The Key to Me: Personality and Spiritual Growth

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ Leave a comment

Our lesson two weeks ago was focused on Personality type and Spiritual Growth.

There are so many things that we can learn from our personality types that can apply to our spiritual lives and our connections with God.

Most of what we discussed came from my reading in these two books:

There are so many insights to gain from reading each of these books!

Knowing Me Knowing God is focused on more general spirituality vs the Personality Type and Religious Leadership is focused more on spiritual leadership.

We discussed three different categories of spiritual growth.

Spirituality and Temperament style

We discussed how different temperament tend to connect with God in different ways.

NF: Transposition

NF’s transpose the scriptures to apply them to situations today. They look for the deeper meaning and find new ways to apply those scriptures to today. NF’s gain lots of new insights from the scriptures and often need to subject those insights to discernment before applying them to their lives. For extroverted NF’s benefit from discussing their insights with others while introverted NF’s benefit from time to journal and process and then reflect on the validity of their insights.

SJ: Remembrance

SJ’s enjoy remembering past events where God rescued or took care of his people in a special way. SJ’s tend to project themselves back into these moments of the past and connect with how those moments become applicable to today. They value discipline, order and a historical perspective in their study of the scriptures. These types tend toward pessimistic aspect of Christianity and should therefore spend at least half their time focusing on resurrection and salvation themes to keep a positive outlook.

NT: Analysis

NT’s take a scholastic approach to prayer and Bible study. They like to study topics out from every angle, determine conclusions from that study and then apply those practical conclusions to their life. They tend to thrive when they can carry practical insights from their Bible study with them throughout the day. They are constantly focused on searching for the truth and looking for new insights for God. They strive for perfection in every area of their lives and have to make sure to not get discouraged when perfection is not achievable.

SP: Openness

These types like to leave an openness in their relationship for God and the Spirit to move in their lives. They tend to desire less routine and more free flowing prayer and dialogue with God. SP’s are able to fruitfully meditate on one aspect of creation and draw closeness and connection with God from focusing on that one aspect. SP’s enjoy showing their love for God through things that involved movement and often focus better in prayer when the have something to do with their hands.

2. Spirituality and Function Use and

3. Spirituality and Function Growth

The four functions: Sensing, iNtuition, Thinking and Feeling can all be used in different ways in our walk with God.

Luke 10:27 says:

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

When we look at how the functions fit into this scripture we can see that we can learnt o love God with all four functions:

Heart: Feeling

Soul: Intuition

Strength: Sensing

Mind: Thinking

We each have preferable functions in our walk with God that are more developed and more readily used than the other functions.

We talked through the different functions and how we each use our preferred functions in our walk with God and how we can grow to use the other functions in our walk with God as well.

One point we also hit on was the need to dig deeper into our inferior function. This is our fourth function in our function stack and the one that is least mature and least developed in our life and in our walk with God. Our inferior function is the function we tend to use when we’re stressed and overwhelmed and it is the least like our normal personality but it is a part of our personality type all the same.

We have so much room to grow and our need for God is so evident when we look at our inferior function. We can see our weaknesses and see that we need God’s strength to grow and change in this areas.

2 Cor 12:9-10

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God’s grace is sufficient for our weaknesses and for our use of our inferior function!

Here is a link to one of my favorite pins on inferior functions. It lets us see what happens when we begin to get overwhelmed, how we end up using our inferior function and how to get out of our rut when we’re stuck in our stress.

This is a great way to begin exploring our inferior function so we can begin to see our greater need for God and that we can focus on using our personality type for spiritual growth!

We each have many strengths and some weaknesses that are connected to our personality type. Studying out each of those things and how we can grow in our walk with God can be a great help to connecting with God more and being used by him in greater ways!

This is a great tool for helping study our personal strengths and weaknesses in our spiritual life.

I hope these things help you connect more with God and help you to use your personality type for spiritual growth!

The Key to Me: Personality Type and Personal Growth

April 4, 2016 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ Leave a comment

I am so excited to being our spring women’s series for 2016 The Key to Me!

We will be spending these 5 weeks studying out our Myers Briggs Personality types and learning to grow in different areas of our lives based on these types! We each have so much to learn about ourselves and about our personality type and we can use the things we learn to learn more about God and more about how to become like Christ!

Gen 1:27 says: God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

How awesome is it to know that we are each created in God’s image! As we learn more about ourselves and who God created us to be, we learn more about God and who He really is! Myers Briggs has 16 different personality types and it’s so cool to think that as we learn about each type and the similarities and differences between them, we learn more about 16 different sides of God’s character and the image that we are created in!

This past week we discussed personality types and personal growth. We walked through an introduction of what Myers Briggs Type Indicator is and we talked about how to use what we learn about our type to grow personally.

We discussed 3 keys to Personality type and Personal Growth:

Embrace Your Type

We broke down what Myers Briggs is based on and learned how to embrace our 4-letter type.

We learned that in order to embrace our type we have to determine what our type is. If you haven’t taken a free personality test you can take one here.

Many people who take the personality test feel like they may be in between a couple different types or that they aren’t really sure if the results are accurate.

Reading through descriptions of each option can help you to determine what your type really is.

The 4 letter types are categorized into temperaments, and the temperament can be further broken down into roles and individual types. Much of our study on personality type will be based less on each specific type and more on research about each temperament that many can relate to at one time.

Our second key…

2. Enhance Your Knowledge.

After you have determined what your type is and embraced your type, the next step is to enhance your knowledge about your type.

This can come from checking out websites and descriptions of your type

http://www.humanmetrics.com and http://www.truity.com are just two of the great websites on personality.

You can also venture into reading books on personality type, googling information and descriptions of your type and my personal favorite, creating a pinterest board dedicated to pins about your personality type!

Enhancing your knowledge about your type will greatly add to your ability to use that knowledge for personal growth.

One thing to dig into and learn about is the function stack for your type. Each personality type has four functions, the dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior function. We each use Sensing, iNtuition, Thinking, and Feeling somewhere in our function stack.

Here is a simple description of each function’s role in the function stack.

There is a lot to understand about how to determine which function fits where in our own function stack but the simplest way is to use a chart like this to figure out what your functions are.

The e or i indicates whether your that function is extroverted or introverted.

For example, my personality type is INFJ.

My functions are:

Dominant: Introverted iNtuition, Auxiliary: Extroverted Feeling, Tertiary: Introverted Thinking, Inferior: Extroverted Sensing.

Learning what your function stack is and enhancing your knowledge about your type then leads you to our third key:

3. Empower Your Life.

The things we learn about our types, including our strengths and weaknesses should be used to empower our lives. We should not use these things as excuses or things to enable us to just live the way we want to.

The best part of being created in God’s image is that we can empower our lives by what we learn in order to grow toward being more like Christ.

Learning that your introverted doesn’t mean that you can then choose not to initiate with people. Jesus was an incredible initiator. So in order to become more like Christ and empower your life as an introvert, you choose to get filled up in your alone time so you can pour yourself out for others like Jesus did.

There are many other examples I could give, but that’s where you get to focus on learning and growing in your personal life.

Enhancing your knowledge about your type gives you the ability to become more self-aware and to put words to the things you think and feel.

Empowering your life equips you to take what you’ve learned and allow yourself to grow closer to God and to become more like Christ.

These are descriptions of each of the introverted/extroverted functions that could be in your stack.

Your dominant and auxiliary functions are your strengths and the most developed of your functions. Learning more about these allows you to empower your life to use the strengths and gifts that God has given you.

Your tertiary and inferior functions are less developed and less mature in your function stack. In fact, your inferior function is the one that comes out when you are stressed or overwhelmed. It makes sense then that we often feel unlike our true selves when we are stressed out or overwhelmed.

These descriptions are what each function looks like when it is developed and you are using it correctly. We often don’t use our inferior functions correctly so these descriptions can be used to describe what your inferior function could look like if you choose to develop it more.

In times of stress, we have the choice to either develop our inferior function more or turn instead to our dominant function which is more mature and developed already and use that to get us out of our rut. Both are great options for personal growth!

These things should be used as an introduction to personality type and to start us on the path of personal growth through Embracing your Type, Enhancing your Knowledge and Empowering your Life.

Stay tuned for this week’s lesson on Personality Type and Spiritual Growth!

God is Love!

November 10, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ Leave a comment

Brian did a great lesson at church on Sunday about God’s love language!

He taught us that God’s love language is Intimacy, Obedience and Loyalty. When we learn how God interprets love, it allows us to do the things that will really show that we love God. Knowing God’s love language helps us to have an intimate connection with him, obey his word and be loyal to having God be the top priority in our lives. Doing all these things helps us to build a relationship with God in which we will feel his love as well!

Our God is a relational God and wants to be in an intimate relationship with us. God is all about love because love comes from God!

1 John 4:7-12 says:

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

God loves us in an intimate, complete way because God is love! How amazing is it that God sent his Son to die for our sins as the ultimate display of true love! God loves us in such a great way that he calls us not only to love him in return but to love others as well. He gives love to us to fill us up and so that we can spread it to others around us.

God’s love lives in us and if we learn how to show it to others his love is made complete in us.

The interesting thing about being loved by someone or about showing love to someone is that sometimes our love language does not match with the other person’s love language. Just like learning about God’s love language so we can really communicate our love, we need to know more about the different ways that humans communicate love.

This quiz on the 5 love languages can be really helpful in determining how you normally communicate love. I find it helpful to take this quiz and then also think… how do I typically receive love, and how do I show or give love? Sometimes those are different. Gifts is not usually one of my highest forms of receiving love (feeling loved by others) but it is a way that I show my love to other people. It is also important to remember that how you show love to your physical family, or your boyfriend or husband can be very different than how you show or feel love with the ministry. It can be helpful to take the relationship quiz if you’re dating or married, but to also take the singles quiz thinking in terms of your friendships or ministry relationships.

When we determine the ways we give and receive love we can learn so much more about ourselves and about others! When you aren’t connecting with someone, you can help communicate how you give and receive love and ask how they give and receive love, so that you can start speaking the same language. Sometimes I am working so hard to show someone I love them through gifts but what they need to feel loved by me are words of affirmation. If I learn to give those words of affirmation to them more specifically, they will actually feel my love more deeply.

Especially as women, when we learn to accept and communicate love in different ways, it broadens our ability to connect with other people. Learning about these love languages helps us to love one another in a godly way. Verse 12 of this passage says: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” If we learn how to love one another in deeper ways, God’s love can truly be made complete in us!

I encourage you to take the love languages quiz and start up conversations about the different love languages so you can learn to love others deeper, and so that others can show their love to you more effectively as well!

You are NEEDED!!

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ 2 Comments

Each one of us have specific talents and we are each desperately needed by the people around us! God has given each of us unique talents and he wants us to use them to advance his kingdom and strengthen the people we interact with!

One of the difficulties of knowing our true identity is knowing what we are really good at and knowing how to use those strengths in a way that makes a difference!

As we continue our series about becoming a better me, here is a free strengths test to determine what your top strengths are! The test takes 15-20 minutes and gives you a full report of your top strengths and talents and even some video explanation with more information!

If you took this test last year with our ministry, you can login with your email and get your results again! If you’d like to take the test again and get new results, make sure to enter a new email address at the end 🙂

Next Tuesday we are going to talk about how each of us are needed by the people around us and how we can use our strengths properly and be proud of who God made us to be!

I’m excited to discuss and study out these strengths with each of you!

http://freestrengthstest.workuno.com/free-strengths-test.html

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

April 20, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ Leave a comment

Ladies!!

For some preparation for week three of our series, I would like each of you to take some time to take this personality test. It should only take about 15mins for the test, and then feel free to check out the extra information supplied on the site about your personality, including famous people who share your personality!

God created each one of us to be special and unique and the more we can learn about ourselves the more we can learn to “become a better me” and to serve God with our personalities!!

Feel free to share the test with your friends and join us Tuesday night at 7pm as we discuss how special God made each one of us!

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

I AM… Created in His Image

April 4, 2015April 14, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ 1 Comment

In our first week of our new women’s series, Becoming a Better ME, we discussed the journey women experience in trying to figure out our true identity.

There are so many things that fight to destroy our true identity. The world throws at each woman impossible standards of what it means to be beautiful, thin, successful, popular, and strong. Satan whispers lies of how far we fall short… you are weak, you are not pretty enough, you’ll never change, you’re not good enough, not worth pursuing. The issue comes when we begin to agree with Satan and instead of seeing ourselves the way God sees us, we agree with Satan and voice our agreements out loud by labeling ourselves by our sins and weakness instead of labeling ourselves with the thoughts of Christ. We start to voice things like, I am alone, I am weak, I am not good enough, pretty enough, kind enough, smart enough. I am emotional, I am insecure, I am scared.

Our identity can so easily come from these things, or from changing ourselves in an effort to please people instead of learning who God truly made us to be and allowing ourselves to grow into the things that God wants us to become.

Gen 1:27 says

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

God created us as females in his image. As women we were created to reflect something special about the image of God.

I’ve been rereading the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge and have loved the way they described being made in God’s image.

God put some natural desires on our hearts as women that reflect desires that he also has. As women we desire to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty…

These are the same things that God wants! God has a great desire for a deep relationship with each of us, he wants to be our great helper in the great adventure of our lives, and he wants to unveil beauty in everything we see.

The hard part is that even though we connect with God on so many levels with these desires we often have trouble trusting him with our lives and we pull back into defensive identities.

We easily become dominant or desolate women, (or some version in between) instead of being the women that God intended for us to be.

Dominant women use their defensive identity to try to control everything and everyone around them. They pretend to not need anyone and push people away by having a hard exterior that seems to “have it all together”. They lack a vulnerability and femininity that God wants them to bring into the world. Oddly enough, these women are often lifted up and recognized as successful and strong in our culture.

Desolate women are the opposite. They crave attention and acceptance from everyone around them and are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure people are happy with them. They are consumed by their desire for relationship and are far too vulnerable and emotional. Desolate women live in hiding, whether it is hiding behind being busy, frumpy clothes, not making decisions, angry silences or withdrawals from conflict, these women hide their true selves so that no one can reject who they really are.

Whether we tend to the dominant or desolate side, we all have indulgences that we go to in order to get filled up instead of going to God.

These indulgences can be anything from buying something for ourselves, eating seconds or a super-sized something, controlling our food or overexercising, fantasy worlds, masturbation, Netflix, pursuing guys in texting or flirting, drinking, partying, negative emotions and spirals…

We give our hearts away to these things instead of letting God fill us up.

God so desperately desires to be close to us, to fill us up, to have a deep relationship with us, to take us on incredible adventures and unveil so much beauty in our lives.

When we live in these defensive identities and go to these indulgences to be filled instead, we separate ourselves from the image that God created us in.

Jeremiah 2:13

“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

1 Samuel 12:21

^”Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless.”

These defensive identities and idulgences are just broken cisterns and useless idols. They do not fill us up and make us whole because they do not connect us to our creator!

The only way to fight the desire to turn to these empty solutions is to fight to be closer to our God.

The more we know about our creator the more we will know and understand the image we were created in! By spending time reading our Bibles, journaling our thoughts, and praying through our insecurities, we can experience more of God’s identity and in turn be more secure in our own!

Jesus was a great example of knowing exactly who he was because he knew exactly who God made him to be!

In the book of John we find some incredible I AM statements from Jesus:

John 6:51 I am the Living Bread
John 8:12 I am the Light of the World
John 8:23 I am From Above and Not of This World
John 10:9 I am The Door
John 10:11 I am the Good Shepherd
John 10:36 I am the Son of God
John 11:25 I am the Resurrection and the Life
John 14:6 I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life
John 15:1 I am the True Vine

Throughout this series we want to follow Jesus’ example and create our own list of defining I AM statements from the scriptures and themes we study out.

The first statement for our list… I AM… Created in His Image!

Whenever we are feeling insecure, doubting who we were made to be, hearing lies of Satan fill our heads, or feeling like we don’t measure up to the standards of the world… let us remember… I AM… Created in His Image! There is power and security in knowing that we were created in the image of the creator of the world!

Let’s live as women who become more of who we are because we know more about God, whose image we were created in.

Becoming A Better ME Women’s Series

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ Leave a comment

The women of Denver CSA will be starting a women’s series this Tuesday Evening (March 31st) on Becoming A Better ME. How many women struggle with figuring out their true identity and who they really are? Over the next 5 weeks, we will be discussing who God truly made us to be as women. We’ll be talking about how to be confident and secure in our identity and what it means to grow and become the woman that God intended for us to be.

We’ll be posting thoughts and resources that connect to our series on this blog for ladies to use and follow as we dig into what it takes to “become a better me”.

Invite your friends to come out and join us for our women’s series and/or encourage them to check out the resources that will be posted here!

It’s going to be an exciting time to connect and discover who God really meant for us to be as women!

Welcome to our Led By Grace Blog!

March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 ~ kkeselcampbell ~ 1 Comment

Thank you so much for visiting our site! The women of Denver CSA (Christian Student Association) have decided to start a blog to share devotionals, thoughts and inspirations that directly affect women and the issues we face. We want to fight to be women who are Led By Grace and to help other women learn to be Led By Grace as well! We are so grateful for the grace God has lavished on us and we want to be moved by it and led to spread His word throughout the world! Join us in connecting with God’s word, being inspired by the thoughts of women leaders and sharing these thoughts with our friends, whether in person or online! We look forward to seeing how this will help each of us grow in our walk with God and our ability to be Led By Grace in our daily lives. Feel free to comment with topics you would like to see discussed or questions you would love biblical answers to! We want this site to be a great resource for empowering women and helping women thrive through their knowledge about Christ!

Thanks for checking out our site and please sign up to follow our blog through the Follow option on the side bar, and feel free to share future posts with your friends!