Max Lucado - Cure for the Common Life Workbook

In his book Cure for the Common Life, Max Lucado urges readers to find their sweet spots in life. Ever heard of a sweet spot? It refers to place on a golf club (or baseball bat or tennis racket) where you get the most power and control out of your swing. Hit a ball in the sweet spot and you can send it flying forever. So much energy for so little effort!

People have sweet spots, too. God has designed all human beings to do certain things well and in a way that is totally natural to them. For instance, one person has a knack for numbers. Another is a great problem-solver. Someone else has a nose for a bargain. Yet another is a creative genius. Every person has a sweet spot. And life makes sense when you find your spot and keep hitting the ball there.

So how do you find your own sweet spot? As Max describes in Cure for the Common Life, each of us has moments in our lives when, seemingly by accident, we hit a home run. Just knock it right out of the park to everyones amazement. These moments are not accidents. Its not just a coincidence. Theres a reason you wrote the best paper in your class in junior high school. Theres a reason that you saved the day on the family vacation by knowing how to get your dads stalled car re-started in a driving rainstorm. It wasnt just a rookie coincidence that enabled you to make a key observation that helped your boss save face with his superior.

When it comes to sweet spots there are no accidents, only incidents. They are moments when youre in the zone. Situations in which the way God made you lines up with what is needed at the time. When that happens wham! You hit the ball in your sweet spot and there it goes! To you it may not seem like a big deal, but to someone who doesnt have the gifts you have, your natural response can seem like a feat of genius.

And here we come to an irony. Your sweet spotyour giftednessis so natural and so instinctive that when youre using it, you dont even think about using it. You just use it. You wouldnt think of doing things any other way. Therefore, your giftedness may not seem remarkable to you. Its just you being you. For that reason, most of us have a hard time recognizing our sweet spots for what they are.

Thats a problem, because if you dont know what your sweet spot is, youre going to have a hard time hitting the ball there. Oh, occasionally youll connect. As they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But God doesnt want you to live in your sweet spot now and then. He wants you there most of the time.

When we use the term giftedness in this small group study, we are referring to the unique way in which an individual functions. Giftedness is a persons inborn core strengths and natural motivation, which he instinctively uses to do things that are satisfying and productive. Giftedness is not just what the person can do, but what he was born to do, enjoys doing, and does very well. Giftedness is more than talent or ability. Giftedness involves motivationan inner drive or energy that compels an individual to do a certain thing.

Every human being has giftedness. Every single one. No matter what the level of his intelligence is. No matter what her DNA makeup is. No matter how damaged, disabled, dysfunctional, or compromised she may be. Every human is born with her own unique giftedness. Many people hear the term gifted and they think of spectacular performers: Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa. Impressive people like that have giftedness, to be sure. But so do you. Giftedness is not about the spectacular, the amazing, or the one-of-a-kind. Giftedness is about who people aretheir personhood.

Every human being has personhood. Your personhood is given to you by God. Your personhood fits you for particular tasks. Sometimes a person fits a task so well that unusual results occurmaybe even spectacular results. Like seven NBA championships. Or billions of dollars in wealth. Or a change in the way a society sees a minority group. Or a new theory, called relativity. We rightfully celebrate spectacular results like those. But giftedness is not in the results; its in the person. And every person does something naturally and instinctively that yields some worthy result. That activitythat innate ability and the motivation to use itis what we call a persons giftedness.

In many schools today, some students are designated as talented and gifted students. That means they possess a heightened capacity for learning and require an enriched curriculum to stimulate their education. Its wonderful that experts have identified the needs of those students. However, when we use the term giftedness in this small group study, we are not referring to talented and gifted people. We are referring to all people. Everyone has her own giftedness, quite apart from how she learns.

God endows every person with a means to glorify him in very practical, evident ways. That is his gift to us. He allows us to enjoy the exercise of our gifts, so that well do them again and again. But the purpose of the gifts is twofold: to bring God glory and to do the things that he wants done in the world.

If you have such a hard time recognizing your sweet spot, how will you ever find out what it is? As usual, God has an answer for that: other people. Other people are like a mirror for your giftedness.

You live inside your skin and usually instinctively do what you were designed to do. You dont see your giftedness at work, but the rest of us do. Wow, how did you do that? well ask after youve penned the neatly crafted letter, or negotiated the bargain of the day at the yard sale, or made the blockbuster insight at the Bible study, or baked the to-die-for chocolate cake.