What is the most dangerous mistake we make with charisms. Charisms reveal the unique ways in which the Holy Spirit empowers us to serve the Church. However, there is one common pitfall that we often stumble into: using charisms to prove ourselves or earn something.
The Peril of Performative Faith
Many of us fall into the trap of approaching charisms with a performative mentality, seeking validation and approval from others. We mistakenly believe that our worthiness as disciples of Christ hinges on how well we exercise our charisms. This undermines our relationship with God, as it shifts our focus from His freely given love and grace.
A Lesson in Unconditional Love
God, our loving Father, cares deeply about how we approach Him. His desire is for us to accept the gifts of the Holy Spirit freely and without expectation. This means we do not have to prove ourselves. Jesus is the ultimate example of this unconditional love, who sacrificed Himself for our sake. Love, grace, and the desire for communion roots our relationship with God; it is not transactional. It can keep us from this pitfall of charisms.
Moving Forward
There are alternative ways to relate to God that break free from the performative mentality. We can approach Him with gratitude, surrender, and trust. We recognize that our charisms are like chores assigned to us for our good and the good of the family. Strive to develop a heart disposed to obedience and service, rather than one propelled by ego and personal gain.
The most dangerous mistake we can make with charisms is using them to prove ourselves or earn something. This mentality undermines our relationship with God and detracts from the true purpose of our spiritual gifts. We are called to discern our charisms, seek the guidance, and embrace them as part of our mission. A free PDF guide to all 24 charisms and a charism assessment will help you further unleash your God-given gifts.
Learn more at Many Parts Ministries.
Jill Simons [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Charisms for Catholics. My name is Jill Simons and I’m the Executive Director at Many Parts Ministries where we equip the Body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms which is really another word for spiritual gifts. When you discern your charisms you’re able to see how the Holy Spirit is already active in your life and where he is inviting you to further build the church. Let’s dive in.
Jill Simons [00:00:32]:
Today, we’re going to be diving into really the biggest pitfall that people come across in using their charisms. We’ve had a lot of really positive episodes about where kind of the full range of what is possible when you’re using your charisms. But I want to take our episode this week to just really share some caution about the things that we can do in our charisms that really kind of cast them into suspect territory. And the number one thing, the number one way that people get into trouble using their charisms is using charisms from a place of trying to perform, trying to earn something, trying to prove something, trying to be good enough. This is always a bad road to be on. There is not a good way to do this because when we have this mindset that we are trying to use our charisms to prove something about ourselves, we’re ultimately doing that from a place of not putting our full weight and faith on what God says about the relationship that we already have with him. Obviously, we need to be staying in a state of grace and that is something that is a free gift from God, right? That’s not about a performative state. The state of grace is not everybody thinks you are in a state of grace or it looks like you’re in a state of grace, from the outside. Being in a state of grace is about being in right relationship with God and confessing, if we have sinned against Him, through the sacrament of confession which brings us back into unity with that grace. But what we see is that confession scares a lot of people which fair, it’s kind of a nerve wracking thing when you examine it but at the same time it’s for our good in a very clear and tangible way. Not least of which is it brings us back into right relationship with God. And what we see is people who know that they are out of step with God in some way or perceive to be. I want to add that in, there are people that struggle with maybe scrupulosity or something like that where they actually are in a state of grace but feel that they are not, feel that they are not worthy of it, feel that they haven’t atoned sufficiently or something like that. There’s a variety of situations that can contribute to this but you have someone who is trying to earn the state of grace, essentially, trying to prove that they are worthy of being a child of God. And this is a toxic place to be. There’s not a good way to do this. If we are looking at our lives this way, it is going to inherently, deeply undermine the relationship that we are able to have with God. And I want to come back to this chores analogy that we use on a regular basis to kind of drive this home. We talk all the time about us, God really being our Father, us really being his children, and our charisms being the chores in the family. This is something that we’re not going to get kicked out of the family if we don’t do this. But at the same time, it is for our good and the good of the family that we do this. And there’s an important reason that this has been assigned to us. Yes, God could do all things on his own. There’s a reason that he asks us to help, that he empowers us to help in these specific ways, not dissimilar to the way that I ask my children to clean their assigned room, even though I could do it two times better in a 10th of the time. It’s not about that. It’s about the fact that it’s good for them to be the ones to do it. And just like my children are in no jeopardy of not being loved or being ejected from the family if they don’t clean their room sufficiently, that is not on the line, when we look at our membership in the family of God. What happens when we have this proving and performing mentality is we are treating our chores like this is the criteria on which we are being judged, whether we get to stay in the family or not. I want you to just push that to its logical conclusion. Imagine that. Imagine a child so anxious and skittish that there is real palpable, life-defining anxiety about whether or not they are going to be allowed to remain children in the family if they do not execute their chores perfectly. That is clearly a mess of a child. There can’t be anything healthy about that. Whether it’s coming from them or it’s an unhealthy parent influence in their lives remains to be determined. But in our relationship with God, we know he’s not the one with the problem. He’s not the one that’s bringing the toxic energy. We are the ones bringing the toxic energy. And so when we look at the kind of place you need to be in and the brokenness necessary to have that kind of mentality in a family, it really clearly shows us that this is a really unhealthy way to interact with our charisms. And so what do we need to do to unravel that if that is going on in your life? I share all of this from an incredibly solidarity-filled place. This has been a lot of my life experience as a younger person, especially in a lot of my 20s, doing ministry and doing spiritual work in general, using the gifts that I had been given, not just within the Church, but in general, in a very “please love me” kind of way. Really looking for the approval of other people. Really looking for the approval of God, taking whether I was being spiritually consoled or spiritually dry as the direct information about whether or not I was being accepted by God in the moment. And there was a lot of toxicity that flowed out of that. There was a lot of toxicity that flowed into that. There was a lot of wounding that I had to go into to unravel that. But I think the fact that God didn’t ever take his finger off of that wound and kind of he kept agitating it enough that I finally was so fed up that I pursued doing something about it and actually letting God into those places that needed to be healed was really a huge grace in my life. I think if God had not cared whether I was that way or not, he would have just let me be. He would have just let me persist in trying to prove and perform everything in my life and it would not have really mattered if I had changed how I approached Him in that way. But clearly it did matter. And I’ve come to really see on the other side of that how incredibly much it matters when we are trying to earn something that we’ve been freely given that not only undermines our ability to love authentically and to trust, it really kneecaps the person who’s trying to give us the gift. Right? How would that make you feel if you were trying to give someone just a free and beautiful gift and they kept trying to buy it from you or prove that they deserved it somehow? That’s just like an awkward, toxic, nonsense of a situation. We don’t want to put God in that kind of place in our lives. We want to really accept what he has freely given us. And of course, primary among that is the love, the salvation, the life of Jesus Christ, the fact that he suffered and died for us while we were still sinners, and invites us to share in his resurrection, though we had no part of winning that, of suffering in that way of his Passion. He still wants to freely give that to us. And of course that is sort of the ultimate example of this and our charisms flow from it. Absolutely. It is all one God. The work of Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit is really one work. There’s this saint that has said that they are essentially the two hands of the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, all unified as one, moving together. And so what I want to invite you into is twofold. Firstly, I want to invite you into the fact that relating to God that way is not the only way. This is not the one default setting that you are destined to live in for the rest of your life. And changing it starts with believing that it can be changed, that this does not have to be the way that you relate to God for the rest of your life. And then secondly, I’d like to invite you to let the Holy Spirit illuminate why this is. What is it that is causing you to show up in this wounded way? I guarantee you that it’s a wound. It’s something that you picked up somewhere along the way that continues to hurt you. And Jesus is not highlighting it because he hates you. He is highlighting it because he wants to heal you. And that is a painful reality. The healing process is rarely enjoyable. This is not something we do for fun. This is something we do because anything else living in this wounded state is ultimately just so much less than what God wants to invite us into. And he is inviting you into the fullness of what he has for you, and healing you is part of that. So I invite you to just let yourself know that it’s possible. And secondly, to begin exploring what needs to be healed with the Holy Spirit. The actual healing of those things is outside of the scope of what my ministry provides. But be not afraid. There are so many other amazing ministries that I can wholeheartedly recommend to you that provide exactly this kind of service. Three that are absolutely wonderful, that I can wholeheartedly recommend is the ministries of Dr. Bob Schuchts. He has many books out. “Be Healed.” Be Transformed.” I will misquote the other titles, so I’m going to let you look it up because there’s several of them that speak to different aspects of woundedness and are just incredible. He also has “Healing the Whole Person” seminars and other programming that you can partake in that really dives deeply into how do we allow Christ to heal these wounds in us, which is so integral in changing how we relate to Him. Also, I can definitely recommend the Lozano Family Ministries, which is Unbound. There are Unbound leaders all over the country, organizations that give the Unbound healing ministry. I’ve received a ton of healing from that in my own life. So I really recommend that. I also would recommend Encounter Ministries. If there is a campus near you, then that’s a great resource for pursuing further healing. They also have great resources on their website that you can check out. They are primarily a school of ministry that trains people to do all these different kinds of healings. And so I have been trained as an individual through them to do this. But that is not where the Holy Spirit has ultimately led my personal ministry on a regular basis. And so though I have received that training, that is not what I do on a day to day basis. You will be in good hands with any of those wonderful people and the beautiful dreams and kingdom visions for healing that they have helped to bring into the world. And I hope that you take this seriously. I hope that this is something that if it is a problem in your life, I hope that this hits you, even if it’s uncomfortable, because I would probably say that I am 100% fine with you setting aside charisms, charism discernment, all of the rest of it. If you realize that this is functioning at a high level in your life; there’s tons of trying to perform and prove and show people that you’re good enough and get people to love you and get God to love you. We don’t want to be pursuing our charisms from that place. That doesn’t mean you throw the baby out with a bathwater. We’re not going to say don’t use them or feel like you don’t have them or anything like that. But if we’re going to pursue something intentionally and you see that you are in this place, then let’s intentionally pursue that healing and stay open to the Holy Spirit acting and using and moving in your charisms however he wills, the same way that you did prior to discerning your charisms. But if you’re going to put your focus and emphasis somewhere, put that focus on letting the Lord show you how he wants to heal you and believing that you can be healed. So that when you are ready to move back into a focus on charisms, it’s from a place where you’re free. It’s from a place where you are able to allow the Holy Spirit to show up unfettered by what you are going to make this mean about you and you’re able to really make the Holy Spirit present for his own sake.
Jill Simons [00:16:21]:
Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you would like to learn more about your charisms or begin your own discernment journey, head to our website at manypartsministries.com where you can download our free PDF guide to all 24 charisms and also begin your own journey by taking our Charism assessment.
