What is Charismania?

What is Charismania? It is any endeavor to “drum up” the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit by one’s own natural abilities.

SPIRITUAL GIFTS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE “WARMED UP”

The Bible says the exercising of the gift(s) is done by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is “one and the same Spirit [who] works all these things…” (1 Cor. 12:7-11).

This means that people should not have to “warm up” or “drum up” a gift or try to induce power through some means of their flesh. True workings of the Spirit start and end by the Holy Spirit.

Charismania

What we see today in New Apostolic Reformation meetings is not the picture we see in the New Testament of the Holy Spirit’s work but what Chuck Smith called charismania: “Charismania is an endeavor in the flesh to simulate charisma. It is any effort to do the work of the Spirit in the energies or abilities of the flesh – the old, selfish nature of a person. It is a spiritual hype that substitutes perspiration for inspiration.”⁴

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1. Chuck Smith, Charisma Vs. Charismania (Costa Mesa, CA: Word for Today, 1983), 10.