What God lays on your heart as a matter of concern or interest should not be neglected. Your heart passions are an important piece of the puzzle that makes up your ministry profile, helping you to focus the use of your spiritual gifts on people and issues in which God wants you involved. For more, check out: Finding Your Best Fit in Ministry
Bible Verses for Why Heart Passions are Important in Developing a Ministry Profile
Read the following Scripture and consider the difference serving from the heart makes:
Prov. 4:23 – It affects your motivation in serving … so guard your heart.
Lk. 6:45 – It affects your communication in serving … so work at putting good in your heart.
Ps. 20:4; 37:4; Prov. 3:5-6 – It affects your outcome in serving … so trust your heart to the Lord.
Resources to Help You Serve Those to Whom Your Heart is Drawn More Effectively:
Your God-given spiritual gifts are a key piece of the puzzle that makes up your ministry profile. They help determine the direction and effect your ministry should take based on God’s special divine empowerments given for you to serve.
Spiritual Gifts Empower You For Ministry So They Must be a Key Component in Ministry
Read the following Scripture and consider how a good understanding about spiritual gifts helps prevent you from pride and dysfunction in serving the Lord.
1 Cor. 12:7-11 – Spiritual gifts are given by and operative in our lives by the Holy Spirit and are not personal strengths … so don’t take credit for what God does.
Rom. 12:3, 6-9; Eph. 4:7 – Spiritual gifts are distributed according to grace, not merit … so avoid comparisons and competitions with others.
1 Cor. 12:4-7, 12-31; Rom. 12:4-5 – Spiritual gifts vary and are not all given to each person but God will bring unity out of such diversity …. so accept and appreciate one another’s contribution.
Resources to Help You Understand & Identify your Spiritual Gifts:
Your walk with God is central to effectively serving the Lord. It is a most integral piece of the puzzle that makes up your ministry profile as it motivates you and helps to keep you on track.
What the Bible Teaches About Your Walk with God
Read the following Scripture about walking with God and consider how it helps you in ministry:
2 Cor. 5:7 – Walking by faith enables you to think big, to step outside of the box and take risks.
Gal. 5:16-26 – Walking in the Spirit helps you keep in step with God rather than operating out of the flesh and yields the kind of heart qualities that will help you maintain the right kind of attitudes, determination, and relational integrity needed in ministry.
Eph. 4:1-7 – Walking worthy of the calling you received leads to the kind of humility and oneness needed in ministry as you realize grace levels the plain.
Eph. 5:1-2; 2 Jn. 1:6 – Walking in love exemplifies a sacrificial spirit as seen in our Lord Jesus, making you willing to go beyond simply what is “expected” of you.
1 Jn. 1:5-2:2 – Walking in His light generates a life of integrity and authenticity that people look for in Christian leaders, teachers, and ministry workers.
1 Jn. 2:3-6 – Walking as Jesus walked provides a pattern and a standard to follow.
3 Jn. 1:3-4; Ps. 86:11 – Walking in truth keeps you faithful to Him and not pulled in every direction, feeling the need to please people or follow the latest fad.
Our walk with God is a critical component of ministry. It’s at the core of serving. If we struggle in our walk, our ministry will not reach its potential effectiveness.
When Our Walk with God is at the Core of Serving
Our walk with God refers to more than what we do. It also involves our hearts. To love the Lord and then to love others (Matt. 22:36-40) tops God’s priorities. Everything else we do pales next to that.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3)
The use of our spiritual gifts needs to flow out of our love relationship and walk with Him for apart from Him, we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5). Jesus spoke those words in the context of abiding in Him.
Because Walking with God is a Core Component of Serving, Nurture Your Walk
As a site about equipping believers for ministry, it’s important to not only deal with spiritual gifts and ministry areas and issues but also to emphasize our walk with God. To this end, you’ll find resources on various aspects of our walk with Him. And, you can benefit from the Walk the Walk Devotional series.
Walk the Walk Devotionals Download Bundle
The first Walk devotional I wrote extends the invitation, Let’s Walk the Walk, giving a more general presentation of what it is to walk the walk.
Walk in Wisdom let’s us know that we do need to be careful, discerning, and alert as we walk with Him through life.
And, Walk Even When It Hurts reminds us that God provides what we need to keeping walking even when life is hard.
Are you nurturing your walk with God? To maintain life and energy in serving and not just get the job done … to be spiritually effective and not just productive …. you must guard your walk with Him!
I regularly check the statistics for the MinTools.com site. What I have found through the years continues to hold true. The primary keywords people use to find this site are some form of “spiritual gifts.” Actually, the phrase “spiritual gifts test” is at the top and the online spiritual gifts test is the highest hit page on the site followed by the spiritual gifts list page.
Spiritual Gifts Need to be an Ongoing Reality in the Church
I am glad to see the consistency in these stats because there for a while I was concerned that spiritual gifting had become just the latest church fad. Key Christian leaders wrote books on it. Web sites with content on spiritual gifting grew in number. All that was good for a “shot in the arm” but God’s design for the growth of the Church is the ongoing emphasis and use of spiritual gifts wherein everybody does their part.
From the beginning, teaching on spiritual gifts has been a part of the MinTools.com site. It is the hub around which the rest of the site has been built. How can a site designed to equip believers for ministry not include a major emphasis on spiritual gifts? (Click image to learn about downloadable spiritual gifts curriculum and resources.)
What’s the Emphasis on Spiritual Gifting in Your Church?
What about in your church? Is attention to spiritual gifting just a fad or sporadic teaching emphasis or is it an ongoing reality and priority? There are key factors to operating within the sphere of gifting that tend to be present if it is a part of a church’s culture, one of which is that you consistently recruit based on spiritual gifts.
I recently received an e-mail from someone whose Sunday School class was learning about spiritual gifts but wanted to help people see how to use their spiritual gifts within their church body — the practical use of spiritual gifts. I wrote,
I really believe there is no substitute for taking the time to tailor it to your particular church setting. You need to look at your particular ministries, the tasks required to do those ministries, and then determine which gifts are needed to accomplish those tasks. To do that you must be able to define the different spiritual gifts and then discern what gifts are used in the different ministry areas.
How to Get Practical About the Use of Spiritual Gifts in the Church
In reflecting on practical ways to help people see how to use their spiritual gifts within their church body, I thought about the Everybody Has a Part Curriculum, which is part of the MAX Pak. It concludes with a lesson suggesting that you end with what is often called a ministry fair.
In a ministry fair you typically set up displays or booths for each of the major ministry areas of the church, with the ministry head on hand to answer questions. Students walk around to gain more information on the different ministries, talk one-on-one with the leaders, set up times to observe the ministry in action, etc.
In addition to possibly having a ministry fair, here are other ideas that have been effective in some churches:
Make up a booklet of your church’s ministries and list the gifts that are most used within those ministries. Get as practical as you can in laying out ministry descriptions and the process for getting involved in those ministries.
Have the ministry leaders from the different areas prepare for a session to share how people with the various gifts can be used in their ministries. You could ask them to take ‘x’ amount of minutes to share with the whole group or you could have people go to only the one(s) that best fit their gifts.
Plan for testimonials from people with the different gifts to share how God has used them specifically because of their giftedness.
Set up one-on-one consultations with class members to discuss possibilities.
Essential to doing any of the above is that we know what spiritual gifts are most useful in the different ministry areas. If you aren’t sure, be sure to check out the Ministry Handbook: Spiritual Gifts in Use. That resource suggests spiritual gifts typically used in 16 broad ministry areas under which most ministries in your church should fall. It also points to gifting vital to 27 specific tasks that might need to be done within any of those areas. (The ideas in this post are also listed in the handbook.)
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What God lays on your heart as a matter of concern or interest should not be neglected. Your heart passions are an important piece of the puzzle that makes up your ministry profile, helping you to focus the use of your spiritual gifts on people and issues in which God wants you involved. For more, check out: Finding Your Best Fit in Ministry
