Anthony Delgado has a wonderful wife and three children. Anthony directs Youth Ministry at A lot of people assume they have this gift because for some reason or another they believe they are good teachers. It could be that they teach high school or they teach swimming lessons and so it is only natural that they serve by teaching Bible. Now, I’m not saying that a high school teacher can’t teach Bible, but simply being a vocational teacher does not mean that you have the spiritual gift of teaching.
The spiritual gift of teaching is the divine ability to understand and explain the depths of God’s word. I use myself as an example for this one all of the time. I have been a musician for years. One of my first jobs out of high school was as the bass guitar teacher for two of the local music stores. I got the job because of my musical ability, but when it came down to it, I was a right terrible bass guitar teacher.
In addition to being a terrible guitar teacher, I also have very poor reading comprehension. I struggled to get through high school and college English classes. But, many years later, I have found myself not only with the ability to understand the Bible, but also with the ability to teach it. So, I can be confident that I have the gift of teaching. It should be noted that I am still a terrible guitar teacher and I still toil over literature, but only when I have to.
Your spiritual gifts test may have uncovered that you may have the gift of teaching. I would recognize you as a teacher if you have a solid understanding of God’s word, are able to tell others what it means, even in a general sense, and you have a desire for others to know more about God.
Occasionally I will get stuck when I am teaching the youth group. I will come prepared with the perfect analogy for a concept and it will be completely lost on the group. Inevitably, one of the youth will chime in with the perfect explanation for what I am trying to say. That would definitely be a characteristic of a youth with the gift of teaching.