gifts, and it also comes from developing our gifts in the way that the world tells us to rather than how God would truly want us to do it if we surrendered these gifts that He's given us by His grace back to Him.
• 5:19
  So I actually started to say this at the end of the podcast, and I'm editing this so that this comes at the beginning because I'm realizing I want y'all to hear this right at the beginning.
• 5:30
  This episode might be tough for some of you, and the reason that this is gonna be tough for some of you is because we are going to be talking through your primary motivational gift and how that gift, along with the other six gifts that God gives us by his grace, how when we center how we serve and glorify God in what brings us the most joy and what motivates us, that that is what produces the best fruit.
• 6:00
  And I think that this is gonna be tough for some of you because you are so used to not asking yourself what brings you joy.
• 6:11
  You are so used to not asking yourself what fills you up and lights you up and makes you just so excited and makes you feel like you've got more energy and more time and more capacity to do things.
• 6:30
  You're not used to asking yourself that.
• 6:32
  You are used to asking yourself,"What does everybody else need from me?" rather than, If I'm going to show up and be a good Christian today, if I'm gonna show up and serve and love God before all, everything else, and then love others as I love myself, how am I gonna love myself by allowing myself to do work from this place that brings me joy?" Like, that feels selfish to you because you are so used to asking,"What does everyone else need?" rather than,"What do I need in order to be sufficiently filled up and have the capacity necessary to do what is asked of me today or what is needed of me today?" You operating in alignment with your gifts, and you growing in your unique expression of the gifts that God has graced you with, that is a testament to how good God is.
• 7:37
  It glorifies Him.
• 7:39
  When you show up And you use the gifts and the talents that He has given you, and you do things in alignment with His will in a way that loves others, other people see that and go,"What?
• 7:54
  How are you able to do that?
• 7:55
  What's going on?
• 7:56
  Oh my gosh, this is amazing.
• 7:57
  You're so, you're so good at that.
• 7:59
  Look what you did.
• 8:01
  How did you do that?" And then you are able to say,"God is good, and He has given me what I needed to be able to do this.
• 8:11
  This is because of God that I am able to do this." You are able to glorify Him through your work.
• 8:18
  And people go,"Wow.
• 8:20
  If being a Christian means that I get to live like this, I, I want to be a Christian.
• 8:27
  you choosing to center your work in your primary motivational gift, and I'm gonna explain what that means, but you choosing to center your work in that gift is not selfish.
• 8:40
  It is righteous.
• 8:43
  It is actually how God wants you to do this.
• 8:46
  It is how He wants us to do this, okay?
• 8:49
  I want you to hear that before you listen to the rest of this because, like I said, I'm taking this section at the end and bringing it to the beginning because I know what I just said over the next several minutes, and I know that without that lens, you hearing this, the question in the back of your mind is gonna go,"Well, yeah, but can I really do that?" Yes.
• 9:09
  Yes, you can, and you should.
• 9:11
  And I, I don't use the word should often, but you should if, if serving God according to His will matters to you.
• 9:20
  So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
• 9:22
  And so I'm really big on operational definitions.
• 9:26
  If you come into any of our learning spaces, I think defining the words that we're using so that other people understand what we're saying when we use them is very important So I want to reintroduce these seven motivational gift expressions that we use in our Growing Your Gifts curriculum, and that we use in our SAGE diagnostic, our Spiritual Assessment of Gift Expression diagnostic.
• 9:53
  So I wanna start off by defining what a motivational gift is, and then going into, like, a pretty brief explanation of the seven gifts.
• 10:02
  And then I wanna talk about what these individual gifts look like when they are divinely directed and developed in accordance with God's will and His Word versus being diminished and distorted.
• 10:13
  And from there, I want to talk about what it looks like to truly order these gifts in a way that aligns with how God designed you and how He created you and what you enjoy most so that the fruit that is getting produced is good fruit externally and it's good fruit internally.
• 10:33
  So what we mean by gift, the word gift or charisma in the Greek, is really this ability, this talent that you are given by God's grace.
• 10:48
  God has given you an ability that He didn't have to give you, because it's not required for you to live, and it allows you to do things that other people can't do as well as you do.
• 11:02
  Paul talks about the fact that we're all given these gifts in measure in accord with God's grace.
• 11:07
  And so all seven of these gifts, we are intrinsically motivated by and intrinsically good at in accordance with how God designed us.
• 11:18
  And jesus Himself perfectly expresses all seven of these gifts.
• 11:23
  And so our goal as humans is to continue to grow in the development and the directed use of these gifts for God's glory.
• 11:34
  God gives us these gifts so that we can glorify Him.
• 11:38
  And the fruit of that for us is the fruits of the Spirit.
• 11:42
  When we use our gifts in an ordered way, we experience more joy, more love, more peace, more kindness, more gentleness, more faithfulness, more self-control more patience and long-suffering.
• 11:56
  Like, we are able to operate like Jesus more and more.
• 12:02
  We're able to show up in our daily lives like Jesus taught us.
• 12:07
  So when we talk about gifts and these, these talents and abilities that God has given us because He loves us, and to do the work that He hopes that we will choose to do with Him, these aren't about competence as much as how we are naturally wired to experience joy in serving, okay?
• 12:31
  So these gift expressions, yes, they are about how easily we are able to do these things.
• 12:37
  And you can grow in all seven of these and still experience burnout, and restlessness, and frustration, and confusion, and resentment, and bitterness, because if you are not focusing in in the areas that truly bring you joy, and notice, I'm not talking about the areas that bring you worldly metric-based success.
• 13:04
  I mean joy.
• 13:05
  Like, you love it.
• 13:07
  Like, it, it, it, it fills you up.
• 13:09
  It lights you up.
• 13:12
  If we are not focusing on the naturally created intrinsic joy that God has sparked within us when we show up in these ways, then you can develop these all you want and you're gonna end up using them in a distorted or a diminished way because you're gonna burn out.
• 13:32
  You're gonna get exhausted.
• 13:33
  And I see this in leaders time and time and time again.
• 13:36
  And like I said, this was me.
• 13:38
  So we have the gift of the judge, which is what St.
• 13:41
  Paul calls perception or prophecy.
• 13:44
  And this is the ability to discern to sense, with your eyes and your ears and your, your sensory system what is spiritually true and what isn't.
• 13:56
  So it's less prophetic from the perspective of like,"Oh, I'm gonna have these visions and dreams." Yes, those are also gifts that God gives us, and those are more what Paul refers to in different parts of the New Testament as manifestation gifts.
• 14:14
  Here, when we talk about prophecy and perception, you're able to pick up on things that other people don't pick up on.
• 14:19
  You're able to see what's happening under the surface.
• 14:21
  So you're, you're seeing what is, what is not visible to the naked eye a lot of times.
• 14:26
  You're seeing things in a spiritual sense, not just in a physical sense.
• 14:29
  And yes, you often do pick up things in the physical as well, in the relational and the mental, the emotional as well, and you are able to spiritually sense when something is out of alignment and speak up to that.
• 14:42
  And that's where that prophetic, like, I'm going to speak to the fact that I am seeing things that are out of alignment, or I'm gonna speak to the fact that I'm seeing things that spiritually we really need to pay attention to because if we don't the Bible tells us what happens when we operate outside of God's will from a spiritual perspective.
• 15:01
  So that's the judge.
• 15:02
  The professor gift is, like I mentioned before, teaching, discipleship, the ability to impart practical wisdom and help people to embody it and to use it in a way that benefits them long term.
• 15:17
  The Coach gift is the gift of exhortation, and so this is the ability to help people to transform, to grow, to do that through feedback, both positive feedback and, sometimes constructive criticism or what we call admonishment, where you're going,"Hey, you know, you told me you want to be doing A, but you're doing B, and B's gonna make it hard for you to do A." And it's said from this loving and kind place.
• 15:39
  It's said from this place that is,"I want to help somebody truly grow spiritually.
• 15:44
  I want to help them to produce good fruit." The CEO gift is the gift of leadership, of, what Paul talks about, like ruling over, having power over someone.
• 15:53
  And so that gift is really about prioritizing the eternal best, the long-term best over the short-term good.
• 16:03
  Okay?
• 16:03
  So it's not about, oh, this is bad, and this is bad, and this is good, so I'm gonna pick the good, the good thing.
• 16:09
  It's about, hey, sometimes I'm gonna lead us in a way that's gonna, lead us to sacrifice right now.
• 16:14
  It's gonna lead things to feel not amazing right now, tough, painful right now, because eternally this is what makes sense, because long-term, this is what's gonna actually be righteous and bring glory to God The consoler gift is the gift of mercy.
• 16:29
  It's the gift of active compassion.
• 16:31
  The ability to really just sit with people in their suffering, and their trials and tribulations, and be with them and offer them solace, and offer them mercy.
• 16:41
  Like, make things easier for them.
• 16:43
  And a lot of times it is, it's from this compassionate, this caring place.
• 16:48
  Okay?
• 16:50
  The gift of stewardship is the gift of asset allocation.
• 16:53
  It's the gift of administration and giving.
• 16:55
  And so a lot of times people hear the consoler gift and the builder gift, and they think that that means,"Oh, you know, consolers give time and energy, and builders give time and energy, and I'm just over here giving money.
• 17:08
  Well, no, assets are time and energy, and your knowledge and your information.
• 17:14
  And so stewardship is really about that allocation piece.
• 17:17
  You're gifted at looking at a situation and seeing what assets are available and what assets are needed, and connecting those two things to one another.
• 17:26
  And so the steward sometimes is really great at asset allocation when it comes to networking and connections or fundraising or, hey, you know, person A has seven of this, and person B has none of this, and they both need three, so let me help them get connected, right?
• 17:45
  Let me help get three from over here to over here.
• 17:48
  So like I said, it's really that administration, that management of the assets that we have, and being resourceful.
• 17:56
  And then the last gift is the gift of the builder, and this is, what Paul refers to as serving.
• 18:01
  And this looks like executing.
• 18:04
  It looks like implementing.
• 18:05
  It looks like being the one to make sure that the task list that has been carefully thought out of what needs to get done gets done, and things get brought to fruition.
• 18:14
  And so we're not leaving open loops.
• 18:17
  We're not getting 90% of the way through something and then things falling off the rails.
• 18:23
  We're not doing things haphazardly, but we're making sure that all of the necessary pieces and parts are getting completed.
• 18:29
  So as you listened to me describe that, there might have been a place where you're like,"Oh, you know what?
• 18:35
  When I get to focus in, in this particular area, that is what brings me the most joy." And you might have also listened to that and said,"Well, where I find joy isn't where I'm the most successful or the most talented." And so I wanna be clear that the question here isn't, like, what am I good at?
• 18:56
  It's not just that.
• 18:58
  We also wanna look at how God designed the gift to function and what has shaped it and the expression of that gift.
• 19:04
  Because I have seen plenty of people who when they take our primary motivational gift assessment and we identify their top gift that brings them the most joy, it's a place that they are less developed or they are less divinely directed at this point in their life than some of their other gifts.
• 19:25
  So if we look at it from this perspective of like,"Well, how are you expressing it right now?" Off the bat, we miss the most important piece of this, which is, how do you most love to show up?
• 19:37
  If you are allowed to fully express yourself and contribute and to show up in one of these gifts more than the rest, which one would you want to prioritize?
• 19:49
  And I find that our past painful experiences and the worldly influences that we have, really impacts how we understand our gifts and how we order our gifts.
• 20:03
  Sometimes people take our assessment, and they're like,"Well, I had two that scored equally." And I'm like,"Okay, great." So that just might mean that one gift shows up and brings you a lot more joy in this area, and one gift shows up and brings you a lot more joy in another area.
• 20:19
  It This isn't about pigeonholing you into one space.
• 20:23
  Here's the cool thing that, that happens, that we find happens.
• 20:27
  Once you better understand where your personal intrinsic joy lies and once we identify hey, if we center how you do things in this gift, all the other ones all of a sudden start bringing you a lot more joy.
• 20:44
  Like, once we've identified that, from there, ideally all of these gifts start growing in the amount of joy that they bring you because they are in proper order.
• 20:55
  And identifying your primary motivational gift is so we can start to order things a little bit more clearly for you.
• 21:03
  Okay, it's not supposed to stick you into a category and then be about,"Okay, well, my identity is X." No.
• 21:10
  That, that's, that's not your identity.
• 21:12
  Your identity is a child of God.
• 21:13
  Your identity is not a steward.
• 21:14
  Your identity is not a professor.
• 21:16
  Your identity is not a builder.
• 21:17
  Your identity is a follower of Jesus and a child of God.
• 21:21
  So once we've got that, then it's looking at, okay, in my current setting, in this season of life, what does the expression of my gifts look like?
• 21:34
  How am I expressing my gifts?
• 21:36
  Okay.
• 21:36
  Am I doing it in a divinely directed way where the gift is submitted to God and God is remaining the ultimate source and authority?
• 21:45
  Like, I am surrendered to Him and I use the gift in accordance with His will.
• 21:50
  So with the example of the professor, right?
• 21:53
  Divinely directing that gift that brings me the most intrinsic joy, the, the gift of being able to teach and disciple others, I am doing that from the place of wanting to create long-term embodied wisdom in not just this generation, but generations to come.
• 22:12
  That's what Paul says, The divinely directed expression of the gift of the gift of teaching, is that you teach these people in a way that it gets carried forth through generations, and it is righteous and brings glory to God." So divinely directed expression looks like that.
• 22:32
  All right?
• 22:33
  If I'm not teaching in a way that is in accordance with God's will and God's word, then that gift is not being divinely directed.
• 22:41
  Is it developed where I am able to express this gift to the full capacity that I have, that God has given me, and I have cultivated that capacity through formation and practice, in obedience, in wisdom, in experience.
• 22:56
  As somebody whose primary intrinsic motivation is professor my ability to teach and disciple looks very different today than it did even a year ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago.
• 23:10
  And so that is something that I continually ask God for support, and wisdom, and, opportunities to develop, to deepen in, and to truly teach in the way that He wants me to teach, to disciple others, and to help them learn, and pass on wisdom in the way that He wants me to do it, and also that I become more skilled with it.
• 23:32
  Right?
• 23:32
  I'm going to make sure that I'm operating at full capacity so that He can use me in whatever ways He wants to the fullness of that gift that He's graced me with.
• 23:42
  So I see this a lot of times with people, They have a gift that they're so intrinsically motivated in, and they're not developing it.
• 23:49
  Like, when they do it, it is directed.
• 23:52
  When they use the gift, they align it with God's will, and they're not developing it.
• 23:57
  So they're not giving themselves opportunities through, these formative experiences, to practice, and to learn, and to make mistakes, and to fail, and to, obey, and, and to use the gift in places that God's calling them to even though they're scared, and to get the wisdom that comes along with doing something a bunch of times, and learning not just how to do it well, also how to do it in a bunch of ways that aren't good.
• 24:23
  It's funny because right now at church, we are going through Chosen five in, like, a Bible study setting.
• 24:29
  And so today, this morning, we just watched episode two of season five and, you know, all of this is in the Bible, so I feel a little silly saying spoiler alert, and in episode two, Simon Peter is preaching.
• 24:44
  And he is standing there in front of about 100 people while Andrew is off to the side, and he's telling a story that he's like,"I know this story like, the back of my hand.
• 24:53
  If you put it in front of me and I read it, I would recognize all of it." And he's teaching it for the first time, and he keeps making mistakes.
• 25:02
  And so as he's saying things, he's realizing he's not quite sure what he wants to say, and he's looking over at Andrew, and Andrew is, like, correcting him and giving him the right information.
• 25:12
  And afterwards, Peter is so despondent.
• 25:14
  He's like,"Oh my gosh, that was humiliating." And Andrew's so happy and so excited.
• 25:18
  He's like,"You're doing it.
• 25:19
  You're practicing.
• 25:20
  You're doing it.
• 25:21
  And this is how you're gonna get better." He's so proud of Peter for doing this thing and working on developing this gift because in a way, when we develop a gift that God is saying,"Hey, I really want you to be using this.
• 25:34
  I gave this to you for a reason.
• 25:36
  I graced you with being intrinsically joyful in this state for a reason," then when we develop it, that is even more of a divinely directed way of using the gift, right?
• 25:50
  Because we're saying,"Oh, I understand that God wants me to be doing this." So that's what divinely directed and developed looks like.
• 25:58
  On the flip side of this is where we see diminishment, where the gift gets restrained or hidden or rejected or under-practiced.
• 26:06
  So I see this a lot with people who I speak to them in person, and you can tell they love to learn, and they have so much wisdom and so much information.
• 26:20
  And as I'm talking to them, I'm like,"Well, where do you get a chance to, share this out rather than just random conversations with people?" And they're like,"Oh, I'm not a teacher.
• 26:27
  I'm not a preacher.
• 26:28
  I'm not any of that." And I'm like,"You know, there's a lot of people on the internet saying a lot of random things who are not nearly as knowledgeable and naturally good teachers as you.
• 26:39
  If they can go out there and confidently do it, so can you Like, if God is calling you to learn all of this information, that's not just so you know it and you don't share it with anyone else.
• 26:52
  That would actually be kind of a distorted way of using the gift.
• 26:55
  And so I'll say that to them, and I'm like,"You need to be talking." I, I...
• 26:59
  It doesn't matter if it's a podcast, if it's in person, uh, you know, but go, go develop this gift because you are not operating in accordance with God's will if he's given you this amazing gift and then you're, like, hiding it under a bushel.
• 27:15
  You're pretending you don't know what you know.
• 27:17
  You're not sharing information with other people that would potentially change their life and the generations to come after them.
• 27:24
  So that's the diminished piece, the distortion is where you see somebody who has a gift, and it's very recognizable, but it's been recruited to meet another need or to accomplish another purpose that is not what God wants it to be used for.
• 27:41
  You know, I used to teach on several topics inside of our Trauma Institute, and then before that in our mindset coaching spaces that were not of God's will.
• 27:55
  I was teaching about New Age practices.
• 27:57
  I was teaching about a lot of things that, looking back, I'm like, man, I actually led people astray when I taught people that.
• 28:02
  I taught people things that took them out of what God has said is his will and his word.
• 28:10
  And so that's distortion right there is I'm teaching people and giving them wisdom, giving them knowledge, and giving them, uh, opportunities to practice and get experience in things that are not wise, that are foolish.
• 28:24
  And actually I love this because Paul is one of the most beautiful examples of distortion.
• 28:29
  When we look at how Paul used his ability to teach and to speak he learned so much and had so much knowledge, as a Jewish leader and then used that to persecute Christians.
• 28:45
  That's pure distortion of the gift.
• 28:47
  That is Satan getting ahold of that gift and using it for worldly means.
• 28:51
  And so there's a lot of reasons why we may do that.
• 28:55
  It can be because we have set our eyes on earning worth or approval, creating safety, controlling outcomes, uh, avoiding d- avoiding rejection, trying to rescue others, proving we're useful, assuming responsibility that God didn't give us.
• 29:10
  Like, there's so many reasons why a gift could get diminished or distorted.
• 29:14
  And one of the hardest things about distorted gift expression is that it can still be highly effective.
• 29:21
  You can build a career with it.
• 29:22
  People will reward you for it.
• 29:24
  You'll get a lot of money for it a lot of times, and you can even serve people to a point with it.
• 29:29
  And over time, it's gonna produce bad fruit internally and then also externally.
• 29:37
  So in order to determine your current expression of your gifts, that's where you've got to get in and look at all seven of these gifts from the perspective of distortion versus diminishment and direction and development.
• 29:52
  And so that is actually why we created our spiritual assessment of gift expression diagnostic.
• 29:58
  It is not a map, it's a point on the map.
• 30:00
  It shows you how your current gift expression is occurring.
• 30:04
  And so it's really helpful to do that because it helps you look at, okay, in this season of my life, am I operating in a way where I'm really ordering my gifts as God wants me to?
• 30:23
  And so once we've got that picture in front of us of all seven of our gifts and how they how developed they are, how directed they are, how diminished they are, how distorted they are, then we can go,"Okay, where's the disorder?" Where is the disorder in here and, and why?
• 30:45
  What heart posture am I operating from?
• 30:48
  Am I centering my primary motivational gift?
• 30:54
  How am I using the gift?
• 30:56
  What fruit is being produced as a result, both inside of me and out in the, with the people that I use the gift with and for?
• 31:05
  How disordered is all of this?
• 31:08
  This is so helpful because we can go from understanding, okay, God is the source of my gifts.
• 31:16
  I want to make sure that I understand how he has designed me from a motivational perspective and, and the posture that I can take so that I am operating within these gifts from a place of joy.
• 31:30
  I can then look at how I'm using these gifts.
• 31:33
  I can examine my motivation for why I am showing up the way I'm showing up and how I'm showing up the way I'm showing up.
• 31:41
  And from there, then when I look at the fruit that's being produced, I can go,"Okay, well, this makes a lot of sense." So I can ensure that my gifts, when they are being used in an ordered way, number one, they're submitted to God because He's remaining my source and authority.
• 31:59
  Number two, I'm practicing discernment, and I'm noticing, hey, am I over here trying to pretend that I'm motivated by being a builder when in reality I'm, I'm motivated by being a coach who builds things from a coach lens.
• 32:20
  We can honor our capacity, because I think this is a big thing.
• 32:23
  I've realized that if I don't read and write and ensure that I am resourcing myself with input at the beginning of the day, you know, reading scripture, um, listening to high quality content that fills me up, praying and opening my mind up and asking God and for discernment around where he wants me to focus that day, ensuring that what I am learning personally is good and aligned with God's will, and ensuring I have enough time for that on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a seasonal basis.
• 33:07
  If I'm not doing that, then my capacity for teaching others and helping others learn goes down.
• 33:17
  Also, my ability to honor my capacity and going,"Hey, If I have a day in front of me where I'm going to need to do a lot of building, or I'm going to need to do a lot of stewardship, then I better make sure that I am prioritizing getting the information and the knowledge I need in order to be able to do those things.
• 33:37
  Like, that has to come first because if I just start with building or I just start with asset allocation and I don't give myself what I know is going to help me feel motivated to do this, then I'm gonna have a hard time.
• 33:52
  I also need to be able to, over time and throughout seasons, to understand that my gifts may be ordered in a different way based off of the, the season and the assignment.
• 34:06
  My gifts need to serve what God is asking for in this season.
• 34:09
  And so sometimes, you will have a season where God is like, this season I'm gonna have you be a sponge from an absorbing perspective.
• 34:16
  Next season I'm gonna have you be a sponge from a squeezing perspective." So those are both Ordered ways of showing up as somebody who has the primary intrinsic motivation of being a professor, of teaching and of learning.
• 34:36
  And in the one, I'm doing a lot more learning and a lot more formative work to get the knowledge that I need to give to other people.
• 34:44
  In the other one, I'm doing a lot of teaching and formative work in disseminating that information to others, and learning how to do that in the best way I can.
• 34:56
  And the last piece of ordering our gifts in a way that allows us to express them in alignment with God's will is understanding that this is all, like I said at the beginning, to serve other people.
• 35:08
  It is to serve and to love God above everyone else, and then to love other people.
• 35:14
  Your identity is not dependent upon being needed for the gift.
• 35:18
  You are giving from this place of joy.
• 35:20
  You are giving from this place of excitement.
• 35:22
  You are giving from this place of having the capacity, of having an abundance of what you need in order to be able to serve others.
• 35:32
  So you ordering your gifts in a way that allows them to be incredibly divinely directed, and you also prioritizing their development, and you doing it through this lens of your primary motivational gift, this changes the game, y'all.
• 35:51
  And so this is why we are launching our Grow in Your Gifts program.
• 35:59
  And interestingly, this is a program that I was going to run at the beginning of the year and then didn't, and ended up doing it as a 10-day, like, journey for people that were already inside of one of our spaces.
• 36:13
  And over the last several months, as we've been developing High Responsibility Humans and starting to do deeper work in that space, particularly on the agency side of our business, I'm realizing that without this, formational knowledge, it is very hard for people to then order their gifts.
• 36:36
  It is very difficult for people to develop in the leadership and spiritually focused ways that they are desiring because they don't have a clear understanding of their gifts.
• 36:47
  And so I don't want you to go through this 10-week program and to just, to just simply know your gift.
• 36:51
  I want anyone who comes in that space to be able to become increasingly skilled at recognizing what it looks like to surrender their gifts to God, to develop them with wisdom, and to produce the fruit that He intends.
• 37:06
  Okay?
• 37:07
  So that program, the information's in the show notes, and I think it's gonna be incredibly valuable.
• 37:13
  I'm so excited, like, so excited to teach it.
• 37:17
  And if you're not ready for that, um, go take the Primary Motivational Gift Assessment.
• 37:23
  Or take the assessment, and then if you decide,"You know what?
• 37:27
  I really do kinda wanna get a clear idea of how my gifts are being expressed in this season of my life," go take the SAGE Diagnostic.
• 37:35
  All right?
• 37:36
  Both of those are in the show notes, too.
• 37:38
  From there, if you're like,"Okay, yes, I'd really love to go deeper into this," then you can sign up for Grow in Your Gifts.
• 37:44
  If you're listening to this several months from now, it's still gonna be available.
• 37:47
  It's just we're gonna do it live to start.
• 37:49
  So next week in our solo episode, I'm gonna be talking more about how Paul has given us this incredibly valuable way to evaluate our gifts, and to evaluate that expression.
• 38:00
  And we're gonna talk about how you can possess these extraordinary spiritual gifts and still express them in a way that makes them, like, functionally useless or even harmful.
• 38:10
  We're gonna talk about what Paul says is the, quote-unquote,"more excellent way." And we're gonna get into how you can, again, assess that gift expression and make sure that what God has given you, you're using it in the way that, like, you wanna be using it, okay?
• 38:29
  So I just at the end of this wanna pray, if you wanna pray with me.
• 38:33
  I wanna just pray for God to particularly show you what He's given you, to show you how it has been developed and, and how He has been trying to direct you, and also to show you where your gifts have been diminished, and where the expression has been distorted, where you have been taught that it's selfish to want to have intrinsic joy and excitement when you show up and do things in order to glorify God.
• 38:57
  And, and I wanna ask God to teach us to steward our gifts from Him as the source, and to produce the fruit that He intends.
• 39:06
  And, and I just pray that for you, I pray that over you, I pray that over myself, and I pray it in Jesus' name.
• 39:14
  Amen.
• 39:15
  I truly hope that if this has intrigued you, that you're gonna go take the assessment or to, go further and do the SAGE Diagnostic or just fully dive in and decide to do Growing Your Gifts with us starting in October.
• 39:30
  So I love you all.
• 39:32
  I pray that you have a blessed week, and I will talk to you next episode.