How to Discover Your Spiritual Gifts Using the Spiritual Gifts Discovery Method
To discover our spiritual gifts or gifts of the Holy Spirit, prayer plays a vital part. This spiritual gifts discovery method takes a prayerful look at our past ministry experiences noting where we feel God working most effectively through us.
Just as Jesus observed what God was doing and followed God’s lead (see John 5:17), the spiritual gifts discovery method uses our observations of what God has been doing through us. This method looks at our past ministry experiences where we thrived, identifies the spiritual gifts that may have been activated and then encourages us to experiment in service in these specific areas of giftedness.
Quite often we aren’t aware of our spiritual gifts at first. But as we grow in our faith and knowledge and as we try different ways of serving God, we can begin to see his divine patterns.
Here are the steps in the Spiritual Gifts Discovery Method.
Step 1: Study what the Bible says about the spiritual gifts
What are the spiritual gifts?
The spiritual gifts are also called the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they are supernatural abilities given to us to do God’s work here on earth. They’re not talents we were born with and they’re not skills we have acquired through learning and experience. Natural talents and skills are certainly useful in ministry. However, the spiritual gifts bring a whole new level of empowerment that goes beyond natural human ability.
The spiritual gifts are listed in the Bible in the New Testament in I Corinthians 12:8-7-11, Romans 12:4-8 and Ephesians 4:11,12.
There are 18 or more spiritual gifts. The gifts listed in the above passages are: Serving/helping, mercy, giving, administration, teaching, apostleship, leadership, shepherding, encouragement/exhortation, prophecy, evangelism, faith, words of knowledge/wisdom, healing, working of miracles, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues.
Why does God give us spiritual gifts?
The reason God gives us spiritual gifts is for the good of the whole church in fulfilling its mission of teaching us about God, making disciples, caring for each other, showing God’s love and spreading the Good News of who Christ is. God created the unique spiritual gifts to guarantee a way for each of us to use God’s supernatural power to do our part in this mission.
The Apostle Paul gives the analogy of the church as a human body. (See I Corinthians 12:12-26) Each part has a different specialized function and each part is essential for the body to work. Likewise, we all have different spiritual gifts that can be used for the good of others and the effective ministry of the whole church. We need each other. There are no lone rangers because spiritual gifts aren’t built to personally benefit a single individual.
When and how do you get your spiritual gifts?
You receive your spiritual gifts at the time you make a personal decision to follow Jesus as our savior.
When we make a life decision to accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord, the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual gifts He wants us to have. We don’t decide which ones we get. It’s entirely up to God.
What determines when we use our spiritual gifts?
It’s also up to God when and how He wants us to use our spiritual gifts. Jesus himself followed God’s lead. He explained it this way in John 5:19 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”
As an example, if we have the gift of words of knowledge, God will only give special spiritual insights to us at carefully selected times when needed to help someone who is struggling. The rest of the time, we will continue to gain knowledge through our natural means of observation.
If we’ve been a follower of Christ for some time, we already have one or more spiritual gifts. The number and combinations of gifts we get are also chosen for us by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit also determines how big the area of influence or anointing our gifts will have.
As a note of caution, please be aware that some spiritual gifts can be faked or counterfeited by occult forces. Be wary of any “spiritual gifting” we had before accepting Christ or any “powers” from other religious or New Age sources.
Step 2. Prayerfully go over the different spiritual gifts and how they are used
Here is a list of the spiritual gifts along with clues that might indicate you have this gift. Some writers break the spiritual gifts into 3 broad categories: the practical serving gifts, the speaking or word-based gifts and the power or signifying gifts.
The practical serving gifts
This grouping of gifts is characterized by hands-on work in ministry.
Serving/helps: The gift of serving or helps is doing specific practical jobs to support ministry. You might have this gift if you love doing hands-on tasks and behind the scenes work to support church ministries and leaders.
Mercy: The gift of mercy is having God’s great love and compassion for those in distress and coming to their aid in practical ways. You might have this gift if you are drawn to helping those who are ill, distressed, broken, suffering or in physical need by offering them God’s presence, compassion, help and comfort.
Administration: The gift of administration is putting God’s vision for a ministry into action. After a person with the gift of leadership receives a vision and direction for ministry from God, the person with the gift of administration creates and implements a plan on how to do it. The Bible uses nautical terms to explain this – the captain (leader) sets the destination and the helmsman (administrator) steers the boat in that direction. You might have this gift if you work in ministry roles where you gather resources, enlist volunteers and set procedures to work toward fulfilling the mission of a ministry.
Giving: The gift of giving is the supernatural ability to give money to generously support God’s work here on earth with eagerness and joy. Although all Christians are called on to give, those with the gift of giving go above and beyond by seeking out ministry needs they can fill. You might have this gift if you intuitively see where your money can be invested in ministry and you give without being asked. You find great joy in giving and wish you had more to give.
The speaking/word-based gifts
This grouping of gifts revolves around communicating the truths of God.
Teaching: The gift of teaching is being able to explain the Bible’s principles in a way that enlightens, instructs, challenges or changes the listener. You might have this gift if you love studying the Bible and can’t wait to tell others what you’ve learned so they can benefit from it.
Encouragement/exhortation: There are two sides of the coin for this gift.
The gift of encouragement is building up the confidence of individuals and groups with words of commendation, comfort or hope. You might have this gift if you see the positive in others, write notes of appreciation or point out people’s good qualities to them to build them up in the faith.
The gift of exhortation gives specific, helpful words of correction to those who are getting off track by pointing out areas where improvement is needed. You might have this gift if you are sometimes led to have private heart-to-heart talks with others about both their strengths in ministry and also ways they might improve.
Leadership: The goal of the gift of leadership is to discern God’s vision for ministries or churches and communicate it to others so they can enthusiastically work toward the goal. You might have this gift if you can see the big picture of the overall ministry mission and you can influence others to follow your lead.
Prophecy: The gift of prophecy is bringing direct messages from God intended for a specific person or group to warn, correct or tell what God is going to do. They are usually spontaneous messages about a current situation as opposed to the gift of teaching where we do study and preparation to share God’s words. You might have this gift if you sometimes get messages that seem to be from God to speak truth about a life event, problem or situation at a specific moment of time for specific people.
Apostleship: The gift of apostleship originally applied to the leaders of the early church who had been chosen by Jesus to spread Christianity across the known world. Today this gift is seen as those who have a very strong spiritual authority that’s recognized by others to start new wide scale ministries or plant churches. You might have this gift if you start new ministries, have authority over multiple churches or are a widely respected spiritual leader.
Shepherding or pastoring: The gift of shepherding is taking personal interest and responsibility in nurturing individuals or small groups of people as they grow in faith. A person with this gift acts as a personal spiritual director or mentor who helps people develop their spiritual practices such as prayer, service, Bible study. It also has a caregiving side that that is concerned with their personal lives, situations and needs. You might have this gift if you often find yourself leading small groups or checking in with people to see how they’re doing or purposefully investing time and energy in the spiritual growth of individuals.
Evangelism: The gift of evangelism is the ability to proclaim the message of salvation through faith in Jesus in clear and compelling ways that lead to people being converted to Christianity. As noted with other gifts, every Christian is responsible for giving their own witness to God’s saving grace. However, those with the gift of evangelism are very motivated and bold in declaring the Good News of Christ. You might have this gift if you feel a strong passion for making sure that everyone you meet has a chance to hear the Good News. You hate the thought of anyone facing life or eternity without Christ.
The power/signifying gifts
This group of gifts reveals the presence of God at work in mysterious and powerful ways.
Words of knowledge and wisdom: Some lists of gifts break these down into two separate gifts.
The gift of words of knowledge is hearing a specific message or thought from God that you didn’t get through natural means that’s meant for an individual that shows God’s supernatural knowledge of their needs or situations. You might have this gift if you are sometimes given specific insights into someone’s past or present situation or their secret thoughts or feelings that strike them as true, timely, comforting or useful.
The spiritual gift of words of wisdom is putting facts or principles together that guide others to God’s action plans for a ministry or for their personal lives. You might have this gift if you are able to see how things fit together and see underlying patterns and then translate them into practical courses of action.
Faith: The gift of faith is a supernatural certainty that “God’s got this” concerning a future outcome that is still currently uncertain. Although all Christians rely on faith in God, those with the gift of faith have an ability to have unshakable confidence as to whether or not God is or isn’t going to do something specific that appears on the horizon. You might have this gift if you have a certainty about something God is going to do while others still aren’t sure what will happen or they’re wondering if it’s the right thing to do. In some cases, your faith inspires others who still have doubts to move forward.
Healing: The gift of healing is the supernatural ability to see God’s healing intentions for those suffering physically, mentally or emotionally and then acting on these intentions to pray in concert with God to release his healing power. This doesn’t mean you have the power to heal anyone, any time. As John 5:17 says, you see what God is going to do, and then you act. You might have this gift if you sometimes intuitively know when God is or isn’t going to heal someone and you seem to know what to pray for healing in a way that brings hope and wellness.
Working of miracles: The gift of working of miracles is the ability to sense and act on the knowledge that God is ready to send signs or wonders to others so they might believe or give glory to God. You might have this gift if you have seen God work through you to do things beyond human capabilities such as deliver people from demonic influences.
Discernment of spirits: The gift of the discernment of spirits is the supernatural ability to sense unseen spiritual forces below the surface when things otherwise look fine at first glance. There are three different directions discernment can work:
Seeing God’s influence where you can sense God’s Holy Spirit at work and when it is absent. You might have this aspect of the gift if you can clearly feel the Holy Spirit in meetings and ministries and in personal conversations. At other times, you notice the lack of this grace and know that ordinary human powers in use.
Seeing hidden human agendas where you are able to sense something amiss in human motivations of those around you. You might have this gift if you can sense when something is off with people, even though their words, actions and intentions seem good. You may be sensing underlying selfish motivations or hidden agendas that are purely human and not in line with God.
Seeing evil influences when you are able to sense when the devil is present either opposing God’s plans, harassing believers or holding a stronghold in a person’s life. You might have this gift if you find yourself taking strong stands in prayer against evil and are sometimes led to confront evil using God’s power.
Speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues: The gifts of speaking in tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues are two related gifts that involve using a spiritual language given to you by the Holy Spirit.
A special spiritual language given by the Holy Spirit was documented after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. In Acts 2:1-4, on the day of the feast of Pentecost, the believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to speak in a variety of known languages they had never learned. These languages were heard by foreigners as expressions of praises to God and caused them to pay attention to Peter’s sermon, resulting in mass conversions.
Speaking in tongues: The gift of speaking in tongues is using your voice to praise, thank and pray to God in a spiritual language that you have not learned or may not understand. You may have this gift if you find yourself praying privately or in groups this way.
Interpretation of tongues: The Bible instructs us that when using the gift of tongues in a church service or meeting, it needs interpretation or translation so that the message will be spiritually helpful to the listeners. You might have this gift if you can understand what someone is saying when they are speaking in tongues and you translate it to others who don’t know what was said.
Step 3. Ask God to show you what spiritual gifts you have been given
Now that we have a basic understanding of the various spiritual gifts, it’s time to apply this to our personal experiences.
Begin by simply asking God to open your eyes to the spiritual gifts you have been given. Then prayerfully go back over the list of the spiritual gifts and note the ones you feel drawn to or ones you want to explore.
I found it helpful to make a note after every spiritual gift of my initial thoughts by jotting down yes, maybe or no for whether I might have each gift.
Step 4. Ask where do I feel God used me in special, effective or surprising ways?
Now take time to pray and meditate on your past ministry experiences.
Begin by jotting down any memorable experiences that come to mind. Don’t try to analyze them or organize them as you list them. Simply write down what happened and what the outcome was. Try to find at least 5 or more experiences to analyze.
Don’t worry if they all seem very different. This may indicate several different gifts you might have.
Now go back and examine each experience you wrote down one by one. Dig a little deeper. What surprised you about it? How did you feel? How did the person or group you were helping respond? Was there anything that seemed way more than a coincidence? Did you feel any special empowerment?
Next, go back to the list of spiritual gifts and jot down any spiritual gifts that might sound like what you experienced.
An example from my own experience.
To help us have a better feel for this process, I’ll give you an example of something I jotted down from my own past experience. I wrote about how a number of years back a private school startup that our church had sponsored abruptly shut down when their funding tanked. Although the school was now an independent entity, the whole volunteer board and the great majority of the teachers and students were connected to our church. Many of them were in our adult Sunday school class. Emotions ran high. Many felt disillusioned, upset, blindsided and discouraged. And they felt ignored and unappreciated because there was never any official, organized attempt to acknowledge their sense of loss and hurt.
Even though no one assigned me to do it, I seemed to zero in on these discouraged people. I listened to each person’s story. I encouraged them. I hugged them. I thanked them for their faithfulness. I even made up a song to the tune of Home on the Range that went like this: “Home, home in God’s church, where the dear and the loving ones prayer. Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and our hearts are not cloudy all day.” I even led our Sunday school class in singing it together and it did bring out a few smiles out that had been missing for quite a while.
I mentally labeled the role I sometimes seemed to play as being on the “spiritual mop up crew.” Things get messy in ministry, someone slips and falls into a puddle of disappointment. And I come in with the mop and acknowledge the mess and encourage them to get up because they’re a valuable member of God’s Kingdom.
When I reviewed the list of spiritual gifts, I saw that this lined up with the gift of encouragement. I saw that the Holy Spirit put a spotlight on a whole group of discouraged and disillusioned people that few others noticed. And this prompted me to step in with words and actions that helped comfort them.
Step 5. Ask God to bring to your mind other experiences you’ve had that are similar
Once you have examined one specific experience and connected it to a possible spiritual gift, look back on your past ministry work to see if you can find other similar experiences.
Don’t overlook clusters of smaller experiences that aren’t as memorable as the one you first examined. Spiritual gifts are sometimes activated in many different ways, big and small.
If you don’t find any other experiences that seem to relate to the first one, your experience may have been a one-time empowerment for a specific assignment.
However, more than likely, you will begin to see a pattern emerge from your past ministry experiences that support the presence of a specific spiritual gift.
Don’t worry if you don’t see connections or patterns right away. Things may come to your mind over the next few days. When they do, make a note of them and add it to your list when you get a chance.
An example from my own experience.
Here’s what I found when I asked if I could see other clusters of experiences similar to my “spiritual mop up crew” experience of the gift of encouragement.
In this case, it wasn’t a spiritual mop-up operation. I lead a prayer group and every week I email our minister to ask him if he has any specific prayer requests for us. This started out with basically the same old businesslike email every week, but I began adding in something extra. I always mentioned something positive I saw going on in our church as a result of his ministry. A great choice of sermon topics. A positive comment someone made about our church. A way I saw God at work.
Some time later the minister mentioned in a sermon that God has wired him is to thrive on words of appreciation. I hadn’t known this when I was sending all those emails week after week. I didn’t know it, but the Holy Spirit did. Everyone in ministry work needs encouragement from the top to the bottom.
Step 6. Ask God to show you areas of service where you find joy and satisfaction in your work.
Really enjoying doing certain ministry work and looking forward to doing it is another clue that you may have found an area where you are spiritually gifted.
When you ask a group of people what kind of ministry work they enjoy, their answers are surprisingly different.
One woman who has the gift of helps/serving enjoys doing practical jobs out of the spotlight. Her favorite role is being a sanctuary steward who straightens up pew racks between services. She loves the peace and quiet and prays as she works. Another person would hurry through the job so they could get on with something they really want to do.
Step 7. What is something in ministry that seems to be easier for you to do than it is for other people?
By definition, spiritual gifts give you a surge of supernatural power to do specific ministry work. When God’s power is working through you, you often have a sense of ease and heightened effectiveness that others who don’t have the same gift don’t experience.
By asking yourself what comes easily to you, you may find an underlying spiritual gift at work.
An example from my own experience.
When I asked myself this question, I saw that I love to teach our adult Sunday school class. I enjoy creating, researching and writing lessons and seeing how to apply the Bible to life. I thrive on leading discussions. When I’m standing in front of the class, I have this huge desire for every person to “get it” and I’m excited about what we’re learning. And I feel the time flies and there’s never enough time to say everything I want to say!
On the other hand, I learned that not everyone feels this way when I asked people to fill in volunteer slots to teach Sunday school. I was taken aback that most members of our class actually refused to teach! They let it be known that teaching wasn’t their thing. They’d rather do anything else, like handing out name tags, sending notes to the sick, or heading up a mission project.
Compared to them, I could see that I had the gift of teaching and they had other gifts I didn’t have like the gift of mercy as shown by their compassion for the sick.
Step 8. Have you had the affirmation of others in the form of positive feedback concerning something specific you’ve done in ministry?
So far, we’ve been invited to look at our own experiences in ministry and here we move outward to see what feedback we’ve received from others that we are working in an area where we might be gifted.
Often other people can see something in us that we can’t see in ourselves. Their observations and feedback can help us explore specific gifts or they can confirm the presence of spiritual gifts we are exploring.
An example from my own experience.
There’s a spiritual gift I dismissed as something I hadn’t been given until others started commenting on it. Leadership. I couldn’t see myself setting the vision for a whole church like ministers do. Oversee staff? Set big goals and inspire people to catch the vision and enthusiastically implement them? Not me.
The ironic thing is that I’ve already mentioned to you that I lead a prayer group. The backstory is that I was just an ordinary member of a prayer group until the leader moved away and asked me to take over the group. I took over reluctantly.
At the time, the group format was praying over lists of names of church staff and volunteers. I’m not an avid list prayer. I’ll be honest, leading the group was definitely more of a chore than a joy.
Then I slowly began getting ideas on how to improve our prayer times. Eventually I got brave enough to stop giving out prayer assignment lists. Instead, we covered the most important and urgent things in our prayer time together. I led a study on the spiritual gifts with the group and after we uncovered our various gifts and began using them when we prayed, our effectiveness and enthusiasm increased dramatically.
And that’s when something strange started happening. Members started thanking me for my leadership of the prayer group. I was quite surprised. I began to realize that one of my spiritual gifts might be leadership in the specialized area of prayer.
The lessons I learned from this experience.
First, others can give us valuable insight into a spiritual gift we might have.
Secondly, any spiritual gift can be specialized to a specific arena. In my case, I had a specialized gift of prayer leadership. Another example would be the gift of mercy. One person might have a specialized gift for serving cancer patients, another for helping the homeless, still another for comforting the grief stricken.
And finally, it’s possible to have a spiritual gift that we have dismissed. In my case, it was because I had never put myself out there to try leading until the leader left and put me in charge. And I also had a false perception of the gift of leadership when I compared myself to the minister who was leading a whole church, something I knew I could never do.
Step 9. Ask yourself where you’re the pushiest or the most critical about ministry priorities
This may seem counterintuitive that an area of giftedness might cause us to be annoyed in ministry. It happens all the time because we’re all human and we can clash with others when our ministry priorities differ.
There’s an example in the Bible in Acts 15:36-41 where Paul and Barnabas, who were traveling together to spread the Good News, had a “sharp disagreement.” Paul, who had the gift of evangelism, didn’t want Mark to go with them on their next leg because Mark had deserted them on an earlier evangelism journey. Barnabas, whose name means son of encouragement or consolation, wanted them to include Mark. Paul and Barnabas parted ways, with Barnabas going with Mark and Paul going with Silas.
To look for clues of your unique spiritual gifts, think about times you’ve been in “sharp disagreement” with other people in ministry. Often it can be due to a clash of personalities. But sometimes it can indicate a clash of different spiritual gifts.
An example from my experiences.
I previously shared that I have the gift of teaching. In our Sunday school class, we start at 10 AM and have exactly 45 minutes to cover everything the class does including taking role, sharing prayer requests and making announcements about social gatherings and mission projects. On this particular Sunday, it was 10:20 before the class leader wrapped up all of the “other stuff” I viewed as less important than the lesson. I immediately jumped up and took over the podium, talking fast and furious, while he was still gathering up his papers.
I didn’t realize how rude I’d been until my husband came up after class and said within my earshot to the class leader in a joking way, “Now you see what I have to put up with at home!” I suddenly realized that I there had been a tug of war between the class leader and myself right in front of 30 people! My gift of teaching had clashed with his gift of administration that tended to the other class business every Sunday.
I apologized to the class leader for my rudeness. He kindly accepted my apology. And what had I been teaching about that Sunday? The gifts of the Spirit of course. And what did I do the next Sunday? I used this story to show the whole class a real-life example of how gifts sometimes clash.
Step 10. Observe people around you and identify their spiritual gifts you see at work.
As we’re considering what spiritual gifts we might have, it’s a huge help to see them used first hand. A simple way to do this is to observe how people ministering around us are using them. It’s like the difference between having someone describe to us what an elephant looks like and actually seeing an elephant.
Go back over the descriptions of each of the spiritual gifts at the beginning of this article and ask God to bring to your mind someone you know who might have this gift. Write down their name and jot down one sentence about why you think they might have this gift. A good place to start looking for spiritual gifts at work is among your church staff and in the prayer groups and Bible studies.
The benefits in being able to see spiritual gifts in those around us.
It enables us to better define in our own minds what the gift might look like in action in real life.
It helps us compare our experiences to theirs to see if we might also have this gift.
It gives us an appreciation for others whose spiritual gifts are different than ours and alerts us when our gifts might possibly clash with theirs.
It encourages us to honor and graciously defer to others with specialized gifts that are needed for a particular ministry that we aren’t equipped to handle.
An example from my experiences.
When I was studying the spiritual gifts, I began to wonder what examples I could find in my own church for each gift so I could get a better understanding of them. I started observing others in ministry and began uncovering fascinating connections. Once I glimpsed a possible spiritual gift, I emailed those I had observed or chatted with them about whether they identified with the gift and how they used it in ministry.
I saw that our senior minister had the gift of teaching (he loved to know all he could about the Scriptures he preached on), the gift of evangelism (he was gung-ho to reach the lost wherever they were), and the gift of leadership (unlike other ministers we’d had, he prayed long and hard for God’s vision and future goals for our church.)
I was surprised to see gifts in other church staff members that you normally wouldn’t associate with their job description. The choir director had the gift of shepherding. The young man who operated the AV equipment had the gift of prophecy. The assistant children’s leader had the scholarly Ph.D-level gift of teaching adults the intricacies of the Old Testament.
And the women I knew best in our prayer group turned out to have spiritual gifts I hadn’t formally labeled before. There was woman who had an off-the-charts anointing of the gift of helps/serving. Another woman who frequently got a single word from God such as peace or gratefulness had the gift of words of knowledge. One woman’s gift of mercy showed up as the overpowering supernatural sense of God’s love when we were praying over others. And yet another woman’s gift of discerning spirits became apparent in her strong ability to cut through to the root causes of problems and to pray boldly when she sensed something amiss.
Step 11. Ask God to give you an awareness of and appreciation for the spiritual gifts you don’t have.
Since there are 18 or more spiritual gifts, there are many more gifts we will never have than the gifts that we do have. It’s important to know which gifts we don’t have so we can support others who do have those gifts and we can avoid ministry roles that aren’t suited for us.
After you’ve determined several of your spiritual gifts, go back over the list of all of the gifts and note the ones you don’t identify with from your past ministry experience.
Next jot down instances where you felt serving was a drudgery, you didn’t enjoy it or you felt a general lack of success or competence.
Once you have a few of these, you’ll gain insight into where you’ve been trying to fit your square gifts into a round ministry hole.
While it’s possible to discover and develop gifts you don’t know you had, it isn’t possible to trade in your spiritual gifts for ones you think you would rather have.
The other advantage of knowing the gifts you don’t have is that you will be able to defer to and support those who are gifted in those areas.
An example from my experience.
When we did the spiritual gifts study in our prayer group, I found that the spiritual gift of faith was something I didn’t have. Of course, as a long-time Christian I have saving, trusting and believing faith in God. But I haven’t been given the spiritual gift of faith, which is having supernatural certainty that God is or isn’t going to do a specific thing.
One night at prayer meeting, I saw God’s wisdom in not giving me the gift of faith. A handful of us were gathered to pray and several of us, me included, were praying earnestly about a proposed church program that had troubling issues that needed to be addressed. One person was so distressed she was crying.
A woman on the other side of the room was very quiet and calm during all of our desperate prayers for guidance and help. When she finally prayed, it was like she had been sitting in another room and hadn’t heard our intense prayers. She prayed, “God, I thank you that you’ve got this and everything is going to work out.”
At first, I was confused. Then I remembered that during our spiritual gifts study it came to light that she has the gift of faith. I recalled that someone with the gift of faith can see that God is going to do something specific, so they don’t sweat the small stuff. To them it’s a done deal.
She was right that everything did eventually work out. But on the other hand, we were right in praying hard in the meantime. We still needed to struggle in prayer and do the legwork necessary to address the issue. Our prayer resulted in several of the women being directed and empowered to speak up on the issue and to keep questioning until the best way forward was found.
That experience taught me that in my role as a prayer leader, God was wise not to give me the gift of faith. The gift of faith puts us on a fast track of certainty that hardly anyone else is on. If I sometimes knew for certain beforehand that things were going to work out eventually, I wouldn’t pray as diligently. In fact, I might not pray at all.
Instead, God has called me to lead us to pray collectively and earnestly for God’s wisdom and guidance. Prayer where we acknowledge and care for others who are worried, fearful and suffering during times of change. Discerning prayer that unmasks the devil’s schemes to divert our attention from God’s way. And prayer for endurance, strength and trust as we struggle together until God’s answers come through.
The bottom line is that I don’t have the gift of faith. And this makes me a much more effective prayer leader.
Step 12. Pray about a new ministry role to try based on your unique spiritual gifts.
Churches and ministries thrive when members use their spiritual gifts for the specialized purposes for which they were designed by God.
In this final phase, it’s time to put you gifts to work.
First, list all of your current ministry roles, and volunteer jobs. Write down a description of what you do. Put a check mark next to the ones that line up with one of your spiritual gifts and note which gift it is.
Next, list some of the things that you do on your own initiative that aren’t formally part of any organized program. Examples might include giving money quietly to a struggling family (the gift of giving), writing notes to the sick (the gift of encouragement) or meeting regularly for coffee with a young adult you feel led to mentor (the gift of shepherding.) These self-initiated ministries may be a strong indicator that a spiritual gift is in use. After you’ve made this list, ask God to enhance your ability to sense his calling and gifting to specific daily assignments.
Finally, ask God to show you if there’s somewhere new you might volunteer to learn how to put your spiritual gifts into use.
The following gifts usually have obvious places you might readily plug in to serve: helps/serving, giving, administration, mercy, teaching, encouragement, leadership, evangelism, apostleship and shepherding.
Others that lean more toward the signifying/power gifts require specialized places to learn, grow and serve. Many of them, like words of knowledge/wisdom, discerning of spirits and healing involve asking the Holy Spirit why you are being given these insights and learning when the Holy Spirit is giving you permission to act.
If you might have the gift of prophecy, discerning of spirits, healing, words or knowledge/wisdom, faith, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues or the working of miracles, look into prayer groups, altar ministry teams, healing prayer teams, spiritual counseling groups, or deliverance ministries.
You also might develop your confidence in using your signifying/power gifts in a prayer partnership or a small covenant group setting.
It’s also quite useful to read books written by those who have healing or deliverance type ministries to gain further insight and helpful information.
Examples from my own experience.
In our prayer group, when we started offering to collectively pray out loud, in-person over people who needed physical or emotional healing, we found out we needed more power.
These prayer times became the place where we could practice our spiritual gifts and become more confident in following the small inner nudges to say or do healing things that we wouldn’t have thought to do on our own.
In this prayer setting, the gift of knowledge and discerning of spirits became were activated. During one prayer over someone a seemingly random Bible verse came into my mind and I prayed it over the person. They later told me meant so much because they had written it down in their journal that very morning when they were struggling. I began to sense that I have the gift of knowledge because I sometimes receive something specific to pray over someone that hits a strong cord in them I’m unaware I am striking.
I discovered that the more I allowed myself to speak out things that seemed to come to my mind in prayer, the more confident I became in hearing words of knowledge. With experience, I leaned into these nudges and pray them out loud without worrying whether they would have any personal meaning for others.
In conclusion, as Christians, we all have been endowed with spiritual gifts specifically chosen for us by the Holy Spirit. It’s up to us to pray for God’s help in identifying them and using them for God’s work here on earth.
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Copyright Karen Barber 2026. All rights reserved.
