Dear Parents,
We have some pretty gifted teens in our church, there’s no doubt about that! In the past year we’ve seen our teens engage in service in some pretty amazing ways. And what I love most about this is that even as they are young, they are already so gifted! I can’t wait to see what God does with each of their lives as they continue to live for him! In order to give direction to this topic of gifts, and to close out or series on Identity, we taught a lesson this week about gifts. We considered both the “spiritual gifts” as well as giftings that we may not consider spiritual but which can definitely be used for service to Jesus.
First, we studied passages in Colossians and I Peter to help our teens see that they have been designed with certain strengths and passions so that they can use those to serve the Lord. We often disqualify certain aspects of our giftings because we don’t see them as “spiritual.” Yet, God designed us in that way, so we can’t discount those gifts or think they are unimportant. We shouldn’t disqualify any aspect (unless sinful) of what we love to do, because that may be the very thing God wants to use. Some of us were designed to love the great outdoors, others love cars or motorcycles, while some love music or books, and still others love to dance, run, bike, workout, or engage in other physical type activities. While you won’t find any of these listed in the Bible in the famous spiritual gifts passages, they are still very important ways that God can use us to touch others. He designed us to love different activities so that we would function within different spheres to reach unbelievers who are within those different spheres. Imagine if all Christians only loved to read. Well, we could reach everyone at the library, couldn’t we? But what about all the unbelievers at the gym or the mud bog? We are designed to love different activities because God wants us to serve him in those different spheres.
Secondly, we took at look at spiritual gifts passages like those in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. We compiled a large list of different spiritual gifts and discussed what some of those less familiar gifts looked like. We also focused on how we see these gifts in our everyday lives to help teens overcome the misconception that spiritual gifts are only for church or for use among other believers. While some gifts are meant for the edification of the body of believers, some can be used outside of the Sunday morning gathering, too. As Christians, we can take our gift of faith, or wisdom, or encouragement, or hospitality, and we can use it to reach out to unbelievers and believers alike. Even these “spiritual” gifts are a part of our everyday lives.
To conclude our lesson, we provided the teens with three different spiritual gifts inventories that they can take should they be interested in doing so. We handed out one paper copy and shared two online links as well. The links for all these resources are below should you desire to view them or help your child process through them.
- http://www.reachingyouth.org/f/Spiritual_Gifts_Inventory_Revised.pdf
- https://gifts.churchgrowth.org/cgi-cg/gifts.cgi?intro=1
- http://www.spiritualgiftstest.com/test/youth
Blessings,
Catherine