**Hip-Hip-Hooray for having no more password security on my blog! Proceed as normal!
As a girl, and even up through high school, one of the words that people always used to describe me was “encouraging”. My parents knew it, my friends knew it, and I knew it; I also knew that encouragement wasn’t just something I was good at, but was a truly a gift that G0D had given me. Encouragement was my biggest and most apparent spiritual gift, and G0D allowed me to be a vessel for encouraging H1S people time and time again. I can recall many times off the top of my head that I felt like I was supposed to say something to someone, and they would respond telling me that I had no idea how much they had needed to hear what I had told them. To me, it never felt like a big deal; I was just telling the person the truth of how G0D saw them and how much H3 loved them. This gift made me feel connected to G0D in a really sweet way; H3 would give me words or ideas to share with people, and I would just look up and give H1M a little smile and know H3 was about to do something really rad.
And then, I realized that this gift could come in really handy. I knew the “encouragement buzzwords” and I got pretty good at looking at people and their actions and choosing a buzzword to tell them to make them feel good or better about themselves. Simply put, I learned how to flame peoples’ egos, and I realized how much easier it was to make friends when I told people something that would make them feel good. The gift that G0D had given me started to shrivel; G0D never took it away (Romans 11:29 tells us that H3 won’t take away the gifts H3 has given us), but H3 didn’t use me in the ways that H3 had in the past. When I would encourage people, they would appreciate my words but my words weren’t always impactful. Some may say that I just “lost my touch,” but I believe that I closed myself off to being used as a vessel for the Kingdom.
One of the things that you talk about a lot on the World Race is spiritual gifts. You read about them, talk about them, pray about them, and really dig into walking into the gifts that G0D has given you. I am a firm believer that, if you don’t know what your gifts are and you ask G0D, H3 will absolutely tell you. And I knew that one of my spiritual gifts was encouragement, but (in complete vulnerability) I didn’t know if G0D would give it back to me. Side note: I’m so thankful that G0D is infinitely over and above anything we could imagine as humans. I felt so much fear that I had squandered and wasted what H3 had given me, and that I either didn’t have any more spiritual gifts or that I would have to “prove myself” in order to have my original gifts returned (like when you leave a water bottle behind at summer camp and the counselors make you go up and do the dance to “I’m a Little Teapot” in order to get your water bottle back). While all of this was going on, I was also learning a lot more about the spiritual gift of prophecy. For the longest time, I had assumed that prophecy was only delivering messages of “doom and gloom,” like many of the prophets in the Old Testament; I had figured that people with the spiritual gift of prophecy were tasked with going to people who were living in sin and telling them to change their ways. But at training camp back in October, I began to understand that prophecy is simply sharing something that G0D has told you with whoever else H3 wants to hear it. This is an incredibly new idea for me, and I definitely do not have a definitive understanding of how prophecy is defined. However, from what I understand, prophecy is sharing G0D’s heart for H1S people; H1S good, gracious, and loving heart. The B1BLE shows us that prophecy can be hard, and sometimes G0D calls H1S prophets to deliver tough messages to H1S people. But prophecy can and should be a tremendous blessing, because G0D calls prophets to, ultimately, speak H1S capital-t-Truth out of love. Which sounds really scary, but also really cool, and sounds like the perfect cheese to the macaroni that is encouragement, but… I didn’t even know if I have the gift of encouragement anymore.
Fast forward to our last week in Nepal when our team, along with three others, were out in the jungle working with a church and praying in and around the community. One morning, I had the realization I explained earlier, and broke down to G0D.
I’m so sorry. I know I misused what you gave me. I realize now that I took something good and skewed it. I know I don’t deserve to have it back like I had it before. But that was such a sweet thing I had with you, and I would love to share that with you again. I’ll completely understand if you say no. But, would you consider it? I want to trust you either way, and I know that if you grow this in me again, I’ll still royally mess it up because I am a sinner and a failure. So I’ll have to repent of this a lot, and I need help not to turn this into a selfish, squandered mess. Please help me.
And I didn’t hear H1M say anything. I didn’t feel anything. “Ok,” I thought. “H3’LL do whatever needs to be done.” During team time that same night, I remembered that our sweet team leader (who I had not told about the doubt and discouragement I was facing) had done some listening prayer for all of us and prayed into the spiritual gifts that G0D had placed in each of our lives (basically, she had asked G0D if there was anything we needed to know regarding our spiritual gifts; basically practicing part of the gift of prophecy and writing down what she heard for us to read). Just for laughs, I asked her if I could see the words she had written down for me and what she felt G0D wanted me to know about my own spiritual gifts. I opened the folded slip of paper and actually laughed out loud.
Words of Encouragement + Prophecy
1 Corinthians 12 (v. 7-12 especially)
Love you
That note simultaneously broke me and blessed me more than I can explain. To know that I was never “bad enough” or “too big of a failure” to have G0D disregard me, to know that H3 still wanted and desired to use me as H3 created me and not as I had become… To know and see H1S goodness in intentionally saying “Joanna, I created you as GOOD and the person I made you to be is GOOD and I want you to use these things in a GOOD way to glorify me and love my people” was incredible. Oh, how H3 loves us!
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
There’s no real ending to this story, because I’m currently re-learning what it means to walk in these gifts and these ideas… And I know that this period of learning is going to last the rest of my life. Spiritual gifts aren’t meant to completely and wholly define you; they’re just one of the many ways that G0D uses H1S children to build each other, build the church, and build the Kingdom. They’re similar to talents, but they tend to flow out of your spirit more than your actions (for example, being musical and playing piano may be a talent, while things like prophecy and evangelism are spiritual gifts). Spiritual gifts are a weird thing to think about if you’ve never explored them before, so if you have questions, I definitely don’t promise that I know the answers, but I’d love to start a conversation with you about it and walk alongside you in figuring this stuff out. I’m excited to see how G0D continues to use encouragement and prophecy in my life, and how H3 continues to bless those I get to interact with each day. I know that this post doesn’t have any real follow-up or cool associated stories yet, but I hope you are encouraged that our FATH3R really does know us, know our hearts, and desires to use us in awesome ways to spread H1S Word and H1S love around the globe!
