If you want to know God’s will for your ministry, take a look at what you’re good at.
Why would God give you certain gifts, abilities, and talents and not expect you to use them? That would be a waste.
Pastor, just like everyone else in your church, God gave you Spiritual gifts, Heart/passions, Abilities, a Personality, and Experiences (SHAPE). That God-given SHAPE makes you unique. When you take the time to figure out how God has shaped you and begin to minister out of that SHAPE, God will do more with your life than you can imagine.
Ask yourself, “What am I good at? What do I love to do? What is my passion? What do I find exciting, and what do I find boring? What do people affirm in me? How can God use those abilities for his Kingdom?”
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (NIV).
The word for “God’s handiwork” in Greek is the word “poema,” from which we get the word “poem.” You are God’s poem. You are a work of art. You are unique. There is nobody like you!
You may have hundreds of other pastors in your community, but none of them are exactly like you.
Yet there’s more to life than being unique. God wants you to be unique and effective. He designed you the way he did so you could do good works.
Even before you were born, God planned a specific role for you in life. He said, “I’m going to make this person with certain gifts, abilities, and talents, and I’m going to allow this person to go through certain experiences—some good, some painful, and some educational. I’m going to bring all of these things together because I want something done in the world that will take that kind of person to do it.”
We are saved to serve. That’s what it means to have a ministry—you use your talents and gifts to help other people. Fulfillment means being who God meant you to be and doing what he meant you to do.
The Bible says, “God has given each of you some special abilities; be sure to use them to help each other” (1 Peter 4:10 TLB).
