What Kind are You?

I don’t know about you, but I love taking those online tests about “what kind of ____ you are” It could be personality, leader, friend, thinker, or whatever I just love taking them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with them, and some of them can actually give you real insight into how you see yourself, or how others see you. Finding out you’re much more like Dopey or Grumpy, than you are like Happy or Doc can be both eye opening, and even tough to swallow. (Reference to Snow White for the 1% of the population who has never seen it) 

But a potentially negative unintended consequence can come from taking these tests; or should I say, spending too much time thinking about them. You begin to live with those definitions, or those boundaries in mind, and they can be a distraction. 

Even Spiritual Gift tests; which can be so helpful in finding where God has gifted you, and that is so important, can be a hinderance. You might find yourself in a situation saying ‘no’ to something you shouldn’t have, or saying ‘yes’ to something you shouldn’t have, simply because it fits or doesn’t fit in your spiritual gift “lane”.

I am learning, that as helpful as those tests and inventories may be, what God is really looking for, more than anything, is that we would walk looking to, and listening to Him. So even when you have a teaching spiritual gift, and He’s calling you to share Christ with a young man at a grocery store you say ‘yes’. Or when you have a prophetic spiritual gift, and He’s calling you to help mow your neighbor’s lawn, you say ‘yes’. 

Matthew 16:24,25 says, “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’”

Truth is, we are meant to spend more time “losing” our life than we are “finding it.” That doesn’t mean being self-aware and discovering more about how we work is a bad thing. It does mean if we spend a lot of time doing that, and not much of our time learning how to surrender, and set our preferences, priorities, and desires aside in order to follow Him more closely, we are way out of balance. 

Jesus made us uniquely and amazingly complex and wonderful. He has such tremendous plans for each of us, and the pathway for us to really “find it” is to set our hearts on Him, putting Him first, allowing Him to direct us, or as He described it, “losing our life”

So let’s be aware of how we were made, let’s discover our spiritual gifts; sure, let’s even learn which dwarf we are, but more than all of that, let’s set our hearts toward Him, allowing Him to define and direct our lives toward Him and His great plans for us.

Daniel Sabo