Discernment in Gifts and Serving

In last Monday’s article, I mentioned that discernment and wonder are my two Working Geniuses and how I can look back to times even as a small child when I was using these geniuses. I also mentioned that I’ve learned and grown and know how to regulate myself more. The fact is though, that sometimes, or maybe a lot of times, I don’t always do that perfectly.

I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in that though. I suspect I’m probably in pretty good company. When we enjoy doing something or are naturally wired or even spiritually gifted in an area, there can be a tendency to go a bit overboard at times. It’s like someone who really likes to explore the reasons behind things and ask the why question doing that as everyone else is trying to put the finishing touches on an event or project. In the early days of planning, those “why” questions can be extremely helpful and vital, but the day of or even the week before a launch those questions generally aren’t as helpful or well received.

I’m definitely guilty of ironically lacking either discernment or at least regulating my wonder and discernment at times. There are times, probably many times, where discernment of an idea, plan, systems or structures is not just helpful, but critical. But, there are also appropriate and inappropriate times and places for it. When we fail to use discernment in exercising our gifts, talents, and abilities, it can definitely compromise the wonder and joy of those around us.

For example, when you are enjoying a shopping trip with a friend, standing in the checkout line theorizing on why the store is not really doing things in the best way and how they can improve things for the customer if they would just make a few changes, doesn’t really make the experience better for your friend. That’s particularly true if your friend just happens to be enjoying a day off from working in that same store. Not that I know this to be the case from experience or anything.

Also, spending a lot of time visiting a relative in the hospital is probably not the best time to critique the hospital’s visitor entry and volunteer systems. Although I might have to chalk that one up to personal stress relief and maybe even entertainment, or lightening the mood, for other family members. The eye rolls I got when sharing my thoughts might suggest differently though, so maybe it was just personal stress relief.

While these are a couple of relatively funny examples, hopefully they do serve as good reminders for me and for you that to really experience wonder and enjoyment from our gifts and talents, we need to be discerning in how we use them. We should be using gifts and talents to serve, help, and hopefully bring joy and wonder to others. When we don’t regulate ourselves and our gifts, we aren’t really able to do this.

We all have our moments and will experience times when we take things a little too far or use our gifts and talents in ways that aren’t particularly the most helpful. When those moments happen, we need to do our best to recognize them, acknowledge them, and even correct them if needed. These moments shouldn’t become habits though. If we are regularly using our gifts and talents in ways that aren’t helpful, then we may have deluded ourselves into thinking we are serving and loving or helping others when really we are just serving ourselves. While using our gifts and abilities generally does bring us joy and maybe even wonder, if we are using them just so we can feel good then we are being selfish. Hopefully, none of us want to make a habit of being selfish.

Let’s use the gifts and talents that we have, but make sure we are also using discernment along the way.