Who Am I

This is a paper i wrote at Summit Pacific College for Spiritual Issues class.

Personal Gifting Summary

Spiritual Issues                                                                                                   Juss Hunt

Dave Demchuk                                                                                                Oct 22, 2010

            In this essay I will describe to you my personal gifting and my personality traits.  I have taken personality surveys that have helped me to discover who I am. From those surveys I discovered that I am an idealist who is introverted, intuitive, perceiving, and is affected by feelings. I have also discovered that my dominant spiritual gift is discerning of spirits.  All of these factors play a role in who I am and how I go about things. 

I am an idealist

 Many of my characteristics come from the fact that I am an idealist. This affects the way I interact with people and the way that I think. I see many examples in my life that bring out the idealist characteristics in me. 

An aspect of idealism that describes me well is that I am concerned with personal growth. I am always analyzing myself trying to discover who I am and how I can become the best that I can be. I am always focused on my personal journey and the journey of others.

 Another aspect that comes out of being an idealist is that I am a romantic. I find this to be true when I look at the relationship I have had with my boyfriend whom I have been with for three years; he is the only person I have been with. Our relationship as definitely been affected by me being an idealist, because I yearn for romance and I pride myself on being kind hearted, loving and authentic.  In my relationship I want to have a close bond emotionally and spiritually. I want to share with him my deepest feelings and complex personal world.

  Another thing that affects me by being an idealist is how I react to conflict and confrontation. Conflict upsets me because idealists feel at ease when everyone is getting along. But when there is conflict I become uncomfortable. An example of this in my life is when my parents would have heated discussions/debates with my sister. From my point of view as an idealist I thought that they were mad at each other, it made me very uncomfortable and I didn’t want to be involved. But I talked to them later and they said that they were not mad at each other; they were simply talking things through. The fact that I am an idealist really affects the way I go about things.  

Idealists do not like to be insincere or dishonest. This affects my personal relationships in many different ways. For one thing I am very hard on myself if I am dishonest or fake. I always make sure to be myself. This means that I do not like shallow relationships because they feel fake to me. I like to have a few close, deep relationships with people. Being this way can be good or bad. It is good because I am honest and I have very good relationships with my few good friends. It can be bad because I can be brutally honest sometimes witch upsets people. Also I do not have many friends and am socially awkward because I hate small talk. Quite often I may feel left out because of this, but I will never be a person who conforms to the crowd. I will always be myself.

I am introverted

Because I am introverted I enjoy exploring my thoughts and feelings. I am always in the inner world of my mind. I am constantly thinking about my feelings and the feelings of others. I always try to figure people out, myself included.

             

            A characteristic of mine that comes from being introverted is that being around people drains my energy. I am usually very quite when socializing in a crowd of people because of this. I am not completely introverted because I do love being around people, I just don’t like small talk. I think that a social activity that I consider shallow drains my energy. I don’t like social activities that don’t involve conversation about ideas, concepts, feelings, or anything else deep. Small talk often feels meaningless to me; I cherish deep conversations that help me get to really know people. If I don’t see into the heart of a person from the personal things they tell me, then I will try to figure that person out when there is very little I know about them. I always want to get to know people on a personal basis, which is why I dislike small talk.

 I Am Intuitive

            Intuition means that I have a direct perception of truth and quick insight. I can see signs of intuition in my personality when I get premonitions, or visions of things that happen before knowing that they will happen. I have had many times in my life when I have predicted things to happen and they have. I can often predict how a relationship will turn out. For example when I first meet my roommate I predicted that she would be a lot of fun but not a very deeply close friend. I predicted that she would take a while to open up to me and that she has a hard time talking about her feelings and other deep personal things. From knowing her for almost two months I found this to be true in many ways. She is a lot of fun and she did take a long time to feel comfortable in sharing things with me. Also she still isn’t a very deep person. I had these intuitions about her by just observing her the first day I met her. This intuitive “sixth sense” is very present with me at all times. Some may say that I am judgmental and I can be. But usually my judgments are right.

I Am Perceiving

Perceiving people are spontaneous, adaptable and open, among other things. I can see how I am a perceiving person because I have all of those qualities. I am spontaneous because I rarely plan things in advance. I make big decisions quickly at times. I do really random things without planning them. I might just drive to a friend’s without telling them. I might go on a road trip not knowing where I’m going. I am flexible; I can change my plans suddenly. I am also open. I am not opinionated. I am willing to accept other people’s opinions, ideas or suggestions. I am not trying to hide anything from anyone. These are all perceiving character traits.

I Am Affected by Feelings

            A lot of my life is based on my feelings and the feelings of others. If I have a bad feeling about something or a sense with my intuition the bad feelings of others I will generally have a bad day. An example of this is when a friend of mine told me that they broke up with their girlfriend of three years I had a very sad day after that. It affected how I lived the rest of my day. My thoughts were negative towards many things. I kept thinking that nothing was going to work out for the better and things were always going to end bad no matter what it was that people were talking about or what I was thinking about. This affected my day greatly just because of the sad feeling I got from that one person. This happens to me all of the time. If I am around a happy person I will feel happy and be more positive towards life.

            Most of the time I am affected badly by feelings. I am very easily prone to depression and negativity. I am easily brought to having negative feelings about everything. But the fact that I know this is true helps me to deal with the negative feelings. When I know I have a problem I learn how to deal with it. I have learned that is I am affected by bad feelings then I should find someone with good, happy feeling to brighten my day.

I Have the Gift of Discernment of Spirits

            Discerning of Spirits affects my personality and lifestyle. Discerning of spirits is the ability to know what is of God and what is not of God. It is the ability to evaluate people as well. For example I can evaluate people when they are teaching, preaching, or prophesying. I am able to distinguish what is true and false. This also plays a role into my intuition because I can tell when someone is being sincere; I can discover things about people through this gift.

            Some examples of discerning of spirits in my life are the following stories. A few times in the past I have been acquainted with spirits and I have been able to tell when they were good or evil spirits. At times the people around me thought that someone was filled with spirits from God during a worship service but I knew that it was an evil spirit. A while after I noticed this at a camp a leader there noticed it too and asked us to leave so the leaders could pray for the person. That leader also had the discernment of spirits. Another example is when I listen to preachers in churches or other places. I have a feeling when someone is preaching false teachings even thought I was not well educated. Afterwards I would ask a leader if that they where preaching was theologically correct or whatever it may be, and I found out the truth about what I sensed about the teachings. This is a good gift for me to have because I am able to question people, I don’t just believe everything people say. God tugs at my heart when something is not right.

My Personality

            All of these things have a role in forming my personality. I am who I am because of the way I was raised and the people who influenced my life. A lot of these personality traits come from my parents. I have gotten my intuition from them and I am introverted like my dad. They way they have raised me affects my personality in many ways. My sister and my peers have also affected my personality. But God is the one who made me and gave me my character.