Most Christians believe in spiritual gifts. Ask a room full of churchgoers whether the Holy Spirit gives gifts to believers, and almost every hand goes up. It’s one of those doctrines that’s broadly accepted, rarely contested, and — if we’re honest — surprisingly underexplored.
The question I want to ask you today is a more specific one: do you know what your gift is?
Not in theory. Not in the vague sense of “I think I’m probably an encourager.” Actually know — with enough clarity that you could say it out loud, that you could look at how you spend your time and see it operating, that someone in your church community would recognise it in you before you told them.
Because there’s a significant gap between believing in spiritual gifts and actually knowing yours. And that gap matters more than we often acknowledge.
The Gift You’re Already Using
Here is something I’ve come to believe: most people are already operating in their spiritual gift. They just haven’t named it yet.
The person who walks into a difficult conversation and somehow creates space for people to be honest — they think they’re just being a good friend. The person who seems to know, without being told, when someone in the room is struggling — they assume everyone notices what they notice. The person who serves behind the scenes, long after everyone else has gone home, with a quiet sense of satisfaction rather than resentment — they just think that’s what faithfulness looks like.
It is. But it’s also a gift. And naming it changes something.
When you can say “this is my gift,” you stop treating it as optional. You stop assuming everyone can do what you do. You stop waiting to be asked. You begin to steward it — to develop it, to offer it, to bring it into the spaces that need it most.
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4:10)
The word Peter uses — stewards — implies responsibility, not passivity. A steward manages something that belongs to someone else on their behalf. Your spiritual gift was given to you for the benefit of others, and it comes with an expectation that you’ll put it to work.
Why Not Knowing Costs More Than You Think
When people in a church community don’t know their gifts, two things happen. They either serve out of guilt — turning up for rotas and programmes because someone has to — or they disengage, quietly concluding that the church doesn’t really need what they have to offer.
Neither of those is the thriving, Spirit-empowered community the New Testament describes.
Paul’s image in 1 Corinthians 12 is of a body: every part functioning, every part needed, every part contributing what the rest of the body cannot supply on its own. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27) The body doesn’t function well when significant parts are sitting on the sidelines.
The health of your church community is partly a function of how many people in it know their gift and are using it. That’s not an exaggeration — it’s just what the body metaphor implies.
Five Minutes That Might Change Something
Over the past few months I’ve written a series of posts exploring spiritual gifts in depth — what they are, how they work, why some of them make people nervous, and how the church needs all of them. That series is called Empowered, and it’s all available on the blog if you want to go deeper.
But if you haven’t read any of it, here’s the best possible place to start.
I’ve put together a short spiritual gifts assessment — five minutes, a handful of questions — designed to help you identify where the Spirit seems to be most consistently at work in you. It won’t tell you everything, but it will give you a starting point. A name. Something to pay attention to.
Take the Empowered Spiritual Gifts Assessment here →
Then come back, read the series, and begin to think about what it might look like to steward what you’ve been given — not for your own benefit, but for the people around you who need exactly what you carry.
Start with the series: Why Spiritual Gifts Aren’t Optional · If It’s Not a Spiritual Gift, It’s a Spiritual Discipline · Three Kinds of Gifts — and Why Your Church Needs All of Them
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