Week 2: Embrace Your Calling

A look at three gifts that are given to every Christian

by Sam O'Neal

Welcome to Week 2 of this Dot Com(unity) session, and let's jump right in with the study.

Three Gifts
This week's teaching points focus on three spiritual gifts that God gives to every Christian at the time of their salvation (and beyond). They are faith, a relationship with God, and an extra capacity to give and receive love.

To start, I'm curious if these "guaranteed gifts" were surprising to anyone? I had not heard of an initial "burst" of spiritual gifts before, nor had I thought of these three items as spiritual gifts, per se. But they make sense when you think about it.

The first thing I noticed about these teaching points is that they include a lot of "outside" Scripture references. This can be very helpful in a group in terms of finding something to talk about, but don't be concerned about covering each verse during your group meeting. Read them before hand and think about a handful of verses that would best fit your group and where you want to take the discussion. For example, I really like 1 John 4 as a way to start talking about love and how it should be demonstrated by followers of God.

Teachable Moments
As I mentioned, you'll need to skim the different texts ahead of time in search of verses that have a good chance of impacting your specific group. But I do like the idea proposed in the "Action Point" at the end of the study.

It recommends that you have your group members look at those three guaranteed gifts—faith, relationship, and love—and decide which one has the most room for improvement in their lives. This is something you could do as a group (and have people share as desired), or as a "homework" assignment on their own.