Ep. 62 - Is It a Gift or Just a Skill? How to Know What You’re Called to Build

In this episode, I explore the crucial difference between gifts and skills, emphasizing that just because you're good at something doesn't mean it's your calling. While the world celebrates skill, the kingdom recognizes the inherent value of your divine gift. I discuss the hidden costs of building a life, business, or ministry solely on skill and the importance of operating within your God-given gifts. By understanding and leveraging your gift, you not only find true fulfillment and purpose but also achieve consistent kingdom fruit. Join me as I delve into the signs that differentiate gifts from skills and provide actionable steps to help you align your life with your divine calling.

00:00 Introduction: Gifts vs. Skills
01:00 The Cost of Building on Skills Alone
04:43 Understanding the Difference Between Gifts and Skills
08:42 Biblical Examples of Gifts and Skills
12:12 Signs of Operating from Gifts vs. Skills
19:27 Questions to Discover Your True Calling
20:28 Conclusion: Building with Your Gifts

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Just because you're good at it doesn't mean God has called you to build it. We live in a world that celebrates skill, but in a kingdom, it's your gift that makes room for you. Many are building businesses, ministries, brands, and so on around what they can do, but not what they've been called to steward. So today we're asking a bold question. The thing you are building, is it around your gift? Or is it around the skills that you have acquired? Because if you're not clear on the difference between your gifts and your skills, you might just spend your life building with the wrong brick. Your gifts is the only thing that changes lives. Your skills may get you paid, but it is only your gifts that will change lives. So let's talk about how to know what you've been truly called. To build because this is important. If you do not know the difference between your gifts and your skills, it's gonna cost you. What is the cost of not knowing the difference? When you build your life, businesses, or ministry around skill alone, you may achieve success, at least in terms of how the world defines success. So you may make money, you may become famous, you may become someone that people know, but it comes with hidden. Costs Number one, you will be constantly pivoting. You will be constantly chasing the lady in the red dress. You will be constantly chasing relevance because your skill is not sufficient to give you the fulfillment that only your gift that is inherent in your purpose can give you. Number two, you will feel trapped in what is profitable but not purposeful. Number three, you will burn out because your outpost isn't connected to grace. It is only in the place of purpose, which is manifested through your gift that you will find the accompanying grace to execute those functions that you are executing. When you build from skill, you might climb the ladder, but you will realize. It's been leaning against the wrong wall. So here's what I've seen over and over again. People are burned out in their businesses. People are burned out in their jobs, not because they lack success, not because they haven't climbed the corporate ladder, not because they're not earning the money that they set out to earn, but because they're building from skill alone instead of gifts. They're operating from what they've learned. Not what they've been graced to carry a gift. Is grace wrapped A skill? Might just be grind built. Know the difference When you build from skill alone, you may produce income, you may earn the big fat check, But you will also produce frustration. Frustration coming from a place of lack of fulfillment, frustration coming from the yearning and the desire in your heart to accomplish the one single thing that you were born to fulfill. But when you build from gift, you step into flow. When you build from gifts, favor finds you When you build from gifts, fruit always follows you. God doesn't just anoint your hustle. He breathes on your assignment because like Adam, you are in the middle of your garden. You have recognized your king, who is God, and he has allocated you, your garden, the place of your purpose so that you contend it using the gifts that he has. Given you. Let's not forget, even Jesus faced this misunderstanding. People misunderstood him. In Mark chapter six and verse three, they said to him, isn't this the carpenter's son? They were looking to reduce his divinity, his divine identity to his earth skill, because people often honor what you can do before they recognize. What you are called to be. Jesus carried the ultimate gift, but many dismissed him because they saw a trade, they saw a carpenter, and the Bible says he could not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. They only saw the carpenter's son. They did not see the gift of God to the world that he was. So let that be a warning. You and I, when we reduce ourselves or others to what's visible and perhaps marketable, we miss the miracle hidden. Inside their gifts. Let's break this down a little further and perhaps compare what a gift is to what a skill is. First of all, your gift is given by God. Your gift is an inherent capacity to fulfill a function or meet a need in creation. It's the thing that God gave you at creation so that you will fulfill your. Purpose. Your gift is an inherent capacity. It's given by God, but a skill is learned. Oh, this is a marked difference because the fact that your gift is given to you by God and it's an inherent capacity means that nobody can be better than you in the execution of your gift. But people can comfortably and perhaps even, Get better than you in practicing that skill that you have learned. Also, your gift flows with ease because it has divine backing because God gave that gift to you. It flows with ease because he gave it to you. He backs it by all that. He's your skill requires. On the other hand, repetition and mastery you have to master to do the thing. That you are learning to do your gift energizes and gives life because it's your purpose. It's from your source. God gave it to you, and it's connected to who you should be. So when you're operating in your gift, you're operating in your fullness, you're operating in everything that God intends for you to be. So it energizes and it gives you life, but your skill often drains you and can often feel. Mechanical. Your gift produces consistent kingdom fruit. Consistent Kingdom fruit is a product of your gift, but your skill may bring success, but not always. Satisfaction and fulfillment. Your gift is connected to purpose and assignment. Your skill is often tied to survival and validation. Why did you get the university degree? Got. Why did you acquire the skills you acquired? For many of us, it was because we needed to survive. We needed to have a job that will pay us, and we needed to have that validation in society, that we're educated and that we have this. Qualifications, your gift, bears grace, and spiritual authority. Your skill requires heavily on human effort and many times on human accreditation. Now, this is not to say that skills are bad or skills are not needed. We do need skills. We need skills because skills help us execute with excellence. Skills help us refine our gifts skills, help us remain relevant in the environments we've been called to influence. But skills are only important and relevant and useful when we use them within the confines of our purpose, within the confines of our gifts. So for example, someone who is good. At communication, that skill should be used to sharpen their gift of teaching. Design also, as an example, is a skill that can help package the gift of creativity. Administration is a skill that strengthens the gift of leadership. These skills become tools that allow your gift to flourish and function in greater capacity on their own. Communication, design, administration, or any other skill could lead to frustration, could lead to dissatisfaction. If all you are doing is to build your existence around them, if they're not connected to your gift and being used to execute your gifts to excellence, they could lead to a place of frustration in life. We see in scripture also in Exodus. Chapter 31, Bael was filled with the spirit of God and given all kinds of skills, why not for his glory, but to carry out the divine assignment of building the tabernacle. His skills didn't replace the call of the spirit. Instead, they empowered him to fulfill. That call. So the skills that he received came so that he will fulfill his purpose so that he will fulfill the call of God on his life, which is more connected to his gift. In First Peter, chapter four, verse 10. We are reminded to serve one another with the gifts that we have received and in David's life we see First Samuel chapter 17, he refused Saul's armor. Sas Armor was a symbol of skill and status. It was a testament of of the army's excellence. It was a testament of the pros of the army's strengths. He refused it and he relied on his sling. He relied on the tool that fit his gift. And his calling skills should serve your gifts. Gifts should not serve skills. So take a look around your life today. What is your gift? What are your skills? Are you using your skills to serve your gift or have you buried your gift? On the altar of using your skills. Skills were never meant to replace the gift. They were meant to support it. You were never meant to build your purpose around just what you can do. You were called to build with what you were uniquely graced to carry. That thing is your gift. Now, this is the difference between a gift and a skill. Now this difference between the gifts and a skill is a reason you would find, as I've alluded earlier, an overqualified professional, somebody with an MBA with a PhD who is an executive somewhere or a high ranking academic, probably earning six figures, but still deep down in their hearts, they're still. Unfulfilled. Their skill paid them, but their grace is still togging at their hearts. The grace of God, the gifts that they have and the purpose for which they were made is still togging on their hearts. Still calling them is still pulling them, and that is why the experience that unfulfillment, in the words of Howard Truman, don't ask what the world needs. Ask, what makes you come alive? What is the thing that truly makes you come alive? It's your purpose manifested through your gifts. Your gifts make you. Come alive. The difference between skills and gifts is the reason why people are trapped in what I call the degree trap degrees can open doors, but only your gifts will unlock through peace. So people have ended up with very good university degrees, very good university qualifications that led them into very good or high ranking jobs. But that became a trap because education does not always equal assignments. David, like I mentioned before, he rejected Saul's armor because it didn't fit. The gift that he carried. Instead, he chose his gift over external approval. So if you're wondering whether you are operating with your gift or just a skill, here are some signs that point toward the grace on your gift. Your gift energizes you. Instead of exhausting you, this is because gifts are grace empowered. They align your divine assignments with your daily expression. When you operating your gift, you are drawing from spiritual flow, not just mental or emotional effort. When you are operating with your gifts, you do it even if you were not paid. This is your answer to the question, what will you do even if you are not paid? So if you're trying to find what your gift is, this is how you find it. The thing that you will do, the thing that you will use and express yourself, even if nobody paid you for it. If money was not an issue, the thing that you will do that is a thing that points you to your gift. People consistently affirm your gift, even without promotion. You've never told them you're able to do this thing, but somehow people walk up to you and they affirm this gift in you. They affirm this ability that you carry. You are perhaps like the person standing on top of a mountain. You don't see the mountain, You don't realize how gifted you are, but other people look at you when they look at you high up there with your gifts and manifesting those gifts at such a high level, but you don't see it. So that's a pointer to what your gift is. Your gift bears consistent fruit. This is how you know. What your gift is, it produces impact. It produces influence, and when channeled properly, it produces income. The reason is because your gifts are designed to bear lasting fruits, unlike your skill, which can be seasonal, your gifts are not. just productive. They are reproductive. They continue bearing fruit because your gifts is like a seed and seeds carrying them a tree. And in those trees, they are also other fruits that carry seeds. So gifts are not just productive, but they are reproductive. When your gift is activated, it multiplies beyond you. It multiplies into transformation. It multiplies into testimony and it multiplies across various territories. When you operate from your gifts, you feel a divine partnership. You sense heaven back in you. Your gift is where God's grace meets human. Need your gift is where that inherent capacity to meet a need in creation finds the need it was designed to meet. And that intersection is where your gift is. So before we look at the signs of skill-based operation, let me make this clear that identifying your skill over your gift isn't about shame. Many of us have gone on this journey of starting from survival and starting to live life in such a way that we just needed to make ends meet, but the day has to come when you take stock and you ask yourself, am I fulfilling the purpose for which I was created? Am I using the gift that God has given me? Am I like that servant who received one talent and buried it, or am I like the ones who received three? And five. And he did, went and used it and multiplied it so that when their master came back, he said to them, you are faithful. You are a good servant. Now here's how you know. what you are building is just around a skill. These are some signs that may indicate you're operating from something that you've mastered, something that you've acquired, knowledge that you've acquired and you've learned, and not necessarily that inherent capacity that you've been anointed with and called to execute. Number one, it pays your bills, but it drains. Your spirit. This usually means you are operating from effort, not overflow. We said that when you're operating with your gift, you are operating with divine assistance. You're operating from your flow. In fact, you're operating from overflow, but on the other hand, when you're operating just with your skin. Skill. You are operating from effort. You're operating with your human ability, and that's all you have. You'll be performing a role that just meets a need, but you are missing out on your divine design because you are not designed to do this thing. You will get tired very quickly. You will get worn out very quickly. You will not be passionate about it to keep going. When you're operating with your skill alone, you are only doing it because people expect you to do it. You're only doing it because of people's response, because of what people will say if you did not do it. This reveals that the motivation is external. It's not spirit led. But it's driven by obligation rather than obedience. When you're operating based on your skill alone, you may be good at it, but it doesn't make you come alive. This points to the difference between performance and purpose. What you can do well in the natural may still be misaligned with what you are anointed to carry in the spirit. When you're operating with skill alone, it may just feel like a cage. And not a calling. This often reveals that you are confined to responsibility. You're just doing a job. You're just performing a task. You're not being released into purpose. You are trapped in what works, but it doesn't bear witness to your spirit. Let me say, clearly, many people are succeeding at things they were never assigned to do, but success without purpose is still Phil, you. In the kingdom because I believe that Kingdom success is defined number one, by purpose is defined. Number two, by potential is defined. Number three, by productivity, you are not designed to be a machine that just performs and succeeds. You are designed to be a vessel. Your gift isn't just what you do well, it's what you do by grace. Perhaps we could layer on just one more mindset, distinction between operating with your gift and operating with your skill. As we begin to bring this to an end, it's the difference between the orphan spirit and the steward spirit. The orphan spirit leans on. Skill to prove they're worth. It hides behind talent to earn validation. But on the other hand, the steward spirit receives the gift and multiplies it not to gain approval, but to fulfill assignments. The often hides behind skill to feel worthy. If they're not able to perform that function, they don't feel like they're good enough, but the steward develops the gift to fulfill a call. The primary motivation for the steward, and I dare say the son is to please the master, to please the king. This is why many are overperforming, but under fulfilled. They've mastered the doing, but missed the being. So as you seek to progress from just being a performer, someone who just uses their skill to becoming somebody who is working in purpose and using the gifts that God has given them, here are three questions you should ask yourself. Number one, what do I love? To do because the answer to that question will reveal your passion. Number two, what am I actually skilled and equipped to deliver? The answer to that question will reveal your proficiency. Number three, I. What real problem does this solve? What real problem does the intersection between my proficiency and my passion solve? When your gift produces impact, influence, and income, you're not just hustling, you are stewarding, and this happens when you use your skill to excel In the place of your purpose. So lemme challenge you today. Are you building from your gifts or from your grind? Are you pursuing alos or are you fulfilling assignments? Are you packaging? What's marketable? Or are you stewarding? What's eternal? Here's your activation for this week, write down three things that you're great at. Ask yourself, which one do I feel graced to do? Which one Best? Consistent fruit without force. If you build from your gifts, you'll bear fruit that remains. If you build from skill alone, You may just bear burdens that multiply. You are not called to perform. You are called to produce fruit. You're not called to fit in. You are called to steward. What, what sets you apart to stop settling for being good at something? God never called you to build with and go multiply the gift he trusted you with. God bless you.