Chuck Swindoll on "Ability"

My wife recently gave me Chuck Swindoll's book, THE TALE OF THE TARDY OXCART. It's primarily a book of Swindoll's favorite illustrations. His section on "Ability" seems to fit yesterday's post on Spiritual Gifts. It also seems to fit what we are trying to do at Grace River.

"Abilities are like tax deductions, we use them or we lose them" (Sam Jennings).

"Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaniful to meet the problems of the new world. So they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming; in fact, better than his instructor, but he made only passing grades in flying, and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to drop swimming and stay after school to practice running. This caused his web feet to be badly worn, so that he was only average in swimming. But average was quite acceptable, so nobody worried about that--except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He developed charley horses from overexertion, and so only got a C in climbing and a D in running.

The eagle ws a problem child and was severely disciplined for being a nonconformist. In climbing classes he beat all the others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there . . . ." (Chuck Swindoll, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life).

"Between the great things we can't do and the little things we won't do, the danger is we shall do nothing at all".

Spiritual Gifts?

Ok...so I am working on a pre-assessment tool in preparation for a Church Planting Basic Training that Tina and I will attend in a few weeks. A portion of the pre-assessment deals with spiritual gifting. I have completed, I suppose, a dozen spiritual gift inventories in my life. The one consistant among them all is that they are inconsistant. My "gifts" change. Maybe that's why Paul gave at least three different lists of gifts in the Bible--each of them a little bit different. It seems highly likely to me that in any given situation, the Holy Spirit may empower (gift) us however He chooses making spiritual gifts assessments irrelevant. Different situations likely will call for unique gifts.

Anyway, according to the survey tool, I possess the following five spiritual gifts:

• Encouragement--the divine capacity to give strength, support, or comfort.


• Faith--The divine capacity to act on God's promises with confidence and a steadfast belief in God's ability to provide.


• Hospitality--The divine capacity to care for people by making them feel welcome, comfortable, and accepted.


• Leadership--The divine capacity to communicate vision, motivate, and direct people to accomplish the purposes of God.


• Teaching--The divine capacity to clearly explain and apply God's Word, producing spiritual growth in the lives of the hearers.

The tool also suggests that I ask some close friends about my spiritual gifts. With that in mind, do you agree with the list? disagree? Is there something missing from the list?

You may want to work through a spiritual gifts assessment as well to see how you are gifted (at least right now). I've used the Team Ministry assessment for years to help with gift assessment. You can do a free online assessment at http://www.churchgrowth.org/. Look for the "FREE Gifts Analysis" link over on the right side of the page.