Sermon Tone Analysis

A Word on Love...

​ ESV29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no other commandment greater than these.”The

aid of the Enneagram

We begin our consideration of the nine types of the Enneagram with Type 4 — “THE ROMANTIC” or “THE INDIVIDUAlST”

A few descriptors of 4’s: Creative, self-aware, intuitive, sensitive

The Need of a Type 4 — to be special/to be unique

Fewer 4’s in the United States than any other number.

Healthy 2’s behave like Healthy 4’s.

When Healthy:

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Healthy Fours have a considerable emotional range, and they manage it by not speaking or acting on every feeling they have.

They know they don’t have to be special to win God’s unconditional love.

These Fours have found a way to live, for the most part, outside the pattern of shame and inferiority.

They are deeply creative, emotionally honest and connected, and attuned to beauty.

Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, The Road back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery (Westmont, IL: IVP Books, 2016).

When Average:

Average Fours struggle daily with learning to accept themselves as they are.

Such efforts are complicated as they seek their identity by exaggerating their uniqueness.

These Fours are coy; they want you to want them but they play hard to get.

Their melancholy often goes unchecked, causing painful distance between themselves and others.

Average Fours are moody, melodramatic, needy and self-pitying.

When Unhealthy:

When Unhealthy:

Unhealthy Fours tend to be manipulative, playing the role of victim in order to create or maintain relationships.

They find themselves lacking when compared to others, which only exacerbates their self-debasement.

These Fours feel so much shame they are unable to connect to the very part of themselves that believes they can change and be better.

Four’s Deadly Sin: Envy

Three’s Deadly Sin:

Fours feel something important is missing from their essential makeup.

They’re not sure what it is, whether it was taken from them or they had it long ago but lost it—only that the missing part is nowhere to be found and they’re to blame.

The result is that they feel “different,” ashamed, uncertain about who they are and ill at ease in the world.

It’s no surprise that envy is the deadly sin of Fours.

They envy the normalcy, happiness and sense of comfort with which others seem to move through life.

They instantly spot who has a more interesting life, a happier family or childhood story, a better job, superior taste, a more privileged education, more distinguishing clothes or unrivaled artistic talent.

This envy, coupled with their pervasive sense of “irredeemable deficiency,” launches Fours on a never-ending quest to find the missing piece without which they never feel at home in the world.

Sadly, by fixating on what’s missing, Fours are blind to what’s present in their lives, namely the many wonderful qualities they already possess.

​The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery The Three’s Deadly SinIn crafting a persona that will impress and perhaps even help them form relationships with high-influence people who can help them get ahead socially or professionally, Threes lose touch with who they authentically are.

In time they so overidentify with their glittering persona that their true self gets lost in the performance.

They, along with everyone else, are fooled into believing their false image is who they really are.

Four’s At Work

​The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery The Three’s Deadly SinImmature Threes need to win and make it look easy.

For them, taking second place is a patronizing euphemism for being the first loser.

Whether they’re in the classroom, on the athletic field, on a trading floor, on a stage, pastoring a megachurch, in the boardroom or serving the poor, Threes have to be the star.

Because Threes grow up believing the world only values people for what they do rather than for who they are, becoming king or queen of the hill is a matter of life or death.

Three’s At Work

As you might imagine, many Fours gravitate toward careers in the arts.

A disproportionate percentage of our most beloved actors, poets, novelists, musicians, dancers, painters and filmmakers are Fours on the Enneagram.

But Fours don’t exclusively choose arts-related career paths.

They can be anything from a chef to a yoga teacher to a worship pastor to a web designer.

Because Fours are comfortable accompanying people on their journeys through painful times, they make great therapists, pastoral counselors and spiritual directors.

They’ll thrive as long as their work affords them the opportunity to express their creativity, depth of feeling and distinct style.

If you want Fours to perform ordinary or routine tasks, forget it.

First, they’ll feel it’s beneath their sensibilities.

Fours will procrastinate if you ask them to tackle projects that involve too many details, like writing reports or fussing around with spreadsheets.

If you meet a Four whose day job is waiting tables or driving a cab, chances are it’s a side gig to support their art or some other creative passion.

​The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery Ten Paths to Transformation for ThreesPeople will say Threes are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead.

They care about titles, who’s next in line for promotion and who occupies the corner office.

Threes make phenomenal salespeople, though they develop a kind of pride around their ability to turn it on and become whomever the customer wants them to be to make the sale.

The Spiritual Life of an 4:

​The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery Ten Paths to Transformation for ThreesThrees’ issues with feelings become really clear when you see them at work.

They live for setting a goal, killing it, setting another goal, killing it, setting the next goal, killing it.

This is where Threes get their energy, but it costs them.

Imagine a Three is working on an important project at work when their spouse or a friend calls to say they’re feeling angry or upset with them about something.

The Three might have feelings about the situation as well, but having to deal with feelings threatens their ability to complete their project on schedule.

So they disconnect in order to stay focused on work.

It’s as if they say, I’m going to slip this emotion into my “Feelings to Deal with Later” file and come back to it when I’m finished with this task.

All their lives, Fours have felt different and separate from others.

Is it any wonder they came to believe they could only recapture the love they yearn for by becoming unique and special?

Their sense of identity has never been quite stable, as they’ve tried on one after another like suits looking for the right fit.

Fours shouldn’t be angry with themselves, since everyone has peculiar, counterintuitive strategies for getting their needs met.

So first, Fours need to hear this loud and clear: there’s nothing missing.

It may be hard to believe, but God didn’t ship them here with a vital part absent from their essential makeup.

Fours arrived on life’s doorstep with the same equipment everyone else did.

The kingdom is inside them too.

Everything they need is here.

The Spiritual Life of an 3:

They must learn how to regulate and stabilize their emotions.

It’s hard at first, but Fours must figure out how to observe and detach from their feelings rather than exaggerate them, wallow in them or act them out impulsively.

Fours shouldn’t worry about settling for having ordinary, medium-sized emotions.

Regular feelings don’t make Fours any less special, and once they get their emotional house in order, balancing highs and lows, they’ll find they actually can form and hold on to relationships with others more easily.

With prayer, meditation and self-knowledge, Fours’ need to be unique will mellow.

For Fours an important healing message is “We see you.

You’re beautiful.

Don’t be ashamed.”

Relating to and with an 4:

Relating to and with an 4:

• Don’t be afraid to tell Fours when you feel pressure to be more than you can be or to handle more than your part.

• Fours need to be both unique and authentic.

That will require some compromise at times.

If you can be honest about how their style affects your life, the differences can be managed.

• Fours long for what they don’t have, and they are comfortable with longing.

It’s not something for you to fix.

• It is very important that you tell Fours how their mood changes affect you.

• Don’t tell Fours to “cheer up.”

They are usually neither sad nor depressed.

Fours are comfortable with melancholy.

But remember it’s okay for you to be lighthearted.

• If you can learn to model balance and stay present when they are caught in a cycle of moodiness, it will be a tremendous gift.