How’s it going in your journey to discovering joy and purpose in your life? Did you find time last week to ponder some of the gifts God has given you that ignite your sense of fulfillment and passion? If not, be sure and visit our recommended resources on discovering your gifts from last week’s blog.
The next step in our journey involves dedicating your gift; devoting your time and effort to a particular purpose. The essence of gifts is all about giving to others, so I like to think about dedicating our gifts in the same terms of devoting our gift to help others. So how can you start dedicating your gift?
I’ve discovered a really simple and effective tool for this. I like to start my morning meditating and reflecting on the upcoming day to see how I can offer my gifts to others. When I meditate in the morning, I am more open and sensitive to where God wants me to go and where my abilities can be used throughout the day.
One gift I’ve discovered through this journey is the ability to give others direction and see God in their lives. In the past, I was always way too quick to give advice, more interested in my perfect plan rather than the person. I’ve since dedicated my gift by listening first — really hearing from them, empathizing with their pain, and then reflecting back to them what they are saying and returning it to them so that the plans I would have offered to them are really their plans. So often it is what I would have given them anyway they just needed help pulling it out of themselves. It’s been the idea of dedication that has transformed that gift to be more centered on the other rather than myself.
I recently helped a friend struggling with a personal situation. I listened first, asked questions, reflected back what I was hearing and only added my thoughts only after I understood. She reached out a week later to express how much she appreciated my listening ear and counsel. Had I not learned to dedicate my gift, I would have bypassed an important opportunity to really impact other people’s lives.
You can too. I know you have gifts that are unique to your life, unique in how you can help others, and unique in a way special only to you, so take the time this week to dedicate your gift to influencing those around you.
Let me know in the comments if you have any tools or tips you use for discovering and dedicating.
Stay tuned for the third step in your journey with next week’s blog!