A friend of mine emailed me this link on motivational gifts. Click here to read the entire article. I thought you would like to read about this. Which one are you? My gift is giving/serving and my husband's is teaching.
At the moment of salvation, a believer receives one of seven motivational gifts: prophecy, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, organizing, or mercy. This gift of God’s grace shapes how the believer views life, relates to others, and impacts the Body of Christ. A motivational gift can be compared to a set of eyeglasses from God, given so that the believer can see people and circumstances through that particular set of “lenses.”
Following are simple descriptions of the seven motivational gifts, explaining how a person with each gift would “see” his or her role in the Body of Christ:
- Prophecy: Reveals truth by exposing sin, so that fellowship with God can be restored and/or maintained
- Serving: Demonstrates love by meeting practical needs, usually through tangible work
- Teaching: Discovers and validates truth so that the Church maintains accuracy
- Exhorting: Encourages Christians to grow spiritually by teaching, discipling, and counseling others
- Giving: Conserves and shares resources in order to meet needs
- Organizing: Carries out projects by recruiting workers, organizing tasks, or delegating responsibilities
- Mercy: Demonstrates God’s love and compassion by responding to hurt
God works through the spiritual gifts in the Body of Christ to help the Church grow and remain healthy. By God’s grace, prophets warn believers of sin. Servers guard against slothfulness. Teachers steer us clear of heresy. Exhorters watch out for hopelessness. Givers stand against selfishness. Organizers ward off chaos. Mercy-givers demonstrate God’s tender love.
Although each person’s behavior will vary according to factors such as temperament, background, age, gender, culture, and circumstances, it is not unusual for those who share the same motivational gift to demonstrate common characteristics. Also, especially as believers mature, they may act in ways commonly associated with other motivational gifts, but this does not mean that their motivational drive has changed. For example, if a teacher-motivated person demonstrates the characteristics of a mercy or giver, he is still motivated by a desire to affirm truth even in his mercy-like or giver-like actions. His inner motivation has not changed; he is simply developing other God-honoring qualities.
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