Youniversity - Part 1 by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Why Study Yourself

2 Corinthians 13:5 says: Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. The Bible does not just commend self-examination in the spiritual sense — it establishes a principle that applies to the whole person. The better you understand yourself, the better decisions you make, the better you relate to people, and the more productive your life becomes.

We spend years studying medicine, science, and geography and never pay serious attention to studying ourselves. One of the most overlooked truths is this: you are entirely unique. Among every human being who has ever lived or will ever live, there is no duplicate to you — not in DNA, not in fingerprint, not in the specific combination of experiences, wiring, and purpose that God placed within you. If God wanted to produce you in large numbers, he would have done mass production. He took his time with you.

Things That Determine Who You Are Today

1. Your Past

Every experience you have had — your upbringing, your parents' marriage, your wins, your wounds, your disappointments, how you were treated — adds up to who you are today. This is why none of us are the same. We have not had the same experiences.

This understanding also helps when relating with people. Most of the time when someone responds harshly or erratically, it is not about you. They brought their misunderstanding and their pain from somewhere before you arrived. You just walked into it. If you understand that, you stop taking things personally and you stop firing at the wrong target.

2. Your Personality — Temperaments

Scientists have identified four major temperament types:

• Sanguine (Yellow) — Bubbly, joyful, relational, optimistic. They see the positive in everything. Almost impossible to find them depressed. They are an energy in the room and a great presence at any gathering.
• Choleric (Red) — Passionate, results-oriented, task-driven. They don't understand why you need a holiday. Work is their energy source. They are not naturally people-oriented — they are project-oriented. If you are not producing results, the relationship with a choleric will die a natural death. They are not being malicious; they are just expressing who they are.
• Phlegmatic (Green) — Laid-back, easygoing, adaptable. Most Nigerians are phlegmatic. You can squeeze a phlegmatic and they will simply adjust. They don't like conflict. They can be stubborn but are easily motivated. Their slogan is: it's okay.
• Melancholy (Blue) — Detailed, artistic, deeply musical, poetic, architectural. They sing songs word for word from start to finish. They notice things others miss. They are gifted with their hands and their imagination.

Knowing your personality type affects your career choices, your relationships, and your daily habits. A choleric pastor will tell you to rest when you are already exhausted and mean it — because rest genuinely does nothing for him. Understanding that saves you from being offended by advice that comes from a different wiring.

3. Your Problems

Your present challenges shape what you pay attention to, what moves you, and what sections of a sermon hit differently. This is also why the same message lands in completely different places for different people — each listener is processing it through the filter of their current battle.

4. Your Purpose

God made you with something specific in mind before you were born. Jeremiah 1:5 — Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I ordained you. Your purpose is already in you. What pains you? What excites you? What gets your attention without you choosing it? These are arrows pointing toward your assignment. Moses was a deliverer — so when he saw a Hebrew being mistreated and no one was around, something in him responded. He was expressing his purpose before he understood it.

Life is not primarily about getting money. It is about living out your purpose. When you do that well, money follows. The problem is most people chase money and abandon purpose, then find they have the money and still feel empty.

5. Predictable Patterns

You are more predictable than you think. By observing your history you will find repeated patterns — you start well but never finish, you make money and immediately spend it, every relationship ends the same way, you arrive late to everything. These are not random events. They are patterns.

Knowing your patterns allows you to put structures in place to compensate. If you know you are impulsive with money, give someone else control with a two-signature requirement. If you know you cannot sustain relationships, let a trusted friend into every relationship you enter. If you are a last-minute person, deliberately set earlier deadlines. Patterns are manageable once they are named.

6. The People Around You

We are all created to be influenced. The only question is who is influencing you. You are a product of the five people closest to you. If all your friends are broke, that is a signal worth taking seriously. The goal is not to abandon people — it is to add people who are where you want to go.

Satan understands that God always uses people to bless you. So his strategy is to disappoint you with enough people that you withdraw and stop trusting. Once you stop trusting people, you cut off the conduit through which most of God's blessings travel. Guard against that. People are broken, most of what they do is not personal, and God is still sovereign over the network of relationships in your life.

Positive Programming

All of the above is your natural makeup. Being born again opens you to something beyond it — positive programming. The entire Bible is a book designed to rewrite your natural operating system. Romans says be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The Holy Spirit has the capacity to take those predictable patterns, those wounds from the past, those personality blind spots, and rewrite them — if you yield.

A Christian who still carries the same behaviours as before, still walks in the same poverty mentality, still operates in the same bitterness, has not opened themselves to the programming God provides. The word is the software. Church is part of the update process. Sessions like this are diagnostic runs.