Knowing When To "Use" Your Spiritual Gifts

I hope someone reading this may have answers, because all I seem to have right now are questions.

There have been situations that J and I have run into in our married life, with people that we aren't especially close to but are friends and friendly with. When we did some studying on spiritual gifts at our church and on our own, we found that one of J's major gifts was that of Wisdom or Understanding. He just seems to "know" things, that he shouldn't, without the help of God. Know what I mean?

These situations have been instances where, although he (we) haven't known specifics, we've known that something was "off" or just not right or. . . we could see (he more than me) a situation arising before it arrived or could see the direction something was going before it went there. We don't talk about it often with others; we're not really like that.

And so it's hard to know, when do you tell your knowledge and how and to whom. How do you take delicate information (that you shouldn't have, but do because God gave it to you) and try to help a situation? Or prevent a situation from getting worse? How do you know when to speak and when to keep your mouth quiet? The Bible talks about the tongue getting us into trouble and how we are supposed to tame it. And the Bible talks about "for everything there is a season". So, in what "season" do we speak and come alongside a friend, and in what "season" do we keep quiet?

I spoke to a dear woman that is a spiritual guide in my life the other night and I asked her a lot of these questions. I got a few answers.

Pray for direction.

Pray for peace. Imagine going to the person and telling them what you know; do you have peace about that? And imagine the other side of that: keeping quiet. Do you have peace?

Learn from the past.

Stay in tune with God's will for your life.

Keep in the Word! This was impressed upon me so much through the whole conversation with this dear woman. Not because she said it to me, but she kept going back to Scripture and I felt that I should know the verses and should have studied them for myself.

Making mistakes is okay. And the verse that comes to mind is the one where it says "God's Word does not return void". To me (and I could be taking it out of context or whatever, cuz I haven't read it lately) that says, even though we can be fumbling and really making a mess of it, God will get through; his message will get to the person / persons. And just think, He did use an ass to get through to one man. So I think He can use our futile (sometimes) attempts at serving Him too.

What about you? What do you think about how and where and when to use our gifts? I know what mine are, but I don't think I use them nearly enough.


Striving to learn and live God's purposes,