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Summary

In today's conversation, Jesse gives a well-researched, eloquent presentation on what every Enneagram type really wants, like their deepest desire, and what they settle for instead. If you want to see the slides, over to the YouTube channel to watch the presentation there.

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📑 FREE PDF Download: Spiritual Growth Series Podcast Notes
Get the bullet-point notes for all 6 episodes—key insights, no fluff, easy to revisit.

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Spiritual Growth Series

🎙️ Episodes in the Spiritual Growth Series

• Spiritual Identity, Idealized Self, and Avoidance Patterns | Lisa Vischer (Ep. 7)
• Spiritual Practices for Each Enneagram Type | Pastor A.J. Sherrill (Ep. 8)
• How Each Enneagram Type Relates to God | Lindsey Lewis (Ep. 9)
• Image of God in Each Enneagram Type | Marilyn Vancil (Ep. 10)
• What Every Type Wants & What They Settle For | Jesse Eubanks (Ep. 11)
• Enneagram Vices and Virtues | Hunter Mobley (Ep. 12)

The Guest

👉🏼 Follow Jesse Eubanks

https://relatebetter.com/ 

40-Day Enneagram Devotional

📚 Get a personalized devotional for your Enneagram type:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VGPJTX6

Read The Transcript

Tyler Zach (00:20)

Welcome to Typish, an Enneagram podcast where we explore how your personality shows up in all of life. I'm your host Tyler Zach, and in each episode I connect you with leading experts on how your personality impacts your relationships, mental health, spirituality, and everything in between.

The Typish summits I host include speakers and attendees from all kinds of faith traditions and backgrounds. But because I started my Enneagram journey as a pastor and wrote a 40-day devotional for every Enneagram type, I have a large Christian audience — and the topic of spiritual growth is the number one request I get. So I decided to open up the vault and share six conversations from my Gospel for Enneagram summits back in 2023 as a special six-week podcast series. If you'd like the bullet point notes for all six episodes, you can grab them right now by clicking the link in the show notes and downloading the PDF as a free gift.

Today my guest is Jesse Eubanks, a friend of mine. He's an ordained minister, certified Enneagram coach, and the author of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others Through the Enneagram. He's also the founder and president of Relate Better. You can head over to relatebetter.com to find some free relational tools for your church, business, or organization to help people better their relationships. He also does corporate workshops with Lindsey, who we've also had on the podcast.

Jesse teamed up with Christianity Today to create, produce, and host a new podcast called Wondrology, exploring the intersection of faith and science. Make sure to go check that out wherever you listen to podcasts.

In today's conversation, Jesse gives a well-researched, eloquent presentation on what every Enneagram type really wants — their deepest desire — and what they settle for instead. If you want to see the slides, head over to the YouTube channel to watch the presentation there. Without further ado, let's jump in.

Jesse Eubanks (02:28)

In Enneagram theory, the basic idea is that each of the types is driven by different motivations, different desires, different things that they want. And somewhere in the mystery of nature and nurture, one desire becomes so important, so central to who we are as people, that we literally forge a personality around that desire. You could say that if all nine desires are sled dogs, one of them becomes the lead sled dog and leads the other eight.

But the basic idea we need to work with is this: one of these desires is so profoundly buried within us that it simultaneously marks all of our life and so often simultaneously remains utterly hidden to us. Each of us has this thing we desire, and we've literally forged our life around the pursuit of that desire.

That being said, we can start with this principle: maybe I'm not seeing everything. Maybe I'm a little blind to the realities around me. A lot of times we look at other people and think, look at all their issues — if they would just do this or that. And yet we really lack clarity about our own issues. So we have to do the work of pushing through our self-deception, pushing through all the ways in which we remain blind to the things that drive us — because self-deception really hurts the people around us.

We have seen this over and over again in the church: if you take each of these types and take it to the last station of that train, each of us is capable of doing profound damage to other people. Which is a way of saying: we've got to do our work. And part of that is understanding what's driving and compelling us as people.

Donald Miller says that a story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. In its most simple form, that is the definition of a story. And each of us as people, we are living in a story. So the question we have to contend with is: in your story, what is it that you want? What is it that drives you, compels you, pushes you forward in the morning?

I would add this too: there can be multiple desires at play. But also, the less aware we are of the desire that drives us, the more power it has over us. And the more we come to acknowledge and recognize the desires that drive us, the more we are able to steward them — to trust them to God, seek wisdom and counsel from others. So the more subconscious the desire is, the more it holds us hostage. The more aware we are of it, the more we're able to steward it.

We see in the Gospel of John that the very first question Jesus asks is, "What do you want?" Christians have a contentious relationship with the idea of desire. Part of it I get — we live in a hypersexualized culture, so when we hear desire, many times we think of it in sexual terms almost immediately. That's real unfortunate. While sexual desire is definitely a part of who we are, and sexual desire can actually be a clue about some of the things we want in life, I think we're so scared of desire — because it feels so big and powerful and potentially immoral — that we squash all curiosity and back away from it.

But we see constantly throughout the Gospels that one of Jesus's greatest gifts was drawing out the desires of others. Jesus came to people with such great curiosity, asking them about who they are, what they wanted, what they were pursuing, and why. And Jesus is inviting us to do the same thing. What is it that compels us as people?

Desire is really powerful. It's really hard at times for us to steer and control it. Many of us have felt a lot of shame around our desire because it's gotten away from us. Honestly, even my own wrestling match with my Enneagram type — a lot of that was that I didn't want to come to terms with being a Three, because I felt so much shame around the idea that I had this desire to be significant. That desire was simultaneously driving me, but I was also so ashamed of it that I couldn't acknowledge it for myself.

Dr. Curt Thompson — we're doing a series on desire on our podcast right now, and he was our first guest — said: "We have as much ability to stop desiring as we do to stop breathing." So a lot of times Christians have this idea: if I just ignore it, if I just squash it — but we cannot not desire. God is a desiring God. We are made in his image and therefore we are a desiring people.

The other thing to keep in mind is that desire always moves toward beauty. Whatever we find to be the most beautiful, the most attractive — it's a natural thing that we move toward that. That could be a beautiful sunset, a beautiful place, a beautiful person. But also at a deeper level, we move toward what feels most emotionally beautiful for us. We move toward what feels most beautifully secure, beautifully free. Generally speaking, if you find yourself moving toward something, most likely it's because it has captured your imagination and you find it beautiful.

And I think it could also be said that the nine desires of the nine Enneagram types are good. They're good desires. If you look at all nine in some way and in some capacity, you can see these desires on display even in the character of Christ. Now, that does not mean that we get everything we desire, and it does not mean that we should unquestionably go after our desires — but we absolutely can see that these nine desires are good.

When stewarded well, and living in tension with other desires that are also good, they can be a pathway toward wisdom. Cliff Roth says the problem is when we attach to the wrong things in the wrong way. What happens is that this desire doesn't believe that it can be fulfilled — doesn't believe that we can actually get it in a satisfactory way, that it can truly be satiated. So instead of getting the real thing, we end up settling for substitutes. And then we demand that those substitutes do something for us that they are incapable of doing.

So we come to these false idols that we curate and create — not at a conscious level, but subconsciously — and then we demand that they deliver. The trick is that they never deliver well, but they deliver often enough. And so we stay addicted to them. Ultimately, we find ourselves attached to these idols instead of attaching to Jesus and to other people in ways that are healthy and life-giving.

In the end, we need a chief desire that will guide all the other desires. So the first thing we have to do is acknowledge our desires without judgment. Christians are so fast to judge everything as moral or immoral, of God or not of God. And it squashes our curiosity. So the very first thing we have to do is just acknowledge what is there. What is it that I desire? What do I want? What do I long for? There are specific desires coming out, and they're driven by these deeper desires — what we often refer to as the desires under the desires. So the guiding question today: what do you desire?

So Tyler, that's our runway.

Tyler Zach (12:02)

I love it. So much of Christianity is now centered around knowledge and behavior — what are the behaviors we need to stop doing or start doing, what do you know about the Bible, is it correct. But this is like a gospel 101 introduction to getting deep. It's really the Adam and Eve garden story played out here, of desire — and then the serpent redirecting their desire toward other things, and the consequences that come, the fig leaves we put on. The Enneagram uses defense mechanisms as the language for that. I love that you're getting under the hood here. Phenomenal introduction, Jesse.

Jesse Eubanks (12:54)

Here's a theologically nerdy way of framing that. We so often have this fixation in Christendom on two things: orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Orthodoxy being: if I have the right cognition, the right beliefs, the right theology, everything will be okay. And then orthopraxy: if I just go out and act right. And let me say — those two things are very, very important. I am not saying they're not. But Jesus was often concerned with orthopathy. Orthopathy is this idea of affection and desire and wants and longings. What does it look like for us to begin to cultivate a desire and a love that is formed into the likeness of Christ? We need all three of those components to hold each other in tension and hold each other accountable.

But this idea that cognition alone is strong enough to overcome desire is a very false belief. At the end of the day, we are very emotionally driven people. We need cognition to hold it in tension. But the idea that I can just memorize the right Bible verses and make all desire go away — that's not quite how things work.

Okay. So let's kick things off with the heart triad — Types Two, Three, and Four. This triad is searching for identity. And a lot of times we think of identity only in terms of the question "who am I?" — but we can also think of it as "who am I to other people? Who am I within a community, within my place in the world?" So this desire for identity drives each of these types, and it comes out in their specific ways as well.

Type Two — the Helper. Their childhood theme is neglect and unfulfilled needs. Twos were taught as kids: suppress your needs, don't pay attention to your needs, other people's needs are more important than yours. As a result, they came to believe that it was not okay — not morally acceptable, socially risky — for them to have their own needs. The message they long to hear is that they are loved and wanted — that their company is wanted, their presence is wanted.

So they go out into this world with this deep desire to be loved and wanted unconditionally. But the catch is: they don't believe they can really truly get that. So they settle for being indispensable. And it's really hard for a Two to tell the difference between being loved and wanted unconditionally and being indispensable. Being indispensable comes out in the form of trying to do too many things for too many people on too small of a relational budget. They don't have the capacities they believe they do, and they exert themselves way beyond reasonable limits because they believe if they don't, they won't be wanted anymore.

Of course, all idols require sacrifices. And so the Two ends up sacrificing asking for what they need — because having needs makes them feel ashamed. They sacrifice receiving without paying back — because the idea that they might be taking from people and not giving back threatens their place in the community. And they sacrifice the experience of needing God's grace — because we experience God's grace when we acknowledge our needs and come to him with them. And because the Two is reluctant to do that, so often they don't get to experience the sweetness of God's grace.

So what does Jesus tell the Two? He tells you: I want you for who you are, not what you give. Jesus has not come to you and said, "Hey, Type Two, I'm only interested in you as long as you're serving, as long as you're giving." He treasures you. He wants you. Matthew 7:11 — "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" Type Two, he wants you to come and ask for what you need.

Type Three — the Achiever. The childhood theme of the Three is performance and achievement. A lot of emphasis on doing, getting things done, and feeling most secure and valued when receiving adoration from other people. The unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to have your own feelings and identity — because who cares about that? If it doesn't get me people's affections and adoration, having my own feelings and identity is sort of irrelevant.

The message they long to hear is: you're significant and valued for simply being you. And so in a lot of different ways, I have done the dog and pony show — going out and trying to prove my significance to other people. The more I fail to recognize what drives me as a person, the more compelled I feel to do things that aren't actually what God wants for me. But the more I can recognize that a lot of what drives me at moments comes from a place of wounding, the more I can rest in: Lord, I'm significant to you and to the people around me that matter most. I don't have to do these things to prove it.

A friend of mine says: whatever we disown, owns us. So we've got to take ownership — I've got this wound, and I've got to do the work of working through it.

So what is it that the Three wants? They want to be significant. And they settle for being successful. I've talked about why we can't tell the difference — because when I'm significant, people look at me with love in their eyes. But when I'm successful, people also look at me with love in their eyes. They hit me in the same way. The fake and the real feel the same emotionally.

So the idol of the Three is being successful. And they sacrifice authenticity with themselves and others, because they've got to uphold this image. They sacrifice family and intimate relationships, because there are things to do to make sure people are still clapping. And they sacrifice being loved for who they are — because they're petrified that if people knew who they really were, they would not love them.

What does Jesus tell you? I adore your unedited self, not your performance. We don't have to go out and kill it in order for Jesus to look at us with all the love and affection of the universe. John 8 — "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Truth is so central to our experience of Jesus. And that means, in part, we have to rest in the truth of who Jesus is, trust him, walk with him — and not go out and attempt to earn that.

Type Four — the Individualist. The childhood theme is loss and rejection. A lot of Fours feel like the black sheep, the outcast, the perpetually misunderstood — the weird ones. They live with a general sense that at one point in life they had love, and love abandoned them. And now they're trying to find it again. Their unconscious childhood message was that it's not okay to be too much or too forgettable. If you're too much, people freak out and back away. But if you're just like everybody else, you become cookie-cutter and people will forget you.

The message they long to hear is: you're seen and loved exactly for who you are. They want somebody to look at them, perceive them, get them, understand them, and really adore them just as they are. So what is it they want? They want to be their authentic self who is significant to others. But they settle for being unique.

And it's really hard for the Four to tell the difference between these two things. So they become addicted to differentiation. You ask a group of people what they want to do and get to the Four — you can tell what they'll say: anything but what somebody else said. Because they feel like that differentiation is the thing that's going to give them value and set them apart.

What do they sacrifice to their idol of being different? They sacrifice happiness — because they're perpetually longing and they're worried that happiness is sort of a shallow thing, and that the good stuff is always out in the future. They sacrifice feeling accepted and understood — because if you take away all their mystery, they're no longer different. And then they've lost an identity and everything becomes common. So they need to go to the strange place, the back-alley restaurant — going to Chili's feels like death.

So what does Jesus tell them? I know you and I delight in who you are. We see this in Psalm 139: "You have searched me, Lord, and you know me." So the Four who often feels so misunderstood — Jesus says to you: you may get to say that to other people, but you don't get to say that to me. I see you. I know you. I accept you. In fact, I know you way better than you know yourself. You are actually more of a mystery to yourself than you are to me.

And within that, the Four is invited just to rest. That search — that good desire to be authentic — is then stewarded by the reality: I want to be authentic, but I don't have to curate an image. Jesus already knows me and accepts me as I am. I don't have to go out and fabricate an eccentric image in order to have a place in this world.

Jesse Eubanks (36:00)

All right. Let's talk a little bit about the head triad — these folks are searching for security. They're always on the hunt for more resources, more security, more support, living with a general sense of: where am I in relationship to security, safety, pleasure, and contentment?

Type Five — the Investigator. The childhood theme of the Five is being engulfed or neglected. It could be overwhelming parents, or a life situation in which something came up and nobody was adequately prepared for it. So the Five generally lived with a sense that the world was really demanding a lot and that they were getting swallowed up by it all. Their unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to be comfortable in the world — if you slow down and take things at surface level, you're a sucker. You're going to get taken advantage of and end up hurting other people.

The message they long to hear is that your needs are not a problem. Fives actually see even their own desires as problematic. They would really prefer to not have personal needs. That's why you encounter some Fives whose homes have very few possessions — even having needs feels a bit problematic. You also get some Fives who are bunker people, fallout shelter people.

What is it that they want? They want to be competent. This is a basic psychological need — if you look at Erik Erikson's stages of psychological development, competency is really, really important. The Five sort of relishes in that and universalizes that desire: I want to be competent at all of life. But they don't really believe they can be truly competent. So they settle for knowing everything. They move from an embodied experience of competency into a mental state of competency. They end up creating these really elaborate mind palaces.

The idol of the Five is knowing everything. And they sacrifice feeling known and loved — because they hold everything in as they try to figure out all of life. They sacrifice intimate relationships — because people are emotional, confusing, needy, and takers. And they sacrifice engaging life — they mistake watching a video about skiing for actually going out and skiing, failing to realize those are not the same thing.

What does Jesus tell you? Your needs are not a problem. You were made to have needs. You were made to not know everything. Yes, you were made to be competent — but not to bear the burden of having all the answers about all the things. Because you already know the person who has the answers for all the things, and you're invited to trust in him. Luke 6 — "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap." Stinginess begets stinginess. If you live from a posture that says there's not enough in the world and you hoard and hunker down and make your world very small, that has consequences. But if you live a life of generosity — understanding competency as an embodied, relational experience — that will lead to more relational flourishing in your life.

Type Six — the Loyalist. The childhood theme of the Six is danger and unpredictability. This can range from kids who were just anxious all the way to those who suffered significant childhood trauma. Their unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to depend on or trust yourself. Many Sixes grew up in environments where the unpredictable kept invading their life, or with people around them going, "Don't run, don't do that, you shouldn't — " And so the Six learned that they were not very good at forecasting problems correctly and they shouldn't trust their own instincts.

The message they long to hear is that you are secure. They want to know that everything is okay, that they can rest and stop having to be hypervigilant. So they want to be secure, but they settle for safety. And the line between these two things can be really dicey for a Six. Security and safety feel like the exact same thing — but one of them is about trust and rest, and the other one is about protocol. So the Six becomes really fixated around protocols, fences, rules, criteria, and forecasts to make sure everything is tended to. And typically it's not coming from a posture of trust.

So the idol of the Loyalist is safety. They sacrifice feeling carefree and relaxed — because the moment they fall asleep is when somebody cuts a hole in the fence. They sacrifice trusting God and other people — what if God's not there? What if other people don't show up? And they sacrifice even trusting their own ideas. Sixes are often addicted to asking everybody else: "Do you think this is right? Did I do the right thing? What else should I do?" It's really hard for the Six to trust their own convictions and instincts.

What does Jesus tell the Six? You're safe and secure in my care. I got you. I'm going to take care of you. You can trust me. Now, Jesus does not give us a naive promise — he promises there will be troubles in this world. He's not promising you'll live a life with no physical or emotional danger. What he is saying is: I will be with you always, to the end of the age. All things work together for the good of those who love him. Matthew 14 — Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. There's an invitation for the Six to move past just questioning and researching and building a fortress of protocols and actually go out and take action — based on the assumption that you're going to go out and Jesus is going to meet you there. He's going to take care of you. You don't need to bear the burden of being the one who thinks about every worst-case scenario. Your desire for security can be found in the person of Jesus. And it turns out — because he's put the Holy Spirit inside of you — good chance that all those ideas you have are actually very valuable and worth paying attention to. So you're even invited to appropriately trust God at work inside of you as well.

Type Seven — the Enthusiast. The childhood theme of the Seven is prolonged childhood and loss of paradise. Many Sevens describe their childhood in very dreamy, favorable ways. But the truth is that a lot of Sevens at some point began to experience something — small or big — in which it felt like childhood was robbed from them. I know Sevens who actually become depressed on their birthdays, because every year marks that they've gotten further and further away from childhood, which was the ideal time of life for them.

Their unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to depend on others for anything. Sevens felt like: if I wait on other people to show up and deliver on the things I'm longing for, they're not going to do it. So the Seven feels like they've got to go out and get theirs on their own. The message they long to hear is that they will be taken care of — that other people are attuned to their desires, their wants, their needs, and are appropriately responding to those in ways that have the Seven's best interest in mind.

So what do they want? Very simple — they want to be happy. And I think this is something we all want. But they don't believe that they can truly be happy in this life. So they settle for pleasure. And it's really hard for the Seven to tell the difference. What is the difference between true joy and happiness and indulging in the next grand adventure, going to the buffet, dreaming about the next thing? Those things feel like the exact same thing for the Seven.

So their idol of pleasure requires them to sacrifice feeling satisfied — because they're always longing for the next adventure. They sacrifice depth in relationships — because relationships get boring, melancholic, moody, sad, and needy. And they sacrifice discipline and focus — their brain jumps from thing to thing, life jumps from adventure to adventure. And so a lot of times Sevens can fail to stick with things and fail to develop some really important muscles essential for flourishing in life.

So what does Jesus tell you? I will take care of you. Jesus longs for you to be happy. A friend of mine says the ultimate trajectory of the Christian life is toward joy. Jesus longs for us to experience joy. But in the same way that the Six has to realize that their desire for security will only be fully fulfilled in heaven — that longing for joy and happiness will only be truly fulfilled in heaven as well. Your needs are important to God. He wants to respond to them. What he doesn't want is your desire for happiness to become so strong that you become addicted to those things and they begin to rule over you. It's like the addict — the first time they get high, it's the greatest feeling they've ever had. But eventually all they're doing is getting high just to maintain so they don't bottom out.

Luke 14 — "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." Sevens are invited to move beyond a joy of avoidance into a joy of substance. And when they move into that joy of substance, what they find is that it actually gives them far more happiness than the joy of avoidance ever could.

Jesse Eubanks (46:00)

Let's make our way into the body triad — or what some call the gut triad. These folks are searching for freedom. Some would say autonomy, or independence. But they're searching for the ability to live their life according to their convictions, without being controlled by other people in ways that are destructive, and without doing destruction to their own lives.

Type Eight — the Protector. The childhood theme of the Eight is survival and conflict. A lot of Eights either came from families of Eights — where there was a kind of den of bears, wrestling hard, the line between play and aggression very thin and confusing — or they dealt with childhood illness and survived through strength, or they experienced a lot of bullying as kids and one day woke up to their own ability to push back. Survival and conflict was just everywhere as kids.

Their unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to be vulnerable or trust anyone. In warfare, when we ask "what's the enemy's vulnerability?" we mean: how can we exploit their weaknesses? In the same way, the Eight begins to view their own tenderness as something that can be exploited — and when they trust somebody else, they're setting themselves up to be betrayed and taken advantage of.

So they long to hear the message: you will not be betrayed. Somebody who is going to stick with them and never suddenly turn on them. So what do they want? They want to protect themselves. That's a good desire we all have — the ability to protect ourselves and the people we love. But they settle for control and power. And those two things become very confusing for the Eight. It becomes hard to tell the difference between appropriately protecting themselves from being attacked and simply: if I'm the one in control, I can't get attacked. That becomes very alluring.

So their idol of control and power requires them to sacrifice closeness with people — so they won't be betrayed. They sacrifice giving and receiving forgiveness — because that requires admitting fault and flaws and mistakes that people will leverage against them. And if they give forgiveness, then the other person isn't being punished, and they should be punished for what they've done. And finally, they sacrifice having and sharing fragile feelings — acknowledging their own tender feelings. In many cases, the Eight had to sacrifice the tenderness and innocence of their childhood in order to survive. And the idol of control and power continues to make them sacrifice that inner child.

So what does Jesus tell you? I will never betray you. Jesus is worth your absolute trust. He is not going to tell you one thing and then suddenly change it up on you. He is faithful all the way to the end. Luke 6 — "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." Eight, you have received the mercy of God. Who are you to withhold that from other people? In your desire to protect yourself, do not sin by withholding mercy from others. You cannot ask the Lord for mercy for you and demand that he only brings justice to everybody else.

If you have received mercy, the burden is on you to give mercy. And part of the journey for the Eight is: what happened to you in which you felt betrayed, taken advantage of, and had to be bigger than you actually were? Until you begin to do the work of making peace with that part of your story, you will always be tempted to pervert your desire to protect yourself by seizing control and never allowing anybody else to have authority over you.

God designed us to live within our place in the world — which means there are people who have authority over us, and people we have authority over. But we should never be in a position where no one has authority over us. That is unhealthy and destructive, and it's bad practice for heaven. Eight, you've got to do your work.

Type Nine — the Peacemaker. The childhood theme of the Nine is feeling unheard and overpowered. A lot of Nines describe maybe one parent who was really big — the giant emotional epicenter in the house, and everybody walked on eggshells around them. And maybe the other parent was extremely passive. So they would go to that parent and the parent would offer good words, but wouldn't actually take any action to satisfyingly deal with the issue. Nines just grew up with a general sense of: I don't possess the ability to change outcomes. My opinion doesn't count for much in the world I live in.

So they grew up with this unconscious childhood message: it's not okay to think too much of yourself or to assert yourself. And as a result, they end up with this longing desire to know that their presence matters. That when they're in the room, when they're talking with others and engaging with others, their presence really makes a difference. Some Nines find this hard to articulate, so I've realized that if I say the opposite, it lands differently — they want to know that their absence matters. That when they're not there, people actually feel it.

So what is it they want? They want to be at peace. Nines really embody this longing for shalom — the wholeness and completion of all things, both internally and externally, relationally and universally. But they settle for comfort. They don't really believe they can get the peace they're longing for. So they become addicted to the path of least resistance. Whatever is easiest, causes the least conflict, bothers people the least, leaves them least emotionally disturbed — that's typically what they settle for.

And in their worship of comfort, they relinquish their own desires. Because even acknowledging their own desires brings up conflict inside of them. If I want something and I can't get it, what do I do with that? If I have an opinion and the other person doesn't like it — and so they just forfeit the belief that they can make a difference. They sacrifice the growth that comes from conflict. And here's the fascinating thing: Nines love great stories. And in every single story they love, the main character is transformed and changed largely because of the conflict they encounter. Conflict forges us as people. And when we fail to engage in conflict, we get stuck.

So what does Jesus tell you? Your presence matters. The world needs you. Your relationships need you. The people around you need you — not in a vending-machine sense, but in the sense that your presence transforms lives. You have the capacity to influence outcomes, change people's trajectory and destiny, to show up with a voice and an opinion and to shape the world around you. Your presence matters.

Luke 21 — "But watch yourself, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength." The invitation for the Nine is: you've got to wake up. When we fall asleep to the life we've been entrusted with, there are severe relational consequences. And for many Nines — your idol of comfort is accidentally perpetuating the very thing that wounded you as a child. Other people's addiction to comfort was super harmful to you. When you engage in the same way, you inadvertently hurt other people as well.

You have a good desire for peace. Bring that into the world. But oftentimes, peace is accomplished through action and not through passivity. We've got to go out into the world and engage life as it is — sober-minded, believing that God will work out all things that he has begun. Ultimately we will experience shalom, but beginning to build that shalom now requires us to take action and to exert ourselves.

Type One — the Reformer. The childhood theme of the One is conditional love and criticism. Many Ones grew up either in environments with high protocol — military families, ministry families, some expectation where the child was expected to behave with more maturity than was age-appropriate, with very clear guidelines on what was right and wrong and consequences for crossing those lines. Or the One grew up in an environment that was totally chaotic, lacking a moral compass, and the One began to develop their own internal parental voice to navigate the world. In both cases, the One internalized a very demanding voice that showed them: this is the correct way to live. And if you don't, you are in the wrong.

The unconscious childhood message is that it's not okay to be wrong or make mistakes. In my own family, when we realized one of my kids is probably a One, one of the things we started saying is a mantra: "Making mistakes is what?" And she'll say, "Part of learning." So many Ones don't have that. They don't believe that making mistakes is actually good for us, beneficial, or that God's grace has accounted for it. God knows we're going to make mistakes. God knows we're going to mess up. But so many Ones as kids did not receive the ability to live with that.

The message they long to hear is that you're good. Not just good in a moral sense, though Ones do have a desire for moral goodness. But also just — my existence is good. It's good that I'm here. It's good that God made me. It's good that I exist. When we see in Genesis that God declares over creation, "It is good" — that's the longing of the One.

So what do they want? They want to have integrity — the same character in public and in private, not saying one thing and behaving differently. Not being duplicitous. They want to be somebody with integrity in the way that a bridge has integrity: it's built right, it can hold the weight, the construction is good and whole and complete. Ones have this longing to be well-built as people, to be people of character.

So they want to have integrity, but believing they can't really achieve it, they end up settling for perfectionism. And perfectionism is a really cruel idol. I say that if we could hear the inner voice of the One, we would lock that voice up for abuse — because that interior voice of the One is so cruel. And the really twisted part of it is that it loves — especially in our faith — to commandeer Scripture. It has the words of God, but it does not have the voice of your spiritual father. It doesn't have the tenderness, the affection, the love and compassion. All it has is demand. And it grabs hold of Bible verses and then beats people up on the inside. And when they can't take it anymore, it spills out onto others — because the One can only beat themselves up for so long.

So the One has this idol of perfectionism, and they sacrifice their own wants and desires — "Good grief, who cares what I want? It's only what Jesus wants." But Jesus did not come to eradicate you. You are not supposed to cease to exist. You have desires, and your desires matter. They also sacrifice fun, enjoyment, and spontaneity — because there's stuff to be done. And they sacrifice receiving and giving grace. The belief is that anger has more transformative power than grace does. Grace is too soft, too slow, too easy on people. Anger gets things done; grace does not. And perfectionism lies to them in that way.

What does Jesus tell you? I've made you good just as you are. And it's true on both fronts. Your existence is good — God has made you good in your mere existence. And morally, righteously, you've taken on the righteousness of Christ. When God looks at you, he looks at you with all the affection that he has for Jesus. Your sins are no longer held against you.

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Ones — in your pursuit of goodness, rest in Jesus. Trust him. Trust that he's working it out. It's going to be okay. Don't allow your good desire to right the wrongs of the world to become one that fuels a bitter anger that inadvertently also destroys everything.

I think of the parable in which Jesus tells us: be careful about pulling everything up, because in your desire to pull out all the weeds, you'll also pull out the good stuff. Ones so often have that temptation — they want to confront all the evil and sin in the world, but they end up bulldozing and destroying other people in the process. So what does it look like to be people who speak truth and reform the world — which is a good desire — but do it with God's disposition: his patience, his gentleness, his compassion, his grace. The ability to miraculously, supernaturally hold the tension of those two things.

Tyler Zach (54:31)

Amen. Thank you for joining me and Jesse today to learn the gospel through an Enneagram lens so you can transform your life and relationships.

Tyler Zach (54:52)

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Now before you go, take a moment to pause and reflect on your desires. What is one desire that has been quietly shaping your decisions? And what deeper longing might be underneath it?

As you sit with that, remember that the goal isn't to eliminate your desires, but to let one desire guide them all — to love God and love others — trusting that Christ meets our shame with delight, our fear with his presence, and our failures with his grace.