Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

We've been working through the 40 days of Developing a Servant's Heart. We are pursuing the life of service and ministry that God intends for his followers. Today we are looking in the mirror. We’re going to examine our unique personalities. You are a unique creation of God, complete with a unique personality.

Job 10:8 in the Old Testament says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.” God is the sovereign creator of our universe and he is the creator of every one of us. He created us as individuals with different personalities.

So what? Why should we spend time talking about this? Of all the spiritual topics we could be talking about, why spend time exploring personality?

Because our personalities are important. Everything we do is, on some level, affected by our personalities. So if we’re seeking to find our place of service and ministry, then we’ve got to have an understanding of our personality.

Personality refers to how we think, how we feel, and how we react. It affects everything. The people we like and the people we struggle with. The things we find funny and the things we don’t find funny. Our relationships with spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and classmates. The way we deal with conflict, the way we deal with change. And yes, the way we serve and do ministry. All of that is connected in some way to our personality.

If you’re a parent of multiple children, then you see this played out everyday in the lives of your kids. Whether your kids are young, or even if they’re fully grown, as a parent you have learned to navigate the differences of your children’s personalities.

Nicki and I have friends in Indiana who have twin girls, Chloe and Gracie. It was so fun to watch them. Chloe loved sports. She asked for a basketball for Christmas. She hated dresses. She was ready to play, and sweat, and roughhouse.

Gracie was a frilly girly girl. She always wore pink. Dresses with ruffles. Always. The differences in their personalities was incredible.

There’s even an example of this in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, Issac and Rebekah had twin boys named Jacob and Esau. These boys couldn’t have been more different.

Genesis 25 says, “When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a peaceful man, living in tents.” (Genesis 25:27, NASB)

Twins. Same father, same mother, and yet vastly different personalities.

Scientists have identified over 18,000 different character traits that make up personality. 18,000! We are each a complex combination of personality traits. Some of our personality is inherited. We’re born with it. Some of it is learned over time. But all of it shapes our lives.

And to make things even more complicated, not only are our personalities complex with thousands of different character traits, but our personalities are also victimized because we live in a sin-stained world.

And the result is that our personalities must be redeemed.

In Genesis 3, we learn about the fall of man. In other words, the moment when sin entered into our world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. God commanded them not to eat from this specific tree in the Garden of Eden. They disobeyed God by eating that fruit. Such a simple story, but a story with untold ramifications.

We don’t often comprehend just how big and how far-reaching the fall of man really is. The entrance of sin into this world that God had created changed everything. It didn’t just separate God and man. Sin’s entrance into our world ravaged God’s good creation. It robbed our world of the perfection that it once had. Sin’s destructive force has brought untold difficulties and problems into our lives…and our personalities are not exceptions.

Some people are born with addictive personalities. They are very prone to alcohol and drug addiction. Some people have very critical or judgmental personalities. Some people have personality disorders that have an incredibly destructive impact on their lives. None of these personality characteristics were in God’s original design. They are the result of living in a world filled with the presence of sin.

The fall of man was a powerful event in human history…but not the most powerful. The only event more powerful and far-reaching than the fall of man was the redemption of man in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Jesus died and rose again to redeem you. The word “redeem” is a churchy sounding word. It’s not a word you use often in day-to-day life, but it is a good word. The word “redeem” carries the idea of being bought back. Something like paying a ransom for someone who had been kidnapped or paying a price to buy someone out of slavery.

The New Testament book of Titus tells us that, “Jesus Christ…gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (Titus 2:13b-14, NIV)

Look at the two-fold purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross for us.

First of all, it was to redeem us from all wickedness. To buy us back from sin. To give us a clean slate, a new start, a new life. Jesus death and resurrection means that we can be set free from the guilt and punishment that we deserve.

But look at the second purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus died “to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (italics mine)

He died to redeem our purpose and even our personality. Because Jesus died for me, I am now “his very own.” My purposes are now his purposes. I don’t live for my own glory. I live for his glory. And my personality follows suit. Because I belong to him, because I live for his purposes, I am eager to do what is good. I am eager to use my personality traits for good. I want to use them to glorify God instead of pleasing myself. That is what a redeemed personality looks like.

There may be no better example of a redeemed personality in the Bible than that of the Apostle Paul who wrote these words from the book of Titus. If you’ve been on track with the devotional book reading each day in this series, then you read about Paul this past Tuesday.

We know Paul as the greatest missionary in the history of the world and the author of much of the New Testament in the Bible. When it comes to the giants of the faith, it’s hard to top Paul. But things didn’t start out this way in Paul’s life. Earlier in his life, Paul was a persecutor of the church. We talked about this in our last sermon series.

In Galatians 1, Paul wrote, “For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was…extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” (Galatians 1:13-14, NIV)

Our devotional book says, “Paul was an aggressive and zealous person long before becoming a follower of Jesus. He worked hard at destroying the Church of God. Zeal in a first century context quickly transformed to something you did with a knife… Paul carried his zeal for the traditions of his ancestors to the extreme.” (Church, Christian, Central, of, Staff, The and Karen Englert. Developing a Servant's Heart. City: Central Christian Church, 2004. pp. 146-147)

Paul’s aggressive and zealous nature caused the imprisonment and death of many early Christians. But now listen as Paul continues in Galatians 1.

“But…God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles…” (Galatians 1:15-16a, NIV)

Paul, the aggressive, zealous persecutor and murderer had become a Christ-follower himself. Our book says, “God called Paul and set him apart by His grace for a specific purpose. It was time for Paul to ‘about face.’ God was redirecting him from zealous persecutor to zealous proclaimer of the Gospel of Christ. God specifically chose to use Paul’s background, his passion and his gifts to serve for Christ, not against Him.” (Church, Christian, Central, of, Staff, The and Karen Englert. Developing a Servant's Heart. City: Central Christian Church, 2004. p.147)

Paul’s personality had been redeemed. He was still passionate and zealous and aggressive…but he had surrendered these personality traits to serve God’s purposes instead of his own.

There were some parts of Paul’s personality that needed to be changed, redirected, or transformed. But Paul didn’t have complete a personality transplant, either. He still had the same traits that made up his personality, but here’s the key: he had now surrendered them to God. His personality had been redeemed.

We don’t have to have Paul’s personality to serve God effectively. In fact, I’m glad we all don’t have Paul’s personality. It would be a real headache if we had a church full of Pauls. It would also be a real headache if we had a church full of me’s, or a church full of you’s. God, in his creative wisdom, has given us all different gifts and different personalities.

Our different personalities increase our impact. Here’s where we really start to see how our personalities affect how we serve.

When I was a youth minister in Indiana, I had a decent sized staff of adult ministry volunteers. It was a really diverse group of people, especially in the realm of their personalities. Two really come to mind as absolute polar opposites: Larry & Kris.

Larry was a very quiet guy. In our youth staff meetings, Larry would rarely say a word. Larry was never, ever onstage. He was just a gentle, very unassuming person.

Kris was nuts. He talked fast and he talked often. When we were playing a game, Kris was all over the place. He was a boisterous and energetic person.

Which one of them was the better youth worker? Answer: neither. They had very different personalities and they fulfilled different roles in our student ministry. Kris worked the room. He walked around, talking to as many students as he could. Kris would lead a game, teach a lesson, whatever.

Larry worked hard behind the scenes, setting up equipment, chairs, whatever needed done. When the crowd arrived, Larry would seek out the shy student. Maybe it was their first time in our ministry and they were nervous. Larry would have a quiet conversation with them, away from the noise of the crowd.

Which one was more valuable? Neither one. Which one did we need more? We needed them both. They had different gifts and very different personalities, and we needed them both equally.

God has wired us with a variety of different personality types so that we could fulfill a variety of different ministries. When you surrender your personality to God, when you have a personality that has been redeemed for God’s purposes, it becomes a tool to serve God.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t parts of our personality that need work. We all have negative pieces of our personality puzzle. A redeemed personality means that God is constantly chipping away at our personality.

Earlier we defined our personality as how we think, how we feel, and how we react. Our minds, our emotions, and our actions all must be surrendered to God’s will and God’s leading. So we need to remember that our personality redemption isn’t a one-time event; it’s a lifelong process. And that means that we’ve got to be patient with one another.

The Bible tells us in the book of Romans, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” (Romans 15:7, NIV)

Ephesians 4 instructs us to, “Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.” (Ephesians 4:2b, NLT)

Your personality is imperfect. So is mine. Even though I am a Christ-follower, my personality remains a redemptive work in progress. I haven’t achieved perfection in how I think, and feel, and react…but I’m progressing. I’m not the brash hothead that I used to be. I’m not the procrastinator that I used to be. I’m not the unorganized mess that I used to be. I’m not perfect in any of these areas, but God has done some amazing work in my life. I’ve made progress in these areas that I didn’t even believe was possible. And the only possible explanation of that progress is this.

“…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6b, NIV)

God’s redeeming work in us lasts throughout our entire lives. So because we are part of God’s family, and because we are all in a continual redemptive process in our lives and even in our personalities, patience and love is required among us. When someone’s personality irritates you, remember that your personality probably irritates somebody else.

Our personality differences in the church make life challenging, but they also make our service and ministry impacting and effective. Here at Amelia, we have service opportunities for an introvert and an extrovert. If you enjoy working with kids, you can join our teaching team, volunteer at VBS, etc. If you prefer visiting with older folks, we need a visitation team to visit nursing homes, shut-ins, etc. If you’re a get-your-hands-dirty kind of person, we’ve got numerous construction projects that need done. If you’re a quiet, prayerful person, we need a vibrant ministry of prayer.

Let’s go back to my example of Larry and Kris again. If you plugged Larry into a ministry where he had to speak in front of people, he probably faint. If you plugged Kris into a quiet ministry of extended prayer, he’d probably fall asleep. Keep in mind that both of these men are committed followers of Jesus Christ. Both of them are passionate about serving and ministry. It’s just that their ministry avenues are different because of how their personality is wired up.

We all have different personalities. We have personalities that are imperfect. Personalities that must be surrendered to God. Personalities that must be redeemed by God. But ultimately, we have personalities that God can use. And as we gain a better understanding of the good and the bad components in our personalities, we can gain a better perspective on some areas where God could really do some incredible work through us.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: Developing a Servant's Heart, ministry, service, personality