Noticing the Holy Spirit
There are many different tools available to help us better understand ourselves. CliftonStrengths, Myers-Briggs, GRIP-Birkman, DISC, and the Enneagram are all assessments that might be familiar to you.
These tools offer you a glimpse into your personality, spiritual gifts, strengths - your way of being a person in the world.
They are a bit like a mirror that you hold up and see yourself reflected back. You might like what you see, or you might notice things you’d like to change. These tools can reveal things to you that you weren’t aware of and offer you insight into how to grow and flourish.
If you are a follower of Jesus, then you have the added benefit of partnering with the Holy Spirit as you reflect on the data these assessments provide.
At different times I have found each of these tools valuable in helping me to know myself a bit better.
I’ve been thinking about the Enneagram recently, in particular, the triads. The Enneagram has many layers when it comes to unpacking the data it reveals, but it is common to begin by looking at the number you identify with most closely and then noticing to which triad that number belongs.
If you don’t know much about the Enneagram, it is represented through a complex diagram that breaks down personality into nine main types, which are then divided into triads.
The gut triad - 8, 9, 1
The heart triad - 2, 3, 4
The head triad - 5, 6, 7
There is a lot that can be said about these individual numbers and the triads they belong to, and while I am not going to write much about the Enneagram here, there are many helpful resources available if you want to know more.
The thing I’ve been thinking about is how the numbers in each of these triads see the world differently from the other triads and how that probably means they interact with and hear from God differently too.
I happen to identify with the Enneagram 1, so I find myself in the gut triad. About two years ago, I was on a Zoom call with a peer who is also in the gut triad, but she identifies as an Enneagram 8. On that call, she was talking about how when the Holy Spirit highlights something for her to pay attention to, it begins as an instinct that she feels in her body.
I realized this is true for me as well. When I sense the Holy Spirit, it is often an instinct - I know in my gut that I should speak up, that I am in danger, or that change is coming. I can feel it in my body.
What caught me off guard during that call was the realization that, as a woman growing up in the church, I was often told that I could not trust my gut instincts - that they were unreliable. And those instincts definitely couldn’t be the Holy Spirit speaking to me.
Over the past few years, I’ve realized that God created us with bodies. That might sound silly, because of course that is true. But for so long, I had believed that my body was just this broken vessel holding my spirit while living on this broken earth.
But what I’ve come to know is that my body is good and that God meets me in my body. The instincts I have warrant my attention. Are they always the Holy Spirit trying to tell me something? Of course not. Sometimes, they are just my human response to a situation. But that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Rather, they should be assessed.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more curious it has made me about the other triads in the Enneagram. Do those in the head triad notice the Holy Spirit first in their mind through their thinking? Do those in the heart triad notice the Holy Spirit first in their feelings?
I don’t think we are limited to noticing the Holy Spirit in just one way, but I wonder if we might all have a default way of sensing the Spirit based on how we are wired as people.
I’m not sure what the experts would say, but I do feel confident that, with all of our different personalities, we are bound to encounter God in various ways.
That is pretty amazing and should be celebrated.
I’d love to know if you’ve noticed that there is a common way that you most often encounter the Holy Spirit or if you feel like it is pretty mixed for you.
~ Melissa