1. Missionary

2. Wisdom

3. Exhortation

4. Mercy

This past week we read Discover
Your Spiritual Gifts by C. Peter
Wagner. As you can guess, the book deals with spiritual gifts- what
they are, where they are mentioned in the Bible, different beliefs on
spiritual gifts and then at the end we completed a "quiz"
to help us narrow down what our possible dominate spiritual gifts
are. My top four are listed above. Obviously, this quiz was to simply
help us and so the answers are not set in stone- however, it was
interesting to come together and notice what everyone's dominate
traits were. The top three out of our group are actually my top
three:

• Missionary (we
  ARE on a missions trip but that does not mean that everyone's
  dominate gift in our group is being a missionary)

• Wisdom

• Exhortation
  (one thing you will never run short of in our group is
  encouragement- you can always find someone who has something
  encouraging to say)

Obviously, each
person has different gifts in different amounts and there are people
who would state that their gift was leadership or hospitality and we
all nodded our heads in agreement. However, there were also those
times when a gift would be stated that hasn't been as obvious and
it's shown us different parts of each other. I've learned there is a
person gifted with intercession (the ability to pray about specific
things and see specific/ frequent answers to those prayers), one with
miracles, a couple with the possible gift of celibacy, a few with the
gift of teaching, one with the gift of discernment of spirits...
Again, this test was simply to give us an idea of what gifts we could
have. The book suggests that we basically "try the gifts out"
and see if God uses them. The book talks about roles vs. gifts and
how they can be confused and so there is a need to test the gift out.
(I could talk more about this book and explain it but this blog would
be ALOT longer- if you have any questions, maybe pick up the book or
email me and I can try to answer it the best way I can).

Another thing that
I found in the Bible a couple of weeks ago (found is probably the
wrong word since it has always been there and I've read and heard
this verse many, many times) is the verse in Philippians 4:6-7 which
says:

Do
not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and
petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the
peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

When
I had read these verses in the past, I concentrated on the parts
about not being anxious, with thanksgiving, presenting our requests
to God, the peace that transcends all understanding and it guarding
my mind. For some reason, I had never noticed the part "will
guard your heart."
Now that I've noticed it, I can't believe I ever overlooked that part
of the verse; it mentions in Proverbs 4:23 to guard the heart for it
is the wellspring of life. Also, being a woman, we've been taught our
entire lives to watch over our hearts, keep it safe. This part of the
verse means so much to me because for me, when I'm struggling with
something or I become anxious about something, I feel it more in my
heart than in my head. Generally it seems that if you tell someone
you are anxious or worried about something, people assume that you're
simply thinking a lot about that thing, which is true for me as well
but again, I feel things more in my heart- that's how I can tell when
something really bothers me. And to read that verse and realize that
God understands, that He knows that, yes we do think about our
problems more and we need to give the problem to Him but at the same
time He knows that the problem can affect our hearts- simply makes me
love Him even more and lose any worries I might have had.