How To Identify Your Talents

When you stop growing you start dying. -William S. Burroughs (Novelist)

Who doesn't love Januaries? Frest start, clean slate. Resolutions. One of the most helpful items that could ever get into your New Year List is to "GROW." If you plan to really live this year, growing must be a priority. Otherwise (if you wanna start dying), then forget growing. But  how do you translate this concept into practical daily living? Last January 8, 2015 I happened to stumble upon John Maxwell's podcast that was recorded years ago about "Ready, Set, Grow!" and it really is a blessing to learn the wisdom he shared!

He mentioned about the Rule of 5 Times but I'm not gonna explain that rather expound on one amazing thought he mentioned during his teaching. He said that if you wanna grow in the spiritual realm this year, you gotta have the following times EVERYDAY:

1. God Time
2. Gift Time
3. Grace Time
4. Give Time
5. Gratitude Time

Growth is inevitable when you make this list of habits a hobby. I wanna focus however in Gift Time because for the past years, the other four items have already been impacting my life as I practice them (with a lot of failure involved). "Gifts" was even more impressed to me strongly when the Prayer and Fasting Day 5 material of my home church discussed about Serving God with your Gifts.

KNOWING YOUR GIFTS

Since I was a student, as young as I can remember, it was always a struggle to answer the question "What are your talents?" Others' gifts are really obvious. You may pick yours from the common list:

Dancing
Singing
Playing musical intruments
Acting
Painting
Drawing
Crafts
Speech
etc.

However, mine was really so hard to realize that I even asked God before if He missed out and became unfair in distributing gifts to me. But of course, in case if you're asking the same, He wasn't. In fact he's very intentional with every detail of your life including this gift/talent aspect. So how do you actually discover this gift? John Maxwell helps us with that. There are 3 evidences for you to confirm what your gifts are... Ready?

1. You will be good at it
2. You'll have an opportunity to use it
3. You'll love doing it

Have you figured out yours yet? I have. Finally after years of struggling, I'm now sure what my gifts are.., few yet wonderful (for me) :)

Writing. Well I'm not very good like the novelists, newspaper writers, poets and the likes are. But the fact that I can remember more than 1 human being has commended me for my good writing gives me confidence to claim it. The first one whom I can remember is my Journalism teacher, Ms. Apple Soriano, back in 3rd year high school. She had this collaboration thing with some foreign people from the academe (can't remember the details) and one of my works were commended by those foreigners. Others who have commended me with my work are well, my friends. Haha. :) My blogsite seems an opportunity to use it and definitely i love doing it! It comes naturally and it's my form of expression.

Speaking/Teaching. Unlike writing which comes easy like a flowing river, teaching is a gift I believe I have which rocks the nerve out of me. Who doesn't get nervous when speaking in front of people?! But I'm passionate to do it because of the higher fulfillment it brings. I also have, and am grateful to, a lot of opportunities to use it.  I use it in the ministry, I use it for work, and even to mentor students in my alma mater as I teach as a part-time university instructor. I haven't been fired yet from work so I guess I'm good at it :) A few have also reckoned that I have the gift after they have heard me teach.

Going back with growing... using you gift everyday enhances it so it can reach even greater excellence. You may already know your gifts and you're already using it everyday prior to reading this but I wanna make a reminder that

Gifts were given by God and the best way to use them is by serving Him.