God’s Personality Test

            You have searched me, LORD and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. (Psalm 139: 1-2)

            Do you like to take personality tests to find out more about yourself? In the Christian world, we have spiritual gifts surveys.  Elsewhere there’s the Myers Briggs test and now there’s a revised one out by Gallup that uncovers your top five natural talents called Strengths Finder.

            A couple of my friends thought it might be helpful for me to take the Strengths Finder assessment test, so they facilitated the personality quiz, which consisted of a number of questions that you only have 20 seconds each to answer.  Sometimes it’s not easy to answer a question about yourself in 20 seconds, so I missed a couple. When I was done with the test, the results come back immediately.  My top strength: “Futuristic.” According to the book, this is what futuristic people are like:

            You are the ones who love to peer over the horizon. As if it were projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow.

            I thought, “Makes sense. I am a planner.  The future excites me.  It’s difficult for me to live in the present.”

            Then I thought, “God already knew that.”

            It occurred to me that God knows more about each of us than we know about ourselves. We take tests to get a better handle on who we are, but the Lord formed us and intimately knows our personalities inside out.

            Maybe we need to go to God and ask him to reveal our strengths and weaknesses to us rather than an on-line test.

            Interesting.  God had already been working on my weaknesses that come with being futuristic.  While this is not in the Strengths Finder information because it’s about strengths only, I can tell you the weakness of being a futuristic person is the inability to abide in the Lord. God had already revealed that part to me and I’ve prayed for help with abiding.  He wants us to rest in him and if you are constantly thinking about what’s down the road, it’s not easy to do that.

            Anxiety is also a negative byproduct of being futuristic. Do you struggle with anxiousness? Maybe you are futuristic.  When I wake up, I am already thinking about what’s ahead, even before drinking my first cup of coffee!  When you have a vision of the future but cannot control the timing of it, anxiety rears its ugly head.  

            Do you want to know more about yourself? Psalm 139 tells us that God knows every detail in our DNA. You don’t even have to answer a series of questions.

            At the end of the Psalm is a prayer that I pray regularly:

            Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

            I may be futuristic, but I have to remember only God knows the future. Fortunately, he knows my fascination with what’s beyond and invites me to take his hand as he leads me down the path to my eternal future.

            What about you?  Today I invite you to take God’s personality test in Psalm 139 and ask him to show you who you really are, strengths and weaknesses.

            He works with both.