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In our family, we are going through some important paradigm shifts around parenting – through a coach, articles, books, etc. It’s great! But it’s also hard to look at the mistakes.
The truth is that it is hard to change. Not only is it difficult to do things differently, but it also takes courage. It takes courage to say, “You know what? I was doing things wrong and now I’m going to do it better!”
It’s vulnerable and can feel excruciating – very!
But it is strength, not weakness, to change.
God is a good God and He will lead you when and how He wants you to change.
There are times the enemy will use those genuine convictions from God, as opportunities to take you into a tailspin of self-doubt and/or self-loathing. Don’t let him!
Here are some fantastic tools to give you more insight on helping you change faster and without the issue of depression that you’ve done it wrong for so long.
That’s the beauty of Jesus…He is leading you. He is guiding you.
He is revealing what He wants to reveal to you in the season He wants you to learn it. We can trust Him on that.
The fact that you’re willing to “go there” means that you’re already on the right track!
Blessings,
Belah
PS – If you leave an iTunes review and send me a screenshot, I’d happily send you a couple of free trainings from some of my best-selling courses! If you’re not sure how to leave a review, find out how at delightyourmarriage.com/itunes
transcript
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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. Hi there, and welcome. Thank you for joining the delight your marriage podcast. I am so grateful that you spend time with me every week or every now and then. And yeah, I hope it makes you smile. So today, I want to talk about the courage to change because it takes a lot of courage. And we’re going to dive into that. And before we do if the podcast has meant something to you, and you have felt even a nugget of inspiration, encouragement, hopefully wisdom, something that’s turned you closer to Jesus and your spouse, your kids, your friends, family, whatever it may be, it would be a huge support to this work spreading if you leave an iTunes review. And because basically, the the higher the amount of reviews, the higher it gets on the charts, which means the easier it gets spread to other people and search results. And there’s just a whole lot of tech stuff that I don’t understand, but your reviews help. So it takes you know, maybe it’ll take two to three minutes to figure out how to do it, maybe it’ll take 30 seconds, but it would mean a lot to me. So if this podcast has helped you, I would love for you to help us back by by adding a review. I’d like to sweeten the motivation pot. And actually if you take a screenshot and send that to belah at delete your marriage.com I’ll be sending you back a free training. So basically a couple portions of some of my best selling courses I’d love to give you for free. So thank you in advance for that. Alright, let’s dive into this vitally important topic, something that I’m learning very much so even right now.
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All right, so one of my clients posted this today on our private communication channel, and I thought it was very appropriate to what I was going to talk about. So he said, This is a quote from Tom Landry. It says a coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see. So that you may become what you have always known you could be. So a coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see. So you may become what you have always known you could be. So I thought that was pretty powerful. And I was very encouraged that he would post such a thing. And he said, Bella, just trying to butter you up before the call. Very sweet. But I will say that, that’s my hope. In this conversation. You know, I am an intimacy expert and coach and marriage and intimacy expert and coach and that’s what I really focus on, is helping you change. That’s what I think God has really gifted me in is helping people change and it is a quality that I have sought to hone over the years. Now. I too, am in need of change i to make mistakes plenty of times and my husband can attest to that. He’s actually sitting here listening and he shook his head. No, no, never. Never. But that’s not true. And he knows. But the point is that that that’s okay. That’s a good thing. To want to change to know that you need it. Because that’s reality. None of us are have arrived. You know that phrase none of us have arrived. We’re all in the midst of growth all of us and if any leader in your life or that you see far away from you or if they feel like they have arrived. That’s what the Bible says, Be careful. Be circumcised SPECT because you may fall. If you think that you don’t need any more change. You don’t need any more growth. You don’t need to be edified, then, okay, you very well may fall and we unfortunately, have seen it with too many leaders, huge, huge leaders, they have fallen because they themselves have not felt They, they needed to change. Now why does this take courage? Why do I talk about the courage to change? Because it is hard. Right? When we have been doing things a certain way, especially for a long time, there’s a level of pride that goes with it. Where we, you know, maybe we’ve taught other people to do it a certain way. Maybe we’ve encouraged other people, our own kids or our spouse, whatever it may be. We’ve said this is the right way. And And when God has revealed, no, no, this is this is what’s true. It takes courage to change that. I think pride is a little more complicated than I guess I used to think I, I think now pride, when we see pride in someone, it helps me to realize that it’s really generally a thinly veiled vulnerability, sorry, insecurity. I think it’s thinly veiled insecurity. Because pride I think is unhealthy, inappropriate confidence, right? Because it looks like confidence sometimes. But sometimes it’s just somebody who’s insecure, and they don’t even want to give airtime to the potential that they could be wrong. Or they could need tweaks in their opinions or perspectives. A lot of times, we’re not 100% Wrong, wrong. It might be a half truth or a half correct understanding or a good intention, but a poor execution, a poor strategy, but uh, but a good heart behind it. There might be some truth to it, but there’s always opportunities to make it better. Which I think a lot of times my prayers to Jesus are around the sin of not getting it entirely correct. It’s doesn’t mean that I’ve got some big repentance sin or that you do. Like, that’s not necessarily what I’m saying. I’m just saying that we always can get things better, we can always have a more pure heart before Jesus. I mean, I’m hanging out with some people right now in specific culture, and they are just, every time I spend time with them, I’m just amazed at the heart, genuineness, kindness, gentleness,
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depth of care for people, I’m just like, I want my heart that pure, I want my heart that pure. I want to care about people that I’m deeply and and. And truly, I don’t know if that makes sense. I feel like a lot of times, you know, we say we love another person. But I feel like there is a purity, like your love can be more pure, it can be more true. It can be a deeper love. And I think we always need to be pursuing that, for God and for our spouse, and for our kids. And so that was part of the reason I thought it was really important for me to speak about this concept of courage to change because my husband and I are actually doing some parenting coaching. I think I mentioned that a couple times now. And it’s phenomenal. It is phenomenal isn’t somebody to coaching us on parenting? It is just if I truly believe that it’s God first in my life, then my husband, and then my kids, why the heck not Am I expending effort and energy and resources on being the very best parent I can be. So this is not a parenting podcast. So I’m not really going to share what I’m learning. But I will say that it’s taking courage for us to change our paradigms, our perspectives, how we’ve seen things role modeled. It takes courage for us to go before our own kids and say, You know what, we’re doing things a little differently, here’s how we’re going to do it now. And it’s not easy to look at ourselves and say, golly, we needed some new insights. And, you know, I commend you, if you’re listening to my stuff, I don’t, you know, I don’t speak to you and in just flowery language all the time, I expect and encourage and want you to be better and change. And we all need that. And so yes, I am hoping that I will coach in terms of showing you what you don’t want to see. Because I want you to be better and I want your wife and your marriage and your kids to be impacted in all the ripples in your life to be impacted in you to be a better human and and more connected to Jesus. So yeah, so So that’s, that takes courage for us to look at ourselves and say, You know what, shoot, I’ve been doing this wrong for a while. I’ve been making mistakes for a while. And yes, that can either that can either cause you to be insecure, you know, cause you to be insecure or lose your confidence, you know, gosh, I’m no good for anything, because I’ve done all these ways of bad things, and, and all that. But I don’t think that’s the way God wants us to see it. You know, in my view, I think God is so kind to not allow us to understand things until we’re ready for them. You know, in the Bible, it talks about Jesus, sometimes he would give a parable to the crowds, and then he would actually explain the parable to the disciples, because the disciples, were ready to understand it in a deeper way. And maybe the crowds weren’t ready for it. They couldn’t get there yet. So that’s my encouragement is like, if you didn’t understand this thing before, it’s probably because you weren’t ready for it. And there may have been reasons that you weren’t able to see it. And maybe, you know, if God is God, and we trust Him, that He is truly just as it says, in Romans eight, working all things together for good for those who love the Lord are called according to His purposes, the next verse is about, you know, being conformed to the image of Jesus. Like, it’s possible that there were times in your life that God needed to you to view a certain thing a certain way for other purposes that we don’t understand. And we can just fall on God’s grace for that. We can just say, You know what, God, you’re bigger than my mistakes, you can still direct these this person that I may have said things the wrong way or done things the wrong way. And that’s looking at our mistakes. And looking at the things we needed to change actually causes us to follow Jesus more closely. If we ignore our mistakes, if we ignore the ways that we need to change, if we don’t listen to people who are giving us good feedback, we don’t take responsibility for it and change it. Why then, God can’t grow us. He can’t use us in a stronger way. So my encouragement to you is, is to be okay with God growing you and changing you and taking responsibility. And eating the Humble Pie, because that’s what that’s the the man we follow, is a man of humility, and make, it’s making us more like Christ every single time. And it gives us an opportunity to throw ourselves on his grace again,
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to say, God, I was trying to do this on my own. I can’t, I need you. I need you every day. I need you every moment. Shoot, I made a mistake again, God help
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me. Help me. Because I don’t think it was God’s intention for him to sacrifice himself on the cross, just so he could be in relationship with you. And then once you accept Jesus as your savior,
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it’s like, okay, be perfect. And I’m I, without me, that that’s not it. We get to grow in who he wants us to be, as we walk in relationship with him. So, yes, you’re going to falter, he’s right there next to you to pick you up and teach you more. He’s going to reveal things to you at his pace. And be okay with that. When he reveals something to you that’s new, except it with grace and openness. And thank you, Lord, I’m so glad you showed me something new. I’m growing. That’s one of the standards I always say before every single call that I have. It’s a it’s a growth mindset. There’s a book I think called Growth Mindset by Dweck is last name. But anyway, it’s it’s this idea that our minds are constantly growing, we’re constantly growing, the more new things you learn the mistakes, it’s so so the standard that I always say is, it’s not about focusing on mistakes, to start being ashamed and guilty and all these things. It’s focusing on mistakes so we can learn from them, and grow from them, and get the insight that we need from them and be empowered by growth and be grateful, oh my gosh, thank God, he is active in my life. He’s showing me new things. I’m growing. Because you don’t want to get to a place where, you know, pride has consumed you. And pride again, is just this, almost like a armored shell with insecurity on the inside. Right? That’s kind of like the At the heart of stone, we instead want to be, we want to soften, we want to be softer and be sensitive to God’s Spirit and God’s leaning in God’s guidance and shifting. So, um, so it’s courage, it’s, it’s, it’s courage, it’s vulnerable to change. And it’s vulnerable to ask for forgiveness, say I’m sorry, take ownership. You know, I do that a lot. Because especially with with, you know, my work, a lot of times, I’ll, you know, shoot an email back, and it’ll be a fast, you know, response, because I’m like, I’ve got to get through a lot of stuff. And, and I’m like, you know, what, I really should have sat on that a little bit, I should have really thought that through before responding, or that, that could have been taken in a different way than I mean it to. So a lot of times, I’ll be like, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that shouldn’t been as strong, you know, one thing and you may, you may have this on your mind anyway. But for me, you know, I do a lot with, you know, text. So whether it’s a, you know, a message on a platform, or it’s an email or what have you, things can just be a lot stronger via text. And so, you know, you can’t get the intonation, you can’t get the true, you know, there’s so many nonverbals that cannot be communicated via text. And so, so yeah, whether that’s a text message, or social media post, or anything and everything else. That’s what I think about a lot, because I’m like, I really should have been patient and calmly decided, what were the right words to respond. And sometimes it means that it takes me a long time to respond to emails. So if you’ve ever been on the other end of that, that’s the reason, I’m actually really excited because I’ve got some, some new help with that, from a very wise and encouraging woman who’s a, he’s been transformed by the dy M work and by God’s grace, so she’s going to be helping me with some of those email communications. But that’s just my my journey on you know, I do apologize a lot. And that’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re weak. I think that means you’re strong. Because you’re you. We need Jesus, we need Jesus, a lot of times, I have a lovely mentor in my women’s program. And one of the things she talks about, that I love is she says, you know, what she always likes to improve on I asked her how she, you know, one of the things that she does every week is share with me how she wants to improve the next time. And one of the things she says frequently is, I want to give more space for the Holy Spirit. I want to be praying while I’m listening to the woman speaking and sharing. Because I want to really be attuned to what God wants me to share. And we have to give time and space for that. Because we do need him to lead us and guide us, we do need to ask him for help.
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And when we ask him, we also get to have faith that he’s leading us and guiding us, which is awesome.
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The other thing I want to give a moment to consider is just because you are growing and changing doesn’t mean that you get to slip into doubt and fear that oh my gosh, I’m gonna do it wrong.
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You know, I don’t know what to do anymore. Because I just realized that I was doing a lot of things wrong for 20 years or whatever. We don’t have to slip into that either. You get to trust that God is a good God. And he’s going to show you in the time that that he needs to do the other thing that’s really I think important is that nobody out there is perfect. Nobody out there is God. They will not be your full on. Go to for everything they cannot be. It’s important for you to notice that because God is supposed to be God. The Holy Spirit is supposed to lead you. Yes, God uses people. Yes, he teaches people and teaches you through them. Yes. But ultimately, your relationship with Christ is going to help you discern is this right? Is this right for you? Is this the correct way of thinking for you in your situation in your season in the calling and given and talents and boundaries and limits for your life, the way that God specifically has you positioned, you can’t rely on somebody else to give you all of that you just can’t a human is, first of all, limited in all their knowledge, but also limited and all their perfection. It’s it’s just, you can’t but but God is going to lead you into the places he wants you to learn and grow and change. So just because you’re learning from a situation or from a person, and you’re growing and you’ve seen that you made mistakes, doesn’t mean that you’re gonna always make mistakes, or in that particular realm, or that you’re always, you know, wrong or you don’t, you can’t have confidence or that sort of thing. That’s, that’s my encouragement to you is that you can have confidence and be open to growth, and be open to God’s guidance, in learning through situations through people through coaches, through the wisdom he’s given others at this point. So how do you make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed by the learnings, and you don’t get to a place where you are just discouraged because you’re like, golly, I have been doing this wrong for too long, or you push them aside, you don’t focus on the learnings because you don’t want to feel bad. I used to be in this job where it was just honestly, the wrong fit. I just didn’t think the way that my manager wanted me to think and not only my manager, but the the position just was the wrong position for me, but I was so I would constantly get negative feedback is what I’m saying. And I don’t think my boss meant for it to be negative, I think she was just trying to be matter of fact, and efficient. So she would just constantly be pushing the, the, the corrective feedback, and the thing that helped me not get discouraged, was to make a list as I went, and it was just a tab on my notes that I would just add in. And it was just a learning, it would just be my learnings, notes. And it would, it was just a list, I would just add in, okay? read my emails out loud before I send them or, you know, be careful about this system, or make sure I send it to this person, not this person or what have you. And it would really take the sting out of the learning, it would be less personal and be more like, okay, here, I learned something, and it would just a list. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t so emotional anymore. It was just like, oh, okay, that’s a new thing. Great, I learned it, and I would digest it and move forward much, much faster. And so that’s something I would encourage for you is that, yes, things with your spouse, it’s about your heart, you’re, you’re open to them in ways that you’re not open to anyone else. But when you learn something, jot it down, have a list, I’m a huge advocate for journaling, because it allows you to articulate things, it’s not just swimming around in your head, it’s like no, let me put this on a paper, I learned it, I’m moving on end of End of discussion. And you grow a lot faster, when you kind of just put it in a in a system like that. So that’s my encouragement to you to make sure you don’t get swallowed up by
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by the learnings and you know, and maybe part of that is you can consider is this from God, you know, this particular learning is this right? When you get certain feedback and what have you. Alright, I know you can do this, I know you can learn without being overwhelmed and feeling depressed about the learnings. So, my encouragement in all of this is to embrace the sometimes painful sting of learning. To, to to bring it into a question mark a curiosity does God want me to learn from this material from this comment from this whatever, external stimuli? Does God want me to learn from this? And you got to have space in your life to be able to have time to reflect on that to discern that to have conversation about that? Because maybe not, you know, maybe this is a, you know, a kind of like an attack from the enemy just to To knock your confidence, I mean, I get, you know, being a kind of a public person, I get negative stuff, too. I mean, that’s just normal. And sometimes I don’t need to meditate on that that’s not a godly, helpful thing. But sometimes it does require me to take pause and say, Well, you know what, maybe there was a way I could have done this better. Maybe not entirely, maybe, but there may be a, you know, a lining of truth here. Or it may just be you know, ruffle my feathers like a duck and let the water just drip off. Just get it off, don’t even think about it. Or the way I guess a more biblical thing is when Jesus sent out the disciples, to, to the towns, and he said, If a town doesn’t accept you, then you just shake the dust off your feet and keep moving. So that might be what God is inviting you to do. So. So have courage to change be okay, that God is still molding you and shaping you. That’s his grace, that means we are, we are the clay, he is the potter. Like, that’s what it’s supposed to be about. That’s how we’re supposed to do but but trust him for that. You’ve got him, the God of the universe is with you. He’s going to teach you the right things. He’s going to show you he’s going to help you when you fall down. He’s going to be there for you. He is faithful, he’s always faithful. He’s always faithful, no matter what, you know, I had a conversation with my kids the other day. You know, because my son was telling me he was scared. What if we ever passed away my, you know, me and my husband, which I think is a normal fear for kids. And there are so many movies that have that as like, the primary thing is, they’re orphans, and the parents, you know, were shipwrecked or whatever. So, anyway. And you know, I said, you know, it really, I want you to know this, I want you to know that no matter what happens to people you love, no matter what God is with you, He will always be with you. He will always be with you. He is going to make it okay. He is going to make it okay. And I think that actually is an important sentiment for our kids to know. Because yes, I don’t know when my day is where I’m going to meet that wonderful Jesus face to face. I don’t know when that is. But I would love to prepare my kids ahead of you know, whether that’s 60 years from now or however long God has for me. I would love for them to be prepared that no matter what God is going to make it okay. He’s, he’s a good God, He is faithful. And I want them to trust that I want you to have courage, that God is changing you in a good way. So if you’ve, you know, been challenged by this, encouraged by this, what have you I, I hope and pray that you, you will grow closer to Jesus as a result. And the nice thing about that is it causes us to grow closer to the people that that God loves as well, because he loves your spouse more than you do.
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He’ll help you have truer deeper love for your spouse. So let me pray for you. Father, I thank you for this person listening or thank you that you have your eye on them. You have your eye on them. You are watching them, you you’re looking at them they have your attention, the God of the universe. Father, I pray that you would lead them even now. What is it that you want them to grow? In? What season are they in that, that you want to put your finger on? Whether it’s parenting, whether it’s sex, whether it’s marriage, whether it’s something completely different? Their character, a particular sin, maybe a particular passion that they have been avoiding, pursuing a habit that they need to just Nix out of their life completely, or make it unbalanced or or shift it, Lord, you know, and you’re going to lead them into that. I pray for courage for them. That’s it’s okay to change. It’s okay to be different than you were yesterday. That’s good. That’s good. And God is going to lead them you’re going to lead them in the ways they need to change. Give them the grace, give them the strength. Give them everything they need. Lord, we give you all the glory and honor for it. In Jesus name, Amen.
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So finally, I’ll invite you that if you have been blessed by anything around the podcast, even if it’s not this episode, I want to hold it against you. You don’t like no but I’d love for you to leave an iTunes review If you don’t know how to do that go to delight your marriage.com/itunes you can figure out how to do it on your computer or your phone or what have you. The directions are there. It would mean a lot to me and the growth of the podcast. God bless you. I love you. I’m praying for you. And we’ll talk next week. Bye