A Practical Guide for Transformative Growth Part 3Sample

Competence

Competence speaks about living the values that we espouse and being effective in life and ministry. Competence is when it is apparent to all that we are living what we preach. It is when our world is actually being transformed around us through our love, prayer, and service. Said simply, it is about demonstrating both the love and power of God effectively through our lives. It is about being trained and experienced and able to effectively administer our dominion mandate as kings and priests.

Learning to use our gifts effectively while having impure desires, a worldly value system, unhealthy emotions, false beliefs, or an unhealthy thought life may make us look great in the natural, but we will be ineffective in the spirit at best, and destructive at worst. So, I want you to keep in mind that competence in using our gifts is built on the foundation of the inner work we have done. When our entire being is conformed to Christ, then we can walk in the reality of ‘greater works’ and ‘asking anything’.

Having said that, we should never just sit back and rely on our natural talent or gifting, whether it’s a physical talent like painting, a life skill like connecting with people, or a spiritual gift like prophecy. We should all be investing in mastering the raw gifts that we were born with. To become competent ministers of the grace of God, we need to train. We need to receive equipping from the apostolic, prophetic, teaching, evangelical, and pastoral gifts in our midst. We need to take risks and learn by doing. We also need to press into walking in the miraculous. We need to do what Christ did and greater, like He said we would.