Spiritual Gifts and The Great Adventure

We all have a special part to play in the big story that God is writing, and I feel like spiritual gifts are his gift packet to us; tools we need treeto plaas Paul our part. When we don't use our gifts, we cannot fill our role, and miss out on our part in the Grand Adventure God is writing . God's Grand Adventure is the only true fairy tale, it is the only story that counts, and it is the one that tugs at your heart to do something meaningful, to play superhero, to change the world, to find satisfaction in a hollow world.
The desire to be a part of God's Grand Adventure, and the sour, bitter pang of lonliness and meaninglessness of our efforts in life to be a somebody when we don't participate with God's story, this is what drives us to addictions and escapism, and idolizing fictional characters with lives more meaningful to us than our real ones.

And at the moment, not using my spiritual gifts has distenced my fullness in playing in the big story, and I feel lonely and unused, unsatisfied, and unhelpful. I'm trying to connect at church, it's very hard when I work so much.

The gifts I have in my tool bag are knowledge, teaching, and visions. I'm not sure which gift these visions fall under, I was thinking prophecy.  But I want to use them more. I'm thinking that the book I'm very slowly working on works with most of them.  Painting during the church services, and the prep for that, has generated a few images from God, and sometimes a long teaching blog post to explain it, like the one above was specifically for my church.
The gifts of knowledge and teaching I know how to develop, they are more easy to discuss and practice in our Western culture of books and quantitative data. Visions, not so much. I don't know how to develop those, or "fan into flame" as Paul told Timothy, because it's so easy to just imagine something.

Why are visions important to me? It's a rarer gift, and kinda fun, and it strengthens my faith in the unseen, much more real world, with it's more real battles. It's a glimpse, a very direct confirmation of the more real world, and God's connection with all of us. With visions of spiritual war, I feel like my prayers are more effective when I see what I am fighting. They are metaphors and symbols; reminders.

I want my visions to go in the direction of being for specific people, or messages for the church. I need to get more involved with my church to do that.