The Belovedlove Toolbox is a collection of resources (downloads, links, books, reminders) chosen to help you become more aware of God’s tenderness and care for you. These tools can be used individually or in combination to aid you as you learn to be embraced and live in the reality of God’s love.
Identity Resources
Characteristics of Identity
- Body
- Mind
- Heart
- Spirit
- Personality and temperament
- Strengths, gifts, talents
- Passions
- Interests
- Love Language
- Place in time and space
- Family
- Growth
- Creativity
- Things I don’t yet know about myself
- Limitations
- God within me.
- Restoring my soul
Identity Assessments Tools
Love Language Assessment (free, 10-15 min, 30 questions.)
Identifies: love language
Description: An analysis of your “emotional communication preference,” It identifies a primary “love language” what that means, and how you can use this information to better connect with others in relationship, particularly those you are close to. The five love languages are
- Quality time
- Words of affirmation
- Acts of service
- Gifts
- Touch
Keirsey temperament test (free: 30-45 min.; 70 questions.)
Identifies: personality and temperament
Description: This is a widely used instrument to help people discover their personality type. The KTS-II is based on Keirsey Temperament Theory™, published in the books Please Understand Me® and Please Understand Me II, by Dr. David Keirsey.” There is a goldmine of information on the website that explains how different personalities function and can excel in the workplace as well as personal relationships.
Once completed a person is assigned 4 letters that help describe their personality.
- E extrovert (expressive) or I Introvert (attentive)
- S sensing (observant) or N Intuiting (introspective)
- T thinking (toughminded) or F Feeling (friendly)
- J Judging (scheduled) or P Perceiving (probing)
The Flag Page ($25: 5-10 min)
Identifies: motivation, talents, temperament. Generates “flagpage”
Description: Intriguing unique assessment using a series of choices, instead of a questionnaire. It identifies several different personal qualities, including motivation, the environment you are most comfortable in (a way of describing temperament), and your gifts and talents.
Kolbe test ($55; 20 min.; 36 questions)
Identifies: “conative skill” which is the way you naturally get things done.
Description: Developed by the author of the book Powered By Instinct 5 Rules for Trusting Your Guts by Kathy Kolbe, the Kolbe test assesses your “conative skill. ”According to Kolbe, there are three parts of the mind: one part that thinks, one that feels and one that gets things done. The Kolbe test assesses the third, with is called your “Conative skill”—the way you act to accomplish tasks. This is assessed in 4 different categories, or “action modes”: Fact finder, follow through, quick start, and implementor.
DISC assessment (free, 15 min.)
Identifies: Personality profile
Description: Widely used by corporations to assess a “fit” for their potential employees, [behaviour assessment tool based on the DISC theory of psychologist William Marston. Marston’s theory centers around four different personality traits: Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. This theory was then developed into a personality assessment tool (personality profile test) by industrial psychologist Walter Vernon Clarke (July 26, 1905 – Jan. 1, 1978). The version used today was developed from the original assessment by John Geier, who simplified the test for better, more concise results]
Strengthsfinder ($20; 60 min.)
Identifies: personal strengths
Description: This unique assessment that was developed based on 50 years of Gallup poll research. It was devised by a psychologist named Donald Clifton, and identifies your top five “signature” strengths from a field of 34 possible strengths. The descriptions of strengths are fascinating and unique, and worth reading about even if you don’t take the test. The book Now Discover your strengths is also well worth reading.
Enneagram (free, 15 min.)
Identifies: personality
Description: The enneagram is a model that structures human personality based on 9 different types of functioning that relate to the direction of three centres of intelligence (mental, emotional and instinctive) that we all have. Each enneagram type is based on unconscious fears, desires to compensate them and expresses a unique way in which the three centres of intelligence interact between each other.
Spiritual Gifts test (free, 20-30 min., 100+ questions)
Identifies: spiritual gifts
Description: One of many online ways of learning about your spiritual gifts, as described in the New Testament. Good resources and references associated with this. Wikipedia also has a very good description of spiritual gifts.
Identity Books
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Dr. Paul Brand MD and Philip Yancey
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates
Father’s Love Letter by Barry Adams (see also their excellent website http://www.fathersloveletter.com/ )
Identity and Value Bible References:
1O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.
3You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,”
12Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
13For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
14I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
15My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
17How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.
19O that You would slay the wicked, O GoDepart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
20For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
21Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
22I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.
23Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
Be loved
We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10
And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.1 John 4:16
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, for the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:22-26
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:15-19
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18 NIV