Most couples know each other’s habits, preferences and moods in remarkable detail. Far fewer could answer a simpler question: what has God actually gifted my husband, or my wife, to do?
It is worth knowing. Not as a personality game, but because the two of you are not only a marriage — you are two members of the body of Christ who happen to share a house, a calendar and a bank account. Taking a spiritual gifts assessment together turns a private discovery into a shared one, and it changes how you serve, how you plan, and how you argue.
Why do it together rather than separately
You can take the assessment alone, and many people do. But doing it side by side adds three things you cannot get on your own.
- A second witness. Gifts are confirmed by the people who watch you use them. Your spouse has seen you at your most tired and least impressive. When they say, “yes, that’s you” — or “actually, I’d have said mercy before administration” — that is real evidence, not flattery.
- An end to quiet comparison. Couples often carry an unspoken scoreboard: who is the spiritual one, who prays better, who is more useful at church. Naming your different gifts dissolves the scoreboard. Different is the design, not a deficiency (1 Corinthians 12:14–21).
- A shared vocabulary. Once you both know the words — exhortation, discernment, service, giving, leadership — you can talk about your life together with far more precision than “I don’t really enjoy that.”
How to actually do it
Keep it simple, and give it a proper evening rather than squeezing it between other things.
- Answer separately, honestly. Take the assessment in the same room if you like, but do not compare answers as you go, and do not answer as the person you wish you were. Describe the last two years of your actual life.
- Read both sets of results out loud. Start with your spouse’s, not your own. Say what rings true and where you would have guessed differently.
- Ask for evidence, not opinions. “When have you seen this in me?” is the best question in the conversation. Gifts show up in stories.
- Write down one thing each. One way each of you will use a gift in the next month — in your home, your church, or your street. An assessment that changes nothing was only entertainment.
If you are unsure what the results are naming, the 18 spiritual gifts explained walks through each one in plain language, and how to take a free spiritual gifts assessment covers what the questions are doing and how to read a profile well.
What to do when your gifts look nothing alike
This is the usual outcome, and it is good news badly disguised. One of you scores high in mercy, the other in leadership. One in hospitality, the other in teaching. The household feels the difference every week: one wants the house full of people, the other wants an hour alone with a book.
The New Testament’s answer to difference is never uniformity — it is honour. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21). In a marriage that means covering for each other rather than correcting each other. The spouse with mercy notices who is struggling; the spouse with administration works out how to help them by Thursday. Neither could have done it alone, and neither is the better Christian.
Where difference has already hardened into a recurring quarrel — the same argument, the fourth time — do not try to resolve it inside the gifts conversation. Volume V’s Restoration Conversation is a free, guided template for exactly that: each of you prepares alone, then you work through it together. Use the right tool for the right job.
Gifts are for the Church, not just the marriage
It is easy to turn this inward and treat your gifts as a way to understand your marriage better. That is a genuine benefit, but it is not the purpose. The gifts were given “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7) — to build up the Church. A couple who know their gifts are two Saints who can stop volunteering out of guilt and start serving out of design.
In practice that often means one of you steps back from something you were never gifted for, so that you can step into something you were. That conversation is much easier to have when the two of you reached the conclusion together. If you are still working out what your gifts are for, how to discover your calling takes the next step — from a list of gifts to a direction.
Make it a rhythm, not an event
Gifts do not change with the weather, but seasons do. A young father, a carer, a woman recovering from illness — each will express the same gift differently. Revisit the conversation once a year, ideally alongside your own planning for the year ahead. Ask: what did God give us, what did we actually do with it, and what is the next twelve months for?
Start tonight
The assessment is free and takes about twenty minutes each. You do not need to be part of a church to use it, and you do not need a subscription to begin — the teaching behind it is free to read as well.
Take the assessment together → · See what else is here for couples · Browse the 18 gifts