 of life's most difficult times. God is there, He is there in the midst and He is with us today. Welcome to Hope Today. I'm Tom, I'm here with Corey and Amy. We're gonna be praying in just a little bit for the situation of what's going on in Nashville, but we wanna let you know who's coming up. We've got a great guest coming up, Amy. Yes, our next guest is going to tell us why I'm full of it, you're full of it, they're full of it, and that is personality. You are so full of personality, but have you ever noticed how we all are a little bit different, but there are some grooves of people that do act alike. We are gonna unpack today the Enneagram Life. Now we have the famous Elizabeth Bennett here with us from Pride and Prejudice. She is live in the flesh to talk about personal, relational, and biblical insights for all seasons. You know, guys, the more I read about this, and we had a guest a couple of weeks ago, the more a lot of it just makes sense. Yeah, I'm interested. What did people tell you growing up, what your personality was? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because your parents are always playing games with you and trying to figure out who you are. You know, like my mother, she wanted me to be a chef, and she gave my brother piano lessons, but I ended up being the one that played piano, and my brother's the chef, you know? So she was close, but you know, it was kind of like... She was in the zone. Go, Mom. She was close, guys. Yo, rebellious from the beginning, right? Right. No, that's good stuff. Well, you know, it's gonna be fun to just dig into that, but we wanna take some time for the very difficult situation of what's going on in Nashville, what happened in Nashville, and with the six people being killed at the Covenant School. And we've prayed already, but we wanna continue to pray, and with you guys, you weren't on the show yesterday, didn't have the opportunity to pray. Any thoughts, Amy, as you just dwell on this situation? Well, it's so unbelievably sad and evil and wrong, and I just pray for the families. You know, there was a pastor's daughter who was in that private Christian school. You know, my kids are in a private Christian school. It just really hits home to the season that I'm in, to the life that I live, and I just cannot imagine waking up the next morning with my child not there, not with us. So my heart and prayers are for the families, for the shooter's family. They're waking up today too, heartbroken, and I just have to believe today that what Jesus came to do, guys, was to heal the brokenhearted, and there's no gifts we could give them. There's no words we could use to comfort them, but we just have to believe that right now, the Holy Spirit is going to go into their homes, their life, their family, at their dinner table, in the hard moments, and be there to comfort those who are mourning today. You know, I think what we'd like to do is enter into prayer. I'm gonna ask Corey, would you start us off, Corey? And maybe we could all pray today, and just let's lift this situation up. God is in the midst of even the most difficult situations. God certainly is not in the evil that happened, but God is in the comfort that can come in this situation. Would you start us off, Corey? Absolutely. Let's pray. Father, God, Holy Spirit, we need you more than ever, Father. This nation needs you, God. We need your presence. God, you created us with personality and feelings and emotions and the level of grief and emotion that people are experiencing right now through this loss and this terrible evil is beyond words, God. But you understand how to advocate for us. You understand how to touch us in such a way that gives us peace, that surpasses all understanding. So God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would just blanket every single family that is grieving the neighborhood, the community, the extended family that you would just blanket them with your presence, let your anointing of love come and let their glory of God begin to just saturate the atmosphere to bring people back to you and bring people closer to revival that this would not be in vain, God, but that you would get the glory, you would get the glory somehow through this situation beyond our understanding that you would be present, a present help in the time of trouble and we thank you and we bless you and honor you for your presence to help Nashville in Jesus' name. Amen, Father, we pray for Nashville, we pray for the families of the victims, the school, their friends, and Father, even early this morning I kissed and waved my boys as they drove off to their school and today it just really hit home and Father, I just ask that you comfort the mothers, you comfort the fathers, you comfort the teachers, you comfort the friends. Holy Spirit, we're gonna ask that you do what you do best and you go and you walk alongside them. I thank you that you're our very present help in the time of need and Father, I just thank you that Jesus, the reason you came was to heal the brokenhearted and Father, you bring light and you bring love and you bring your presence and so Father, we just ask more than ever today that they feel your presence, they feel your healing touch and that God, you do a work supernaturally, intervene on behalf of this mass school shooting in Jesus' name. Lord, we know that you are the one who can bring healing to the worst wounds, Lord. This is a wounded, the wounded families, the wounded school, the wounded city, Lord. I know, Father, that there is a, just an incredible hurting there now. So bring your healing, Father. Bring your peace, glorify your name by just strengthening all those around. We ask it, Father, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So we'll continue to pray as we go through the week and just would encourage you all to pray as well. Amen. Our next guest first discovered the Enneagram in 2017 and immediately realized how life-changing it can be. Not long after, Elizabeth Bennett decided to become a certified Enneagram coach. Elizabeth joins us now to share how our personalities affect our everyday lives with her new book, Enneagram Life, Personal Relational and Biblical Insights for All Seasons. I love that. Elizabeth, welcome to Hope Today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. First, let's talk about your name, Elizabeth Bennett. That seems to be a pretty famous name. I always joke with people that when I met my now husband, one of the first things I thought was, if I end up marrying this boy, my name is gonna be Elizabeth Bennett. And so it was definitely an influence in my first initial crush on my husband, but I definitely love that I get to have that name now. Okay, let's talk about the Enneagram Life. Why did you start researching it? What made it attractive to you? Why did you eventually want to become an Enneagram coach with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram listening to your wisdom about the Enneagram Life? When did that all begin? Yeah, so I think my entire life I've been really interested in personality, whether it be Myers-Briggs, Disc, any of those things have always been really interested in it. I think just understanding why people are the way they are is always something I've been really curious about. And so when I first was introduced to the Enneagram, it came in a very pivotal part of my life. We were going through a lot of things, me and my husband, two years into marriage. And instead of me feeling like I was bringing stuff out of my husband, I was able to be, oh, he's reacting to himself and his inner world and how he was made. And it was so illuminating to see how both of us were so different, yet both reacting out of hurt and different motivations and all these, and just the way that God made us. And it was so helpful that we ended up teaching our families about the Enneagram. We ended up teaching a lot of our friends about the Enneagram. And we were talking about it so much that we ended up making an Instagram page so that we could kind of share and have community around what we were learning. And then when I became an Enneagram coach, I think I really found a big part of my calling. I love talking to people one-on-one about their Enneagram type and just seeing those aha moments, see people in utter confusion and chaos in their life. All of a sudden have a flashlight put on how God made them and what their purpose and their meaning might be is just a really, really cool thing. I don't think I'll ever not do Enneagram coaching. It's so cool. I think the Enneagram is newer probably to most people, but what we do remember is things like birth order, you know, gender roles, culture, the five love languages. How does the Enneagram sort of make all of this make sense? Yeah, so the Enneagram is based off of motivation. So all of us have a pretty distinct motivation we're working out of and American culture in general is not very good at discerning motivation. We are very behavioral. We love introvert, extrovert. We love things that are very external. And so when we are looking at things like birth order and love languages and all these things, really the question to ask is, what would someone whose motivation is self worth? How would they interact with being an oldest child? How would that play out? How would that play out with them having a touch love language? And so when I'm writing this book and I'm asking these people themselves what those things look like for them, it's really insightful to see how it all goes back to motivation. My motivation, myself, I'm an Enneagram for and my motivation is authenticity. So as a middle child, how does authenticity show up? Well, it's me trying to prove that I'm different. Me trying to prove that I am my own person within this big family unit. And so a lot of individuality, a lot of some rebellious spirits, grabbing at attention that might not have been there for me shows up in that. How did you break this down into the seasons of life and apply the Enneagram to the different seasons? Because as you mentioned, there's a spring season, a summer season, a fall season, and a winter season. Yeah, so I was really inspired by the person Ecclesiastes of for everything there is a season, a time for joy and a time for mourning and all that stuff. I think as you look back on your life, you can see such distinct seasons of life that you aren't very aware of when you're in it. And so really what I did was I took all these FAQs, all these frequently asked questions that I get on Instagram and I get in coaching and I'm like, I want to help walk people through these things and how the Enneagram can be very practical in their life. And so using those two inspirations going through spring being your childhood and summer being your adolescence, the shortest but probably most impactful season. Fall being your adulthood and then winter being advanced adulthood, just it all kind of just made sense. And I don't know, I feel like it worked out really beautifully and really poetically in the book. Well, you've got like three different seasons of life up here on the set right now to go through. But let me ask you, you talked about how Enneagram helped you and your husband understand what was going on. Tell me a story about someone else that has been helped or been touched or something opened up that was freedom for them. Maybe somebody that you've worked with, somebody that's read your book, just a story of someone who's really been helped by this process. Yeah, of course. So one of my coaching clients that was really impactful for me, she at the end of our session said, I have now realized that I spent my entire life thinking I was just really bad at being a different number. So her entire life, she thought that she was supposed to be this achiever type and she was just really bad at being it. And she was really discouraged about how she was made. And she really could not name many strengths that she had because she really wanted to be a different person. And so when she realized what she was, she was an Enneagram 9. And I'm explaining how sweet and beautiful this type is and how they reflect God individually and how their desire for peace is reflective of God's desire for peace. She just had tears in her eyes of being like, I've never thought there was something that God would call good in how I was made. But there is something that God calls good and how everyone's made. We are a very fractured and imperfect image of that part of God, but we still reflect parts of God and his character all individually and different. And that's why we are a body and we need each other. We need all of these different parts of God's character and God's image. And that could be such an impactful thing when sometimes our negative traits, are the loudest to us, but being able to hear what God calls good in us is so impactful. And I've seen that with my clients again and again. Wow, you are speaking so deeply and it's just truly resonating. So I took the test and I'm also a four. It was called a romantic individualist, right? Which I thought was pretty cool. But what it really focused on was like authenticity as you were saying. And I'm the baby in my family. I have an older sister and an older brother. And for a lot of times throughout my life I was very emotional. And I oftentimes felt like I needed to fit a mold that was acceptable for my parents. And then as I went into ministry, acceptable for ministry. So when I was taking the test, I found that I wasn't trying to answer as honest as possible. Have you ever experienced that where people are like, I really don't wanna choose these answers because I feel like I'm not allowed to be honest. Have you ever had that experience maybe with yourself or with someone you know? Yeah, I feel like in the spring portion of this book I go over pretty well that especially our parents they tend to name what they recognize in you. So both of my parents are not very creative people. And so my creativity was very kind of like brushed off as something that wasn't very exciting. And so, but my parents did name a lot of my introvertedness, a lot of my style and how I liked fashion. And so when I first took the Enneagram test those are things that I gravitated to as, oh, this is who I am because this is what has been called out in me or what I'm comfortable claiming as mine. And so yeah, when a lot of people take the test either they are going off of things that they have been called in the past or things that they're comfortable with. Whereas I don't think many people when they go down to take a personality test are like willing to do the really, really deep work of actually figuring out what their motivation is. A lot of times it's just a whim or a fun thing. And so I've seen a lot of people mistype based on the test first and as they start to research the Enneagram also they'll be looking at a type that makes them feel really gross of like, oh, this is not what I would want to be but I also have a sinking suspicion that this is what I am because this is the one that bothers me the most. And then as people research the Enneagram more they'll start to kind of get more into an accurate typing. Wow. You know, this really hit home when I started reading about parenting and how a certain number of parents and what they want to hear and what they expect and what your parents were. I mean, I was like she is getting in all of our business. So I'm going to be real transparent and say, you know, I'm an eight. What does that parenting look like? What am I going to do to hurt my kids or help my kids? Yeah, so Enneagram eight, I feel like whether they are healthy or unhealthy can look very, very different in how they pair. And obviously all of us, we have some parts of both. And none of us are completely all a good parent or completely all a bad parent. We have some mixing of both but the Enneagram eight really what they want the most they want their kids to be independent. They want their kids to be protected and they want their kids to be strong so that they can weather the storm, they can weather whatever is put at them. So that creates a very tough and tender parenting style. This very, I want you to be strong. I want you to be independent but also my strength is for you. Like when I might be tough and I might be a go-getter but all that strength is for you and not at you. Cause I think sometimes when eights are unhealthy harshness can come out in their parenting style but when they are more healthy, their kids know that harshness is towards what would hurt them and not towards them. Which is a really powerful thing for kids. Wow. Well, you just read my mail and I may or may not have been harsh just a few times but I definitely value independent children. It's so funny. Okay, so let's get into like, okay, and eight values and eight longs to hear you will not be betrayed. Okay, I'm a pastor with church and staff and people and I'm really value not being betrayed. How do I come about that with God's word? What scripture? What should I be thinking as I'm processing? I don't like to be betrayed. Yeah, so all of these different longings, all of these different words that we wanna hear, I think it's so important as parents that we instill in our children that I will never show this to you perfectly. You know, God is the only one who can love you perfectly. And so as an eight, I've heard so many eights say but I have been betrayed. Like I can't absorb that information that I won't be betrayed because I have been betrayed. And so when we are thinking about God though we are thinking about how God will not betray you. We're thinking about how God is the same yesterday today and forever. We're thinking about how God called you from the beginning of time. God has always been after your heart and good comes to those who live in his word and live in understanding of the gospel. And so as an eight who is afraid of betrayal in the world, it's important to hold onto the fact that God is bigger than the world. God has overcome the world and that God will never betray you. What's a scripture that you would encourage us before we finish this conversation about personalities about how God wired us, how God sees us? Yeah, so I think the verse in Psalms 13914 about how we are fearfully and wonderfully made is such a beautiful verse. But the verse that you guys are going over today that verse in Genesis of being made in God's image I think is one that has been really, really powerful for me and my clients of the fact that God, there is part of God that he images through us that the world needs. That there are as good in our personality and as much as we have to work on those hard parts and those bumps and as much as we have to repent and change, there also is good that God has created in us that the world needs and that we have that and that God wants us to live and act in that. Beautifully said, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for this book, this time and these nuggets of wisdom that you've dropped into our life, bless you so much. All right, we will be right back after this break. When Laura called our 24 seven prayer line, she had so much fear that she didn't want to leave her house. She had lost her husband of 54 years, just six months earlier. Laura was flipping through TV stations when she came across cornerstone television. She felt compelled to call. One of our prayer partners talked, listened and prayed with her for 45 minutes. At the end, Laura said how much the ministry had helped relieve her fear. Praise God for how he's using CTVN. When you give, you become part of what he's doing. This month, when you give, we'll send wild expectants as our way of saying, thank you. This book will inspire you to live your life as God intended. To give and request your copy, visit us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Hope happens here. We are back on hope today. And listen, we just had a phenomenal, phenomenal discussion with Elizabeth Bennett about the life of the Enneagram. So today's scripture is actually coming from Genesis chapter one, verse 27. And it reads, so God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. And as we talk about personality and we talk about being able to live within community with different people, it's not always easy. Even those, even your family, there's a frustration because when you're a four dealing with a five or eight dealing with a one or your birth order is a certain way you've been projected on by your parents or your society to be a certain way, there's gonna be friction. And I know that one thing that really helps me to be able to work in a diplomatic way of relationship with people is understanding that they are God-bearers of God. They are image-bearers of God. And that speaks so vividly that God created them and their uniqueness and we should respect it. Tom, how does that speak to you? Just think about all the different personalities. God is such a creative God. He's given us these different personalities. Praise God, everybody's not my personality or just one personality. Just the way we're able to interact with these different personalities, it shows us the glorious creativity of God. I think guys about different churches and how different churches emphasize different things. The Presbyterians emphasize the sovereignty of God. The church I grew up in was a holiness church. They emphasize the holiness of God. Those are okay, those are good, that we get to see these different facets and aspects of God and we see that in our brothers and sisters when we have the opportunity to interact with them, Amy. Well, think about like the school shooting, okay? And all of the different personalities, I wanna go and bring something to that trauma and drama. Tom's probably thinking of a whole other area and viewpoint to bring into that. And Cory's probably thinking, oh my gosh, we should do this. And it's so beautiful that not every person just has it all but that we're all created and we all represent a different image and heart of God. I was thinking just a minute ago that when my grandma passed away, I remember being in the room when my dad was telling my mom because we had just come in from driving around town or something. And I remember at that young age that I wanted to bring joy and uplift right away. Isn't that interesting? And now I'm thinking about this school shooting and I'm thinking, how can I go in there and infuse joy and some sort of peace or happiness right now? How can I go in there and lift the room? Somebody else might be thinking, how can I go serve them and bring them food and be a chef and cook for them? How can I write a song that would bless them? God has given us unique personalities to filter life through, to bring His goodness and His glory to earth. And this is why it's so significant that we take adequate time with God to be able to understand His heart and then also to be able to understand who He made us because it's always not the easiest thing to understand ourselves and this is what we've been talking about is that time with God helps us to understand who we are because the keys to our character and our personality is locked up in God. So He makes it that we have to go after Him and pursue Him to learn who we really are. And I think that that is a beautiful thing. So if you learn anything from this, spend time with Jesus, spend time alone with God, talking with Him and understanding who you are. You know what's great, we talk about God changing us. Does He change our personality? Not really, not too much. I mean, our personality is pretty set but He changes our character and He changes what's inside of us to bring out the beauty that He's created for us to have. Every flower is different, every tree is different, every mountain is different. God hasn't created us to be like anybody else. You can be completely free. Yes, learn from people all around you. Learn from your pastor, learn from your parents, learn from your brothers and sisters and the Lord. Learn from those around you but be who you are, be who God created you to be. When you have that idea in your mind and heart and you follow that, that's freedom for you. Freedom from feeling like you have to be like another person. Boy, I am so glad God has set us free to be who we are, we are individuals and we are those that can serve God with the personality and the talents that He's given us. I hope you know the Lord today. He has great and wonderful plans for you. He made you just like you are but He's changing you into His likeness. Have a great day. On Tomorrow's Hope Today, discover the importance and need for sharing the gospel with others. Author Craig Ireland shares how we should go into the world and teach non-believers about God's grace, love and mercy in order to bring people to Christ. Don't miss Tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.