Jesus clarifies church leader’s spiritual gift

J dealt with his conflicting emotions and thoughts by suppressing them, and gradually grew increasingly frustrated with people and angry with God. The Holy Spirt, in His grace, revealed how J was meant to be a kind and loving prophet to bring God’s truth to others and how his childhood experiences had crippled his voice and gift of compassion. By forgiving those who did not appreciate his gifts, J was released to accept the man whom God had meant him to become. Praise God! 

(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣阐明教会领袖的属灵恩赐 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌闡明教會領袖的屬靈恩賜)

For as long as I remember, I had preferred to be the worker behind the scenes.

I revel in being backstage, not in the limelight. If you wanted someone to support you in your task/vision/goal, I would be that person for you.

I seldom enjoyed being a front-of-room speaker, leader, and even the ‘face’ of any ministry, but that is where I would often find myself. Whether it be a mission trip leader, small group leader or ministry leader, I would always land up in those positions. Along with those positions came great responsibility – to lead not just tactically but also emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Although I am a rather confident person, I had a great deal of anxiety prior to stepping onto any podium.

I would get nervous, fret, and rehearse, excessively preparing for the worst-case scenario to ensure that I would be tipped for success. Smaller one-on-one meetings with leaders and counselling clients would also leave me anxious beforehand. When they started, however, I’d be fine.

To add some context and background to this, I grew up in a household that was relatively void of positive reinforcement and parental guidance. Oftentimes, I was left to my own devices to discover the intricacies of social interactions, relationships, and dating.

As a result, I would often go about things the wrong way – and a general lack of confidence ensued.

As a child, I had always been drawn to the other kids who were by themselves; the lonely kids, and I would go over and make them feel welcome. This allure continues up to this day. I seem to sense and see areas of hurt and brokenness that other people gloss over. I constantly felt convicted and guilt-tripped if I did not go to console and comfort these people.

Eventually, these troubled emotions grew in me a resentment and judgement toward those that did not also share the same approach towards other people.

With this background, I went into a second inner healing and deliverance prayer a little hesitant but overall angry with God and circumstances. There was a constant tension on who I was meant to be and who I actually was when faced with faith and society. I was meant to be loving and kind but I was becoming increasingly frustrated.

During prayer, the Holy Spirit revealed that what I had – without knowing for the past 30-something years of my life – was a very strong leaning towards the gift of compassion.

What I thought was completely normal was in fact, abnormal for most people. Without having had this clarity, this gift was a burden.

Growing up, my compassion was constantly negatively reinforced as a bad thing. My parents would constantly say, “you are too nice” and “you trust others too easily and will get hurt.” Whenever I noticed them fighting as a child, I would interject.

Most painfully, my mother would silence my voice of compassion with phrases such as “when adults speak, children shut up.”

What she did was effectively remove the validity of my voice and silence my spiritual gift. My compassion for a hurting mother and a hurting father became invalid. My confusion regarding these emotions towards others was never talked through and understood – but rather, was talked down.

Moving forward to my early years of primary school, I remember a key event that found me as a vulnerable child being humiliated in front of my elder sister’s class. Her teacher had forced me to apologise to her for something trivial as he, my sister’s classmates and she laughed at me. Sulking and embarrassed, I wasn’t given a chance to speak up for myself or defend my innocence. (It still occasionally angered me that I was not old enough or smart enough to stand up to that bully teacher … as a five-year-old.)

This memory of my voice being taken away in my defencelessness and innocence stayed with me, even until now into my late 30’s.

It also likely set the precedent for the anxiety that I faced prior to meeting people – “What if I don’t know what to say? What if I say the wrong thing?”

How does it all tie to the gift of compassion? Being extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, I too am surprisingly sensitive towards how other people receive me.

Without having the positive reinforcement from my parents and recognition that this gift was from God, I had chosen to silence this inconvenient voice that God wanted to use with self-defeating talk, such as “what if I sound dumb?”

In doing so, I had effectively silenced myself – removing the right to speak up, to have an opinion, and to stand up for the things that are right.

Removing the voice of compassion was removing my voice altogether. It was far better to be silent and nice than to be righteous and confrontational (and exposed). Rather than show compassion to opposing parties and even to myself, I turned to passive judgement instead.

When I’m constantly on the lookout for acts of compassion and kindness but instead am faced with the polar opposite, I am constantly tired or frustrated. I expect others to be kind when they, in fact, don’t even have this gift. As a result, this passive and silent judgement comes in: “Why are they so selfish?”

Sadly, this history of silent judgement also made its way to my relationship with God. After several recent traumatic experiences, I could not bring my voice of frustration to God and eventually began to resent God internally.

This inability to express my frustration and sadness became a pressure-cooker of anger, resentment, hatred, and entitlement.

With no one else to blame but God, my relationship with God became transactional, fake, and strained. I judged God through the voice of compassion “If God is so good, why would He allow this to happen? Good people don’t do this! Good people should…”

Through prayer counselling, repentance, and rebuking of curses placed over me, I realised that this loss of voice had amounted to a considerable suppression of emotion and an unhealthy manifestation of anger through judgement and numbing.

This gift of compassion was inverted into an active weapon.

In releasing myself from the unobtainable standards of a five-year-old in that classroom and recognising the strong suppression techniques from myself, my mother and my sister (both of whom are operating under the yoke of a Jezebel spirit), the pieces of the puzzle have finally come together. The bigger picture reveals Satan’s very real schemes against God’s children which are probably still active in attempting to keep this spiritual gift in me suppressed for as long as possible.

I had always known I had a gift of leadership, wisdom and discernment but I did not know they are linked to compassion.

A prayer counsellor said that leadership without compassion is akin to bullying or dictatorship.

With this newfound understanding, I am now able to move forward with greater confidence and resolve, knowing that God has gifted me with compassion – which is a much-needed voice in the world today.

This frees me to speak wisely and rebuke lovingly when required and to stand firm in righteousness when I am faced with evil. With clarity, I can begin exercising my voice when needed.