Your Yes Matters More
God doesn’t need our strength. He wants our surrender.
Heavenly Father, I ask that You guide every decision so that Your Word will shape my life. I lay each hope and dream at Your feet. May ALL that I do bring glory and honor to Your name. In Your holy and matchless name, Jesus, Amen.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” Colossians 3:23 ESV
When the Lord reached down to save my soul, I was so excited to share what He had done in my life and to see how God might use me. It was the early 2000s, and at the church I was attending, there was a class called Body Life. It was designed to help new believers learn more about their spiritual gifts and how to use them to serve within the Body of Christ and beyond.
I vividly remember looking at the list of gifts and praying that the gift of teaching would show up as my top gift, at least in the top three. Teaching had always been something I loved. You can ask the kids who my mother used to babysit. We would read a book, and then I would create worksheets to quiz them on what we had just read. (I don’t think they loved that!)
As I scanned my results, full of high expectations, I began to feel a heavy weight of disappointment on my shoulders because the gift of teaching was nowhere to be found.
I felt as though I had failed. My hope seemed shattered, like an almost complete puzzle being pushed off the table and the 1,000 pieces scattered across the floor.
A flood of thoughts began running through my mind, sweeping away my hopes with the new current of life. I started thinking that maybe God was redirecting me, or perhaps this was His way of showing me a new path, leading me to something I was actually good at. That had to be it, right?
According to the inventory, my top gift was encouragement. Fittingly, there I sat, trying to encourage myself to be content with the outcome.
A Reminder From a Recent Read
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about those results in years, until the other night. I read an article on Blaze Media titled Beware of the Sin Crouching Behind This Popular Christian Idea by Caroline Woods, and it reminded me of that season.
Woods shared that while spiritual gift inventories often have good intentions, the results can sometimes make us focus more on ourselves and what comes naturally to us rather than on being stretched beyond our own beliefs about what God wants to do through intentional acts of obedience.
God Calls Us in Our Weakness
She made an important point: God often calls us to serve not just in our strengths, but in our weaknesses, so that He gets the glory.
“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’” 2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV
If we only served in areas where we were naturally good, there’d be no need to rely on God or seek His wisdom. It would be through our insufficient strength, and that’s not what God desires for His children. Honor isn’t found in the gift itself, but it rests in being called by the One who knows our hearts better than we do.
We can see this illustrated in Hebrews 5:4 ESV:
“And no one takes this honor on himself, but he receives it when called by God, just as Aaron was.”
Just as Aaron was created and chosen to help be the voice to Moses as he led God’s people out of slavery, God created you to fulfill a specific purpose in a particular time that only you can do. Remember that you are the only person in creation with the attributes, experiences, and lessons that God has taught you. Shine the light that He fuels within you!
He Will Equip You
When God genuinely calls you to something, believe He will equip you with everything you need. Trust that He will walk with you and know that He goes before you. We serve an ever-present Father who is faithful to lead us as we walk out His will.
So, before we set something aside just because we don’t feel particularly skilled in it, maybe we should pray, seek, and ask:
God, are You calling me to this? Could this be a way for Your glory to be displayed through my submission? How can You use me when I fall short?
Our great God has given me so many opportunities to teach in different ways over the years. While I love every minute of it, I can’t even describe the quiet moments that I have had to sit down with women and encourage them in their current situations. Whether the topic is relationships, their jobs, or just life in general, it is such an honor to know that God placed me there for a reason. Oh, what a joy it is to be known and called!
Friends, I hope you are encouraged to seek the Lord in discovering your calling. Inventories and other tools can be helpful, but recognize that they shouldn’t replace our prayers and daily time with Jesus as we seek to know the ways we should live out our purpose.. Surrender your desires to His good and perfect will. Walk with Him and trust He will provide all that you need.
What is your “Yes!” today?
Lord, I pray that whatever I do for Your name, I do it with excellence and with full dependence on You. God, I trust that You will equip me with different gifts at different stages in my life. I understand that the joy is not in the gift; it is in hearing Your call and honoring You with my “yes.” Today, I say YES to You! In the name of Jesus, I pray, amen.
