Have you ever taken a personality test? How about a spiritual gifts inventory assessment? Both can be quite revealing. I’ve done both a few times. I’ve noticed over time that while my personality test results remain consistent, my spiritual gifts assessments do not always. I find that curious…
Forever my highest score on those assessments was the gift of mercy. Now mercy is like sixth on the list! I’m not sure what happened there. So if you find you looking to me for some mercy, perhaps you should keep looking. Used to, I’d pick up every stray animal on the side of the road. I’d also pull over for a turtle in the middle of the road, get out of my car, and move it out of harm’s way.
Sometimes having the mercy gift can be costly.
I brought one large turtle home for my kids to see, put it in my new garden tub to wait until they got home, and later found it’s shell had scratched up my tub! Come to think of it, that was the last stray I brought home… Well to my home.
I once rescued a cute little puppy from a deserted road. Since I didn’t have a fenced yard to keep it in, I dropped it off in my friend’s back yard, and left her a message about the dog saying I would find it a home. Her husband got home first, and decided he’d keep the dog himself, that is until it ate all their shrubbery, dug holes all in their fenced in yard, and chewed through their air conditioning lines. The gift of mercy can be costly. It quite nearly cost me a friend!
Still, I was quite disappointed that my gift of mercy had waned a bit, and equally surprised at what had moved up to the top spots. Things like apostleship, exhortation, and teaching. Wow. Now, I don’t prize one gift over another, (the Bible frowns on that) but I was simply surprised.
This unexpected change came to light as my husband and I had the opportunity to go with our three oldest kids to church and take personality tests and gifts assessments. It’s a new church for us, and it’s their way of helping new folks flesh out where they can best serve in the church.
It was a cool thing to get to do with our three older kids. We took the personality test first. This particular test is called the DISC. The test is based on the premise that there are four major personality types among people, and that most of the time we will fit into one of those categories more than the other three.
None of us were surprised with the results. I’ve often said my oldest son is me with boy parts. We laughed when our scores matched almost exactly. Neither were we shocked to see that my second son scored closely with his dad’s personality traits. And no one was surprised at my daughter’s results. She is a perfect mix of both my husband and me.
If you’ve never had an opportunity to look at yourself through the eyes of these types of inventories, I suggest you give it a try. The Bible talks about how we are all important parts of the body and how we all have an important function within the body of Christ. One that we were Tailor made to do.
I’ve seen churches that will take any willing body to do any needed job, whether the person’s giftedness is in that area of service or not. It rarely ends well.
We were all made to do something that only we can do.
If everyone in the body of Christ could find that thing they were made to do within the body of Christ, how much more would the church actually look like Jesus? What’s the one thing you are to do within the body? If you’re not sure, maybe a spiritual gifts inventory is a good place to start.