We all need the love, care and support that these people love to give!

We’ve now come to the last in the motivational gift list of Romans 12. Most of us like this gift the most because we want to be loved and cared for and nobody does it as well as the Compassions.

God did not distribute these seven gifts equally. In a survey with over 1,000 participants, 13% were Perceivers, 17% Servers, 6% Teachers, 6% Givers, 13% Administrators and 30% were Compassion people. I believe those stats tells us something wonderful about God’s heart for his family.

Those with this gift work on relationships and attitudes. They connect us with each other. They are usually gentle folks who look for ways to affirm, build up. They forgive easily. They are stress and pain relievers. They repair broken and hurting hearts.

They seek out people in distress, not because they like being around distress, but they love hurting people too much to leave them that way. By the way, as children they were the ones making friends with outcast schoolmates. They also wanted to adopt every stray dog or cat they found.

As parents we often have to admonish them to “use your head!” It’s not that they aren’t good thinkers, but in everything in their lives they lead with their heart. That can be amazingly good, but without some outside help, they can get into trouble. They some times will marry someone in order to ‘fix them.’ They are not just ‘feelers’ but ‘doers’ as well.

Compassions keep Hallmark cards and movies successful! They pour over the content of greeting cards in a way that would ruin the rest of us.

As an intercessor I love hearing Compassion Christians pray. I mentioned earlier that three gifts typically show up at a prayer meeting: Perceivers (praying for God’s will around the world); Givers (praying for evangelism); and the merciful Compassions who pour their hearts out on behalf of the physically and emotionally hurting people they know.

In Don and Katie Fortune’s book Discover Your God-Given Gifts, they use the Good Samaritan of Luke 10 to highlight this gift. Read the passage and note: his great love, his attraction to the hurting, the response of his heart as he empathized with the beaten man. Then watch as he took action to remove the hurt and physical distress. His was an amazing compassionate response.

Thank God for putting so many of these people around us as we follow Christ!

Next week: A wrap up on the seven motivational gifts.