Jesse Eubanks is a certified Enneagram coach and host of The EnneaCast, a podcast exploring personality and relationships through the lens of the Enneagram. Jesse is also the founder and executive director of Love Thy Neighborhood,a discipleship and missions agency mobilizing people to follow Jesus and serve the poor in modern culture. Today, Jesse shares how he discovered his love for social action, his difficult path to relational health, and the contentious moment that led him to spiritual formation. Plus, we discuss why rightly knowing yourself is a deeply Christian thing to do and how the Enneagram helps on that journey. His new book How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram is out now. Jesse’s story reminds us that Jesus loves and calls us to be our true selves in Him.
Listen to Jesse’s story in your favorite podcast player now!
Stories Jesse shared:
- Writing a book to help people understand how they relate to others
- How our personality changes our relationship with God
- Growing up in a broken home in a divorced family
- Going to a conference in DC that changed his concern for the poor
- Studying about other perspectives in the world and how it hurt his faith
- Why social action, relational health, and spiritual formation became really important for him
- What happens to people in positions of power without spiritual formation
- Why self-awareness is important for growth
- Working at a shelter for nine years and what he learned
- Learning the truest and deepest thing about us is love
- Entering spiritual direction and how it helped him grow
- Reading about the Enneagram for the first time
- Launching Love Thy Neighborhood when he was funded
- Writing How We Relate and what people will get from it
- Why empathy is critical for relationships
Great quotes from Jesse:
The antidote for fear is God’s presence.
You can have all the right theology, your Gospel will be seen as bankrupt unless you are relationally healthy.
It is impossible to have spiritual maturity without self-awareness.
While I was surprised by some of my shortcomings, Jesus was not.
Empathy plus authority equals trust.
Resources we mentioned:
- Jesse’s website
- How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others Through the Enneagram by Jesse Eubanks
- The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
- The Relational Soul by Richard Plass and James Cofield
- StoryBrand by Donald Miller
- Me on the Enneacast
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