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So, I messed up. I’m throwing myself under the bus here. I’m having trouble having grace with myself. I share what happened here. Maybe you can totally relate to my situation, or maybe you can’t. Hopefully you’ll at least be amused by my humbling…
We all have thorns in our flesh to keep us humble so hopefully this will be encouraging to you… to see me hum-iliated 🙂
Also…
I want to help you be motivated toward intimacy. Whether you’re a wife who needs motivation to love your spouse with sexual intimacy or you’re a husband who needs motivation to care about your wife’s emotional desires… or anywhere in between. This is how to be motivated to intimacy: emotional, physical and spiritual in your marriage!
Enjoy!
A couple of FREE resources I mentioned (after you’re motivated of course) is learn to seduce!
The 5 Amazing Seduction Tips delightyourmarriage.com/tips
Also, for men to understand their wife and how to remove the blocks that are keeping her from intimacy: delightyourmarriage.com/7blocks The 7 Blocks to Her Libido
Thanks so much for listening–looking forward to speaking again next week!
Love,
Belah
trascript
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Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. All right, welcome, welcome. This is belah rose. And if we haven’t met before, I want to welcome you to the podcast, I aim to release this weekly. And it’s really a focus on encouraging and inspiring you to have wholehearted intimacy in your marriage. That includes emotional, spiritual and physical intimacy. So what I want to talk about today is your motivation for intimacy, what’s required for you to be motivated, to have intimacy and for your spouse to have intimacy with you in all of those areas that I just mentioned. Now before we dive in deeper, I want to give you a couple of freebies. So if you are a husband, and you’re looking to encourage your wife’s libido, give her a higher drive. Basically, I want to invite you to discover the blocks to her libido and when you are able to remove those that actually allows her to be more free in sexual intimacy. So you can go to delight your marriage.com/seven blocks, that’s the number seven BL o CK s. And what that is, is a downloadable PDF. So you can discover what is the those seven blocks that are inhibiting her is based on a webinar I did a while back. And it was extremely helpful for the men that attended, so much so that some people afterwards so that it brought them to tears to really understand what their wife is going through. Wonderful. And then if you’re a wife that’s listening, I have a resource for you called the Five seduction tips. Tip s so if you can go to delight your marriage.com/tip S. And what that will do is give you insights into some of my favorite seduction insights that essentially I think most women struggle with. And I am not exempt from the struggle. So when you do sign up for either of these, you’ll get not only the valuable resource, but you’ll automatically be signed up to my newsletter, where I send you wonderful content, mostly just once a week, I try to be really respectful. And I don’t want to overload your inbox. I know you’re very busy. But I am interested in empowering you and inspiring you in your intimate journey in your marriage. It is a journey and I’d love to join you and help you on that. So yeah, go to delight your marriage.com/seven blocks or delight your marriage.com/tip s tips. Wonderful. Let’s dive in to getting motivated to change motivating for intimacy in your marriage. Alright, so first of all, I want to throw myself under the bus. Because I think it’s going to encourage you and maybe let you laugh a little bit or just be amused at my humiliation. So first of all, I feel I’m supposed to be media fasting right now. And I feel like to some degree, God has asked me to be like John the Baptist. And if I’m distracted listening to all the voices and the opinions of others, I can’t hear him in order to go deep and get his heart for this work. So I don’t there are definitely disciplines I have around media already that are pretty strict. But yeah, there’s there’s definite more that I need to do. So I know in this season. I have a lot of goals and media something I need to stop and that includes YouTube social media, TV movies. Yeah. Don’t I sound so spiritual? Just kidding. Well, what happened the other night is I stayed up way too late. Watching America’s Got Talent YouTube clips. That’s right. I did that. Absolutely. And a couple of negative things happened as a result.
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It may seem strong, but in James it talks about if we feel like we did sin, it is sin for us. And I feel like I sinned. I missed the mark. That’s what sin means missing the mark as though you were an Archer and you’re trying to hit a bull’s eye. With your arrow, if you miss the mark, that’s what sin means. And I feel like I missed the mark in this season for me. And aside from that I was rebelling against the thing that keeps me healthy. I know sleep is vital to everything I do. And I decided not to do that. Not to mention, I’m supposed to be in a media fast. So what am I doing? Secondly, I feel I disappointed my husband, you know, who wants to be around someone who has underslept. And also someone who knows they did something wrong. Like there’s, there’s a lower energy, a lower enthusiasm for life when you know, you’re not doing what you should be doing. And I put him in this awkward place of being the responsible one in our relationship. So it’s super humbling. And it wasn’t a good choice. So the other thing is I disappointed those I am meant to serve. I woke up late the following day, which meant I had to cancel my coaching appointment, which is a I have a coach, right. So that keeps me most effective and aligned with what I believe is God’s will. And I cancelled it for this week. So I missed my quiet time with Jesus that day, because I had to get on calls. And I was tired and not feeling great. Which means I wasn’t able to serve those I’m committed to serve and love at my highest potential. So yeah, I missed the mark. Why am I telling you this? Well, hopefully you can put yourself in my shoes. If you let yourself sit with something you feel uneasy about. You may discover its sin. And in our overly distracted world, we have this concept of if I’m uncomfortable, it is bad. So I need to distract myself away from it. I need to eat the candy I need to click on the social media feed I need to check out that post and then that post them in that post and click on that clickbait clickbait just means that something that has an image that’s intriguing, you just click on it because it’s intriguing. It doesn’t mean that you really should be doing it anyway. It’s just clickbait it’s one of the things that internet marketers know very well. So why am I telling you this, I feel as though regardless of what areas of your conscience are pricked by choices you’re making, if you don’t look at it, then you’re not going to be deeply motivated to change, you have to look at the sin in order for you to recognize that it is sin and you need to change. So that’s the first step is to stop ignoring yourself or ignoring the feeling and stop distracting yourself away from it. And I say that with complete self disclosure of that’s my inclination, I would prefer to not look at my sin and just distract myself away from it. So the Bible tells us to confess our sin to one another so that we may be healed. And I wanted to be healed of this sin. Because it wasn’t a one time thing anyway. And even if it was, that would be okay to confess it. But I have done this many times where I will stay up late looking at just it’s not that it’s bad YouTube clips. Luckily, I’ve, you know, gotten at least to that place, but it’s not God’s best for me in the season. And especially staying up way too late is like, there’s no season that that is God’s best for me. So I wanted to be healed of this sin. So I went ahead and confessed it to a dear friend. And that was very helpful.
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I know in the past when I was addicted to pornography, confessing that sin to a wise friend was very helpful in my healing. When I was addicted to bulimia, confessing my sin to my husband. my now husband we were dating at the time, but it was a huge step in my healing. And when I was addicted to social media or dieting, or comparison and jealousy, or video games or sugar or overeating, confessing it was a huge step in my healing. So I want to, I want it to be healed and and tethered to any possible addiction. Personally, I am more prone to addictions based on my family history. I have a higher likelihood of being addicted. So when I see something that is out of God’s best for me, I want to cut it off completely. And that may sound severe To some people that are able to do things in moderation, but I am not not not very well, not the things that I’m prone to being addicted to. So for example, I cannot watch TV series because once I watch one I am then on it for hours and hours and hours, I can’t seem to stop. And so for me the discipline is to not ever start. Even when people are like, it’s the best, you have to watch it. I’m like, I can’t, I just can’t it’s, you know, if it’s a movie, that’s alright, there’s a specific start and end, but I can’t watch a thing that goes on for hours, if you possibly binge it, okay, so let’s talk about how you can be motivated in your life. Now, the first thing that I gave you a sense of already, number one is you have to look at it squarely without distraction, it’s easier to look to the right or to the left and say, Well, that’s what other people are doing. So it’s not sin. But if you know in your heart that it is for you, then you’re missing the mark, if you don’t follow that. This is not to condemn you by any means it’s to open up new possibilities for you to walk closer with Jesus. It says it’s his kindness to lead us to repentance. And so if he wants you to change, whether it’s to love your spouse better, whether it’s to be more free, and sex, whether it’s to focus on being a person of higher character, to stop gossiping, to stop addiction, whether it’s pornography, or prostitution, or all sorts of things, like we have to look at it, we can’t distract ourselves away and assume that we’re going to be motivated to not do it again. We have to actually look at it and see the depth of our sin. Discipline is what we are called to be about that is what we are when we’re called to be a disciple of Jesus disciplined follower of Christ. So look at your sin number two, in order to overcome your sin, you have to accept the fact that Jesus came, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for your sins, you are a sinner. But when you acknowledge how deep your sin is, that means God’s gift. And grace for you is so big, and so wide and so deep. And that faith that he came here and forgave you, based on the sacrifice that he made for your sin. That’s called faith. That’s called being a Christian. So you can live a holy life because the moment you accept His forgiveness, you are no longer an addict. You are in that instance, you accept His grace, you are now a devoted son, or daughter, instead of a cold, heartless person you are in that instant you accept His grace. You are a generous servant and lover of people. Instead of an undisciplined slob, in that instant that you repent and accept His grace, you are a disciplined and devote follower of Jesus. If you don’t have faith in His forgiveness of you,
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I mean, that’s the whole point. That’s what faith is, believing that He forgives you. Even in the small pricks of your heart, the things that you’re like, if I, you know, talk to someone else, they probably would be like us, no big deal. Don’t worry about it. But it’s no it is a sin for you. God has called you to something higher if you feel it in your conscience. He has called you to more. And that’s a beautiful thing. Think about John the Baptist. I mean, the amount of impact he had, because he followed God to what others would call extreme where he’s out in the desert eating locusts crying out for people to repent. I mean, he literally prepared the way for Jesus to come back. That man who decided he wasn’t going to accept the standards of what society or even those that were supposedly calling, following God was doing he decided for him. That was Sin for him. And that’s what God called him to do and to be about. You can’t live a holy life devoted and set apart for God IF YOU CAN’T BELIEVE that He has saved you from your sin. And when you believe that he has saved you from your sin, it means you’re no longer shackled to it, you no longer have an identity, as a person that is that kind of sinner, you accept His forgiveness. And I would encourage you to invite others on that journey to holiness, confess your sin to each other, so that you can be free so that you can be healed, I invite you to do that. What does that mean in terms of people that are addicted to some kind of sexual addiction, if you should confess that to your spouse, I’m not sure if that’s the right path. It is the right path to confess it to a wise mentor or friend, that can hold you accountable that can encourage you that can help you but you have to bring what’s in the darkness into the light. It is not okay to be addicted to pornography, it’s not okay to dabble in pornography. It’s not okay for any sexual addiction. It’s that is called unfaithfulness to your spouse. And that’s what it feels like if a wife is, I mean, it feels like he’s cheating on her if he’s doing pornography, that’s what it feels like to her. Because that’s sexual experience with someone other than her. So it’s very important for you to understand. And for you to really change, you have to look at that thing squarely in the face, and understand the depth of your sin and understand the depths of your sin, so that you can truly be motivated to change. So look at it squarely in the face. That’s number one. Number two, accept Jesus, true forgiveness, accept it have faith, that he forgives you of that sin. And then number three, that you have to have grace for your spouse, to be motivated to intimacy. Many of you have lived two decades with your spouse, and you have an identity in which you see them. When they speak to you, you have this identity in which you see that they are this kind of person, maybe you see them as selfish or uncaring or immature, or lacking in empathy, or not understanding the male mind or not understanding the female mind. Every interaction, you bring a focus. So if you have this concept of their identity, no matter what you’re talking about, no matter what you’re doing together, that is your concept of who they are, which means that’s what you’re focusing on. And without even meaning to it is a self fulfilling prophecy. When you have basically a box that you put someone in, then they really don’t have any reason to live outside of that. One gift that my husband has always given me, which has allowed me to grow and change over the years, and I’m a very different woman than I was when we first were together. I mean, he’ll tell, he can tell you that I mean, I was an immature jerk in a lot of ways. And more than that, worse than that, really. But he accepted who I was in the present moment. When I apologized, he forgave me even when I didn’t apologize, he would forgive me in his heart, so that I could be a different person the next day, the next interaction. He has the ability to forgive all of my past actions and accept my present and believe that is who I am.
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So my most reason good is the reputation he gives me. I don’t have to prove myself 100 times for him to think I changed or him to think that it’s permanent. And the truth of the matter is transformation is not a straight line. You have to have some forward movement, some up some down some to the side, some to the back. But always having the vision and faith that you’re changing, you’re getting there. And that’s the same way with your spouse. You want to be rooting for them. You want to be rooting for them always and have the focus on the good that they’re doing. Focus on that glimmer of good in whatever action they’re taking. Give your spouse the grace to change. Let your opinion of your spouse be changeable. Don’t be set on who you decided they are. And they’re always going to be that way. Why is this hard to do? Why is this hard to do because it’s vulnerable. Because what you’re doing, when you give them space to change is you’re letting yourself be vulnerable to getting hurt, that your hope that your faith, they’re different, may be disappointed, because they’re going to go backwards, or they’re going to go to the side or they’re going to hurt you again. You’re stretching yourself to be open to getting wounded once again, or disappointed. But that’s really the only way that someone can change in your heart, or let me take that back. It’s not the only way someone can change someone can like grovel, and, and, you know, be superduper, humble, to change and all that. And sometimes God does do that. I’ve seen that happen. But sometimes a spouse changes because your opinion of your spouse changes and it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. God changes people in different ways. But he doesn’t have to grovel and apologize and repent, and all these, all these things that are really hard for him. He can just start changing and you can acknowledge and accept and trust that it’s permanent, you can do your work to help that change, you don’t have to the price for change doesn’t have to be so high. They don’t have to go back and relive all the horror that they did to you. For you to believe that they are changed. They don’t have to do that. You can just let it be superduper easy for them to change that right now in the present moment. They are different and you accept them in that you’re not Jesus, you don’t require their repentance, you just require yourself to love them. Well, that’s what you require. So how does this happen practically. If you’ve been married for decades, or even just a couple months or a couple years, there are wounds that have happened between the two of you, whether it’s intentional hurts that he or she did to you whether it’s things that were on accident, whether it was just being apathetic to things that really matter to you. What I like to envision is that that’s like, a heavy burden you’re carrying. And maybe there’s pebbles of, you know, just random in in considered seas, that’s not a word. She’s She or he may have been inconsiderate at times. And those are just little pebbles of hurt, but they are legitimate hurts, or maybe rocks, maybe there’s are things that they disrespected you in public or they don’t honor your body. Or maybe it’s boulders where they actually did something specifically, that harmed you in a really intense way. And those are big giant things you’re carrying. So every time you interact with your spouse, you are exhausted by this huge weight of pain that you’re carrying. So you were exhausted. You don’t come to them fresh and excited to love them well, because you’re so burdened by all the negative stuff that they’ve done to you, which are legitimate. These are valid and painful things.
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Don’t I mean they are. But the only way it’s going to get better is for you to be motivated. And for you to have a fresh perspective of your spouse. So what I want to invite you to do is leave those burdens, leave those rocks and boulders and pebbles with Jesus. Give those to him, ask him to help you forgive your spouse for those things. And this needs to be consistent conversation with Jesus. It’s not going to happen one time, but it has to happen in a consistent way. So I want you to get with Jesus and ask Him to help you forgive X, Y, Z ABCDEFG. I mean all of the all of the things that are causing you to be hurt by your spouse or have caused you or still come to mind still paying you. It’s so important to forgive your spouse. wipe the slate clean because I can give you all the tools in the book. All the ideas, all the thoughts, all the encouragement. But if you are not motivated by forgiveness, if you don’t look at your spouse through the eyes of love, empowered by forgiveness that Jesus gives you, then you’re not actually going to be doing the tools or tips or any of that with a whole heart. And so it very well may just undermine your progress, because she’s not going to believe it anyway, or he’s not going to believe it anyway. It has to start with forgiveness, wipe the slate clean for your spouse, and maybe you’ve done this many times do it again, Jesus says we’re not to forgive each other just seven times, but 70 times seven 490 times. We are supposed to be forgiving each other. And it even says in the Bible that we will be forgiven to the same measure that we forgive others. And this is absolutely including your spouse. A lot of times we think we need to forgive everyone else, but our spouse, we get to hold grudges, because that’s going to change them or that’s what’s productive or something, and it’s not. That is the first person we get to forgive. That is the first person that makes us more like Jesus in by forgiving. And that is motivating for them to change. Now, I am definitely a person that encourages boundaries. There’s a great book called boundaries by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. That is the first book I would recommend, if you feel like well, I’m not going to be a doormat, or I shouldn’t be a doormat, or you have a lot of legitimate resentment towards your spouse, absolutely explore that if that’s relevant to you. But even with good boundaries, you have to forgive. So there are good boundaries you need to have Jesus was a very boundary person. He wouldn’t let people walk all over him. That was his responsibility to have good boundaries. But he also had a heart of compassion. And he didn’t allow the pain of what someone did to him. not allow him to love well. So if you think about Peter, you know, one point he told Peter to Get behind Me, Satan. And Peter was also the one that denied him three times, that was painful for Jesus. But it did not cause Jesus to not love him in the way that he needed to be loved. He still allowed Peter to be very important in the kingdom of God, he still loved him, he still forgave him. But it didn’t mean that he was going to let Peter dictate his actions, somehow. He had boundaries. So boundaries are really important. They’re godly, we look more like Jesus when we understand boundaries. But you can have healthy boundaries and forgive your spouse. Give your spouse the grace to transform, even though their transformation is going to be messy. So my action item to you is to write down the things that you are holding against your spouse. And then get some really good worship music on maybe just music that’s just going to be instrumental.
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And ask God go through it. Go through the list, and ask God to help you to forgive your spouse. For all of these things, the same way that Jesus forgives you.
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You get to forgive your spouse. You get to walk more like Jesus when you forgive.
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So once again, I want to invite you to be motivated to change by looking at the sin squarely, whatever it looks like, whatever it is, whether it’s just missing the mark from the calling God has asked of you specifically. Secondly, to have grace with yourself by accepting Jesus forgiveness really, truly have faith and accept His forgiveness. And number three, forgive your spouse. That’s what’s going to motivate you towards intimacy in your marriage. It’s going to motivate you to love your spouse well. And my final invite invitation is when you have gotten to the place of being motivated to love your spouse well because the slate is clean, you forgive yourself you’re excited to change. Then I want to give you some guidance on seduction if you’re a wife so go to www dot delight your marriage.com/tips T IPs. Or if your husband go to delight your marriage.com/seven blocks, number seven BL o CK s. And then I will be sending you an email every now and then. And in fact, some of my students who have graduated or like, can you send out a newsletter so I can just know what you’re learning or thinking about or what books you’re reading or those kinds of things. So, yeah, I want to give you super valuable content in the emails that I send. So I hope that you’ll be interested in Yeah, getting that inspiration in your inbox every now and then. Alright, let me pray for you. Father, I believe that this is one of the first things somebody needs to do in a transformational journey. They need to accept your forgiveness of the sin that they are covered in, like even even our righteousness you say as filthy rags compared to you, um, compared to what we really could be and should be. So we’re all a bunch of filthy rags. But you came, and you did the perfect life. And you died on the cross to forgive us, so that you paid the price. And so God, I asked for this person to have faith, and be able to now be an identity of what you want them to be as a holy set apart son or daughter, one that loves you with all they are. They can live into that identity God because they can have faith, that that’s what they are doing. Once the moment they repent, that is who they are. And that is what they can live into. And Father, I pray for the grace to for them forgive their spouse, the same way that you forgive us. Give them the grace to forgive their spouse and recognize how important that is. Because they can’t have motivation to love their spouse Well, if they don’t forgive them. So I asked for that help for your listeners here. You love them. There is a deep, wide, wonderful, feeling love that you have for them. I pray you’d give them the grace to walk in that. Thank you, Lord. And I pray that You would give these people the motivation to love you and love each other well. Amen. Well, thank you so much for listening. And God bless you and I love you. And I’m praying for you. We’ll talk soon. Bye