In yesterday's message, Office Hours: Strong Hours, I talked about using your strengths at work and how strengths represent the inherent talents, interests, and the skills you have developed along the way that are related to how God created you. We affirmed the truth that we are "God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works..." (Eph. 2:10 TNIV). God designed and created each one of us with specific and unique "creation gifts." These are distinct from what the Bible calls "spiritual gifts," in that these creation gifts, or strengths, are a part of our creation as people in the image of God, whereas spiritual gifts are gifts of the New Creation, gifts we receive when we are born from above, or born again.
So, all this talk about gifts and strengths, you may be wondering how do you figure out what strengths you possess. Strengths language has come about as a result of an exciting new field of psychology called "Positive Psychology." The Gallup Organization has been doing research for years on thousands and thousands of people in the workplace and have used their research and the findings of positive psychology to develop an inventory to help you discover your gifts called Strengthsfinder. You can go to www.strengthsfinder.com to learn more.
However, I would encourage you to read a book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton titled Now, Discover Your Strengths. This is a groundbreaking book that makes the psychological research approachable, and you will receive a code to take the Strengthsfinder inventory.
All truth is God's truth. It is amazing to me how consistent this new psychology is with the Scripture. For most of psychology's history, scientists have been most interested in studying what can go wrong in the human mind. This new field, Positive Psychology, is more interested in how things can go right in the human mind. Much of it is what in the Bible is called wisdom. Now, scientists are disovering what people of the Book have known for mellinia.
You can check out the book at Amazon or just click on the widget on the left side of my blog, where I recommend other worthy books, several more on this subject. I hope that as you discover more about how you are God's handiwork, how he has an amazing plan for your life, that you will choose to use your strengths to glorify God.
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