97 Days: Allie's Spiritual Gifts

Allie recently expressed a desire to know her spiritual gifts. I thought that was really cool. We had a Building Faith at Home seminar on Sunday night about Preparing for Adolescence, and one of the main things they said about this age was that they would be searching for their identity, wanting to know who they are and what God has planned for them. So I'm going with that and helping her figure out her strengths and weaknesses, spiritual gifts and talents. This morning I downloaded a Spiritual Gifts Inventory with 140 statements that she ranked 1-10 in relevance to her. Her #1 spiritual gift is Giving. She also has a strong desire to live simply so that she can give to others. I can totally see this in her. Allie is SO non-materialistic. She doesn't place a high importance on nice things or designer clothes (praise the LORD! I thought it was just that I was raising her right- turns out GOD did that. ha) For years she has dreamed of living in a treehouse or house of sticks on a island somewhere. She loves to build stick houses in the backyard and wishes she could live in them. Turns out she really does like living simply. She is always giving things to her friends and making things for them. She isn't motivated by an allowance, except that it might enable her to save up to build a yogurt shop one day that she can use to show God's love to others. Wow. I see it now. God has really gifted her with this.

Her second gift that this particular inventory highlighted, not a "gift" that I see but more of a talent mentioned in the Bible, is that of Craftsmanship/Artisan. She loves to make things with her hands. Glad she has Brian for this since he knows how to make everything. :) She loves being in the garage with him, helping him make things out of wood and nails. She knows the name of every tool in the toolbox. This test analysis says that people with this gift develop and use artistic skills such as drama, writing, art, music, and dance for ministry use. Allie is always making up plays and poems and illustrating ideas in really unique ways. Finally seeing this in an "official" test form helps me to see where her heart really is and how she is designed by God. Pretty cool! I'll be sharing some of her poetry and artwork later today. . .