Your gifts make room for you? If you’re a very gifted person, people will seek you out. They will call upon you constantly to share your gifts for one purpose or another.
There’s a wonderful promise in the Bible, in Proverb, 18:16, that says your gifts will make room for you and propel you to higher places. It is a beautiful unfolding as your gif, open doors for you to run a corporation, play basketball, write paint, remodel, practice medicine, teach, cook, or nurture – whatever you are gifted to do.
When you are really good at you; gift and work to hone your skills, people will constantly request your services.
Being sought after can make you feel loved and admired. It can make you feel worthy. But don’t confuse the gift with you.
People see me preach on television every week and feel they know me. One lady ran up to me one day while I was out shopping and said, “I know who you are!”
“You do?” I asked. She smiled widely and replied, “You’re the guy on Oprah!”
To someone else I am the pastor of a megachurch. To others I am a movie producer, a philanthropist, a businessman. I learned to be careful not to allow how others define me to become how I see myself.
My self and my service are not the same thing. They know Bishop T.D. Jakes. They don’t know Thomas Dexter Jakes, the man.
I don’t get it twisted and neither should you. Just because people love your gift doesn’t mean they love you. Most of them will never really know you.
Most of them don’t care about you. They just want your gift. And it’s okay to share your gift. It’s a good thing to serve your gift to people or in places that may benefit from it.
There may be occasions when both your service and your self agree and you are fully invested in that arena. For example, I have invested my self in the Potter’s House, not only my gift.
That is the place to which God called me, and I’m all in. I have learned that I am most powerful and effective when I am fully invested.
On the journey to Destiny, be aware that you may share your gift and not share you. Make that distinction so people who constantly want something from you will not drain you.
People ‘can drain you by continuously asking you to give and give and give, perhaps without the slightest concern for the personal toll it takes on you.
Be prepared to set boundaries of how far, how much, and how long you are going to pour into others. You may think, as I did: “Oh, I have to do it.
They love me.” But actually, they love your gift and how that gift serves their purposes. The gift doesn’t shine if the giver is extinguished!
Decide to step into your destiny by determining not only where you will share your gifts, but also where you are going to be all in—investing your self and your service.
If you spend your self and your service where your service alone would be enough, you are not as energized to perform on the level you need to move closer into Destiny.
You will have wasted the grace you have been given on assignments that aren’t in alignment with where you are destined to go!
I learned that in order to move the Richter scale of your success toward Destiny you have to be fully invested, and you can’t be fully invested in everything and everyone you meet. There’s simply not enough of you to go around!
Your gifts make room for you? Share your thought below…
