Do not neglect the gift which is in you, [that special inward endowment] which was directly imparted to you [by the Holy Spirit]… – 1 Timothy 4:14, Amplified Bible

God designed us all in specific ways for specific reasons. As part of our packages of design, God bestowed upon us certain gifts, and He did so with the expectation that we use those gifts for the furtherance of His kingdom. When we neglect the fact that our gifts are His, and when we act like they are our own, we will never be satisfied in our souls.

When God grants us a gift, He bundles it with an innate desire to use it in the way it was intended. If we don’t use it in the way it was intended, then we will never be satisfied until we do. The Apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 9:16 (AMP):

For if I [merely] preach the Gospel, that gives me no reason to boast, for I feel compelled of necessity to do it. Woe is me if I do not preach the glad tidings (the Gospel)!

Whether the gift in question is the gift of preaching or some other gift, woe will be to the people who point their gifts in the wrong direction – or who fail to use them at all. Such people may experience moments of temporary contentment, but they will not find lasting peace – in their jobs, in their ministries, or in their volunteer work – until they fulfill the purposes for which they were created. Properly using their gifts is part of fulfilling their purposes, and they cannot do one without the other.

If you are uneasy in any arena of personal or professional business, perhaps you are uneasy because you are misusing your gifts. Or, perhaps you are uneasy because you are not using your gifts at all. If you know what your gifts are, stop abusing them. Use them in the way God intended for you to use them. If you don’t know what your gifts are, then consider investing time and/or money in one of the many spiritual gift assessments available on the Web. One such tool is the Career Direct assessment developed by Crown Ministries (co-founded by the late Larry Burkett), which is designed to help people understand what career fields God designed them for and what gifts He gave them for the work He wants them to do.*

Use your God-given gifts God’s way, and life will be inwardly fulfilling, even when your outward circumstances are not what you want them to be.

* For more information about Career Direct, please visit www.careerdirect-ge.org or contact Robbie Romeiser, Founder and Author of TodaysQuoteFromGod.com, at rromeiser@gmail.com. Robbie is a licensed consultant with Career Direct and is available to conduct consultations with people around the world via Skype.

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