Personality Test Connections

Many ask about the relationship between the Redemptive Gifts, Personality Types, and the Enneagram.  Here’s my two cents. Corrections welcome.

The notes below are not attempts to box-in people, but the opposite:  to open conversations for recognizing prominent gifts. 

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Three Tests Related

Consider this picture: your spirit is like a beam of Heavenly light, and your soul is like a stained glass window on earth.

1. Your Redemptive Gift is your brightest color in the light.
2. Your Personality Temperament is the most frequent window color.
3. Your Enneagram type (less obvious) helps bring out our least frequent window color.
   

This may seem convoluted, espcially if you are unfamiliar with them, so let's next try summarize all three tests.

7 Redemptive Gifts

• Prophet
• Mercy
• Servant
• Teacher
• Exhorter
• Giver
• Ruler

4 Personality Temperaments

• Will -- Good -- ESTJ, ISTJ, ESFJ, ISFJ
• Intellect -- Truth -- ENTJ, INTJ, ENTP, INTP
• Emotions -- Beauty -- ESTP, ISTP, ESFP, ISFP
• Harmony -- Being -- ENFJ, INFJ, ENFP, INFP

9 Enneagram Types

The 9 types are arrived at by multiplying three temperaments:
will / intellect / emotion

by three ways we might treat the background of the soul:
flight / flight / freeze 

3*3 = 9

1. will flight -- To be perfect, I avoid my imperfect will
2. emotion flight -- To serve, I deny my emotions
3. emotion freeze -- To achieve, I ignore my emotions
4. emotion fight -- To individuate, I overpower for my emotional reality
5. intellect fight -- To perceive, I push my mind
6. intellect freeze -- To be secure, I ignore reality
7. intellect flight -- To have fun, I deny intellectual reality
8. will fight -- To control, I overpower with my will
9. will freeze -- To be peaceful, I ignore my will

The trick here is that the fight / flight / freeze response can be good for the strongest personality qualities, but bad for the least frequent qualities. For instance, as a type 3, I can freeze my emotions to achieve a successful goal; but unfortunately I often keep my emotions frozen.

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That's a quick summary. Though there are certainty exceptions, here are common connections.

Redemptive Gifts and 16 Personality Types

-- Prophet --  INTP, ENTP, INTJ, ENTJ
-- Servant -- ISFJ, ESFJ
-- Mercy -- INFP, ENFP, INFJ, ENFJ
-- Giver -- ISFP, ESFP, ISTP
-- Teacher --  ISTJ
-- Exhorter --  ESTP
-- Ruler --  ESTJ

Enneagram Types and 16 Personality Types

1 -- will flight -- ISTJ
2 -- emotion flight -- ISFJ, ESFJ
3 -- emotion freeze -- ESTJ
4 -- emotion fight -- ENFP
5 -- intellect fight -- INTP, ENTP
6 -- intellect freeze -- INFJ, ENFJ
7 -- intellect flight -- ESTP, ESFP, ISTP
8 -- will fight -- ENTJ, INTJ
9 -- will freeze -- INFP, ISFP

(Note: Exploring the connection between Redemptive Gifts and the Enneagram types doesn't seem to offer much, probably because the Enneagram deals with reactions to less frequent qualities.)

The Main Point

For me the most fascinating thing about this is how these tests help us recognize who we really are.  Often we are challenged to not be ourselves. 

Our life encouragingly announces “God is like this!  ...And this is in you!”

Fully Received into God

Start with soaking in My presence. 

I long to be "Christ in you," but it is a challenge when you’re too busy being someone else.  

When you are present with Me, you will know and sense the confidence that comes from being truly and deeply loved.

Enjoy being so close to Me—so ingrained, so enjoined and enmeshed with My Spirit, that anything of this world has no power over you.  What are we capable of at this point?

The interaction between the Father and the Son, that oneness—that’s what is yours.