Your Spiritual Gifts Are Dormant (Here’s How to Activate Them)

Every single child of God has a calling on their life. With these callings, God gives supernatural gifts. Sometimes our giftings, we're born with them. Sometimes they come on us when God speaks to us. One of the gifts of God in my life is to write.

But it wasn't a natural gift.

No, it was my worst subject in high school. Now I remember when he said to me, I want you to write, I laughed. I laughed it off. I thought, You don't want me to write? Just talk to my English teachers. I can't write. Do you know what I was really gifted at? I was really gifted at math and science. My dad encouraged me to become an engineer. However, the more I prayed, the more I felt so disconnected from being an engineer. I despised it. I actually got to a point where I just couldn't even stand it.

I think it's a very easy thing just to look at and be like, I am extremely good at this, so I must be called into this.

Our calling is beyond our natural ability because if God made our calling so that we could accomplish it in our own ability, we'd have— Hey everyone, welcome to the Jon Bevere Podcast. I am joined with Arden Bevere, my youngest son, tallest and strongest. Wow. I don't know about that. You have brothers that might challenge that, right?

I feel like we all have our different muscle groups that are strongest.

I mean, Alec has the biggest shoulders.

Biggest shoulders. It's strong.

Crazy.

Austin actually might have us beat on everything though.

Austin's got pretty big arms, I will say that.

He's been hitting it hard recently.

I just look at all you guys And I'm like, how did this happen? I'm a tennis player dad that is actually not very big. I mean, Lisa, when we first got married, she was like, yeah, I dated big guys, so you're my little tennis player husband. But anyway, God blessed us and gave us big boys. So anyway, guys, we're talking about this book, You Are Called.

It's a brand new book.

It's brand new. It's available. You can go to youarecalled.com.

Youarecalled.com.

And I want to talk about it because I'm very passionate about it. I mean, other than the awe of God, this might be one of the things I'm the most passionate about talking. I know that any time I'm in front of college students and business people, entrepreneurs, I feel so tugged when I'm in front of ministry leadership teams. I've been in front of other leadership teams in the marketplace. I talk about this because I find that a lot of people don't realize there's a call on their life, because when you hear, is there a call on this person's life? You're thinking, is that person called to ministry? So it's so wrong. The paradigm has to shift. Every single child of God has a calling on their life. And the question is, are we going to walk in it? Because the Bible says that we should walk in it. It didn't say we would walk in it, which means we have a choice. Are we going to seek God diligently? Are we going to plant in a local church? Are we going to keep ourselves free from distractions that would pull us away from the divine call on our life? That's up to us because God didn't want robots. So now with these callings, okay, so let's say I'm called to the marketplace, or let's say I'm called to education. God gives supernatural gifts to accomplish them, and that's what I wanna talk about on this podcast, okay? So I wanna open with a scripture, Romans 12:6, and this is so amazing. Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. Wow. There's two words I want to highlight in this verse. The first word I want to talk about is grace. Having gifts that differ according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. When most people hear the word grace, what do they think?

Forgiveness of sins.

Salvation. Um, the love of God. Yep. In fact, Arden, almost every single born-again Christian in America, that's the first thing that comes to their mind. Yeah. And a survey was done years ago, and over 5,000 born-again believers were polled. These are Bible-believing believers that go to church, and it was asked, what is the grace of God? Give your definitions. Do you know that only 2% of those people So they were able to list 3 or more definitions. They all listed, and rightfully so, salvation, forgiveness of sins. But do you know that only 2% of the people said that grace was God's empowerment? Hmm. Yeah. Yet listen to what God said to the Apostle Paul. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:9, My grace. Now, this is God speaking because we have quotes here. So it's coming right from God. God spoke this to the Apostle Paul. He said, My grace is all you need. For my power works best in your weakness. And your weakness would be your human inability. So God identifies his grace as his power. Hmm. That's a whole lot different than forgiveness of sins, like you said.

Yeah.

All right. Let's look at Peter. Peter writes in his epistle, 2 Peter, and we went through this a long time ago. He said, grace be multiplied to you. As his divine power. Yeah. What's his divine power? Grace has given to us all things that we need to live a godly life. So in years and years and years of studying the Scripture, Arden, my definition of grace is this: it's God's free, unearned empowerment that gives us the ability to go beyond our natural ability. Yeah, I love that. So God's empowerment on my life, that gives me the ability to go beyond my natural ability. Let me— I said this on our last podcast. I'm going to go into a little bit more in-depth. Our calling is beyond our natural ability.

Mm-hmm.

How do I know that? Because if God made our calling, what he's called us to do on this earth, if he made it so that we could accomplish it in our own ability, we'd have to share— he'd have to share the glory with us.

Yeah, or we just wouldn't rely on him at all. We wouldn't do any partnership, which is what God doesn't want.

And God says, I'm not sharing my glory with anybody.

Yeah.

So God on purpose makes our calling beyond our natural ability. So why? We would have to depend on grace, his empowerment that gives us the ability to go beyond our natural ability. We'd have to depend on grace to fulfill our calling. Now, what's interesting to me, Arden, is that Romans 5:2 tells me that we have access to the grace of God through faith. Yeah. So in other words, we have no access to God except through faith. Let me give you an example. The Bible says in John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Okay? Whoever believes there's faith. When they believe, they get saving grace. Is every person in the world saved? According to the Scripture, yes. He is the perpetuation for our sins, not only for ours, but for the whole world. So according to Scripture, the whole world's saved. Yeah, but Jesus said the majority of mankind is going to hell. Why is that? Yeah, because there's a very small segment that believed they had faith, so they received saving grace. Hey everybody, we'll get back to the episode in just a moment, but first I want to thank the patrons who make this podcast possible. Your support behind the scenes is critical to sharing these messages, so thank you. To become a patron, just click the link in the show description or go to johnbevere.com/patreon. Patron. Now let's get back to the show.

So, and just clarifying that, because I don't want people to be like, wait, John Bevere's saying the whole world is saved and that's it? No, it's, it's the God— Jesus died on the cross that the whole world would be saved, but it's only available for those who believe.

Yes, who access saving grace through faith. By grace you were saved through faith. Yeah. So we access that saving grace through faith. Romans 5:2 says we have access to the grace of God through faith. Mm-hmm. All right, now, in other words, it takes believing in order to receive grace. If 98% of the Christians in the United States don't know that grace is God's empowerment that gives me the ability to go beyond my natural ability, That means 98% of the Christians in America are trying to fulfill their calling in their own ability, and you're never going to be able to do it. Yeah.

Is that, is that kind of what John 10:10 is referring to in terms of Jesus saying, I've come so that you may have life and life to the fullest?

I believe so. Okay. I do. And so the question becomes, are we going to be people that serve God? It's like all of a sudden We're saved by this miraculous grace, but then we try to live for God in our own ability, and that's where the disconnect is, and that's what this book addresses. It's not just you becoming a child, and I don't want to ever make light of it. It's not— it's not only becoming a child of God that grace is needed for. Grace is needed to give us the ability to fulfill what we were created to do, and if we we don't depend on that grace, we won't fulfill what we've created to do. And remember, when we stand before the judgment seat, God's going to say, this is what I wrote about in the book I wrote about your life. Yeah, let's see how you stacked up. And the only way we're going to be able to stack up is by depending on his grace.

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of people that are asking that question right now. Well, like, I know I have giftings, I know I have things, but I've not seen it interacted in my life. So how do I activate those giftings? Because I think some people are like, you're really talented at certain things, or you just have a natural mind to be able to do things and you haven't been able to connect the dots.

And there's a difference between natural talent and the gift of grace. And we're going to get to that. Interesting, because let's go back to Romans 12:6 and we'll address that. Yeah. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. Now, the Greek word for gifts If you take the Greek word for grace, charis, C-H-A-R-I-S, and you put an M and an A on it, you get charisma. Charisma is the Greek word for gifts.

Yeah.

What is charisma? Here's the definition of it. It is a specific gift of grace that empowers an individual to fulfill what they've been created to do. Yeah. So it's a very— now, Now, here's the thing. It is specific and it is unique to our calling. Okay, let me give you an example of my own life. Okay? One of the gifts of God in my life is to write.

Yeah, but it wasn't a natural gift.

No, it was my worst subject in high school. Yeah. English, creative writing, foreign language was my absolute worst subject in high school. It used to take me 4 hours to write a 1-page paper. Yeah, I mean, I— maybe I could get it done in 2 hours. But I remember there were times I just spent hours and hours and I was frustrated because that was back in the days when we had a notepad and I write a paragraph or a sentence and I'd tear it out and throw it away. And I'd go through half the notepad before I even got to my, my first 2 paragraphs I was going to keep. Yeah, I scored 370 on the SAT in English. I mean, that is out of 800. That is a 46%. That is like F-minus-minus. Yeah. So in 1991, God came to me in prayer one morning. I heard his voice and he said, Son, I want you to write. Now with the word of God, it's called the word of his grace. So the word of his charisma comes the ability. Yeah. Now I remember when he said to me, I want you to write. I laughed. I laughed it off. I thought, you don't want me to write. Just talk to my English teachers. I can't write. You got many good writers. I can't write. So I did nothing with it because he was quiet. So I took his quiet as an agreement to my rebuttal. 10 months later, 2 women come to me from 2 different states in the United States within 2 weeks of each other, and they both said the exact same thing. They said, John Bevere, if you don't write what God's given you to write, he'll give the message to somebody else, and one day you'll stand in judgment for it. Now, when the second woman from the state of Texas said it 2 weeks after the first woman from the state of Florida, the fear of God hit me.. And I thought, I need to write. Yeah, I remember I got a notebook piece of paper. So this is 1991. So we didn't have iPads. Yeah, I tore out the notebook piece of paper. I got a Sharpie and I put contract. I wrote a contract with God. Yeah. And I said, God, I think you're making a big mistake. I can't write. I need your grace. And I'm asking that you would give me your grace to write. And I didn't even know back then that grace was God's empowerment. I mean, if you look at the Apostle Paul, he said, I have more labor and more fruit than all the other apostles, but it wasn't me, it was the grace of God in me. Paul knew it was God's empowerment that gave him the ability to bear more fruit than all the other genuine apostles. Yeah. Okay, so I wrote that note not knowing that the grace of God empowers us to go be, and I signed it. I wish I could find that. It's hidden in one of my books somewhere, my research books, okay? I think it's like a big Bible concordance or something. So now I look today, the books are in the tens of millions today. They're in 133 languages all around the world and they are international bestsellers. Now, I'm going to say this. My name's on that book, not because I was the first guy to write it. I was the first guy to get to read it. Yeah, I believe the gift of God on my life, which is his ability. Remember, it's not our ability. Gave us this message. And when I say us, I was just the first guy to get to read it. And so I look at this and it's true for all of us. Another gift on my life is speaking. What a lot of people don't know is the very first time Lisa heard me, my wife heard me preach after we were married, I will never forget, she was sitting on the front row. Within 5 minutes of my message, she was sound asleep. And she was doing this the whole time.

The head nod.

Her best friend beside her had drool coming out of the side of her mouth. I remember my Sunday school class our first year of marriage. My best friend had over 200 people in his class. It was standing room only, and God moved so powerfully in that class. I had on average 20 people in my class, and one Sunday morning I had one girl show up for my Sunday school class. That's how bad of a speaker I was, a communicator I was. Yeah. But then Lisa told me the day we crossed the Florida line, because that's when we lived in Texas when we first got married and I was asked to be youth pastor. And my pastor said, John, I think this is God. I think you need to go. Yeah. And so Lisa and I crossed the Florida line the first Sunday morning. I'll never forget this. My senior pastor said, oh, we got our new youth pastor. Now, this is the fastest growing church in the United States, 7,000 members. They had only been at church for like 4 years. They're just like exploding, right? He said, oh, we got our new youth pastor here this morning. I want him to come up and share. Yeah. So my wife was— Lisa, your mom was trembling. She was like, oh no, because I was such a bad speaker. I would copy other speakers like T.L. Osborn used to say. I remember he was in a meeting one time, okay? And he went, wow. And he said, that word's so good, it's the same backwards. Wow. And Everybody, I mean, like this was a 4,000-seat auditorium, was laughing hysterically, right? So I would get up and preach and I'd go, "Wow, that word's so good, let's say it backwards, wow," and nobody would laugh. So my wife was like, "Please don't let him say wow backwards." She was like sweating bullets, right? So I go up there and he hands me the mic, and I mean, I open my mouth, And it's like heaven came into that auditorium with 2,800 people. And I start preaching like a man on fire. And within 60 seconds, all 2,800 people were on their feet screaming and cheering. And I preached for 4 more minutes. I remember handing that mic back to the pastor. I'm shaking like a leaf. I go sit down, and Mom told me, she said, "I sat there and thought, who just came into my husband's body?" And it's the Spirit of God. It was the Spirit of God.

Now, well, I was going to say, and I'm having this realization as you've been talking, is I think as you're talking, is I said this before, of like people looking at the natural giftings that they have. And I think that very much is, as I could see so many people planning out their life where it'd be like, okay, I am very good at this, I'm good at this, I'm good at this. God used your calling by things that you did not know at all that you had the ability to do, and you didn't at the time until his grace came onto you. So I think this is just furthering the fact of how we have to be so intentional about our calling, because I, I think it's a very easy thing just to look at and be like, I am extremely good at this, so I must be called into this, which could be the case. God could even make your, your gifting that you do have right then be even go further and his grace comes upon you. But I love the fact that God did something, pulling things that are completely not onto your radar, and I think about how many people are listening to this and they're like, I don't know what I'm called to do, and they're weighing out their calling all based off of their natural ability of things that they can do, and they haven't leaned into the grace of God that he has for them.

This is like the most profound question or statement you could make, and I'm so glad, because it's just opened something in my heart so huge. Do you know what I was really gifted at? I was really gifted at math and science. Yeah, engineer. Um, really, really gifted. Like, I scored really high on math. My dad was an engineer. My dad encouraged me to become an engineer. That's why I studied engineering at Purdue. I was so gifted at math. However, in here, I just got— I'd gotten saved in college, and the more I prayed, the more I felt so disconnected from being an engineer. I, I despised it. I actually got to the point where I just couldn't even stand it. Yeah. If I would have pursued the math and the science without seeking God, I probably would have been a pretty decent— successful, but I don't know that I would have fulfilled what I was called to do. Now, I'm, I'm, I'm going to say this. I've, I've got a friend, his name is Aaron Baddeley. You and I both know him. Yeah, he's been on the PGA for How many years now? I think 20 years.

Years.

Yeah. So, and Aaron was really floundering. I remember when he was— he would stay at our house when the tournament was in Denver. And that particular year, he, as an 18-year-old, he won the Australia Masters or, you know, the Australia Open. But he was floundering. Yeah. And he missed the cut. And we flew to Las Vegas. And in that meeting in Las Vegas, the power of God hit him. And after the service, he came back to the green room and I said, Aaron, God really touched you tonight. He said, boy, did he ever. Yeah. I said, what did he say to you? He said, I've called you to play golf.

Mm-hmm.

Well, he explained to me later that he was going to use his talent of golf to make enough money so that he could preach. Yeah. So he was booking himself into churches 50% of the time. And he looked at me and he said, I wanted to do what you do. Mm-hmm. Like we were at— we were at a dinner talking one night and he said, I really wanted to do what you were doing. So I was just trying to make enough money to play golf and take care of my family. But I really wanted to preach. Yeah, he said when the power of God hit me that night, God spoke to me and said, I've called you to golf. The next year— so he barely made, he barely made it that year. He was finished 124th, and that, that conference was at the end of that golf season. The next, within the next 2 years, he won his first PGA tournament. He got as high as 16 in the world. Yeah, I remember that. And he's won 4 PGA tournament since, and he's been on the PGA Tour for over 20 years. And I was on the phone with him just 2 days ago— no, just 4 days ago— and he said, John— he referenced back, we were talking about how things were going, his family's got 6 children, you know— and he said, John, when God spoke to me back in Las Vegas and said, I've called you to play golf, He said, I am going to keep playing golf until God tells me to do something else. Yeah. And he knows this is what he's called to do. Now, he was naturally gifted at golf. It looked like a natural gifting. But in reality, the more he put God first, his ability got better. So I look at sometimes our giftings, we're born with them. Sometimes they come on us when God speaks to us. And I'll show you scripturally. Yeah. Okay. When John the Baptist— he had a gift on his life of the prophetic. Mm-hmm. And that gifting was specifically for him to recognize the Messiah. Mm-hmm. When he was in his mother's womb, he leaps. Yeah, he leaps. When his mother Elizabeth walks into Mary's house and Mary's pregnant with Jesus, he leapt in the— in his mother's womb because he recognized the presence of the Messiah. Well, 33 years or 30 years later, he again recognized the Messiah when he came to be baptized at the River Jordan. That gift was on his life right from his mother's womb. I remember there was a guy who, uh, he came to our church, and this guy's gifting of leading people in worship was exceptional. I remember when he would go to our church, people would be on their feet, he'd start playing, everybody'd be seated, and within minutes 2500 people were standing on their feet dancing and just enjoying praising the Lord. Right. And I got the privilege of hosting him, like driving him to the restaurant in a hotel. And he told me, he said, when my mom— he said, my mom was a praying woman. She spent hours and hours and hours and hours in prayer. He said one day when she was pregnant with me, a man came to the house that she and my dad never saw before. And never saw him after. And the man looked at her while he was sitting in the living room and said, your son shall be exceptionally gifted in leading people in worship. When he was like 3 years old, he told me, he sat down on a piano one day and started playing perfectly, like somebody who would take hours and hours and hours of lessons. Wow. He was playing perfectly. Yeah. That gift was given to him right from his birth. But look at King Saul. King Saul is looking for his donkeys. He meets up with— well, he's not King Saul. He's Saul, the son of Kish. Yeah, he's looking for his donkeys. He meets up with Samuel the prophet, and Samuel the prophet looks at him and says, you're going to meet a group of prophets tomorrow. And when you do, the Spirit of the Lord is going to come on you and you're going to become a different man. And what did he do? He started prophesying even when he became corrupt and wicked. He still prophesied. Okay, so that gifting came on him the moment he got in the group of the prophets because of the word of the Lord that came out of Samuel's mouth. Yeah. So I look at that guy who led praise and worship. He had that gift from his mother's womb. I look at me. I didn't have the gift to write until the word of the Lord came to me and said, write. Yeah, because I tried writing in high school and I didn't have the natural. So this is where the seeking of God element comes in, Art. And this is what I can't stress enough. We got people out there like, well, I'm great at science and I guess I should become a marine biologist because I like animals in the Marines. That may be true. And it— I liked it. I liked math and science, but it didn't mean I was called to be an engineer. The thing we've got to put on the table, the first thing that everybody's got to do is what we said is seek God diligently in faith. And it's not a one-time seeking God. Yeah, it's a continual seeking God. And this thing people don't like. They want, I want a plan, give me the plan so I can just live my life the way I want to and just forget, you know, about seeking God diligently. I'm sorry, that's not the way it works. God wants to create it so that we maintain intimacy with him. Because Jesus, if you look at him, he's called a minister, minister. But where is he called to minister? I mean, if you remember one time his, his friend and Jesus was allowed to have friends. Yeah. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha was his closest friends. Mary and Martha see Lazarus is sick, like really bad sick, and they send some messengers out looking for Jesus. They're searching, combing the countryside, and after 2 days the messengers find Jesus. They say, oh my gosh, you got to come back to Bethany. You got to come right away. Lazarus is like, he might even be dead by now. You got to move right now. And Jesus stayed there 2 more days. Why? He's probably seeking his Father, and his Father says, keep preaching here. And can you imagine how frustrated the messengers were? We spent 2 days. We spent 2 days looking for him. And now he's staying 2 more days. He doesn't even care about his friend. He just cares about the crowds. And then Jesus, 2 days later, says, well, time to go back to Bethany and see our friend Lazarus. And they're like, he's probably dead by now. And so here he goes. It's been 4 days.

Yeah.

And now Lazarus has been in the grave for 4 days. And Jesus raises him from the dead, which gives great, even more glory to, to his heavenly Father. This is what we're called to do with our giftings. We're called to seek God. God's going to lead us in a direction that utilizes those gifts he's placed on his life.

Yeah, well, and that helps us identify those gifts. But then we have to then take it to be good stewards over those gifts because you could have these gifts and like even for you, it's like you could have written one book and be like, wow, It was a big challenge. All right, I think I'm good. Like, I was able to write a book and I accomplished what those two women said. And yep, now what do I do? And but you did— a lot of people don't know you wrote two books before you wrote—

and they were—

yeah, they just— they hardly sold anything. And I think a lot of people can look back and be like, well, no, John wrote Betta Satan. And then it's like, no, there was two books that came. And what you showed is God, I remember this for Redefined, the first book I wrote, is I remember writing that book and I felt like—

which is a really good book, by the way.

Thank you, Dad. But I felt so much of like when people ask me like, well, how many books do you think it will sell? I was like, honestly, God told me to write a book. And whether it's super successful or not, I just know what I'm supposed to do is my stewardship of it is to write a book. And God do whatever it is that he's supposed to do then. And I think too many times do we base off our calling off of success, that then we start doing something and we don't quickly identify success in that thing. And then we're like, well, all right, obviously that wasn't God. And then we give up on it. And I don't think that's a good stewardship of our gifts. And that's part of this next step that we have to take is one, identifying what you talked about so much, but then two, being a good steward over our gifts.

I think you couldn't have said that any better. And I just look at the fact that, you know, I look at those first two books you're talking about. Not only did they not sell at all, I sent them to two publishers. One didn't even respond. The other one said a little too preachy. Yeah. And then the second book and I told the Lord, I said, I'm not going to write a book unless you speak to me. So 25 times God's spoken to me to write a book.. And that's why there's 25 books. I remember the second book. I sent it to my Bible school teacher. She was my favorite Bible school teacher. I loved her. And, and she, she— I was like a pet. I'll just be honest. And I remember she wrote me back. And this is the days before emails because this is 1992 or '93. And she said, who do you think you are writing a message like this? Because it was a prophetic message about the church needing to return to the Lord., and she really criticized it, and I was devastated. I remember a friend of mine read one of those first two books, and the friend said, I think you got too many scriptures, and was kind of negative about it. And I was so depressed. Yeah, I remember laying on my living room floor. I mean, you weren't even born yet. And I, I was looking up at the ceiling thinking, you're a failure, you're a complete failure. Yet when I'd sit down at the little laptop computer, I would sense the Spirit of God, and I would sense these messages are going to be read by people all over the world. Yet the publishers are rejecting it. My Bible school teacher says, who do you think you are? My friend says it's too preachy, too many scriptures. Everything looked like I was a failure, everything, until the bait of Satan came out And what a lot of people don't understand is it didn't sell very well. Yeah, until 6 months into it, I was asked to go on an international talk show. I was only supposed to mention the book. I only had 20 minutes to speak, and they wanted to talk mostly about my— our family. Yeah, they didn't want to talk about the book, but the publisher said, hey, it's an open door. I said, sure. I get on that program The host of that program, who he is— he's passed away now— the bait of Satan, what is that? And I started opening my mouth and God anointed it. I remember they said, keep your eyes on the floor director. The floor director wasn't moving. I'm like, we're past 20 minutes. Yeah, it ended up going 40 minutes nonstop. The next day, every bookstore in the United States was sold out, and within 2 days, the publisher was 20,000 backordered. I never could have orchestrated that, never could have done that on my own. That was something God did. Yeah. And so our job is to be faithful with our gifts. Yeah. But the Bible says the gift of God on our life will— listen, it'll make a way for us, it'll open a door for us, and it'll bring us before great men and women. I look at that as I was being faithful after rejection after rejection after rejection, but just doing what I was getting in prayer in the mornings. Then all of a sudden, God opens the door with these people that were really well known, and all of a sudden now the book is all in hands, and now "Bait a Satan" has passed 6 million copies.

[Speaker] Yeah. I always look at it, and I think it's a great illustration of it, is, you know, in NFL football, it's sometimes when you're playing from your own side of the field, you can have these big chunk plays and it's easy to get a long run or, or a big pass. But then you get to the red zone, which is like the last 20 yards, and they, they switch out and they bring in, you know, those 300-pound defensive linemen. That's like, if you're going to run the ball, if you're going to get an inch, it's going to be, it's going to be some work here. And I look at that and I always have seen this as on the other side of oftentimes the difficulties and just the perseverance is breakthrough.. And just because things are getting tougher and harder and it feels like, well, I'm not getting any traction, doesn't mean you're not just about to break through. And just in the same way that there's, there's the end zone right on the other side. It's like in order to experience— I love this— it's in order to experience heaven's dream, you have to experience hell's nightmare. And it's like you have to go through the hardships and the trials like that. What we've talked about is not a rejection of you're going down the wrong path, but it's a trial that God is doing, the purification that God is doing with inside of you, where Job said, you've tested me and I've come out as pure as, as refined as gold. So that when you do get the calling, or not get the calling, but when you do have a breakthrough that happens, God knows you have the calling and the character to be able to sustain it. It's what you've always prayed, and I think you've always shared this with us boys, and we've prayed the same thing, is God, please make sure that our calling never outweighs our character. Right. And that's always been something that's scary to me within a lot of these young communicators and young, young YouTubers and things like that that are using their platforms for amazing things, is understand the weight that comes with that and make sure that the character, or that you have people around you that is going to challenge you and keep you in line, because if your calling takes you this high, but yet your character can only sustain you this much, you're going to flounder.

Well, stop and think about this. Joseph had a gift. Yeah. What was his gift? The ability to interpret dreams.

Okay.

So when he's a young man, yeah, he's a bragger. He's a tattletale. Yeah.

He speaks down to his brothers. Also, I feel like his whole identity was involved around his dad, too.

Like he didn't have himself outside of His dad. So when God gives a dream, that's one step. Interpreting that dream is another step. So I'm going to tell you what I believe. Joseph had a dream. Do you remember the dreams? Yeah. The first one was the wheat and all the other 11 wheats bowed down. Yeah. And then the second one.

Okay.

So I don't know that God spoke to him in that dream and said, your brothers will serve you. Yeah. I think the next day God spoke to him. And he— because he had the gift of interpreting dreams. Yeah. So then he has the dream of the sun, moon, and stars. So not only his brothers, but his mom and dad. Now, what does his gift do? It gets him in big trouble. Yeah. Because even his dad is like, you're saying he's mad that we are doing this too? So now he goes through the pit, he goes through slavery, he goes to the dungeons, the refinement. But he's still got that gift. Yeah. So God had told him way back years earlier. I mean, we're talking more than a decade. You're going to be a leader and your brothers will be under your leadership. He's in that dungeon. Pharaoh gets a dream. Nobody, nobody understands what the dream is of Pharaoh's. They said there's this guy in the dungeon. Yeah, he's got this gift. He can interpret dreams. God put it on him. Now the time has come. The character has been refined, as you just said. Yeah, he's a lot. He's walked the path. He's now got the character to handle it. He's not a bragger anymore because he ends up blessing his brothers when they come and he gets revealed to them. And by the way, that was 19 years later. Yeah. And I look at God telling me to write in 1991 and Beta Satan really exploding in 1996. That was 5 years. Joseph was 19 years. So I think Joseph had a lot harder than I did.

Okay. Yeah. And it was in a dungeon and other things, but that gift was there.

Yeah, right, right from the get-go when he was a young, young man. Yeah. And the question becomes, are you going to self-promote with your gift? Are you going to walk the path that God puts before you? Yeah. And are you going to pray the right prayers? You boys have prayed really smart prayers. You've said, God, never let this gift exceed the character you've developed in me. I didn't know the pain I was going to sign up for, and there was a lot of pain. But God said, I want to protect you. There are other people that say, I don't care. I want the fame, I want the notoriety, and I'm going to use the gifts that God's placed in my life to do it. Remember in the last podcast, the number one thing we need to know about calling was what? It's not for you, it's for others. That is easy to say, but it's another thing to live. Yeah, that's true. It takes a lot of pain to get to the point where you really care more about the people. When you and I come on this podcast We don't really care about anything other than the fact, are people's lives being transformed? That's what's most important to us. Yeah. Are people being changed by the Spirit of God? I was out praying this morning and I cried out to God and I said, God, please let the anointing be fresh. Please let the anointing change and transform your people as they watch this podcast. I am not interested in having so many numbers, but yet people just getting information. Yeah, we want to see people transformed. Transformed. And I believe it takes the anointing on the gifting in order to bring the transformation. God's obviously gifted you and I to do this. There's a good flow between us. People tell me all the time, we love your youngest son, the comments he brings up, the questions, the input that he brings. There's obviously a gift on us to do this, but we need that anointing because that anointing, I believe, enhances the gift and makes it eternal. Yeah, the anointing is that intangible element. God puts this gifting, we can see it. Hey, I can see this guy can operate on somebody and remove a tumor. Hey, if I try to operate on him, I'd kill him. You might as well schedule the funeral, right? Or, or Akiana, who, who paints— yeah, the, the, the, you know, at 8 years old, the Prince of— the Prince of Peace portrait. The original is worth a million dollars now. That's a gift on her life, right? But what comes with that gift? There's an anointing on her. She seeks God. You can tell when I follow her on Instagram, because when that girl speaks, you can sense a touch of God on her life. That, that is— that's— that hangs in my office. It so inspires me. I will look at that picture of Jesus. And so the question is not, are we gifted? The question is, are we going to seek God so that anointing that causes our gifts to be enhanced and eternal Can I say that I can name people that are gifted and probably gifted by God? I look at— I can name leaders, I can name athletes that are gifted, and they probably are gifted by God. But the question is, are they glorifying God? Yeah. All right. I look at the people like that businessman we talked about in the last podcast. He said, God, I want my business, I want it to glorify to you. And when we sat with him at that lunch for 3 hours and heard about how he had done some of the silliest things, but yet he's ministered to so many people. Yeah. So it's all— it's not just about being gifted. It's about having your gifts anointed so they make a difference in people's lives. And that anointing comes by spending time with him. That anointing comes as we're in his presence. I have seen preachers that I've got— that's a great message. And I've seen preachers where I'm like wanting to fall on my face. Yeah. I'm telling you, I've seen few singers as gifted as Freddie Mercury. He could rouse an entire stadium. As Whitney Houston. Yeah. Oh my gosh, what a voice. But then I have singers that are far less gifted, but when they sing, I want to fall on my face because the presence of God is so thick. Yeah. Now, can you imagine if Freddie Mercury or Whitney Houston would have walked in that kind of anointing? Yeah. So the, so the focus here is not just our gifting. The focus is we want the anointing to be on our gifting. Yeah. I think we've said enough. I think we've got— I've got so much more about it in the book called— and you know what I used? I used to write this book. I used Logos. Yes. And, you know, all the books I've written in the past 20 years, I've been able to use Logos. And Logos has saved me hours and hours and hours and hours of research. Yeah, because I literally have 75,000 books now. That's the level of Logos I have. I have 75,000, like, commentaries. Yeah. I have, I have the concordances, I have Bible atlases all on my Logos, and it helps me to quickly get the information I'm looking for as the Holy Spirit's leading me. Yeah, but I believe this book is going to really impact people's lives because we talked about, first of all, that everyone has a calling. With the calling comes the gifts. And with those gifts, it's very important that we walk in the anointing Yeah, okay, because you can have a gift. Now listen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow some people away. You can have a gift on your life, a God-given gift, and it's not working. Timothy was like that. Paul said to Timothy, Timothy, your God-given gift is inoperative. Engage it. So this book tells us how to engage our gifts, but most importantly, to have the anointing upon our gifts. So it's out there, and it doesn't matter if you're called to the— if you're called to the marketplace, education, healthcare, government, professional athletics, ministry, vocational ministry. This applies to that. I really wrote this book to people who want to make a difference in this world for the kingdom of God and for the glory of God. Amen.

So how do they get it? They can go to youarecalled.com.

Youarecalled.com.

Okay, great. And they'll actually get access to even more stuff.

That's excellent. Well, yeah. Okay, guys, until the next time. This has been the Jon Bevir Podcast with Arden Bevir and Jon Bevir.