Do You Feel Different From Other Christians?

Discover How Your Greatest Weaknesses Might Be Clues to Your Created Purpose: Introducing a series of video interviews with respected Christians who have some off-the-grid gifts, sharing how they incorporate their gifts into their spiritual lives.

Off the Grid

We all benefit from having someone who can model and mirror back at us at least a glimmer of who we’re created to be and how we might use our gifts.

When we’re fortunate enough to receive this, it gives us a needed sense of “permission” to be in the world. And it can show us how to be authentically ourselves in a healthy, loving way. It’s even helpful in living out our relationship with God.

But for those of us who are highly sensitive, highly emotional, or sensitive-gifted and who feel different from other Christians, this helpful mirroring is a rare thing to find, especially in the church.

The church doesn’t lack for people who want to model for us who we are to be as Christians, but this isn’t always helpful for people like us. The problem is that people who are harmonious with the Christian cultural norm might not be good-fitting models for us. Their practical expressions of the Christian life are not always relevant for us.

For clarity’s sake, I’m not talking here about core virtues the Holy Spirit grows in us like love, humility, gladness, valuing others, peace, patience, faith, integrity, etc.

I’m talking about your gifts and created design and how they function in practical ways:

• what the expression of who you were created to be looks like in the context of your love relationship with God
• what the expression of your gifts looks like in the realm of serving God and others
• and even what the expression of prayer looks like for you.

Given To Be a Blessing

What this means is that if your gifts and created design fall outside what is culturally common in your stream of the church, you might find it difficult to grow into the person God created you to be.

The reality is that many unique and hidden gifts intended to bless the world, fellow believers, and the Creator’s own heart, are often misunderstood and overlooked, leaving them lying dormant.

And so today I want to call for a treasure hunt, looking for the unique hidden gifts and treasures the Creator has woven into the very core each individual. Yes, even you. You might be surprised what you find.

Gifts & Accompanying Weaknesses

One place to start looking is with what we call our weaknesses. It seems to me that every gift, every trait, every strength, has its accompanying weakness.

What do I mean by weakness? I consider weakness to be part of our unique design, countering our gifts and strengths. To be considered a weakness, our failures in that area are defined as undesirable by ourselves, our culture, or by individuals around us.

Some examples might be:

• a nurturant highly sensitive person’s struggles to interact with others in noisy social environments
• a deep thinker’s poor tolerance for dealing with the physical environment
• a helpful extrovert’s dislike of being alone for long
• a dancer’s inability to sit still in meetings
• a seer’s difficulty in praying out loud in words
• a dawdler’s inability to operate in efficiency mode
• a strong, competent person’s obliviousness to subtleties
• a multi-faceted scanner’s failure to dedicate herself to just one thing
• a hardy, not sensitive person’s incomprehension of details
• a tender hearted person’s uncontainable public tears at the most inconvenient times
• a writer’s low appetite for social relationships

Weaknesses As Signposts

All these weaknesses look unacceptable to at least some people, and you will most likely be encouraged to sow your energies into mastering or eradicating your weakness. But I don’t see God calling us to this in scripture. To the contrary. Our Creator seems to value our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

For those of you who are aware of your weaknesses (a.k.a. “defects”), I’d like to suggest that maybe your weaknesses can be signposts that something wonderful lies hidden deep inside. Something no one has ever mirrored back at us.

This is how I see it. Your gifts and weaknesses are a package deal. Everybody’s are. When you look at one end of the package deal, it looks like a gaping hole that needs to be filled and all you see is what’s missing that you believe is supposed to be there. But if you look at the other end, it looks wonderful and rich and useful and lovely.

Choose Your Focus

The bottom line is that you can either pour your energies into the dud end (trying hard to be what you’re not) or into the treasure end (seeking out your treasure and investing it).

I would like to propose that instead of hating our weaknesses and dedicating our lives to self-reformation, we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us on a journey that will awaken, open up, unpack, invest, and mature our dormant gifts.

It’s truly a treasure hunt. What our weaknesses will show us is not predictable. What they do is provide clues that can send us on a search and a journey with the Holy Spirit. And there’s no one who can teach us who we are like the Holy Spirit can.

How ‘Bout We Stir Up Some Dormant Gifts?

I love to help stir up gifts hidden deep inside people. To this end, I’m doing an inspiring series of interviews with individuals who express their love for God in ways for which many churches don’t offer a grid.

My hope is that one of these people might reflect back at you something that’s never made sense in you. Or maybe their example will send you on your own out-of-the-box journey with the Holy Spirit to see what lies under those plaguing weaknesses of yours.

Come Join the Treasure Hunt

The interviews are free to access. You simply need to be on my mailing list and I’ll send you the links to them as they’re posted. You can sign up in the purple form to the right. And you can read about the interviews on my Goodies page.

I invite you to come join our treasure hunt. May you find priceless treasure both in yourself and in the people around you.

Blessings!
Gail Ruth