Transcript from the Christian Life Coach Collective
Episode #2
I am so very excited to talk to you today about your superpower. When you received Jesus, at that moment, you received the Holy Spirit. He breathes on you at the moment of salvation, and you receive the Holy Spirit, and that right there, my friend, is full of superpower.
Okay, so we're going to go into your specific giftings and your calling as a coach, what you offer, what you bring to the table, not only the coaching aspect of it but how are you made to live this one short life? How do you reveal the character and nature of a good God to the world around you? How do you meet the one who He puts in front of you?
We're going to be deep in the Word today:
1 Corinthians 12:
“There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it's the same God who works in all of us. And a spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other to one Spirit. To one person, the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice to another; the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. That same Spirit gives great faith to someone else the Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles. Another is the ability to prophesy, He gives somebody else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or another spirit. Still, another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what's being said. It's the only Spirit who distributes all of these gifts and He alone decides which gift each person should have.”
Yes, I’m talking slowly, I want to make a point. All of you together are Christ's body. And each of you is a part of it. And so then He goes on and He says,
“ here are some of the parts that God has appointed for the Church, apostles, prophets, teachers, those who do miracles to give to healing, others, leadership, and the languages. Are we all prophets? Are we all teachers? Do we all do miracles and have the gift of healing? Do we all have the ability to speak their languages? Do we all have the interpreted ability to interpret them? Of course not. So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts.”
I want to stop right there and say, the most helpful gift you can use and earnestly desire is the one God put in you. Not the one God put in me. You need to go seek out and earnestly desire what He puts in you.
You have to take ownership of your story, and your gift as part of your story. So you need to take ownership of this and this is going to impact how you coach, how you show up in the world, how you parent, how you live a life in relationships, marriage, how you work, and how you thrive. This is going to help you understand how it undergirds you, how you walk out your day, and what you believe, which means that impacts what you think, and what you're thinking impacts how you feel and experience the world and then what you do with it, which leads you to the results in the legacy that you get.
Okay, so let's start here with what you believe about yourself and the Gifting that God has given you. Go seek the most helpful gifts. You have the gift of being a racecar driver who consistently wins, as that may not be helpful in your life for the calling that God's given you. That may not help you in any way. You went and sought out having that Gifting, but God doesn't plan on using it.
So what are we doing? Why are we racing cars around? What do you call it? Monte Carlo? Whatever it is. What are we doing with that? Why are we searching and seeking the ability to have gifts and practicing things just to do it? Just to make a name for ourselves? What are you looking for? Are you looking to be a famous speaker? I mean, what if God's not gonna use that in your life? We are kind of wasting our time here.
What is He putting in you that He wants to use daily to help others know Him? To know that He is God and to glorify Him, what is that that He's put in you? And it may feel simple to you. It may seem less than that. But who are you to despise or to question a potter? Right?
Ephesians four talks about how He's given us each a special gift through the Generosity and the Grace of Christ. Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the Church: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers, right? So these positions have the responsibility to equip God's people to do His work and build up the Church. This will continue until we all come to such Unity in our Faith and knowledge of God's Son, that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the complete standard of Christ. So that means not yet okay, you're not there yet The responsibility of the fivefold giftings is to equip the body, God's people, and His Church, to build up the Church, The Body of Christ so that the Body can thrive and take care of one another.
Let's go to the plane example. The pilot needs to be at the helm of the cockpit, he needs to be at the wheel, so to speak. I don't know what is it that they do. They need to be at the wheel to be looking out the windshield. They need to be listening to a voice that tells them which direction to go, and what altitude to be at to safely get the passengers or cargo to the place they have said they would take the plane.
Then there are the air traffic control people, the ones in the towers (that seems like the most stressful job in the world!) to see all of the things going on. They see all the planes in the sky, they see all of the paths and the journeys and they're the engineers, they can help land a plane, they know so many things and they have this high perspective of what's going on.
The pilot does not have that perspective or gifting and that's not their calling. The pilot has the one duty to land the plane safely at its destination.
Then you have multiple flight attendants. They're serving beverages they're taking care of everyone. They're relaying what the pilot says to the passengers they're making sure that everybody knows how to be safe. They're correcting behavior. So there's only one or two pilots and multiple flight attendants.
And then the passengers are there. You have a massive amount of people who are passengers. That is the greatest number of people. That's okay. Let's just look at it from that perspective. Most people fit onto the plane as a passenger. When you're on a plane as a passenger, you can take care of one another.
As a mom, I used to fly a lot with small children. Other people would help take care of me and do things and hold that dirty diaper while I buttoned up the new clean one… (God bless you... you were such a sweet woman to hold that!)
We help other people by taking the luggage out for the other passengers or putting it up for them. This is like the Body, we're meant to be serving one another and helping each other and that's something that we are actively doing as coaches.
It's a gift and an honor to be able to help and serve where we are with the one in front of us without saying well, I'm not going to do this… I just should be a pilot. That's the only person who has the authority here. The greatest Gifting here is the pilot. That's what I'm in awe of, or you know, the air traffic controller.
If you think that you're just not enough because you're only a passenger and not the lady who is talking to the pilot and who is seeing all things, where is that coming from? What are you believing? What kind of things are you setting your eyes and your thoughts on? Because that's not getting you anywhere. I'm not good enough until I'm that person. I'm not doing something important until I stand on top of the mountain. This is a lie, stop it.
If you're thinking that the most important person here is the one in charge of the beverage cart. Well, you can go get yourself a job, you don't have to wait. You don't have to knock a flight attendant over to take the cart, you can just be where you are, doing what you do. And love the one that's sitting next to you, train them, you know, give them the aisle because you know he's six foot four and in the middle seat and didn't know how to book himself a good flight. So taking care of him could look like giving him the aisle seat that you paid extra for. This is taking care of the Body of Christ.
I wanted to say everybody is designed to serve and everybody has a gift to serve the world. The gift is supernaturally yours when it is so natural that it's constant and it is showing up always in your life rather than only by compulsion. Sometimes we devalue our gifting, considering it plain and ordinary and we keep it as a guest that appears highly emotional or compulsory.
Sometimes we compare because it is natural to us. We compare ourselves to someone else's mountaintop. Remember you're not seeing them in the valley. You're not seeing all the work they had to do to get to that mountaintop, okay?
That mountaintop is very deceiving, it can be a blessing and it can be a gentle experience, but you are not designed to live on the mountaintop. You're designed to come back down and bring people from the Lord back up to the mountaintop.
Regular, everyday life is where we get to reveal how God operates in our original design, how He created us, and the Giftings He's given us. Everything, including the past, the brokenness, the experiences, the healing, all of it, is designed to operate from that place needing Him and His strength. Showing a perfect system. So God has given you a gift, multiple giftings that you need to take seriously every day.
Your gift serves you by creating contentment and satisfaction in your original design. It brings hope and you find that when you're immersing in a gift and you operate in it as a caretaker of some kind, it will come to you naturally.
If you despise your valleys and journeys and only measure yourself to where others are, that will lead to disappointment. You’re expecting to be someone else and these expectations lead to disappointment and disappointment in your process comes when you don’t value what God is doing right now. Right here.
God is trying to get to you and say “Look what's in your hands!” Are you expecting to be, to do, or to have something God has not led you to live, out of expectation? That will hurt you, my friends, it's set you at this point. So instead I'm going to change your mind and shift to living out of expectancy.
Whatever you believe you deserve, or don’t deserve, surrender it to the Lord and let Him lead and reveal, let Him protect and supply. And know that God is your expectancy, that He's always a good God. And all things work to the good of those who love Him.
Now I want to walk you through how to empower somebody. People need to process or ask God more questions and some of you are gonna think it's this or that, you don't need to hear the Lord say something else.
Here's how I explain my superpower. When people say what do you do? I say I'm a Christian life coach and my superpower is helping my clients see what is possible with God, to figure out how to walk into another superpower which is the wisdom given to me with a measure specifically by God for service to Him.
When I found the Lord at 22, I just prayed that I would have the wisdom of Solomon. I believe it was in my heart to pray that because it was already part of my original design. And God wants me to use it as wisdom. Not to try to do big grandiose things with it but to use it to serve Him on the daily, right where I'm at with those in front of me not looking for a different platform. I am enjoying the platform I have of being a wife and a mom. I have a platform to speak to very important people and they live in my house. I have a platform with a nonprofit that my husband and I founded. That is a platform for me. Those are the people right in front of me that God's set there. I have a neighborhood and a city, that's my platform, the people across the street to share hope with. It's my clients, my platform. My pulpit is right here, It's always in front of me.
So I believe that some of you might hear that and think well, that's very boastful or prideful to say that she has the gift of wisdom. No. Here's what boastful and prideful sounds like. “You should see me in action. Oh my gosh, God has given me so much wisdom is pretty amazing. I'm pretty amazing with my gifting and honestly, you should earnestly desire to be more like me”.
Okay, that's just silly.
Most of us wouldn't even say those things, instead, what I have learned to do is to recognize the strengths that God's given me so that I can deal with them, because not doing that is then the flip side of the pride coin, and it's called false humility.
Rather than living from false humility go seek out the gifts that God's given you and then be wise with them, like the parable of the talents. Use what He's given you for His Glory. Don't bury it because you think He's a harsh ruler, or you're afraid that other people will think you're so into yourself. Well, if you're afraid that people will think that then maybe that's a nugget of truth that you're feeling conviction about and you need to see if there is a thread of pride behind what you're doing. Because hiding that talent and burning it might be false humility, which is still pride.
Romans 12 says, to not think that you're better than you are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourself, measure yourself by the faith God has given us. Okay? That means not only are you supposed to not think highly of yourself, when that's not reality, but don't think that you're worse than you are. Don't be the victim. Just know you are chosen and called a Child of God.
So when you stop for the one that's in front of you, you're not actually living a supernatural life. When you use the gift, the talent, the abundance, and the things that God's put in your hand with the one that is in front of you, whether it's a client, a child, a spouse, a neighbor, a co-worker, or a stranger, that's a supernatural life because you have the Spirit of God within you.
Jesus doesn't say, “Oh, you're a powerful businessman, and you didn't make me your CEO.” He said, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” He's not asking you to make a big deal about your normal. He's saying when I was the one who was naked, thirsty, hungry in front of you, what did you do? How did you use what I gave you? Don't diminish Who lives inside of you. Don't ignore that you're set apart with God.
Here's what I'm getting at. You're called and gifted. Don't despise how God made you, and don't sit in disappointment and envy because you're not somewhere else and you're not somebody else that you thought you'd be by now.
The Bible says in Romans 9, but who are you to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to the molder “Why did you make me like this?” Has the potter a right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
Don't shame yourself because you haven't had a perfect life. Join the club. And then let's get this club on the road because He knows better than we do, and we should just get on moving.
There are a lot of teachers in this world. The Bible says time for us is short and we need to get out there and Father and Mother the ones who need us. As coaches, we have the honor of spiritually parenting the ones God gives us. Consider it a great honor and duty to God to respond to His children with love and walk with them on their path as they journey toward him. Remember to be real with yourself. Like Romans 12 says to be honest and evaluate yourself or measure yourself by the faith God has given not that you're better than you are not that you're worse than you are.
Just accept the gifts and walk in them in confidence.
He's given you this life, these experiences, and these gifts to worship Him and reveal them to the world. So don't waste time and energy in despair, instead seek out how He's called you into the world and how are you called as a coach. Are you gifted as a coach? Let's explore that.
What seems to come effortlessly to you? Is it mercy, listening, strategy, building, teaching technical things, mechanical things, or musical things, whatever you can do effortlessly is meaningful, and it's meant to be a blessing in your life. So what is it you're doing that you can just lose all track of time and the world melts away?
What have others told you consistently that you're good at? Where do they say you were effective, savvy, and knowledgeable?
What kinds of things would you make sacrifices for? If acts of kindness are a gifting for you then you'll likely sacrifice your day off to do yard work for the widow across the street. If you're gifted in mechanical work, then maybe you would do it for free or for cheap for a stranger just because it comes so easily and you enjoy doing it. You can often find your area of gifting in a space of sacrifice.
What makes you want to learn more about it and do better than you already do? What kind of books are on your shelves and in your Kindle? What kind of stories are highlighted to you? You can find things out about yourself by taking stock of what you want to learn and grow in.
What areas are you confident in, things that you don't feel afraid to be stretched to do? What are you more observant about than others? Sometimes you can see or catch or know things that others around you don't. So pay attention to what's going on under the circumstances when you're in a situation and you're seeing and catching and knowing things. And maybe other people aren't talking about it or don't seem to notice what are you noticing.
And one last thing since every strength has a weakness it also means every weakness has a strength.
So where do you find weak areas that you want to work on that make you feel convicted? Areas that help you point to the other side of the coin because as humans we have a negativity bias, meaning our brains often show us what's wrong before letting us see what's right. Looking at what you see as a weakness, gives you a clue to the other side of the coin and helps you, all you have to do is flip it over and go wow, what is the strength to that weakness? What's the Gifting that's on the other side?
Now I do want to qualify that when your strengths are overused or when they're used out of the right timing or used without permission, they become liabilities.
If you're using a gift of strategy inside of your coaching, and your client just wants to be heard and validated, your gift isn't getting them the results, you will want to see if it's being used without permission or solicitation. If you use your gift of seeing possibilities with a client who wants to just take very clear and concise actions towards a short-term goal then it's out of timing. If your gift of taking action can be overused when someone wants a slower process it can cause you to be impatient, and then you're sabotaging the results. And if you use your gift of compassion and mercy to enable a client's unhealthy behavior, it's being wrongly used.
Here's your homework, and I'm gonna put it in the show notes. But I want you to consider these questions.
Am I being realistic about who I'm called to be and the gifts God has given me?
Am I being prideful about my giftings which keep me up?
Or am I operating in false humility which keeps me playing small?
What do I do effortlessly?
What am I willing to make sacrifices for?
What makes me want to learn more and grow?
What am I confident about? What am I more observant about than others?
And what are the strengths of my perceived weaknesses?
And here's what I want you to do with this info. Write it all down somewhere on your computer, your notes, app journal, or napkin, and compile it with the homework from episode number one, because we're going to go somewhere with this. We're looking at how you can coach and how you're called to live, how you are called to thrive and live an abundant life, your purpose, and your calling in Christ. Because not only does this work for your own life, but you can implement all of this in your client's lives.
There's just no better way to get results and transformation for someone else than to first experience it yourself and then teach it to them because you know what the highest form of learning is… teaching.
Coaching is an experience for you first and foremost. Because what flows from that river where God meets you, causes you to become impassioned to tell others what He's done. That is the glory of being a Christian Life Coach. It is knowing the transformative power of walking with God and then sharing it with other people. It's really beautiful.
And that is all the meat for today friends so thanks for coming to the collective table with me. And I hope that you'll find yourself full, but still hungry for more of everything that God is setting on the table. And I pray for abundant hope and truth over you and your life.
Dig into the goodness of what God has gifted you to do and walk in so that your life and your client's lives can experience greater transformation and results!
***VIParts of this episode to refer to: The right questions to ask to find your superpower
1- Am I being realistic about who I am called to be and the gifts that God has given me?
2- Am I being prideful about my giftings which puffs me up, or am I operating in false humility which keeps me playing small?
3- What do I do effortlessly?
4- What am I willing to make sacrifices for?
5- What makes me want to learn more and grow?
6- What am I confident about?
7- What am I more observant than others about?
8- What are the strengths of my perceived weaknesses?
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