FamilyLife Today®

Dave Wilson: I was thinking about something the other day. When we were dating and got engaged, then we got married, I remember you just celebrating my gifts and my abilities and just loving them when we were dating.

Ann Wilson: Oh no, where is this going?

Dave Wilson: And then we get married and it wasn't very long. Somebody asks you, "What are Dave's gifts?" and you're like, "Eh..." Six months ago, you would have had a list and now you're like, "I don't know if he has any."

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann Wilson: Do you think that’s typical in marriage? You start to see the negative? It was typical in our marriage. Do you remember that, though?

Dave Wilson: Totally, yeah. I mean, what happened? Did I lose my gifts?

Ann Wilson: No, I think this can happen in marriage where you still had all those gifts, but shame on me for now noticing your weaknesses.

Dave Wilson: I did the same thing.

Ann Wilson: We all do it. We’re laughing because every couple, in some way, we all do it because we start to think, "Oh, I didn't see that before."

Dave Wilson: It’s interesting, though, how we do that in marriage, with our kids, in friendship, because everyone has a honeymoon phase. Even at work, there's a honeymoon phase like these people are amazing, this is unbelievable. And then we all have weaknesses and we all have shortcomings.

But we all have gifts. We’ve got Don Everts back in the studio to talk about gifts. Don, is this something that you've done in your own marriage?

Don Everts: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was thinking familiarity breeds contempt is a phrase, but it's not that exactly. It's something like familiarity breeds taking things for granted. Maybe that's what we do because we're around it a lot.

Like my wife, Wendy, she’s hospitable. I mean, she's the queen of hospitality. And then you get used to that and it used to startle me and now it's, "Of course, she's incredible at that."

Ann Wilson: Did you ever get to the point of saying, "Why do we have to have these people in our house all the time?"

Don Everts: Oh, totally. No, absolutely. I married an extrovert, I'm an introvert, so that's a landscape we walk all the time. But there are ways that when you first meet someone or when you're in thrall with someone, how you're just captivated by certain features.

As we look at the research about giftings and look at what the Bible says about it, part of it is how do I remain amazed by people? How do I remain captivated? In the airport on the way down here, I was reading my book again to remember all the details.

Dave Wilson: By the way, your book is called "Discover Your Gifts: Celebrating How God Made You and Everyone You Know." So that's what we're getting into and you've done all this study on it, so you're the gift expert.

Don Everts: In the airport, I'm sitting in the airport and looking at this again and people watching, right? And people are going by and I'm just watching the people and thinking, "How do I get so bored by people or take them for granted?" Or I'm just disappeared into my cell phone when I'm surrounded by these masterpieces.

These masterpieces that God... the language in Genesis 1, all the verbs are craftsman verbs. It's He created. Psalm 139, He knit and crafted them together and we're surrounded by masterpieces. So how do we allow the Bible to give us better lenses through which to see the people around us, including our spouses?

Ann Wilson: Which would be interesting, too, because if we in the church would see one another and call out the greatness and see the masterpiece, that's so attractive. Wouldn't people want to be in those doors when people...

Dave Wilson: It's a magnet.

Ann Wilson: Exactly.

Dave Wilson: It would absolutely draw people in. I can remember decades ago watching a marriage talk by a guy named Gary Smalley. He's no longer with us; he's with the Lord. His son Greg now does ministry at Focus on the Family.

Gary talked about the Hebrew root of the word honor. Have you ever heard this? Fascinating. Never forgotten it. He was just saying we're called to honor our mother and father, but we're called to honor one another. We should be known for honor.

The root is a Hebrew word that means to bow or to bend the knee. He said his point was when you're in the presence of somebody really valuable, it's something you do. Some countries they will literally bow, but we honor people not often based on whether we like them or not, but based on their value.

Like when a judge walks in the courtroom, you say "the honorable judge." I may not even like the person, but he's got a position of honor. He goes, "What would it look like if every time you're around a person..." Oh, and I remember he said this: he goes, "When you honor people, you're in awe." He goes, "Your jaw drops." That's how we should approach our spouse, our kids, our neighbor.

Don Everts: That's what Jesus did, right? Everyone's saying, "Get this leper out of here. Get this old widow out of here." And Jesus saw the dignity that they were imbued with by their Creator.

Dave Wilson: One of our sons has a preaching gift and he calls them God goggles. He did a message once and he goes, "You put on eyes of Jesus to see people the way Jesus saw them. If you see people the way Jesus saw them, you will treat them the way Jesus did." And that's how we have to see the Imago Dei. We've got to see the image of God in everyone.

Ann Wilson: I think, let's just be super practical. Even in parenting, our kids can hit phases that it's difficult to like them at times. The image of God has left the building.

But I remember saying to our boys at certain times, "I just need some time with you." And what it was because we're all giving off sparks, we're all pushing each other's buttons. But there was something about just sitting down at a meal and I could see them, like, "Ah, there you are. I see that." Because I get so messed up in my own head and then I would say those things that I saw that God put in them. I'm like, "Look at you. Look at you."

Don Everts: And how powerful is that for them being formed? Because you're right. I mean, we're managing household. Families are busy. You have multiple kids. You're just managing the household, let alone to have time where you see one child and be able to reflect those things to them and build that into them. God loves you not from just a bumper sticker perspective.

Ann Wilson: And not for what you do.

Don Everts: He loves you because He made you and you're amazing. So it's been sobering for me to think about, as I've been in the research about the giftings and looking at the scripture and working on this book, how powerful it is to see people with God goggles.

Dave Wilson: I haven't thought of it in that phrase, but that's perfect. I need to revise the book now. I always hated how I preach all this stuff and nobody remembers it. My son gives a sermon, "Hey, God goggles," and I'm like, "I said that 20 years ago!" But what is interesting is one of your themes of the book is everyone has a gift and with gifts to share.

One of the things that we've done with FamilyLife for 30 plus years is we speak at their Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. One of the big ideas of that manual that I had never heard before going to this conference... we went to it as an engaged couple two weeks before our wedding. Honestly, we've said this many times, we didn't listen because we thought we don't need this. We love each other, we love Jesus, we're going into ministry.

And now we teach it. But one of the big ideas is a critical point in marriage that I'd love to hear your thoughts on and it's really going back to the garden story, Garden of Eden, where Adam's asleep and God fashions Eve. And then God brings Eve to Adam.

Nobody thinks about this, but at that moment in the garden, there's a question. The question is, "Will you receive Eve as my gift to you?" Because God the Father is walking her, in a sense, down the aisle to Adam.

Adam receives her very excitedly, "Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." In the Hebrew, it's exclamation! But I think what we miss, and this is one of the things we try to teach, is it wasn't because she was gorgeous. It wasn't because her mom is really good in the kitchen. He knew none of that.

He knew God is bringing her to me and God says she's a gift. He responded with such joy, not because he knew Eve, but because he really knew God. So the question is this: we lose that in our marriage. It's almost like, "God, could you take her back? Hey, could you take him back? I thought he was going to be this." We lose that sense of she's a gift, he's a gift and they have gifts.

As you went through this research, is there something you found that people do that gets them excited to understand they are a gift and gifted and others are as well? Anything jump out that way?

Don Everts: It's interesting. So a couple things come to mind. One of those is what we found out about discovering gifts and discovering giftedness. And people need help doing that. So we need help; we need other people to help us see gifts that we have.

Giftedness thrives in relationship and in community. So one of the questions we asked people, and this is nationwide research, one of the questions we asked at the beginning was to rate yourself on a giftedness scale from zero to ten. So how gifted would you say that you are?

Ann Wilson: Oh, that's fascinating.

Don Everts: Really fascinating. There were some gender differences that came up. There were some fascinating things. But one of the interesting findings was, and it was a small but fascinating group, 3.5 percent of all people in the U.S. and they do their nerdy stuff, so we know this is normed across region, across all the stuff. 3.5 percent of all people in the U.S. gave themselves a zero.

Ann Wilson: Wow. Zero gifts.

Don Everts: There were some things like if you are in a lower socioeconomic status, if you are unemployed, there are some certain things that tended to correlate with that group. But here was the big finding: the big finding was how disconnected that group of people was when compared with the other 96.5 percent.

Ann Wilson: To other people.

Don Everts: To other people. A larger portion of the no-gift people... and for the people at home, I'm putting that in air quotes because everyone's gifted, so they just perceive they have no gifts... a large portion of them had not been to church in the last six months. Almost half of the group said that they didn't know any of their neighbors. They're less likely to have ever worked on a community project and they don't feel that they have a sense of community in their life.

Those are other questions we ask people, so you can cut the research and say, "Do these 3.5 percent 'no-gift' people have anything else in common with each other?" What they have in common is that they're disconnected from other humans.

Ann Wilson: And you know what happens when we're disconnected, as I'm wiping the tears off because that makes me so sad that people feel like they have zero. When you're alone and you're isolating, what happens is you hear the lies of the enemy, the lies of our culture: "You're worthless." And the enemy is speaking death all the time. He came to kill, steal, and destroy our lives and our very well-being. When I hear this, it makes me so sad because for those of us who maybe didn't put a zero, we have the ability to see someone else and tell them, "I see your gifts."

Don Everts: So you need other people in your life to see it and call it out. I think of my mom. Anywhere I go with my mom, the waiter, waitress, doesn't matter where we are, she stops and she says, "You're really good at what you do. Thank you for doing that."

Dave Wilson: That's my wife. Ann’s like that, too.

Don Everts: When I was a kid, that embarrassed me. Because I'm like, "Mom, we're at the store. Don't get in those conversations." And I look at it differently now and I'm trying to do it more myself. I have my mom rub off on me and to say to people, "You're really good at what you do. Thank you for doing that."

We need other people partially because of the enemy and what he's saying. And then partially because our gifts get noticed by others. A lot of people don't understand their gifts because the things they're gifted at come easily to them.

In the same way that we all assume everyone thinks the way we do, which leads to a lot of communication problems, we all assume people feel like we do. So it must be easy for everyone to do this. That's not a gift; that's easy. And it's when we interact with other people and they go, "Man, the way you encourage people when you're in..." You hear that enough times and you're like, "Maybe not everyone comes that easily to be encouraging. Maybe that's a gift of mine. Maybe I need to take that more seriously. Am I being a full steward of that?" That comes from having people point things out.

Ann Wilson: Should we log in our minds of these are the things that people have complimented me on? These are the things I've heard over and over?

Don Everts: That's part of it. The every gift inventory that we've developed, part of the questioning comes to what do other people say to you? Do people look to you for these sorts of things? That doesn't tell you everything, but that is a really important data point.

Is a significant part of what we do. We created a little workbook that goes with the book and it's interesting because it's not just a workbook for how to discover my gifts, although we do that, but in all of the 12 gifts that we look at, for each of them it's like let's learn about the gift, do you have this gift?

We spend a lot of time on who in your life would you say has this gift? Write their name down. And we have exercises: what can you do to encourage that gift? To celebrate that gift? So yes, commenting things on other people, paying attention to what people say to us. Giftedness thrives more in a place of community.

Ann Wilson: Should we talk about those 12 gifts?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, let's do that.

Don Everts: Hit them. You've got the wheel right there in front of you. I got the wheel right here. These are based on reverse engineering some of this nationwide research and these are all common gifts. These are all gifts that are common to every human being. We talked about that in the first time.

Ann Wilson: It’s not necessarily a spiritual gift.

Don Everts: They're not spiritual gifts. These are believers, non-believers, all have these. Some of them are like entrepreneurial gifts. Starting things. Some people just naturally think about starting stuff and it's just intuitive to them. Management gifts, right? The ability to organize resources and people to reach an end. Some of us just have to learn it, but some people are actually gifted at it. Financial gifts, critical thinking gifts, artistic gifts.

Don't just think of painting, but some people have a way with words. Some people have a way with music.

Ann Wilson: You have a daughter in art school. What kind of art?

Don Everts: She does both painting and graphic design.

Ann Wilson: Did you see that since she's been little?

Don Everts: Absolutely, yeah. As a toddler, she was drawing all over her body. We were on a long road trip and Wendy and I, we were just talking in the front. I don't know why the kids are quiet. We just were enjoying having adult conversation for like three hours.

The kids were in the back just in diapers because it was hot. We pull over. My daughter's entire body except for her left arm... she's left-handed... was covered not in scribbles and she was a little toddler, in these intricate leafy, evenly spaced designs over her whole body with this ballpoint pen that she had found.

Ann Wilson: And you said, "One day, honey, she'll be in art school."

Don Everts: That's it. And now she is.

Dave Wilson: I remember I was with my mom, who’s amazing at calling out gifts, sort of like your mom sounds like. We were at an aunt's house. I can see it right now. There was an upright piano. I must have been four or five. I go over and I'm plucking away at something and the woman was a piano teacher and she turns to my mom. I remember hearing her say this: "Your son has a gift. Do you know that?" She goes, "What?" "He's playing a melody. Have you ever been taught anything?" I go, "No, I just sat down and..."

Don Everts: Wow.

Dave Wilson: My mom got me music lessons the next day. It was like somebody saw and identified and I can hear a song on the radio now and tell you every chord's going on just by hearing it. I didn't have any idea. I don't think my mom did, either.

Don Everts: That's that person seeing it. Sometimes it takes someone who's not with you all the time. Don't you notice that as a parent? Sometimes it takes someone else because you're having to discipline the kid and you're having to teach them not to walk into the road and you have to get them to get up to go to high school. Sometimes it's someone else with fresh eyes who's not having to manage their life and teach them how to adult who's able to look with just fresh recreational eyes and go, "Man, they are blank."

Dave Wilson: Do you also need the person that goes, "No, that isn't your gift"? Like Simon Cowell sitting there like, "You think you can sing? I know your parents told you you can. You actually can't." There's a little balance of that as well.

Don Everts: Totally. I'm not necessarily a fan of giving everyone a trophy no matter what. I've had people who wanted to be hired as campus ministers and I'd be like, "Yeah, you're not good at it." And you want to know that. You've got to know what I'm not good at, too.

Part of what's relevant about that is we tend to, in the church, lift up certain vocations over others and we bias things towards certain vocations. We pastors, we are the most guilty of this. We lift up vocations in the church. Those are the only ones that matter. faithfulness looks like using your gifts in the church. Generosity especially; that's an important gift.

There was this guy who kept coming to me. He was in my InterVarsity group and I discipled him, raised him up. "I want to come on staff." And I was like, "No." And he was this gifted engineering student, critical thinking skills, all this sort of thing.

He comes back a second time. "I really think you should hire me." Like three or four times I had to say, "I'm not going to hire you. You're not good at this. You are a good engineer. You're gifted at that." What we were working against was this weird Christian bias we have towards certain vocations. He needed me to lift up and celebrate more. Some of it was on me that I needed to lift up and say God has given you critical thinking skills and engineering technical skills to pursue the common good of your society, of your neighborhood, of the people around you.

Don Everts: Sometimes we need to be told no because I just want to do what my hero does.

Ann Wilson: Or we feel like it's more spiritual to go into ministry. If I love Jesus, surely I'll go into ministry. But your ministry can be in your workplace.

Don Everts: That's right. That's a huge thing that Luther did during the Reformation because in the Middle Ages, the faithful vocation, if you had a calling, it was a priest, a monk, or a nun. That's it. And they recognized, well, we need milkmaids and we need carpenters, but it's second-class Christians.

What Luther did is he rediscovered a lot of what we're looking at this book, what does the Bible say about gifts and about calling? Luther wrote at one point, "When a father changes a diaper, the angels celebrate." There's something about doing all the gifts that pursue the common good and bless the neighbor and bless industry and society that we need to lift up. God is just as responsible for those gifts and honored by our using them in those other vocations as well.

Dave Wilson: Well, somebody has the gift of "I can't leave something unsettled" and you've only hit like five of the twelve. So they're literally like, "Give me the other six or seven!" and we only have a couple minutes. Can you do them in a minute or two? Just give a flyby.

Don Everts: Let's do it. We're going to do a speed round. There are also civic gifts. The ability to work governmental systems. Intercultural gifts, communication gifts, which I think are really obvious. Leadership gifts, teamwork gifts, which is the ability to make a team work. Technical gifts. Now those are everything from playing the piano... that's a technical gift because you're developing technical skill. Someone who's good at coding, the people who are recording and who are going to cut and work on this piece that we're doing. We're using communication gifts; they're using technical gifts to produce the same thing, all in teamwork together. Interpersonal gifts. So those are the twelve and you can see how each of them also is a bucket in which really there's a big variety of gifts.

Ann Wilson: I just want to remind our listeners that our vision at FamilyLife is every home a godly home and we need your help to get there. When you become a FamilyLife partner, your monthly support makes that vision actually possible.

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Ann Wilson: You can go to familylifetoday.com and read more about it and become a partner. Just click the donate button at the top and again, you can go to familylifetoday.com.

I think this is just a great reminder. We so often in the church and even in our homes, in the body of Christ, we're focusing in on spiritual gifts, which are really important. There's so many tests on spiritual gifts. But to look at common gifts, to think what am I passionate about? What am I good at? To start telling our neighbors, our friends.

Especially even tonight at the dinner table to ask each other, to ask your kids, "Hey, let's talk about Mark tonight. What do you think his gifts are?" I think that's just a fun thing to do. We just celebrated our granddaughter's eighth birthday and we started this as a tradition and now our kids are doing it, too, where on that birthday, everyone in the family acknowledges the gifts of their sibling and it's one of the sweetest things. Back when our kids were the kids, they're like, "What are we doing again?" But now as a grandparent, I'm weeping because it's such a gift to give, especially since we take one another for granted in our household.

Dave Wilson: I’ll just add this. I remember the first time Ann said, "Hey, it's Dad's birthday, let's go around." I remember sitting there going, "No, let's not. Seriously, are we going to?" By the end of every son saying it and Ann, you're sitting there going, "Thank you. That really was a gift to me." Just to hear that. Why do we stop it? Don't stop. Invite it.

Ann Wilson: It’s honoring.

Dave Wilson: It’s honoring. It’s where we started. I'm in the presence of someone extremely valuable.

Ann Wilson: I love Don's whole book on discovering your gifts. It's good, isn't it?

Dave Wilson: It's good for us, but it's also good as parents because you've got to discover the gifts in your kids. If you want the book, again, it's called "Discover Your Gifts: Celebrating How God Made You and Everyone You Know," especially your kids. Here's how you can get it: go to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes.

Ann Wilson: We would love to pray for you. I would personally love to pray for you and we even have a team at FamilyLife that can pray for you. Just go to familylife.com/prayforme.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported ministry of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.