Pastor Candy Christmas | Gifts That Align With Calling
This summary explores how believers can discover and fulfill their divine calling by recognizing and aligning their natural talents and passions with God’s supernatural purposes. The core message is that God never wastes your skills; He sanctifies them, using what He placed in us naturally to achieve what He has called us to do supernaturally.
True fulfillment comes when purpose and passion meet, causing gifts to shine.
1. Identifying Your Natural Gifts and Propensities
The first step in fulfilling a divine calling is recognizing the natural gifts and propensities that God has already placed within you.
Natural Drive and Passion
God often reveals His calling through an individual’s natural passion—the things they are driven to do, even if these activities seem ordinary, silly, or insignificant in the natural realm.
- The Cooking Example: The speaker shared a personal drive to prepare meals, spending days cooking one meal, baking rolls, bread, and cake. Her aunt profoundly observed that such a strong drive to cook must mean God wanted to use that ability. This desire ultimately led to a ministry of feeding the homeless, which expanded to serving 5,000 children a week and feeding 3,000 people in one sitting.
- The DL Moody Example: D.L. Moody, successful shoe salesman, got saved and developed a voracious appetite for the Word of God, giving him a natural bent to teach and preach. When the church pastor said they had enough teachers, Moody went out and gathered dirty, unshoed children from the streets so he would have someone to teach, mirroring his future ministry.
God-Given Talent Examples
Gifts can manifest in various ways, often unrelated to formal schooling:
- Singing and Music: Some people are simply gifted at singing (like Burton Gar at the speaker’s church) or have talent in songwriting or playing the guitar.
- Communication: Some people are naturally excellent at saying beautiful words.
- Humor: Some people are naturally funny, and this humor is also a gift from God.
Discerning the True Calling
It is critical to distinguish between a genuine calling and a mere human desire. The natural desire or “bent” is often a true mirror of the ministry.
- The Test of Giftedness: The Bible states that “A man’s gift maketh room for him and brings him before great men”. If a man is not gifted or anointed, forcing the issue will prove fruitless, as demonstrated by the man who paid the speaker’s uncle $10 to listen to him preach.
- The Hairdressing Example: The speaker realized “the hard way” that her gifts and talents do not belong in hairdressing after a disastrous attempt to dye her husband’s hair resulted in a “fire engine red” color with white corners on the temples, requiring three stripping and dye sessions to fix.
2. Divine Principles for Ministry Advancement
The fulfillment of destiny relies on trusting God’s timing and the irrevocable nature of the calling.
Irrevocable Gifts and Calling
“For the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable”. This means God does not change His mind; He has entrusted these gifts and callings to the believer, and He is not fickle, taking them back after giving them.
The Gift Makes Room
Believers should avoid “jockeying” or constantly maneuvering to meet the right connections, as this can take them out of God’s timing. Instead, they should trust that “A man’s gift maketh room for him and brings him before great men”.
- Trusting the Calendar: When the speaker and her husband, Pastor Kent, were evangelists, they were prompted by the Lord to trust Him to open doors rather than constantly calling churches for meetings. This was tested when they sometimes went weeks without meetings. When pastors finally called them, they knew that God held their calendar.
- Proving God: God sometimes puts believers to the test after they commit to trusting Him, asking, “Do you really mean it?” and “Are you really willing to walk by faith?”.
The Seamless Transition (Natural to Supernatural)
God uses the skills and experiences gained in the natural realm to fulfill the supernatural assignment. This is the process of sanctification: the anointing doesn’t cancel talent, it consecrates talent.
- Peter’s Nets: Peter, who knew the rhythms of the sea from his profession as a fisherman, later began to navigate the tides of revival. The fisherman’s callous hands became healing hands.
- Paul’s Tents: Paul stitched tent coverings, which became a blueprint for him building “coverings for churches”. The tent maker’s intellect became a teacher’s pen.
- Moses’ Staff: Moses led sheep through the wilderness with his staff, which later became a miracle rod used to lead the people of God through spiritual deserts.
Preparation is Disguised as Profession
What often seems ordinary or small is actually Kingdom training. The secular becomes sacred when surrendered. Every season, even the seemingly unspiritual struggles (like electric bills, house payments, or family skirmishes), is designed to make you skillful in the things of the spirit and prepare you for the next assignment.