What I Do and Why

There are times, especially when we are new to the things of the Spirit, that we try to find “our gift.” At those early stages, there is nothing wrong with that pursuit. A problem can emerge later on when we become overly focused and enamored with our particular gift at the expense of more important issues.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with the Lord, asking why He had me work for so many years in a pastoral role when that was not my primary spiritual gift. The pastoral gift has never been revealed as my primary assignment in any gift assessment test. Prophet has always come out on top of all the tests I have taken. The gift of pastor belongs to Jan. She is the best pastor I know. We make a great team. 

The day I had that conversation with the Lord He said, “I had you spend all those years in pastoral ministry, even though it was not your primary gift, so you would know how to create a healthy environment for the prophetic movement.” At the time, those words sounded presumptive to me, and they might sound that way to you as well as you read these words. Such are the ways of God.

I write every day. It is a personal discipline and has become the resource pool for several books and a few thousand blog articles. Not everything I write is prophetic like a predictive word. Most of what I write are I Corinthian 14 kinds of words to strengthen people with encouragement and comfort. Some of the Old Testament prophets we quote with regularity only spoke a predictive word or two over their lifetime. We were never designed or assigned to be a predictive prophetic dispensing machine. Waking up to the need to produce a predictive word each day is a fast lane to compromise and a loss of credibility. 

Our spiritual gifts are like seeds we plant in hopes of a fruitful harvest. If the environment where a seed is planted is not healthy the seed will not live long enough to create a generational harvest. I have come to realize the environment in which a gift is delivered is as important as the gift itself. They work together.  In the end, this is called balance.