I’m a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (if you’ve never taken this good personality inventory, try it). I am an INFJ, which Keirsey.com calls a *Counselor*.

Counselors, by God-given personality, read things. Books, for one. But mostly people, situations, organizations. INFJ’s read a situation and know at a gut level, what’s going to happen next. They tend to intuit people’s abilities and intentions, too (which makes us good therapists).

But like any good gift, there is a bifurcation. (I learned that fun word from C.S. Lewis. Essentially it means: For every good and perfect gift God puts in us, satan tries to come up with a negative reflection of that- almost an opposite but with a seed of the truth in it- to try to draw us away from the gift.)

For an INFJ, the bifurcation is: being right but being ignored and feeling devastated by the outcome.

Ok, so what the heck does that have to do with walking on water, one might ask? I was practicing my Lectio Divina today on Mark 6- the Jesus walking on water story. I asked myself: I wonder what was each of the disciples’ MBTI?

Then I imagined that if I was one of them, with my INFJ-ness, this would have been the scenario:

Setting: 

Long day feeding the 5000, listening to sermons, healing folks, whatnot…

Problem:

Jesus says to the disciples, “Hey, y’all get in the boat and head over to Gennesaret. I’ll send away the crowds, pray a bit and meet you shortly.”

INFJ-ness kicks in, I whisper to Jesus, because He might have forgotten, “Ummm, are you sure you want to head over to Gennesaret so soon? I mean to say, they asked us to leave last time because you healed the crazy guy by sending all his demons into all their pigs- who all promptly drowned themselves. Think we ought to give it a bit more time?….. AND BTW- You see there’s a storm brewing. Is it a good idea to be in a boat tonight?”

All true and useful observations.

I image that Jesus’ answer would probably been something along the lines of a longsuffering stare (like we parents give our kids) which means, “Quit arguing and get in the boat.”

AND being INFJ, if I was a disciple in the boat and the storm starts railing, I’d be saying to myself, “I told Him so. I’m not a valued member of the team. Why would He make me an INFJ if I wasn’t supposed to use it?”

AH! and then the moment of discernment. There are often 2 true but incongruent realities (if you want more on that, read Lewis’ Till We Have Faces). The earthly, tangible realm is full of storms. The spirit realm is more real, though, and it is full of walking on waters and going to Gennesarets. And whether my INFJ brain can comprehend it, the walking on waters and the going to Gennesarets are the points of it all- I don’t need to understand why.

The following of God’s lead. That’s the point. No matter what our MBTI is 🙂