Spiritual Gifts Analysis Assignment

I am the type of person who is slow to making decisions.  I am always asking other people's opinions, not entirely because I'm interested in their point of view, but because I don't want to make the decision on my own.  I rarely have a ready answer for those questions like "where should we eat today," or "what do you want to watch?"  I resolve to a quick "I don't know," and hope that the decision-making responsibility will be passed onto someone else.  Slow decision-making isn't a bad thing, until it changes from a careful thought-process to plain indecisiveness, resulting from the fear of commitment.  I once took several days deciding whether I wanted to do a job, and once I had decided for it, the job had been taken.  I didn't decide which college to attend until the last week of April my Senior year and I am currently undeclared in my major.

But the academic school-year has begun and brought with it an onslaught of surveys.  I have appreciated the insight that the personal surveys can give as to who I really am and what my gifts are.  So I appreciated the chance to see what another survey, the Spiritual Gifts Analysis, had to say about me, but even more so, I was hoping for the opportunity to be given a magic test that might tell me what my destiny is.  I wanted to let these test become the decision-maker, as it showed me what spiritual gifts God has given me, the strengths I have (as reported by StrengthsQuest), and the hobbies and that God has given me a talent for (this comes from simple personal insight).  In the end, I just wanted it to declare my major for me.

I was thoroughly disappointed.

Okay, maybe not thoroughly...I really should not have expected a spiritual gifts survey to give me career advice.  The top three gifts it showed were Serving, Teaching and Showing Mercy.  I believe these all fit me fairly well, particularly serving.  I am really a behind-the-scenes kind of person.  I love doing service projects, and always work until the last second, because I receive a lot of joy knowing that I am serving God and fulfilling His Will.  With the teaching aspect, I agreed that I like to read Scripture and discover new things from it, but I felt that teaching a group is not my sort of thing.  I'm more of the one-on-one type person and I'm thinking as far as teaching goes, I'm probably more on the writing end of things than verbal instruction.  As for showing mercy, I agree with that this is one of my gifts, but I haven't had as much experience using this gift as I would like to.

I am glad though, that spiritual gifts don't require a decision.  They are instilled in us when we accept Jesus in our hearts and can show up in the things we do, bringing glory to God and joy to our own lives.  So I am not overly concerned with declaring a major right now.  As with my college decision, the answer will come and God will work marvelous things through it.  For now, as I wait for this mysterious and elusive answer to appear, I will continue serving God by serving others, studying God's Word and teaching it to others, and showing others the mercy that God has shown me.