God is definitely somebody who is very unpredictable once a person first experiences the real world, because he made all of us with gifts of course, including with all the wonderful fruits of the Holy Spirit, but how can a person tell the difference between a gift and a charism?
I can say that from a personal experience, it is not always particularly easy to tell the precise difference. If you were to define the meaning of a gift, it is a natural born distinctive characteristic that was given to you at birth, and a charism is a more spiritually infused definitive characteristic that God gives you to use in particular situations. For example, I have a natural born gift of writing because my brain will willingly come up with random big words at times as I try and comprehend the full meaning of them.
However my natural born gift of writing is completely different from a charism of writing, because if a person were to have a charism of writing, then they would be more influenced by the magnitude of the Holy Spirit wavering inside of themselves to write to either a group of people, a mass of people, or just an individual. But how can a person who has the Holy Spirit pushing them to use a charism truly know that it is a charism and not a gift? The person with the charism is more spiritually oriented than I would particularly be in writing just having been “born with it.”However, I always allow the Holy Spirit into my life because God knows full well that I am a young man just simply trying to perfect the natural born gift he gave me.
Anthony van Dyck –
Pentecost
Originally, I believed strongly that I had the charism of leadership. Later, I realized that it was also a natural born gift God gave to me because I remembered as a kid how people always seem to gather around me simply because I had a desire to take full responsibility for every single correct and incorrect action in the process of the goal my group was trying to achieve. I now realize after even more real world experience even at a young age that I have the charism of understanding. I can just look at any person in general or even simply be having a casual conversation and I realize no matter what they have been through (and I may not have experienced the full version of the thing they are describing to me) or I can see that something isn’t right in their facial expression or body language, I feel a tug at my heart to talk those people even if they have an extremely dark past just like I did.
One thing that I have also learned to a full extent in my speech class is that your personality affects certain capabilities of your individual capacity in accordance with a person’s personal gifts. How can certain personalities directly affect an individual’s capacity? For example, I scored very high in the giver personality spectrum in a personality test, and on the back, you can research more extensively the specific gifts associated with your personality. Three of mine that stick out to me the most are romantic, honest, and trusting, however, those are only three of many gifts related to a certain personality style.
Most people will probably never find all of the charisms that God has given to them because some charisms only work with certain individuals or groups and only work with the same exact individual or group they worked with in harmony. Charisms won’t work with any other individual or group whereas gifts will consistently work no matter who is surrounding you. It’s like how I also have a special gift of words which plays into my use of other gifts not only associated with my personality, but with the gifts I use at school using my pure knowledge to learn something the first time I read, see, hear, smell or touch it and I don’t need to use any of my five senses to re-learn the material I researched on my own will. Charisms also work in the same way because you can use them sometimes in accordance with your other charisms that you may not be presently aware of.
I personally discovered my own charism of understanding when I was 17 and when I had to get a job to help my family because I don’t have the richest family in the world, and I could understand that it was a very serious situation that I needed to take full responsibility as a man for my family as a part-time father and parent when my parents needed me most to step up in the house. Even though I am currently a part-time father, I treat my job as if it is a full-time role because I personally don’t believe in such a thing as a part-time father, and my siblings look up and respect me as a father figure somewhat but they respect me even more as a person and as the oldest brother in the house.
As a father figure, I would go to great measures to defend my siblings just like my parents would do for all of my family. I would do the same for a loyal friend because I believe all loyal friends deserve to be a part of my family even though they may not be related to me in any way, but since I am also simply a good man in Christ, I would defend anybody who was getting beat upon unfairly or was in a death situation and I would willingly lay down my life. I still work very hard for my family because I understand how valuable my help is to each of them as a father and as a son and sibling, and if I got married and had a family of my own I would be the best in what I do because nobody else in the world brought the babies that I brought into the world so I would give my kids and my wife only the best and no less, period. Everyone is unique in their own way, and everyone has different charisms and gifts; what are some of your charisms or gifts that the Holy Spirit is tugging you to share with other people?
