Ministry….was a retreat this week.
We’re learning all about who God created us to be, what our strengths are, what we’re passionate about, our spiritual gifts, and so many other things. We took this really neat test called the Clifton Strength Finders test and it’s actually brought A LOT of light into who I am and why I think and act the way I do. So cool.
My top strength is Adaptability. Go figure. It means I have a very go with the flow attitude, thinking only in what today will bring in the moment, does really well under pressure; kinda personality. It couldn’t be more accurate. I think of situations where I’ve been asked what are you doing next and most of the time my answer is a shoulder shrug and “I don’t know I just get on whatever bus they tell me to get on”. It’s funny I never realized it was such a huge part of me. I think I got this strength from my dad. His ability to uproot and move to another state, deploy across countries and not even question his next steps. Totally a strength my dad has. big time.
My second top strength is Empathy. Yup. You read it right, I’m the gal who shuts out all of her emotions but miraculously I’m real strong in the category of empathy. Each strength comes with a definition of how it plays a role in YOUR specific life. Mine goes a little like this, insight into what others are sensing, ability to ask questions in the right way, ability to know the best time to listen, ask, praise, or advise, and I’m keenly aware of others needs and thoughts. When put in those words it makes a lot of sense to me. I see it a lot when we’re out doing door to door ministry and I’m able to feel how receptive the person is to what we’re saying. When their eyes are shooting away from the conversation I can gage how to interact better or end the topic there. Thanks God for this gift. My momma definitely has this gift. She’s a blessing really. She’s always been able to feel so deeply what others are going through (even animated characters on a disney movie). super awesome.
My other strengths I’m still working through, they are, developer, ideation, and relator (as in good at creating deep relationships with friends)
But, my last thought before I close out this lengthy blog, is all about how I’ve seen the Lord work in me since defining the strengths I have. I have always been someone with a lot of thoughts and ideas that bubble right over one after the other before I can even take the time to collect my thoughts and plan them out. Shout out to adaptability for the lack of planning skills and ideation for the multitude of ideas. But, I was asking the Lord how I can use this Ideation skill for His glory and I felt the answer was CRYSTAL clear. If I take the time to write out my ideas all together (maybe it means creating a web diagram, or a venn diagram, or a pie diagram (p.s. i really like diagrams they’re fun to look at)) a lot of my ideas relate to each other. It would help my teammates who don’t have the gift of ideation to understand more clearly where I’m coming from and would help me to choose quality ideas over quantity ideas. Thanks God for this revelation. I’m excited to put this into practice and see how much the Lord grows all of my strengths through it.
Thanks for reading, catch ya next time!
