christian #1: what’s your spiritual gift?
christian #2: oh! i’m a teacher.
christian #1: oh my gosh, YES! i totally see that in you, wow.
christian #2: what about you? what’s yours?
christian #1: i have the gift of prophecy, i speak in tongues, and i think the Lord is working on teaching me to intercede.
christian #2: STOP, those are so wonderful! i think i’ve actually heard you worship in tongues before so that makes sense. the gift of prophecy is so cool and important! what about you christian #3? what are your gifts?
i am christian #3. christian #3 doesn’t know her spiritual gifts and feels like less of a believer, less holy, and just less than those who know their gifts and are living them out intentionally for the Kingdom.
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this week the Father revealed some things to me about who i am, what my gift is, what my role in the Kingdom is, and why i, too, am important.
last week our host took us to breakfast and i had an eye-opening conversation with another missionary named Linda, who has been coming to Vietnam with her husband for four years now. they are an older couple and love the people of Vietnam. her husband, Mike, fought in the Vietnam War.
let’s rewind for a second: back a few weeks ago, our first weekend here, i rode in a cable car up a mountain. the lush, dense, green forest below me was absolutely beautiful. for some reason, the only thought i had in my mind was “wow, this is the kind of vegetation that the soldiers had to fight in”. by the looks of it, there was nothing easy about that task. i kept relating things in this country back to the war.
okay fast forward to conversation with Linda: i had asked her how her and her husband initially got involved in Vietnam, and that conversation led me to ask, “okay so, pardon my ignorance, but can you just explain the Vietnam War to me? how did America get involved? why was the south of Vietnam fighting the north?” she assured me it was not ignorance, that i was merely just a millennial and was not alive then LOL (it’s the truth though)
through this conversation – hearing about the war, what the Vietnamese people endured, and the lasting repercussions the war had on the country as a whole – my heart was struck.
our conversation continued and soon we were talking about a neighboring country, Cambodia, and the genocide they endured soon after the war. the khmer rouge brutally murdered a quarter of this country’s entire population. i had just watched a documentary on this piece of history.
i have been interested in genocide for years. in fact, my final paper in high school was about the Rwandan genocide, and i had done extensive research on different genocides and ethnic cleansing in graduate school.
Linda then asked me if i had heard about what was currently going on in Myanmar. i said that i hadn’t, but that immediately sparked my interest. the next day i spent my off day researching all about Myanmar and the ethnic cleansing they are currently, literally right now, experiencing.
i can’t explain my interest in these occurrences or my passion for the people who are being affected by them, but it’s something deep inside me that gets stirred and sets me on fire.
back in the admissions part of the race, we were given a spiritual gifts test. i took it, and my gift was the gift of mercy. i thought, “great…i don’t know how to handle my own emotions, but God wants me to take on the things that other people are feeling!” oh, how i was so wrong.
the gift of mercy is a beautiful thing. it is the strong ability to empathize with others through compassion, words, and actions. wanting to walk through hard times with people and see the fruit on the other side with them. understanding their hurt, but showing them that there is light on the other side of the darkness.
throughout the past few months, people have talked about their gifts, wanting to live out their gifts more boldly, practice using them, understand them more, and so on. i didn’t quite know how mine applied anywhere, so i was trying to step into other gifts. maybe i’m actually gifted in apostleship, or maybe i’ve just never tried preaching or teaching, so those are my gifts. update: this was NOT working for me either. i do not recommend it.
here is the realization that i had:
i have the gift of mercy for a reason.
i have a deep passion in my soul for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and human injustices because the Lord placed it there.
only someone with immeasurable mercy could possibly long to work with people and situations such as these.
this might not seem like a huge realization, but to me, it was massive. i was seriously researching spiritual gifts because i thought i may not have any at all. i was convinced God had forgotten to give me one or any at all.
i just wasn’t embracing or accepting the one He had given me. i thought it wasn’t applicable to me. i thought it was lame because other people could actually use their gifts on the Race. i had seen it! but when i was given the chance and trusted Him enough to open my heart to these things, He revealed them to me.
i can’t even explain how freaking excited i am to live out my gift of mercy, and to see what the Lord has planned for my life, during and after the Race. i am so expectant of all the things He is going to continue revealing to me about who i am and who He has called ME to be – no one else, just me.
my note to you readers: be you. be who God has intentionally and purposefully created YOU to be. there is no better you than you yourself. live it out boldly. if you don’t understand what your purpose or even your identity is, begin asking the Lord. He will reveal it to you in His timing. trust Him and ask Him.
wow, God is so good.
much love, many hugs, and all the blessings <3
-mags
