How Your Temperament Affects Your Life, Purpose, and Relationships: Interview with Jennifer Sauer

What is your temperament and why does it matter?   

How can understanding your temperament, spiritual gifts, strengths, and weaknesses help you approach life and relationships?  

How can you utilize this with your family to improve connections within your home?  

What can you do today to get started?  

Join us as we interview Jennifer Sauer, CEO of Renew Ministry, Christian counselor, pastor, and coach as we learn how to overcome obstacles so that we can live within our spiritual gifts & understand temperament to show up better, communicate better and have better outcomes. 

Disclaimer: Interview transcript pulled using audio features. Some wording may be lost in transcription. For the full audio recording:  

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or your favorite podcast platform.  

Watch the full interview on YouTube here:  

Welcome to the "Raising Faithful Families" Podcast with Katy Bordeaux 

Katy Bordeaux: Hi, everybody. It's Katy Bordeaux with Covenant Collections and your host here on the Raising Faithful Families podcast. Today, we're going to interview Jennifer Sauer. She is a Christian counselor. She teaches people how to overcome obstacles so that they can live within their spiritual gifts. And also kind of learn and understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to understand those within the people in your family, within your children, how can you work with those in order to show up better, communicate better and have better outcomes. 

So stick around for the conversation. There's a lot of value here. 

Hi, Jennifer. How are you doing today? 

Jennifer Sauer: I'm great. How are you? 

Katy Bordeaux: I'm good. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. I can't wait for you to share this message with the audience. I think it's an amazing message that can really benefit everybody, especially Christian parents on raising faithful families. 

So, I want to start by having you share with us who you are, what you do and a bit about your story. 

Jennifer Sauer: Well, I am a pastor of two small independent churches. I live in Camden, Tennessee. I'm a Christian counselor and I'm also a Ramsey preferred coach. So I do a little financial coaching as well. My husband and I have been married for the last 28 years this May. 

And together we have four children and 13 grandchildren. So I know a little bit about raising children. My husband's also a pastor, and we've served in ministry for the last 28 years, and I initially started counseling to assist him with pre marriage counseling and to help families that we serve. I spent seven years in Christless Pregnancy Center Ministries, and I was a business owner, and I founded the Renew Ministry. 

And I became an international representative of Sarasota Academy of Christian Counseling and a representative of the National Association of Christian Counselors where I teach temperament therapy. I do it online. I do it in person. And it's a process where you learn to identify your strengths, your weaknesses, your gifts, and talents, and discover your true temperament that you were born with. 

And it's a key tool that I use to help people find their purpose in life. 

Katy Bordeaux: That's amazing. So can you tell us what the spiritual gifts are and how someone can find out what their spiritual gift is? 

Jennifer Sauer: Spiritual gifts are gifts from God that help us to accomplish what God created us to accomplish and they help us to live a fruitful life and they give us purpose in our lives. 

And it's a really key thing that we discover that purpose in our life. The assessment that I use is called the Arno profile system. It's, APS for short. It's after the doctor's Arno Phyllis and Richard Arno and it is God inspired and it was established to help with counseling techniques. 

It's proven to be about 95 percent accurate when people answer the questions appropriately and it helps a person to discover how to live and their strengths within their temperament to meet the needs that they have in ways that honor God. And when a person's given permission to operate in their strengths, they can do great things. 

People don't realize how much they can accomplish when they are living in balance with the way they were created to live. The Bible says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And this is who that God knew. And we get to the root of that. For example, this is kind of a simplified explanation of what temperament does. 

There are five different temperament types. Melancholy temperament is gifted with artistic and intellectual abilities, and they're very self sacrificing people. And calorics are encouragers and motivators, and they're good at starting new ministries and new projects. And I can even go into issues with these temperaments also. 

But the sanguine is a person who is a people person, and they're known as the world's best evangelist. And then there's the supine temperament, and they're known as the servant's heart. And they have the ability to serve people in many, many ways. And then the phlegmatic is kind of the evening temperament. 

They can do tedious work with precision and accuracy. We need those kind of people to kind of help keep the books and keep the peace. Most people are a combination of these five temperaments. There's thousands of different combinations. And I show people how they can live within their strengths. 

And avoid their weaknesses through these temperaments. 

Katy Bordeaux: That's so valuable. So when you're working with people on this type of ministry, do you see a common roadblock or a common obstacle that people seem to face? And how do you help them work through that, if so? 

Jennifer Sauer: I do see a common roadblock. People live out of balance of who they were truly committed to/created to be because, you know, they grow up in a certain way and they're told they can only do certain things and they limit themselves. And also the biggest obstacle, of course, is living out of the will of God and people develop a poor self image, and their self perception is not what it should be, and they don't realize their true value, and they doubt themselves, and they doubt their abilities, and so they don't do them, and so a lot of gifts go unused, if they really realize what they were capable of doing, God can help them do great things. If a child has a natural artistic ability, for instance, their parents may squash that ability if they don't let them express it and their gifts and talents go unused and they spend their lives seeking that missing piece because we have these urges and desires that are natural to us. 

And if a child is nurtured in those gifts, they'll grow up to succeed and they'll do great things. But they have to have that encouragement. 

Katy Bordeaux: Yeah. So, what's the simplest way that someone could identify their own strengths and weaknesses? 

Jennifer Sauer: Okay. If you're living in your weaknesses, you're separated yourself from God, from others. 

You probably don't like yourself very much when you're living in your weaknesses. You're trying to reach an unmet need that's in your life. And what we try to do is discover what that unmet need is and deal with it and made it in a way that will bring glory to God. Amen. Uh, heal your brokenness. And it's a process that I take people through to kind of help them discover the root of the problem, to identify your strengths. 

You can ask yourself, what's my passion? What do I excel at doing? And what would make me want to get up in the morning and be excited about going to work or doing whatever it is I do that day. That makes a huge difference. If you can ask your children, you know, what, if you can do anything in your life that you wanted to do, if you go anywhere you wanted to go, and there were no obstacles or no financial barriers, then what would you do? 

And when you find the answer to that, you'll probably find what some of their gifts and strengths might be. I believe that any weakness can be turned into a strength if it's used for the glory of God, because he didn't create any junk and he didn't put anything in there that he didn't want used in some way. 

And so we have to figure out what those barriers are, bring them back around to a strength. And that is possible. It's difficult for some people because they have to be willing. To make changes. 

Katy Bordeaux: That's really helpful. I feel like those answers from our children would be so interesting. I can't wait to ask my son. 

He probably will say something like be a superhero, but that just means he wants to help people heal people. He wants to feel like he has a purpose. So even that, you can, like, look through it and see what's their strength? What are they kind of drawn to? So, do you feel like understanding someone's spiritual gift, whether that's your partner or your children, somebody that you work with, can help you build a stronger relationship with them? 

And then, what type of tips do you have for someone to identify the gifts in others? 

Jennifer Sauer: Okay. Well, I've helped a lot of couples find healing in their marriage by teaching them about their partner's needs. When somebody understands what the other person really needs, they can attempt to meet those needs in ways that their partner can accept. 

With children, it's very helpful to know what parenting style would work best for that child. Some respond to punishment and rewards that others don't. Some are going to rebel and some people get really upset if they're made to look foolish, or if you tell them what their mistakes are. So you have to be able to communicate those kind of things with grace. 

Understand how they can receive it. It's all about communication and being willing to treat other pay people in the way that they need to be treated, which is usually very different than the way we want to be treated. When somebody feels heard by you, when they feel you understand them, you can build a strong bond and relationships are strengthened. 

When we make an effort to treat people the way that they need to be treated, even when it comes to our kids, especially. 

Katy Bordeaux: I agree. So you also teach conflict resolution. And would you say that someone should tailor the way they approach conflict resolution with someone based on their understanding of that person's gifts, strengths and weaknesses? 

Jennifer Sauer: I think that's a great idea because, if you just cookie cutter treat everybody the same, you're not going to get. A good result for everybody, understanding that person's temperament helps them, to receive what you have to say better. Getting to know them is that first step. I've met couples who've been married for years and didn't truly understand their partner's temperament, and they never got along, after going through this process with me, they understood each other better and they started communicating different and they're happily married today. Sometimes it takes, to get your eye off yourself and learn the problem of the other person and what their perspective is. It can be difficult if you've got one partner who's willing and one is not, but once you understand that person and you can really talk to them in a way that they can receive it, then you can make changes and the relationship grows because I think just making an effort is a huge step in mending relationships that are broken because of miscommunication. 

Yeah, I think that, you can work out any problem if you really hear the other person and. Get yourself out of the way. Right. Listen. 

Katy Bordeaux: That's helpful. Sorry if you keep seeing my very needy kitten. If I don't pet her constantly, she'll climb up on my shoulder and sit there like a little parrot. So if you could share, if you had the opportunity to somehow get one tip, one message to everyone in the world at once, what would be the one thing that you wanted to share that you feel like could have the biggest impact? 

Jennifer Sauer: Well, all life is all about relationships. The relationship we have with God, with our spouse, with our Children and family and everything else, putting all of that in order. God first. Spouse second, children third, family and everything else come next. Everything in the right order. Jesus made it simple. 

He gave us two commandments to follow. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. And don't forget to love yourself so that you can love others. 

Katy Bordeaux: So if anybody wants to follow you or learn more about you or get to work with you, how can they find you? 

Jennifer Sauer: Oh, there's a couple of different ways. Uh, you can go to, www.renewcoach.com. I have a free ebook that I'm offering to everyone who comes to my site and you can also have a free consultation with me. 

If you want, um, you can email me at [email protected].  

Katy Bordeaux: Okay, great. I'll link those things too, for anybody to be able to easily access those things. So thank you so much for coming on. This information was super valuable and we appreciate you sharing it with us. 

Jennifer Sauer: Well, thank you. And it was nice to meet you and your cat. 

Katy Bordeaux: I hope this episode was valuable for you, and I pray you're walking away with a new insight, perspective, or idea to implement as you move forward. Remember that God makes everything we truly need available to us. And the life you've prayed for is just waiting for you to take the next step. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review so that we can continue showing up and reaching families who need this message. Until next time, take care and stay blessed. 

P.S. If you haven’t yet, be sure to claim your free gift of 125 Faithful Parenting Affirmation Cards. 

Many blessings, 

Katy