#55: Have you ever wondered why you naturally think, feel, or respond the way you do? Or why certain things stir your heart while others don’t? 

In this episode, we’re kicking off an exciting new series on spiritual gifts, specifically the motivational gifts from Romans 12:6-8. Together, we’ll explore what these gifts are, how they differ from talents and skills, and why understanding them is key to discovering your God-given purpose. 

I’ll share my own journey of discovering my spiritual gifts and why I’m so passionate about helping you uncover yours. Get ready to see yourself through God’s eyes, embrace the gift He’s placed in you, and step confidently into the unique role He’s called you to fulfill.

Let’s go to the show!

Key Take-aways:

• 00:16 - Exploring Spiritual Gifts: A New Series
• 02:11 - Embarking on a Journey of Spiritual Gifts
• 07:23 - Discovering Personal Purpose
• 08:15 - Discovering Spiritual Gifts
• 14:49 - Setting Expectations for the Series
• 17:31 - Starting the Journey of Discovery

Resources:

• Discover Your God-Given Gifts - by Don & Katie Fortune
• The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? - by Rick Warren

Heavenly Position Guidance Challenge:

For this week’s Heavenly Position System Challenge, take some time this week to reflect on the moments in your life where you’ve felt most alive, most fulfilled, or most “you.” Write down at least three experiences or situations where you felt like you were naturally operating out of your strengths or passions.

Then, journal through these questions:

1. What were you doing in those moments, and why did it feel so natural to you?
2. Who benefited from your actions? How did it impact others?
3. Looking back, can you see how God might have been using you—even if you didn’t realize it at the time?

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I'm Angie Robertson and you're listening to the Spirit Led Life podcast, episode 55.

Have you ever wondered why you naturally think, feel or respond the way you do?

Or why certain things stir in your heart while others don't?

In this episode, we're kicking off an exciting new series on spiritual gifts, specifically the motivational gifts from Romans 12:6,8.

Together we'll explore what these gifts are, how they differ from talents and skills, and why understanding them is key to discovering your God given purpose.

I'll share my own journey of discovering my spiritual gifts and why I'm so passionate about helping you uncover yours.

Get ready to see yourself through God's eyes.

Embrace the gift he's placed in you and step confidently into the unique role he's called you to fulfill.

Let's go to the show.

I'm so excited you're here today.

Whether you're tuning in for the first time or you've been walking this journey with me for a while, I am so grateful you've made space in your day to join me.

If you're new here, welcome.

I'll introduce myself again.

I'm Angie, a certified life and career coach, author, storyteller and journaling advocate, and I'm passionate about helping you hear God's voice, live in alignment with the Holy Spirit and confidently embrace who God created you to be.

Before we get into today's topic, I want to encourage you to follow, share and leave a comment on this podcast.

It would mean so much to me if you would take just a few moments.

Go into your podcast player since it's in your hot little hands and click the follow link if you haven't already.

You can also share this podcast with a friend who might be interested in this particular topic on spiritual gifts and who doesn't want to learn more about how God designed them Anyway, one other way you can support this podcast is by leaving a kind review when you like, share and leave a comment.

It helps others to find this podcast and we are building a community to learn how to live our lives by the Holy Spirit.

So thank you again for taking the time to share.

Today I want to invite you on a journey, one that's deeply personal yet powerfully collective.

We're about to embark on a new series exploring spiritual gifts and not just any gifts.

This series will dive into the motivational gifts found in Romans 12, 6, 8.

These gifts are embedded in your very design, woven into the fabric of who God created you to be.

Now let me ask you, have you ever paused to consider why you naturally think a certain way or feel a certain way, or respond to situations the way that you do.

Maybe you've noticed patterns in your life ways you naturally lean into serving or teaching or encouraging or leading.

These patterns aren't just random quirks or personality traits.

They're clues to your motivational gift, the unique way God has wired you to reflect his heart in this world.

But here's the thing.

Spiritual gifts are often misunderstood.

And maybe you've wondered, what's the difference between talents and skills and a gift?

How do I know if something I'm good at is actually a spiritual gift?

And how do I use my gift in a way that God intended?

In this series, we're going to answer those questions and so many more.

And we'll begin by untangling the mystery of the three types of gifts mentioned in manifestation gifts, ministry gifts, and motivational gifts.

Because understanding these categories will help you see how the motivational gifts fit into the bigger picture of how the Holy Spirit works through us.

Before we go further, let me just share a little bit about my own experience with discovering my spiritual gift and why this topic has become so meaningful to me.

All my life from high school on, I have always thought, what do I want to be when I grow up?

I think many of us can relate to that.

We go to our career, our guidance counselor in high school, we go to a career counselor in college and we take all the Myers Briggs and all the different tests, the strengths finders, all these different things to try and understand what we are good at.

That has been my entire quest most of my life.

I would say I even fun fact, I've mentioned this before on the podcast.

I was actually going to be going to school so that I could work in a career center at a university or college.

And I even had a job lined up right before I moved.

Like within the first year of us being married, I had a job lined up to work in the career center at a major university.

I am so passionate about it because I've seen so many people struggle in this area.

In fact I even once I completed my coach certification I went on to do a special area which was career coaching.

And concentrating on that area of my coaching as well.

I'm super passionate because again, I don't know if you remember, some of you that are listening may not even remember this book, but back in the day Rick Warren came out with the Purpose Driven Life and that book took off like a phenomenon.

Churches were doing it, they were having Bible studies, they were doing sermons on it.

There Was all these different things available.

This was before social media and before zoom and all those different things.

And it went like wildfire.

People really wanted to know what their purpose was.

And spoiler, if you haven't read the book, I'm about to spoil it for you.

I, of course, bought the book myself.

I dived into it.

I was waiting on the edge of my seat to find out what it was that God had for me to do, only to get into the end and find out that really all he wants you to know is that your purpose is to spread the gospel, which it is.

That is our purpose.

Everything that we do is to bring glory to God.

And I get it, but it left me wanting.

Okay, that's great.

I get that.

That that's my mission.

That's my calling.

Like, that's what we're supposed to do, is lead people to Christ.

But we don't all do it the same way.

We all are a body of Christ.

We all.

The body of Christ is made up of many parts.

And it left me just kind of going, wah, wah, wal.

If you've ever seen the movie A Christmas Story, and.

And in this, the movie, he is doing the secret decoder from Orphan Annie and he's so excited.

He wants to find out what the code is.

He listens to the radio every night to try and get the code.

And he finally gets all the things and he goes into the bathroom, locks himself in there, and he goes to try and decode the secret message that Orphan Annie has left.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

Ovaltine?

A crummy commercial.

That's kind of the way I felt about the book, A Purpose Driven Life.

Great book.

Don't get me wrong.

I don't want to ever poo poo a fellow author, but I just.

I guess my expectations were so much more than what I thought that I was going to get out of the book.

So with that, that really led me on this kind of journey to really uncovering how did God design me?

How did he make me up?

I've shared before that I let.

For so many years, I let the church kind of tell me who I should be, instead of actually asking God, who am I in you?

And actually finding out who God is.

Because that's the big clue.

He designed us in his image.

So he's going to create us in his image, and we're going to have some of the same characteristics and share the same characteristics that he has.

Certainly not all of them.

We did go over all of them.

We're not Going to be omnipresent and omniscient.

I can never say that word, omniscient.

I can never say it.

But we have some of the characteristics, right?

We should be loving, we should be kind, we should be faithful.

All those things, right?

Jump ahead.

In my journey in uncovering who God made me to be.

I found out about spiritual gifts and I've certainly seen them.

I attended a non denominational church and we had a five fold ministry.

And the five fold ministry are the ministry gifts, which is prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, like it's the fivefold ministry.

And so I saw that aspect of gifting and it still didn't quite jive with me because I didn't feel any of those, like, okay, is that my purpose?

I'm supposed to be a pastor or whatever.

Anyway, it caused me to dive even deeper into spiritual gifts.

Okay, I hear about spiritual gifts.

So I bought several books on spiritual gifts.

And what I was finding is, is that I still was left with not really enough clarity for me.

And then I ended up, and I've mentioned this before when I talked about how we were going to do this series.

I don't even remember how I found out about dawn and Katie Fortune's book Discovering your God given Gifts.

And that book was an eye opener to me because they showed how there's actually three different categories of gifts.

Because what I was finding is everybody was taking all three categories of gifts, the manifestation, ministry and motivational.

Lumping them all together, you take a test and find out what you are.

And that is great.

In some respect it's not an accurate picture of the spiritual gifts.

So for me, I wanted to dive in really deep and really understand what are the different gift categories and why.

And when I did, my eyes were so open to what God was doing in me and I got to accept who I am and understand all the things in my life led up to were all part of the gifting that God placed in me.

And I didn't realize I was already operating in my gift.

And he showed me year after year after decade after decade of different ways that I was actually operating in that gift and how it was showing up.

And it was mind blowing to me.

And so I dived in even further and really went in to get the certification in this training so that I could work in it a little bit more and start to help people understand how God called them.

And I'll never forget one of the ways that I did that was with my alumni from the virtual assistant school.

We had a retreat and we do.

We were doing retreats once a year and I decided to do a presentation on this.

It was very shortly after I had gone through kind of the certification of the program.

And so I wanted to kind of test it out and see how it would land and how I could teach it and that sort of thing.

And I took each of the students through the gifts and we did the, it was a whole like half day retreat.

And then we were, we all came back together.

Once they took the test and they did some discovery and things like that, then I helped them to really see how that gift had threaded throughout their entire life.

It was so exciting and phenomenal to watch how that happened and watch their kind of aha moment of oh my gosh, I didn't realize that.

So that's where I come from when it comes to talking to you and sharing and what we're going to be doing these next few weeks.

I've kind of slated 11 weeks.

It might be more than that.

We'll have to just see how it goes.

But that's kind of where I've slated.

So I look forward to really deep diving in because I don't want to leave you wanting like I was wanting from that book Purpose Driven Life.

I want you to walk away and know, and certainly I'm going to share with you different ways that you know, if you need further assistance, I'm happy to help.

I'll offer some options for you.

If you need some guidance in helping you really understand and get clarity on your motivational gift.

And also if you want to just see how that has been threaded throughout your life, I'm happy to do that as well.

So I'm very excited.

Why does all this matter anyway?

When you understand your spiritual gift, you unlock clarity not just about what you're called to do, but also about who you are in Christ.

And that clarity brings freedom and freedom from comparison, freedom from striving to be something you're not, and freedom to walk confidently in the unique role God designed you to fill in the body of Christ.

One of the most exciting parts of the series will be unpacking each motivational gift in detail.

And we'll dedicate an episode to each one, exploring the unique ways these gifts manifest in our lives.

We'll look at examples from Scripture, examine how these gifts show up in our bodies, and like I said, we're going to dive into how this has been shaping your story all along.

So it is with the body of Christ.

If the foot says I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand, that does not make it any less a part of the body.

And if the ear says I am not a part of the body because I am not an eye, would that make it any less a part of the body?

If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear?

Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?

The motivational gifts help us operate in this body, and in fact there are different parts of the body these gifts use.

This understanding can bring powerful insight into why you naturally serve in certain ways.

And as we walk through each gift, prophecy, serving, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, and mercy, you might find yourself thinking, that's me.

That's why I respond that way.

That's why that particular thing stirs in my heart.

But this series isn't just about information.

It's about transformation.

So together we'll uncover how to recognize your gifting.

How do you embrace it, and how do you use it to bring glory to God?

This isn't about striving to be more it's about becoming aware of how God already designed you.

And as we uncover these gifts, you'll begin to see how they're not just about you, they're for the people God has placed around you.

Now I want to set some expectations for this series.

You might already have an idea of what your spiritual gift is, or maybe you're coming into this with a completely open mind.

Either way, my prayer is that each episode will help you see your gift with fresh eyes and encourage you to walk in it with greater confidence.

So here's what I want you to do as we begin this journey together.

First, prayer.

Ask God to reveal more of who he created you to be and how he wants to use you in the season.

Second, approach this series with curiosity.

You might be surprised by what you discover about yourself and how your gift has been present in ways you didn't recognize before.

And third, be ready to take notes.

Write down the things that resonate with you.

Journal through the reflections I'll share in each episode.

This isn't just about listening, it's about engaging and applying what you learn.

Now, before I close, I want to take this time to invite you to be a part of the Spirit Led Life community by joining our mailing list.

If you go to spirit led lifepodcast.com you will see the subscriber form down towards the bottom.

I'd love for you to fill that out and join the list.

You'll be notified when new episodes release.

And I share things in those emails that I don't share anywhere else, so be sure to sign up@spiritledlifepodcast.com now for this week's Heavenly Position System Challenge.

Take some time this week to reflect on the moments in your life where you felt most alive, most fulfilled, or most you.

And I say that in quotes.

Write down at least three experiences or situations where you felt like you were naturally operating out of your strengths and passions.

Then I want you to journal through these questions and I'll put these in the show notes and they'll also be in the weekly email as well.

So don't feel like you have to rush or if you're driving or working out or whatever.

You can always go back and listen to this little part or you can look at the show notes and get the questions.

Number one what were you doing in those moments and why did it feel so natural to you?

Number two who benefited from your actions and how did it impact others?

And finally, number three, looking back, can you see how God might have been using you even if you didn't realize it at the time?

As we dive into this series, I'll leave you with this gift is not an accident.

It's intentional, it's purposeful, and it's a reflection of God's grace working in and through you.

The world needs what God has placed inside of you.

Are you ready to discover your motivational gift?

Let's start this journey together and I'll see you in the next episode as we dive into the difference between talents, skills and gifts.

And trust me, you don't want to miss this.

Now as I close, I'm going to pray for us as we start this series now.

Father, thank you for your perfect design and for creating each of us with a unique purpose.

Thank you for the gifts you've placed inside of us, gifts that reflect your heart and bring glory to your name, Lord.

As we begin this journey of discovering our motivational gifts, I pray for clarity and understanding.

Open our hearts to see ourselves as you see us.

Help us to recognize the moments in our lives where our gifts have been at work even when we didn't realize it.

Holy Spirit, guide us as we reflect and pray and journal and remove any confusion or doubt and replace it with confidence and peace about how you've uniquely equipped us to serve your kingdom.

Show us how to use these gifts to love others.

Build your church and bring light to this world.

We surrender this journey to you, Lord.

Teach us and shape us and empower us to walk in the fullness of who you've called us to be.

Thank you for the privilege of being part of your plan.

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for joining me on today's episode.

This episode was produced, recorded and edited by me, Angie Robertson.

I look forward to joining you each Thursday for a new episode as we explore together how to have a spirit led life.