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I love new years because everything feels fresh and energized. Even though practically speaking it’s the same as every other day, you just have to start training yourself to use a new number at the end of your dates.

But I am all about using whatever energy there is to increase my chances of growth and change–in God’s will.

So, that’s what today’s podcast is about. Becoming stronger in your vision. It’s about realizing that you’re going to stand before Jesus and He’ll be curious what you did with your days, which lead to weeks, which lead to years and then decades.

We must be cautious about how we spend our time, and spend it in priority to God’s will.

I will show you the specific document I have used since 2013 and review at least quarterly to align my life with how I perceive God wants me to live.

I will also discuss the process I use to discern God’s will for my life every quarter. Because I think we need to be considering God’s will consistently in our lives and move towards it more and more every day.

I think you’ll love the conversation and I look forward to hearing from you!

Blessings,

Belah

PS, if you’d like the free resource I mentioned to help you understand how to love your spouse the way they are craving, go to delightyourmarriage.com/framework

transcript

0:02
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. Hi there and welcome. I’m so grateful you are joining me. So my name is belah rose. And if you’re listening to me in the present, we just kicked off the new year. I’m so grateful. And I want to talk a little bit today about how to organize your life in such a way that you feel very grounded in the direction you’re moving. And of course, if you’re married, which is probably why you’re listening to this podcast, you have your marriage as a very important part of your journey. And if not, we’ll be talking about that. And before we dive right in, I want to give you a free resource, it’s called the framework which really helps you understand your husband or helps you understand your wife and basically what the other is craving. In their marriage, it’s basically when you fulfill these core things for your spouse, they almost naturally respond by filling you up as well. So you can go to delight your marriage.com/framework and get that now keep in mind, I am just like you in that I might hear a resource, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I need that. And then I completely forget later. So I would encourage you, while it’s on your mind, pull over the car, whatever you have to do to get this resource. So go to delight your marriage.com/framework Lots of people have told me how helpful that was. Okay, let’s go ahead and dive in for today.

2:10
So if you’re anything like me, you are very happy that God is a God of second chances. Because I feel like I need those daily. I mean, there’s so many opportunities for growth, in every situation. In every situation, we always can grow and get better. And that’s the beauty of God, he has never done with us. And if you’re in any of my programs, you know, that’s how I start out every single one of our calls. There’s several standards I go through, but one of them is that we’re not about focusing on mistakes, but we’re focusing on the growth as a result of those mistakes, or we’re focusing on the growth we need to process those things that have happened in our lives, or choices that we’ve made, so that we can grow so that we can be different. As a former client told me, you know, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. I mean, that’s the reality. We are people who are meant to be growing, you are meant to be having an active relationship with Jesus. And that’s something that I find interesting, the more I learn about faith, and the more I learn about really standing on the truths of the Bible is the more I realize that it’s all predicated on a current relationship with Jesus current. And that means daily. And it also means weekly, and also means monthly and yearly. But what I’m trying to say is that a lot of times we don’t get the practical how to implement these things in our lives. Right we hear beautiful sermons, we say Amen, we worship in that moment, but what does it look like translated into our lives? So one thing that I highly, highly recommend is for you to develop for yourself what I call a life vision statement. And basically, what you want to do in that document, is, first of all, do some headings on the most important areas of your life and I’m a big person of priorities. I like to think about what’s most important because we can’t do everything in this life. We do choose some things to prioritize whether we intentionally prioritize it or not. But we need to prioritize according to God’s will. So when I think about what Did Jesus say, well, his first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s interesting how all encompassing the first is, and how the second is, is like it, love your neighbors yourself. And I feel like it’s good to focus on the second. But we really can’t miss the first. I mean, there’s just no way. So my encouragement is to write this life vision document as if you’re meeting Jesus, as if you’re at that moment. And it’s all over. And you’re looking back at your life. And you’re like, This is what I did. You’re looking at our beautiful Lord. And he’s looking at you with expectation, and curiosity and excitement to hear how you lived this incredible gift that he gave you. This incredible gift called life. So my encouragement is to first of all, categorize kind of some headings. With love, God, and so mine is love God with all her heart, soul, mind and strength. And then I kind of have some subheadings of knowing God, wisdom, prayer, worship, and timing, those are kind of my subheadings. And then I describe how I did on each of those. And, and this is aspirational, it doesn’t mean currently where I am, because this is supposed to be guiding me in future movements. But from there,

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the next part is loving your neighbor as yourself. And then I have the subheadings of marriage, mother, coach, delight, your marriage leader, extended family, closest loved ones, and then just in general people. And then the final one, I love the verse that says, What do I require of man, but he love mercy act justly walked humbly. And so I kind of have those as, as headings, and then I’ve got subheadings of, of prosperous and frugal, and generous, and apologized. And then another one is underneath walked humbly is intentional growth, and mentored and redeemed at the time, and inner dialogue. And finally, character. So what this does is when you get this thing filled out, and it’s for me a two page document, but it really solidifies. Where are you headed? Where do you want to be headed. And one thing that’s really important about this is it gets to the heart. I love there are vision documents that are more around, you know, visualizing your your funeral and what you want people to say about you. And I think that’s a really good exercise to just get your mind in this space of what what do you want others to say of you, that’s great. But I want it to be deeper than that. I want my heart to say something to me, because the thing is, people, I don’t live my life to please people. I shouldn’t I have in the past. And sometimes I fall into that for sure. But I need to live my life to please God. And golly, if Jesus judge his life based on how people treated him, I mean, that would be an utter failure, right? Luckily, thankfully, he lived his life to honor God, and God’s will for his life. And so we need to judge our lives the same way. But unfortunately, so many of us go through life without an anchor without a uniquely defined vision for us. So I recorded a podcast a while back about political upheaval. You know what, what to do and how it affects, but one thing that was really important is to realize that Jesus wasn’t involved in politics. He didn’t even speak on it, even though there was atrocious oppression going on in his day and age. His job was that was not his job. And yet The baptist was involved in politics. In fact, that’s what got him killed, ultimately. And Jesus said amazing things about John the Baptist even that he’s the greatest of all those born from a woman. So, yes, he was amazing. So some people do have the grace for politics, and they should you my, my opportunity is to give to organizations I believe in, that are putting in politics that I think are true and right. But in terms of following it every day, in terms of really knowing what’s going on. That’s not my grace, I can’t do the work I do for you, or the small sliver of the pie that God has for me to accomplish, if I’m busy worrying about all these other things that I don’t have the grace for. So politics is one example. But there’s many things I don’t have the grace for. And yet I am passionate about it. I do think it’s unjust, I think it’s wrong. So what can I do? Why I can give some money? Oh, yeah, we all can, we all can, can tighten our belts and Tad, and give money away. Absolutely. And what I find really wonderful is when somebody shares how they gave, it really inspires me to give. So that’s one thing, I wanted to just encourage that. It’s okay to hear how somebody gave, and it’s probably okay, for you to share how you gave without this prideful concern that

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you know, if you are doing it just to impress people, that’s different. But I think we as humans can inspire each other on how we give and how we live. And often, that’s why I tell you about my life, not not to puff myself up, but really to say, there’s another way here we can, we can live a little differently. And we can have different values than the mainstream life. We don’t, we don’t have to live and highly esteem certain things. That’s, that’s the world’s mindset. So what I need you to do is get really clear on what it is that God is asking of you, based on your strengths, your experience, the Grace, God has given you to do things that other people think are hard. What’s easy for you, for example, some people are, like I said, I mean, politics is their thing. They’re they’re doing great doing God’s will, in being super involved and, and activating others and that sort of thing. And they can still have the grace to do everything they need to with with their higher priorities as well. But there’s lots of examples. There’s lots and lots of examples. So why are priority so important? Well, I think that if we don’t have a really clear sense of what’s most, what’s most priority in our lives, then we the the days go by, and the weeks go by, and the months go by, and the years go by, and the decades go by, and what’s first, what’s most important, but it didn’t feel urgent in the time. At the moment, it just felt important. But on the backburner, something I’ll get to, then we’ve never spent the energy, the effort, the emotion, the time on it. And none of us are promised tomorrow, if anything 2020 has taught us is that life can change rapidly. And life is precious. None of us are promised tomorrow or 10 years or 20 years. None of us are. And so if we’re not living in such a way that we believe we’re going to stand before Jesus, there is going to be a judgement day. It is clearly in scripture. But I don’t think it’s going to be I think you have to think about it in an empowering way. Yes, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fearing God is vital. And that’s partly why this is so important. Because God is is. I mean he is awesome and powerful and it is His mercy that he does not consume us with fire because of our rebellion. Right His mercy that he brought came that he brought Jesus to the earth to sacrifice instead of us It says mercy. It says mercy. So when we are before him, we get to show him a life that was well lived. That was when we pursued him and desire to please him and make him happy. And I am inspired to sing a song. I’ve sang it one other time on the podcast, but it’s really beautiful. It’s by a gentleman named John Thurlow. And you can YouTube him, he’s got some really great worship music, but it goes, I want to live a life that’s worthy of your calling. Remove the things that hinder me from loving you. Because I don’t want to regret upon the day I stand before you, may I be found a pure and spotless bride. I wanna live a life that’s worthy of your calling. Remove the things that hinder me from loving you. Because I don’t want regret upon the day I stand before you may be found a pure and spotless bride ready for a

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key thing? And so what is that talking about a pure and spotless bride? Well, it’s talking about us in relation to Jesus, that we have refined ourselves, we have washed ourselves in the word, we’ve renewed our minds, we’ve become the people that God wants us to become waiting for our King ready for our King. We didn’t do this by ourselves, though. This process of refining and becoming holy and set apart for Jesus wasn’t something we did by yourself. That’s the thing that’s really wonderful is he did it with us, this whole process of, of being ready for Jesus wasn’t actually something we did by ourselves. Something that he walked us through. So this life vision document that I keep talking about, is something I review it at least yearly, but most most of the time quarterly, but sometimes even monthly, so it it depends, I guess I’ve been doing it for since 2013. So what, what, how many, eight, eight years, and, and it’s just grounded me. So as I’ve had kids, and as just different things in my marriage of sorry, different things in our lives have shifted, and things in my heart have shifted, I’ve tweaked to this life vision document so that I can really see what, where I’m going where I should and really grounds me, and this year, and often I do it, where not only do I update it, but then I kind of underline here are the things I really need to grow in. And this helps me clarify what I need to be focused on in this season. So that’s kind of the overarching, life vision. And then from that, every quarter, I select three areas of focus for that quarter. And when when we think about God’s Will I really think about his will in terms of it’s not just should I move across the country and take that job? And it’s not just should I start a ministry? Or should I, you know, it’s not just these big life decisions, because those big life decisions only come about from the little daily, weekly decisions. We don’t get to make big life decisions unless we’ve been making these tiny, little decisions. And so my encouragement is, whatever decisions you’re making, you are making decisions every day. So if it’s decisions not to follow God’s will for your life, then you’re not even To be aware or not even thinking about it. Why then how in the world would you say that it’ll all add up to God’s will.

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And so, if you have that big overarching vision, then narrow that into what’s most important in this season, and the only reason I use quarterly is because it’s a very easy way to say okay, every three months, let me pause life. Let me reflect how did I do on the last quarter? How did I do on my quarterly focuses and pray through what the next focuses are going to be? See, the thing about me is that I love to learn and grow and so I’m constantly kind of voraciously. listening to things, reading things, growing in all the ways of my life. And previous to selecting, seasonal focuses those three, I would just kind of feel like I was reading and learning everything and never mastering anything, almost like I never kind of got anything accomplished, I was just, you know, doing a ton of things, but never feeling like I progressed in any one area. And so what I encourage is for people to select a focus again just for three months, and decide you’re going to master it, we get exhausted after focusing on one thing for too long. So that’s another reason I think three months is a perfect amount of time for you to just get really zeroed in and focused and then make that a permanent change in your life, whatever that may be. And, just like many things in life, certain things can fall by the wayside. So there are things that was a focus for a season, and then I really got a lot of freedom in that area. And then it kind of felt came back for whatever reason. So, for example, what I’m doing this season, I really feel like God is calling me to get back into my Exercise and Health routines, which have been very strong. And we traveled over. Well, we traveled and quarantine. So let me make that clear. But we were very cautiously chair traveled over the Christmas break. And, and so the transitions are hard for me. And I know that about, you know, just different weaknesses that that I know are just my makeup. So I have to be cautious about that. But all that to say that my routines fell off in terms of how I my limitations in eating and my exercise routines. And, honestly, I need those things in place for me to be able to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Because if I feel lazy and achy, and then I make, you know, poor choices with my time, and then I waste time doing all sorts of things. And I’m not fully engaged with my kids. And there’s so many things that predicate on my health and wellness, that I feel like that’s exactly where God needs my focus right now. Now, like I said, I’ve had great mastery over that in the past, and I’m back in, in this but I need to really focus on it. Otherwise, I’m not going to get to the next level. The other thing I’m really focused on this quarter is parenting for where my kids are at in this stage of their development right now. So there are certain books I want to read, there’s certain classes I want to take. And and I just need to focus on that that’s, that’s priority right now. Or, you know, we’re in a transition time with with one of my son’s age groups. And we need, we need the support, we need to know how to how to move forward in a godly direction. So those are just some examples of my life, vision, my focus? Well, I’ll tell you what the third one is the third one is actually focused on dy M. And it’s focused on getting systems in place in a stronger way. So that the infrastructure of dy M is really strong. So you know, more and more people are reaching out every day, thank God for help, thank God in terms of that I can help them but I need to really have the infrastructure to be able to say, okay, great, this is the resource here, let me get you plugged in this is going to help you you know, just a real strong system in place rather than, you know, each time being like, oh my gosh, how do I help it’s, there’s only one of me and there’s all these you know, but instead by God’s grace I

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do I am is hiring and it’s just really exciting to help more and more people because this is a vital I mean, you know, it’s it’s vital in life to have a strong, happy marriage in line with God’s will, because you can do God’s will better with a happy healthy marriage. So all that to kind of come back to recognizing the priorities of your life. So after you have this document created, my assumption is that you have you know, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, mind and strength. What does that look like practically speaking, my invitation for you is that Staley that has to have a chunk of time every day. Where you are focused on the Lord. And people connect with God in different ways. For some, that means going on a walk in nature and having intentional time with him quietly. For some that means journaling. Like me, he was journaling and, and processing things with him that way. And, and having a prayer list of people and things that you pray for. And I recently learned of a acronym, that you pray for yourself every day. And that’s been something I’ve been doing for a while, and I don’t make it every day. But certainly a lot of times, and I really love I love it. But I learned it from Mike Bickle at International House of Prayer Kansas City, and the acronym is fellowship. And then if we take it apart, so F, pray for the fear of the Lord. Because once again, that’s the beginning of wisdom, pray for the fear of the Lord, he endurance, right, it says that he who endures till the end will be saved. So pray for endurance, pray that you won’t get tired, you won’t give up that you’ll be and you’ll be able to continue to run this race every single day. L is for light, so that God would enlighten your understanding that you would have wisdom that God would be the one to give you that clarity, and guidance and wisdom. The next L is love, love for others love. For God, love for the people in your care. Oh, is one thing, focus. And that’s based on the scripture in Psalms 27, that says, one thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and just seek Him in His temple. One thing I have asked to the Lord, and this I will seek, and so I just I love that perspective. Again, that Psalms 27 For of, of recognizing, you know, God is our portion, he is the one that satisfies our soul. And we need to pray for that we need to pray that God would give us that one thing, focus to recognize that no, Netflix is not more important than making sure we have a strong relationship with Jesus. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s a, it’s a crazy thing to say, social media, checking your status is not more important to make sure you have a quiet heart that’s peaceful. And you know, it’s aligned with God’s will. The enemy attacks us in all sorts of ways. One of the huge ways he does is through distraction. So, okay, the next one is worthy of his calling, Wu worthy of his calling. And I sang that song for you. But it’s a it’s a very biblical notion of we, we want to be people that weren’t worthy of his calling. And for me, that’s really helpful to think, you know, what God has a calling on my life, a will for my life. And it’s not just one thing. It’s many, many, many things that he has a will for, but it’s specific to me. They’re specific uniquenesses to me that he wants me to fulfill. And I want to walk worthy of that calling. And so I encourage you to think about it the same way. You are uniquely designed, you have unique callings and giftings. And I mean, there’s so many things, but if you walk into that little by little by little, it expands. But, but we can’t, we can’t expect our calling to expand if we’re not going to be faithful to walk in it little by little by little. Okay, the next one is s speech. And that’s just praying that God would put a guard on your heart today and not say anything that’s against His will or that.

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I mean, there’s, there’s, you know, the speech has an opportunity to start a forest fire so my encouragement is, you know, to pray of that and I know for me, I so often sin with my speech and so I need prayer for that. The next one is ah, humility. And again, that’s that’s a constant prayer and desire for me is that God would make me humble and recognize that I need him to even breathe. I need I need him in all facets, all areas of my life. And then last one is intimacy with Him so that for me is really focusing on abiding in him which means daily I pause to pray and just connect again to just speak out loud to him and make sure that I’ve kept him in my heart and my thoughts during the day and the final one is, is P peace and joy and I really do love the idea that when I feel at peace I, I’m, I’m in God’s Will I feel a peace about being in God’s will. So that’s, yeah, that’s the prayer fellowship that, you know, sometimes it’s, you know, takes a lot of time. And I don’t always get through all of them. And sometimes I miss it. But when I do go through it, I feel like okay, this is, these are the things I needed to pray for myself to make sure I’m on target today. Awesome. So let’s talk about the loving people. Like yourself, so I always, we need to prioritize people. So it’s first of all your spouse, and then it’s your kids. Because if you’re if you don’t have a strong marriage, then you can’t love your kids. Well, you just can’t You’re too distracted. You’re you’re in too much pain. And so this filters into what is your what is your your quarterly focuses? What are you focused on? In this season? And I encourage you even right now, as you’re listening to my voice, what is God prompting? What is he provoking in you? What is most important in your season right now? Love God, with everything, right, and then love your neighbor as yourself. So that’s, that’s your spouse, then that’s your kids. And then that’s after a both of those, that’s your ministry. That’s your neighbors, you know, physically beside you, that’s the place your you know, your workplace. That’s where you spend your money. That’s all of those things, your activities and hobbies, and commitments, all of those things happen after your spouse, and then your kids. And so if your spouse soul relationship is not strong, if sex is not a vital, encouraging part of your life, if, if your wife doesn’t feel filled up in, in her ways of feeling filled up, cherished and safe and known, then you’re off track, and you need to get on that. So I would say, spend the next three months and focus on that you need to get on track because when you meet the Lord, that’s the highest priority of the second greatest commandment is your spouse. So that’s my encouragement is to really get this thing structured, so it zeroes into the day today.

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This is gonna sound very unsexy. But I like tracking all sorts of things. Why I think tracking is important in our lives is what we measure, we manage I can’t remember where I heard that probably in a business books all the time. But if we don’t measure things, we don’t know that we need to get better at it. For women, I encourage you to track how often you’re making love, and how often you’re making it an awesome experience and you’re putting energy towards towards it. Or for me with parenting right now. Like, again, I track the things that I need to get better at. But sometimes I track things that I’m just like, oh my gosh, I’m doing great at this, I just want to I want to feel confident that I’m on track. So I need to track it. I need to have some sort of, of record or checklist or something that that yes, of course, my heart has got to be in it. But also, I want to I want to actually do these things. So tracking it really helps. So for this season around parenting is one of my sons, he just needs a lot of extra time with me. And that’s not an easy ask. And yet, it’s vital. And yet that’s my second highest human assignment. And so I need to track that. And so that’s what I’m doing every day. I have a little checkbox at the end of my day of did I spend time with this son and I mean time present focused engaging with my with my son there’s other things that are on that checklist at the end of the day is certain reflections that I do certain what else is on there? A few faith statements at the end of the day. Let me just pull it up brushing my teeth because that is annoying and I don’t like brushing my teeth at night in the morning. I always do but at night so I’ve got to have it on my checklist taking my vitamins and meds, starting my bed read bedtime routine at a certain time. And and seeing whether or not I stuck to my health limits that day. So and then I have accountability setup. So I take a screenshot of that and send that to the ladies that I am accountable to every day. And yeah, so that make a system that works for you. Maybe you don’t need accountability, maybe you do. And if you are looking for how do you how do you help your yourself become more accountable to the things that are most important in your marriage. So if you’re a wife, I’ve got this awesome thing set up that I just love called intimate freedom. And it is all about helping you have not only the tools and the understanding, monthly coaching with me, but also weekly small groups where you are just getting encouraged by other women, around intimacy and around freedom in intimacy and, and doing all the things that are hard as a wife, and and getting to a place where you have other speaking to your life and cheering you on. And I absolutely love that I adore it. And then for men, I have my masculinity reclaimed program. And it’s a three month intensive. And it is just amazing what God does through it, like even a gentleman who they were separated for months, and then his wife invited him home. And she doesn’t know he’s doing the program, he has become a changed man, by God’s grace. And God used this program. So if you’re interested in that there’s other many, many other stories of men that their wives just became

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sexually excited to be with him. And again, she doesn’t know he’s doing the program. So it’s incredible to witness that. And if you are interested in that, that’s going to start again in March. So what I would say is purpose it in your heart to get your life structured, get things done, so that by mid March, you’ve got time freed up where you can spend three to four hours, at least a week to really transform your marriage and intimacy in it. That’s what I would encourage you, I’ll be telling you much more about that there’ll be some trainings around it that are free, but it will ultimately launched mid March. Awesome. Well, that’s what I want to encourage you to do is to get a sense of the big picture, and then zoom into the little picture to eventually get to the day to day. Because that is what builds your life every single day. That’s my encouragement. Father, I pray for the listener on this call. Lord, I prefer my own heart. There’s so many things that I listed off today that I’m working, I am a work in progress, I fail all the time. And there are days that I feel like I am on top of the world and just phenomenal at all these things in there are days that I feel just like the only thing I can do is grasp for your grace and need your help. And I pray God that in this moment, the person that’s listening to this would would just get a glimpse into how you see them. And how you desire them to live is different than the way I live. But give them a glimpse into what you are asking of them. Father, because it’s important, we don’t know when we will meet you face to face. And Father, I pray that every person listening to my voice, we get a little sparkle of excitement of that day, that when we do man, it’s going to be good, it is going to be good. Because your grace is sufficient. If we accept you into our heart, Jesus, we will have an incredible, incredible experience that day and I can’t wait to show you all the things that I did just to impress you, just so you could affirm me. No one else but you. Father draws closer to yourself, Lord, you’re a good God. And you look at this person and you, you crave for them to be closer to you and you crave for me to be closer to you and I pray that I would grow in my connection relationship with you as well. Father, we love you. Amen. Right well happy 2021 I’m so excited for you and just a fresh new movement in the world. God wants you to go. God bless you. I’ll talk to you next week. Don’t forget to sign up for that delight your marriage.com/framework I think you’ll be happy that you did. God bless