Human Being vs. Human Doer

Are you exhausted from constantly doing but never feeling like it's enough? In this episode, I dive into the struggle between being a "doer" and learning to just "be"—and why your worth isn't tied to your productivity.

🔗 Connect with me + free resources: https://linktr.ee/heybritt.co

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IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why rest is spiritual, not selfish
- How to stop confusing your identity with your achievements
- The power of saying NO to protect your purpose
- Building filters for what deserves your YES
- Why emotional intelligence matters in your faith journey
- The need for validation and how to break free from it
- Embracing imperfection and the journey of becoming

RESOURCE MENTIONED:
- Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

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🔗 Free quiz, newsletter & more: https://linktr.ee/heybritt.co

CONNECT WITH ME:

https://linktr.ee/brittany.durphey 

Transcript

Brittany Durphey (00:01)

Hello and welcome to the Big Bold Faith podcast, a podcast dedicated to getting real bold and honest when it comes to living and fighting for your everyday faith. My name is Brittany Durfee and I'm your host. And if you've been here for a moment, hello, welcome. If this is your first time, welcome. We're all about just building our faith more boldly and doesn't mean to be

bigger and bolder than somebody else, but maybe you're stepping out to do something different than what you did before to have more confident in what God has already called you to be so that you can be a light on a hill and that you would not to be covered in this season. And I know you guys have been like, where have you been? I'm a very intentional person. And so whenever I get on this platform, just know that the intention of me sitting with the Lord,

to meditate on the word, to meditate on what he wants to download to me, to then download to you. Know that I have your best entrance. I will be held accountable and I want to make sure that my words are guiding and encouraging and edifying for everyone that's listening. And today, today's going to be an amazing episode because it hits home for me. It's this idea of balance. Balance to me, as I wrote in a speech a couple of weeks ago,

is the skies and the seas working together in perfect harmony. For me, balance is so difficult. Maybe you're like me that sometimes you feel like you're not doing enough for the kingdom of God. But of course we don't say this out loud, right? You're currently maybe building that business and it's not thriving the way that you thought it would be. Or he's giving you this idea, this calling that doesn't feel impactful yet. Perhaps

You are believing in breakthrough for your family, for their health, and yet still nothing. ⁓ You're doing everything. You've been to the promised land and back. Maybe you forgot to pray last night and then you woke up this morning and that situation's even worse. And you're like, dang God, I can't ever get it right. Where's the balance of doing this life, being in this life, and being all that you've called me to do without striving, right?

So many of us are doers or as I like to say human doers versus human beings, which he always created us to be an image bearer. That's you. Then you want to stick around for this episode. I want to talk about this emotional intelligence about ourselves when we learn and we lean and glean with the Lord our savior. When you are going through a system or maybe you're going through a process, right? So for me, balance,

I'm a very type A person as many of you guys have known this. I'm sure I say this by myself all the time. My gifts are administration, encouragement, ⁓ leadership, making things happen. Yes, your girl, when you want to call me, I'm your girl, I'm your doer. And it's been very difficult for me to be. And this season, I think I've shared a little bit before God gave me two words. He gave me abiding.

And he gave me this acceleration. These are the two words for 2025. But even this year, earlier this year, he showed me that doing for me became an idol and I was confused. Oh my God, you made me like this. Like this is where you put me in places and spaces to thrive. And then there is also this word of abiding, right? We know that in John, talks about, you know, if you remain in me, like to bear fruit.

Abiding in the Lord not striving and it's a hard idea to grapple with because also in the scripture it talks about faith without works is day So my god, what do you want me to do do or not do and I've also shared with you guys that I have recently been taking a Sabbath So on Sundays or action on Sundays Saturdays are my Sabbath day. So it's the day that I turn off I do not do any work. I do not answer any phone calls. I do not go grocery shopping

I will go and do whatever I want to do. And then this moment of Sabbath, it really gets me back to be part of the creator. What did he create me to do? He created all of this glory and all of the splendor around us. And I'm so busy working like Martha, right? I forget that the creator is right there in front of me and I could just be basking. And what that looks like could mean like you go read a book in the park, you go on a very long hike or walk.

You hang out with your friends, you make dinner, you do something where you unplug and you remember the creativity of nature about yourself. That's hard in this world, right? So many screens, so many technical things that we actually push that part of from ourselves, from, you know, from ourselves, essentially, right? We're doing everything else, but there's this burnout feeling. There's this never feeling content, never feeling dissatisfied.

because there's a part of you that's not fully living. And if I'm honest, I deal with this still today. Y'all give me some grace, right? You'll give me some grace. ⁓ And it's just a difficult task and understanding. So I wanted to kind of dive deep. I'm gonna share a resource with you guys at the end of this. So please stay tuned of what kind of inspired this episode because I think it's super important for us to understand that

our becoming is more than our to-do list. And if you're so busy trying to do to trying to get to the next and then you look up and it's like, well, but who did you become in the process? Right? ⁓ Wonderful book by Michelle Obama. But also who are you becoming in the process? God wants us to become something, not to be doers, not to be a checklist. And I think that's the part where we feel depleted. That's where we feel empty. That's where we feel far from our goals. And

I feel like a lot of us have been running away from very much an answer that's been in front of you the whole time. And I feel like if we get back to that, right, we just turn, repent, we turn back, we can get to a place where we can feel satisfied, content in every season and situation as Paul would mention in the scriptures. So let's dive into this topic about emotionally balance. So what is emotionally being balanced?

You get this by spending time with yourself. I'm going say a whole lot of stuff today. I'm ready. I'm seasoned. I'm ready. I'm watered. Right? I feel like emotionally balance has to come with you sitting with yourself and learning about yourself. When you learn about the things that make you angry, when you learn about the things that make you frustrated, when you're sitting in the silence, when you're sitting with God, things start to become apparent. Right?

I've told you guys that I do micro journaling. love micro journaling and it's, or I guess I was schooled this week. I do macro journaling, but that's a different story for a different time. But when you do this journaling, I get a chance to look back over the years on said day. So if I picked up my journal for today, which I did back in 2024, I can see where I was. I was at a graduation. I was spending time with my grandmother that I hadn't seen in two decades.

I was feeling depleted and exhausted because I thought I could do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthened me. And I thought that I could do a 48 hour trip with no food and no sleep. And then I start seeing these patterns about myself. That's the same person I am today. I will run on empty for everybody else but myself. That was me two years ago, three years ago, maybe even five years ago. But I don't know that information unless I sit with myself.

Fasting is another great proponent of understanding emotional intelligence or maybe more like spiritual intelligence of understanding yourself. During the times where I am fasting, God often shows me things about my attitude that I thought that I had all together. I thought I was type A, you know, A plus plus person. And God's like, you can't say that person. Why do you say that? Why did you like today, you guys like I'm gonna be so present.

I lied about something or I deceived. It wasn't a lie, but it was deception and it came from the brethren of lies. Conviction hit me so hard and it was like, why didn't you just tell that person the truth? Why did you conceal what you would already? I didn't naturally say no, but I didn't tell the truth either. God's still working on me. When I think about emotional balanced Christians, I also think of

things of ⁓ how do you acknowledge or how do we take account for our feelings, right? We are a three part being, right? We're made up of a body, a spirit and a soul, which is your mind, your will and your emotions. And when you suppress your emotions, I see y'all, I'm talking to everyone that's out there. If you suppress your emotions, if you're one of those people that are like, I don't cry, things don't make me like, I don't get bent out of shape for those things. I would employ you to pray to the Lord.

If you're really serious of wanting to connect with the Lord, of understanding God, like this is a part of me that I've been suppressing. So if you're suppressing a part of you, you don't get a chance to be the full expression of who God has called you to be from the very beginning, which is wild. If you don't cry, if you don't get angry, if you don't have an attitude, if have certain things that should bother you and not bother you in a way where you're offended, but bother you where you have an emotion, God is emotion.

And I started learning that in the season of like, Oh my gosh, God, you are a God of emotions. You are a God of anger. You are a God of love. If I don't understand and feel love, how can I love the creator? How can I love my spouse? How can I love my friends? How can I up, up heal the greatest commandment, which is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I can't even do that because I don't got emotions. You don't either. So

I would say definitely if you're struggling or you don't even know what emotions are, think about it, pray about it, sitting the silence, feel your feelings. What does your body feel like when you wake up? I've, I, was a couple of months ago where I woke up and my body and my heart, my heart cavity just felt constricted. And I was like, God, I don't, I don't know what it is today, but this feels tight to me. My chest feels tight. I'm just waking up.

I'm sitting in prayer, God, I don't know what to do. And so after getting out of prayer, I decided to go for a really long three mile walk. God didn't say anything to me for the whole three miles and I did not have my AirPods in. And at the very end of that walk, I came up with balance. I came up with this idea. really was a speech before that I was working on for a class.

And as I was working on it, it came out so effortlessly. And I was like, God, like, I just want to be balanced. just, I want to be like your creation when you created that to be the heavens and the seeds creating boundaries between thee. That's what I'm seeking. And out of that very difficult morning and a three mile walk, I received my speech that I needed for a week or two.

And I just found it very pleasant to just kind of sit with yourself and to sit with the Lord. So if that's something you're dealing with, I would employ you for sure. When we think about being emotionally balanced, there's also another question that we need to understand. And I love this. I believe, I don't know, I think I created it. Maybe I didn't. The difference between being a human being and a human doer. So a human doer, count how many of these are yours. Okay. I'm not going to judge you because these are mine. So just.

Enlighten me, enlighten me, okay? If your calendar is stacked one after another, that is me to the third degree. Again, I think I could do all things through Christ Jesus. That's not what that scripture means, okay? We're gonna deep dive into that, but that's not what that scripture means. It does not mean I can pack all of, you know, all of the meetings of like a Rubik's Cube, like Tetris.

And you've got a meeting at nine o'clock, a meeting at 10 o'clock, a meeting, and you know these meetings are going to run over and you know you need to go to the bathroom and you know that you need to go get some water and you were sitting at that desk for 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 hours, 15 hours and you haven't even taken care of yourself and yet you're trying to pour into everyone. You're trying to listen for God when the body, your body isn't well nourished. It's not even like being able to, ⁓

to be able to function. went to my naturopathic and we were kind of talking about things and she mentioned if your body has so much stress on it and there's a fight or flight mentality, it'll stop many things. One, that weight that you've been trying to lose is not going anywhere. That's first thing. Second of all, you will wake up at two and three o'clock in the morning, not able to go back to sleep. And then you put more danger and stress upon yourself because your body is always in this fight mentality. That's the first thing, right?

Second, you are exhausted at the end of the day and not feeling the joy that God has called you to be in that particular field or that industry. You're like, I'm burnt out. I'm exhausted. I can't think. I'm not excited. I don't want to be here. These people think like, get on my nerves. I can't stand such and such. ⁓

I'm angry at such and such. like to be honest with you, just, I'm gonna tell them my whole self, Holy Spirit. I'm tell myself, okay, cool. I did not properly feed myself and I had a whole snake attitude as somebody. And I said, my problem is it's not with her, it's with me because I don't have boundaries for myself. So when you think like, like let's just say that you have an anger issue or someone like,

pisses you off, right? You're cutting your traffic. Take a step back to realize and take a self-evaluation of where you are in life. Did you get the sleep that you needed? Did you get the water that you need? Did you wake up and work out? Did you sit with the Lord? If all of those things check out, then maybe it's you, it's the anger problem. But maybe it's the environment that you're giving yourself that doesn't allow it to be able to reset. Maybe you don't have an anger problem and not that we should, you know,

give Snickers its credit with like you're hangry, but there are parts about you that need to be well-steward so that you can do the work. And that's why God created rest. That is why when you see in scripture, it's not just the seventh day, it's the seventh year, the year of Jubilee resting for the land because God knew something about the body. He knew something about the earth and we don't take it for, we don't actually listen to it. So,

I'm going to tell you that maybe it's not you. Maybe it's the environment that you're creating for yourself to be angry, to be lustful, to be ⁓ a facetious, to be a division and have factions. All of these things where you're like super sarcastic and you're like, who is that? That's your other person talking because it's out of alignment. And we want to get back into alignment. Couple other things. Actually, there's a whole bunch of other things on this list. I'm going keep going. And you let me know if any of these are hitting home for you.

spontaneous events and gatherings are hard for you. You're like, please don't invite me. Now my introverts, I know, give us a five week notice. And I mean five weeks, give us five weeks notice and we may or may not be there. But if you're not and you're an extrovert, spontaneous events and gatherings are hard for you. You're like, I've got stuff to do. I've got stuff to be. Why are we just sitting here? We just at the picnic? We just at the park? What are we doing? Like, are we, do we have a plan? Are we going anywhere? What's the sequence of events?

⁓ you feel like you have to answer that at last email. I'm that person. I do not like, I don't know how y'all be having these red bubbles on your phone. That'd be like a thousand or let there be more than two texts unread or maybe there's more than 10 emails. Like I will shut it all down. I'm like, wait, let me focus on this. Let me get these emails out. There's something about you that can't leave that undone. You've got to work through it. Okay.

⁓ let's see, you get to the office earlier and you try to get things done before your coworkers, or maybe you wake up early and you start cleaning the house. My, my, my black folks know what we're talking about. Your mom used to wake up, she'd be cleaning the house. It's not even five o'clock. The whole house smells like bleach. Yep. And pine soul. ⁓ and that's just something that we've taken on. I mean, you can even see that as like kind of a, I don't want to say generational curse.

but something that you take on from your mom and it feels like your dishes can't be, ⁓ you can't even leave them in the sink. And we're not talking about being dirty. We're not talking about being unclean or unkept, right? But there's something in you that will work until everything is completed and perfected before you're able to rest for yourself. And it's not sustainable is what I'm getting to. You're overly eager to please other people.

You like to make sure people like you, that you're saying less. Maybe you don't confess about your faith. Maybe you don't say anything. You don't want to offend people. Maybe you code switch. You change your accent. You a little corporate, corporate. You a little thug, thug. Wherever your space is, just so that you can fit in, so that you can please people, which doesn't please God at all. We have scripture for that. You have difficulty trusting other people. You feel insecure in relationships.

Maybe also you are sabotaging your relationships or clinging to others or this one, which is I love is isolating yourself. We think that isolating ourselves in situations and problems and ⁓ keeping ourselves from other people so that we can work on ourselves is not the right answer. I deal with this still today and my friends know that I will, I'm the person, I'm just gonna be at the house. I'm gonna chill, I'm gonna fix this whole attitude.

I'm gonna do a whole 39 day prayer and fasting by myself so that the Lord can correct me and correct me only and then I will come out holy and anointed. I'm kidding, but not about the 39 but about the Holy Holy coming out. It's just something and being an only child that has actually been a crux for me like that hasn't always been helpful because I didn't have anybody it was me myself and the Holy Spirit. It was me myself and

my stuffed animal, which I used to rock with. And so it's like, who else did I go to? Like, that's what I learned. And so I'm unlearning that even today. And I want to tell you that you're in good company, but these are the makes of us being doers. Now, why doing feels better than being? You're not going like me. You're not going to like me. For me doing and I'm going to, I'm going to just talk to myself. Okay.

If this resonates with you, that's between you and the Holy Spirit, okay? For me, being is hard. So to do something feels more accomplished. And I've read this with a couple of different resources that I read and a couple of people that I follow is that it makes you feel seen. You get a chance to produce something. You get a chance to accomplish something. You get a chance to have something.

firm in your hand and you get to execute something and see a finished product. You may get hand claps. feel more accomplished than just existing. And there could be, if you go back into your childhood, maybe there was something in your lineage or maybe you didn't feel seen as a young child. And sometimes we don't even remember that stuff, y'all. Like some of the times that we just were like, okay, like I have this feeling. ⁓

Trying to see. Yes. Okay. I'm going to be, I'm going to be transparent. I have a very bad habit of like wanting to be seen by other people. It is the weirdest thing. I didn't even really want to say it, but I'm going to say it because the Holy Spirit told me to say it, but it's, it's equivalent to a small child. You know how they are in the store and they're like, hi, or they're like, look at me. I have that same feeling. Now I don't go as far as like,

Hey, look at me. But when people like give you like a look or something, they look you to the left or to the right and you like, you just feel seen. You feel like someone saw you and whether they check in for you or they not checking for you. It's like a feeling and the same thing can happen with work. If you feel like someone gives you an email, someone says you did a really great job. You did a really dope job that gives you value. That gives you sense of worth. Like you not.

worthy by yourself, like you not a masterpiece that you weren't bought with a cost that you weren't redeemed, like that all of the things and all of your to do's are the only thing that validates you. So what ends up happening is you're in this perpetual cycle of always doing something to be filled to to fill C. Right. So it's like, OK, if I do this, someone's going to say hi or someone's going to be like, Brittany, she's very disciplined or.

Britney, she's really about that life or we know like, and there's just like compliments, which also can turn into people pleasing. And it's not a goal to please people, but it's to fill the void that you don't have because you were never seen as a child. And so you're going to ask me, maybe that is you. Maybe you like being seen by that girl. Maybe you like being seen by that man. Maybe you being seen by the people at work. Like y'all better give me my credit. I worked really hard.

But there's something to disconnect ourselves from that because that's not our identity. Our identity comes from Christ. Our identity doesn't come in how much we can do. I read this week and I do not remember where, I hope it's in Romans. Y'all go read the whole Bible and tell me where it is. But essentially it says that your good works do not save you. It is by the mercy of God. Then I started to understand like, God, that's why I wake up every morning and say, thank you Lord for your new mercy. Because yesterday,

Even on my best day, when I get all of the things when I'm fasting and I'm praying and I'm saying, thank you, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. No, sir. Yes. And I'm telling the truth at all times and I'm walking in light and I've got all of the scripture meditated, that's still fall short of the glory of God. And so I'm like, ⁓ okay. I can sit on your word, which is your mercy. Thank you for your mercy. Your mercy that saves me when I didn't know you and the mercy that saves me every day when I do know you.

So when, what I'm trying to say is essentially is when you're going through these moments in life and you're feeling like you have to be seen by the world, your connections, you have a like, like, I mean, some of y'all are dating right now, right? Y'all are all those hinges, bubbles, and all of the things and things. I'm gonna say y'all, I'm not part of y'all right now, but y'all are dating and there's that adrenaline, there's that dopamine when someone's like, when they swipe right, right? They're like, oh, hey, how you doing?

And then when they ghost you, you feel like, dang, what did I do? is my breath fucking, like, you know, the whole thing, right? So that's what I'm like, okay, we've got to disconnect our.

ideas and thoughts that by yourself where you are the way that God wrote it into his plan when he saw you before even the foundations of the earth was made he saw where you would be right now and he's happy and he's proud of you and it's the only the enemy that likes to come still kill and destroy and to make you think other ways that Girl, you ain't got it. You still don't know the whole Bible. You still don't know Proverbs 3 5 my heart. You still are in these cycles

It is only by the enemy that he would use such false lies against you and against your identity, which I guess is what I'm trying to get to. Our identity is in Christ. So when we don't understand our emotionally balanced selves, then what we do is we fall into the same trap that Eve did when she went and he was after her character. He was after her identity, because as long as you don't know who your identity is, then you can never be balanced. And there's like just

So many things. So here goes my last question for you. Why we do more than we become? The reason why lot of Christians struggle with the Sabbath ⁓ or the world is because there's this, obviously there's the environment that we're in, right? This go, go, go, go, go, hustle, grind, whatever y'all wanna say. All of that, but that's a system. That's a system of Babylon of.

If I can keep the people going, my gosh, Lord, it reminds me of the Egyptians, right? When you go back and you look in Exodus and you see that the Israelites were just working, working, working, working, working, they didn't even get a Sabbath off, right? And if you read even before then, God had actually had mentioned that his people were going to go through an oppression for 400 years, but we go, we'll talk about that on another day as well. When you see these people working,

Right. Then they get rescued and delivered. They go through, go through the Red Sea to be delivered. God has to work that out of them because all they know how to do is work and to produce. And that is like a system that we're in. And for us to get out of the system, thank God that we have the freedom. Some of you guys have more than others. If your Sabbath is not a full day, that's okay. If it is an hour, if it is 30 minutes to disconnect, to choose it, the enemy, it's like turning down your plate. ⁓

I love when I fast because of two things. One, you have an understanding of your being and who God has called you to be versus what the world has called you to be, right? When you're no longer assigned, when you no longer can do anything to satisfy anyone and the enemy becomes mad. And so then God starts showing you about yourself, what he loves about you, what he doesn't love about you. So you'd be like, God, look, I'm bad by myself. I got five businesses and I have a million dollars. And God says, yes, but that pride. And you're like,

even though I have a million dollars in the bank, my pride does not please the Lord. And so it becomes this disconnect because it starts targeting your identity of who you are and what he's wanting to become or what he's wanting you to become and what he's wanting to remove out of you from the very beginning. So there's that part when you think about going through and being delivered and going through a Sabbath. I also love when you fast.

And I say this often whenever you fast if you do a water fast or if you do a six to six fast I love how heightened your senses become both in the physical and in the spiritual next time you fast Let me tell you go into a store a meat store specifically you will smell every salted ⁓ swine and con and everything else in the pig house, but also your You're able to discern fruit

Physical, I'm talking physical, we gonna get it spiritual. Physically, I want you guys to fast. I just want you guys to just like test out this theory. Next time you fast, go into the store, like it has to be on like day six or day seven, okay, around that time. Or if you're a season faster, it might be like day one or day two. Go in and go smell the fruit and see if you can't discern what is fruit that's mature and ready to eat and that fruit that's immature. Just do it. That's in the physical.

think how much greater in the spiritual you become. So you become more spiritually mature in discerning fruit about yourself and about others. And that's the emotionally balanced or spiritually balanced person that we want to become along the way. Another reason we do more than we become is ⁓ we, I'll say this for the, for the single ladies, right?

It just makes things easier for us. I always grapple with this and I have to let go of things being undone. I've got to let go that my dishes won't, or okay, we'll say it two ways. Cause I know some of y'all don't use the dishwasher. It is my best friend. I don't care about y'all. I know that they might not really be clean clean, but in my head there was a cycle that happened and water hit it and some soap. And so it has to be clean for me.

Now some of you guys will wash your dishes, then put them in the dishwasher to be washed and then take them out and then rinse them and then put a lot of work. It's three. I'm a single person still. That is extra work for me. And it, ⁓ programs my brain to continuously not be satisfied with things being undone.

There's a lot to say with that because I think the Lord allows us to be undone in so many ways. He wants us to become undone so we can become more like him. It was the enemy. was Satan. It was Lucifer himself that wanted to be like perfect. He wanted to be above God. And even in that mindset, I feel like he's constantly running us in cycles with distractions of you're not good enough. You're not.

You're not there yet. You're not perfect. You're not, you're not a hundred pounds. You're, you're 101. You got to get that one point. You only did 9,500 steps today. You didn't do this. You didn't say this, right? You, you slacked off and it's like all of that noise, all of those thoughts, we've got to cast them, right? We got to grab on each one of them and submit them back to Lord and be like, God, but what do you think? Like, how are you feel about me? ⁓ to do this, maybe it's so easy as

Maybe you hire a cleaner once a month or once a quarter. I know I'm baffling y'all. I can't afford that, but it's your piece. Can you not budget the life that you want to live? Right? ⁓ and part of my speech that I had mentioned, I had mentioned about, ⁓ going on this journey of why are you saving money for the things that you want? Right? Things change differently when you have an assignment for your money. If you don't have a vision for your money, you just spend it. But if you know, Hey,

In two years, I'm trying to live in St. Lucia. I'm gonna try to live in Jamaica. I'll see y'all on the next presidential campaign and run, but I wanna live abroad. Things look different. I'm not spending $9 on a matcha every single morning. We are at the crib doing our own matcha because $9 times 30 times 12 is enough for like to put something down, right?

your intentions change. But if you want to hire a cleaner so that you have more time to rest so that you can have revelation, some of the things that we're wanting revelation for, some of the things that we're seeking and asking God for is because we're not still enough to hear him. We're not still enough to understand our emotional beings and our feelings. So we suppress them because we don't spend time with them. And then we're wondering why God's not answering and God is answering in the still small voice. And he's saying,

If you would just sit down and be quiet for a second. You know how your kids, when I was growing up, was, if you don't sit down and be quiet, if you, if we would have sit down and be quiet with ourselves, maybe you could feel that heartache. Maybe you could feel that frustration, that anger, that upset and not to suppress it, but to take it back to the Lord so that you're able to grow and be mature in your fruit and to go forward. So you're not no longer going in cycles. You're no longer five years like, dang, I still hate that person. Why I still have, cause you never dealt with it.

You never sat with it. You never had the ability to just sit with the Lord and sit with your feelings. The one who created the feelings. Maybe you're ordering meal prep, right? Spend some money on some meal prep. Some of us just need to meal prep, me, myself included. I need to carve out Sunday, three hours. Girl, this is the meals. Chat GPT. They cannot make your meals, but they can give you ideas for recipes. I've made this easy, right? No longer are you scurrying the internet like what are we going eat this week?

Chat GPT, I got $49 this week left in my budget because I'm trying to move to St. Lucia, Jamaica, whatever. How do we make a dollar out of 15 cents? Please let me know. I've done this before you guys. And it was actually on the penny. I was like, I live in this zip code. I shop at the Sprouts, the Kroger, the Rouse, all of that. I need meal ideas for $49 for five.

for five days, I like to eat breakfast, and dinner. And it was like, okay, this is what you go eat. Now I'm not gonna say it saves me some money though, right? I may have been eating some carrots during a lunch or a snack, but we ate, right? Easy, right? We have this technology. Let it not be a place where you reject it. Not thinking of easier way. God creates everything. So all of you guys that are opposed to chat, GPT and AI, I totally get it. ⁓

try to keep a balance, right? God has created me and gifted me with beautiful things. Like I would never have chat GPT like, ⁓ do this podcast, right? God still has a voice. God still requires me to prepare and to do all the things. I write down my own notes still. I asked for the Holy spirit, but there might be certain things that I'm like, Hey, like how can I, you know, change this topic or change this title to be more engaging or something like that. But

You know, there's still a part where you are, ⁓ you're responsible for the things that God has given you, but he also gives technology. He gives healthcare. He gives doctors. He gives medication. He gives therapists. He gives all of these beautiful things. And we decide to say like, no, I just, I just want to sit on a farm. I don't want to be part of technology. I don't want to do any of these things when God is calling people into that industry to be able to change and to be the light of the world. ⁓ Y'all need to turn off your notifications.

Sorry. ⁓ There are these beautiful things called a DND. It is called Do Not Disturb Me. I probably have five different settings and I have five different ways people can contact me. So I've got like a work mode, I've got a sleep mode, I've got a podcast mode, I've got...

I've got a Sabbath mode and it essentially you can set it up to have like, you know, if you want your husband to contact you or if you only want your friends to contact you on the weekends or whatever your Sabbath day, it'll block everybody else off. And I'll be sitting pretty. I mean like if my phone is ringing, then I know it's someone intentional that I want to be part of, but all of the Slack notifications, all of the emails, all of all of that can wait till Monday. So yes.

Some of you guys are like, your phone be always on do not and ended and is and will and is going to stay. Some of y'all are like, you're you're doing, did you know you're do not disturb? Yes, girl. I did. Thank you for the invite. Thank you for letting me know. ⁓ Even even going to sleep. Turn your do not disturb on like and I, I some emergencies. Yes. Put those people on emergency. Like I got a few people that I'm like, if you call me in the midnight hour, I will awake.

but everybody else I'll see you on the other side of whatever day. that there, there are certain things like that. And then there's, can release the boundaries from yourself of becoming and do. So just allow yourself to be right. What is your, Hmm. I want you to just breathe for a moment. That's what I feel. I'm like, just breathe, right? Breathe and feel your body. And I know you're like, what does that even mean? Does your body feel tight?

Does your body feel like exhausted? Do you feel like you're thirsty? Do you feel like you're hungry? Like just breathe. We're just gonna take a moment. Breathe in.

breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

There's so much stress that we hold in our body. And even for myself, I'm gauging my body as I'm talking to you guys now. like, I'm a little tired. ⁓ Earlier this morning, I was craving grapefruit juice. And I was like, why am I craving grapefruit juice? Girl, your body needs some vitamin C. That's what it's saying. Hey, I would like some vitamin C. Listen to your body is all that I guess I'm getting to.

We need to breathe. We need to take those emotions. We need to stop running from the next and pause. Say la, do less versus doing more. That is the scariest thing for us doers is to say, but I didn't, I didn't get it all done. And that's the lie of the enemy, right? He wants to put us into these cycles and this distraction to keep going, going, going, even when you're doing God's work, right? But how do you do God's work where you run it all empty?

Because if you're not facing the physical warfare, then there's the spiritual warfare that you still have to conquer. And so if you're not physically well, the enemy's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we want to KO her. Because she hasn't been training. She hasn't been getting her strength up. And so there are certain things in your life, whether you're married, whether you're single, that need to be non-negotiables. And I want to kind of give you this episode takeaway, which I think is super powerful and impactful.

I actually took this and modified it by this newsletter that I ⁓ follow about money markets and it's by Andrew Ginkola. If you follow him, great, but you have to build a filter for your commitments. Can we do this for the next 30 days? I'm gonna try it with you, you're gonna try it with me, we're gonna do it together and we're going to overcome and you can just, I just.

I just want you to DM me and tell me how far you made it. And if we make it to day one, great. If we make it to day 30, great. One is not better than the other. But I think that we do need to put some placeholders in place so that we have boundaries to go far, to do what God has called us to do. And I'm still struggling with this, you guys. I don't have it. I messed up even as of yesterday. Even last week, I was like, your girl can't be working 70 hour weeks. I can't work 70 hour weeks.

I mean, I can, should I? No. Y'all see this gray hair? It's cute on me though. But I got time. I'm trying to be 120. I told y'all this. This gray needs to stop because at 120, you know, I want to look like Samuel from David. But let me jump into this episode takeaway. You've got to build filters for your commitments. Before you say yes to anything, you should ask these three questions.

The first question is, does this align to who you want to become? And I guess the question you should ask before that is, who do you want to become? There is a desire and God has been dealing with me on this specifically. For a really long time, I was like, God, you're going to tell me what I should be, who I should be, what, all of the things. And I was listening to this Dr. Miles Monroe ⁓ sermon recently.

And he was mentioning, and I've mentioned this before, but just to hear him versus to read it was totally different. He was saying, essentially, God has given each one of us a vision, right? There is a desire within us. And a lot of times we don't know it because we haven't sat down long enough to actually write it down. And then we go to the Lord and we say, Lord, please bless this, please do this. And you're not even doing anything in alignment, nor do you have a plan for him to bless. So it would be essentially like, hey, God,

⁓ bless give, me instruction on where to go next. And it's like, well, you haven't even sat with a business plan to say what direction you want to go in, right? Like if you had a vision, like I want to be a, ⁓ an author, at least you have an idea, right? But if you start with not even having an author idea, it's like, how do you go before the Lord to say, Lord, help me understand and guide me in this way of knowing if this book deal should be, or these communications.

You don't have the sermon for that, right? Because you just all willy nilly, right? You just out here walking around saying yes to things, saying no to things, but not really going anywhere. You're going in cycles. And when he had expressed that, I was like, wow. It then also started to give me the insight and discernment. Like a lot of us don't know what we should be, but going back to sitting with yourself, fasting with yourself and being quiet, there are desires that are so engraved within you that

There's things about you that you just are like, I just have this feeling like I just, I want to just live in Europe for a year. And you're like, but no, no, no, I can't do that. Like that's a fleshly desire. Like that doesn't align with God's promises. And it's like, but you've had that dream for five years. How do you put that into place? Right. So then this goes back to the money thing of, who are you becoming? How are you saving your money? How are you? And this will go into kind of this next question of, does this align with who you want to become? Right. Do you want to become someone that's a traveler that

understands different cultures that like that's part of your life. There's nothing ⁓ fleshly about traveling and you don't have, you're not a minute, you know, you're not doing a missionary trip. guys like that you're not doing a mission trip. You guys like it's, it doesn't have to always be that deep. Goes into the second question. Is this the highest value use of my time right now? Hmm. Okay. So you have a vision.

You know where you want to go. You know these desires that you want to travel abroad. You want to be a book writer. You want to be a mom. You want to do this. Okay. So when things come your way, you look at it and you're like, this person wants me to, they want me to start a television network, right? Even though your focus for the last year or two has been writing books. Now, what we're not going to do is first off, we take everything back to the Lord because sometimes

the Lord be like, I want you to put this down for a season and put this back up. So that's not what we're not going to do. Like I always take everything back to the Lord. But I think what's important is at least having the vision and also under understanding the timetable. I've talked about this before the tribe of Isekar. They always understood the, the essence of time essentially, like, ⁓ and every season has a timeline.

So understanding the timeline God has given you for certain projects and certain things. So when you receive something, you say, okay, is this who I want to become? Like is this offer who God wants me to become and who he's called me to become? Maybe it's not, right? You can say no gladly. The second thing is then is this the highest value use of my time?

Some of us are doing low level jobs and low level things when God has called you to be greater. And I'm not talking financially. I'm talking about you could be making a million dollars, but you are spending your time, not wisely. So we only get 24 hours in a day. We do not get time back. We do not get money back. When you spend it, it's over with. You become a day older, a year older, a decade older, and you'll never get that back.

Are you using the time that you have right now for what God has called you to do? I struggle with this. I'm a stand up. I'm gonna say, there's some things I should be doing. I'm saying yes to so many low things. They pay really well. They give me so many accolades. They give me hand claps. They tell me how great I am. They feel that doer in me, but I'm not becoming anything. And that's the part that we want to get to. The last question is, or should I say there's two more questions.

What is saying yes require me to give up? If you're married, you're giving up time with your husband, with your kids, with your family. If you're single, right? You're not spending time like finding a life outside of work. When did the single people always got to work? When did the single people got to always be on the first, the second and the third serving team? All Sundays, we not serving for y'all all three Sundays. We gonna go sit in the park and do nothing.

and not serve your church three times. Like we believe in the body of Christ, but there's a part about being single that we think that we have to sacrifice our lives because we have nothing else. And if that's you, release yourself from that. You can be sitting in your house chilling, go sir, first service, attend the second service, be sitting on your couch for the third service, doing nothing, answering nobody. I'm not coming. I'm not doing, I did what I was supposed to do. like, is it, what do you, what are you giving up?

Who are you not becoming? What are you not doing? What are you not learning about yourself because you didn't go to the pottery class because you said yes to something and no to something else. You never got a chance to live life. The last thing is if a request doesn't pass all these filters, you can say no gracefully, but say it firmly because no is a complete sentence. When I think about no, ⁓ there was another resource. I'm all into the resource. I'm a reader y'all that was talking about

the French word for no, which is non, I believe. I wanna do a deeper dive study, but essentially what I read was that, or what I was listening, essentially was the French, ⁓ their no isn't such a, it's not taken offensively like those people in the US. So someone's like, hey, do you wanna go have dinner? And you're like, no.

No one's offended. They're like, ⁓ okay, cool. But their word is nonce. So all of that to say is feel confident in your know, whether you're French, whether you speak Spanish, whether you speak Portuguese, like any of that, just say no. And if they can't accept you, then it's okay. They weren't meant for you. That thing wasn't meant for you at that season. Do we not believe that God will be the provider and give us everything that we need?

Right? And the season and that maybe knowing the season looks like you're not making a million followers or you're not making a million dollars or whatever success looks like in whatever, wherever you live. But there's so much deeper when you have your life, when you have your soul, when you're emotionally present in becoming versus being a doer of all things. So when we do, we actually become emotionally absent.

and a lot of us are absent in this moment. We're not able to discern, discern friendships, discern people. We can't even discern ourselves. So what we do, a couple of things, and then we gon' pray, and then we gon' be out. Feel your emotions, bring them to God and journal them and denote the patterns. I love this because it gets a chance to say, ⁓ I worked 12 hours today, people were getting on my nerves, what did I not do? I wouldn't spend time with God.

I didn't even eat. Shoot, I didn't take my vitamins. I haven't been outside in three days. Hmm. Okay. My emotions are telling me like trigger alert, trigger alert. Girl, pray for someone to walk with you in this season that is equipped for your emotions and your inner healing, all about accountability. There has to be someone in your circle that's going to hold you accountable to say, Hey girl, ⁓ have you been, you seem a little crunchy. You seem a little like agitated.

You good. Like, and not in a like, you've got to trust this person, right? Like there are some people that you'd be like, I'm fine. I told you I was fine. And as women, we have our hormones, all of those things. ⁓ Ask, am I living faithfully to the life God has called me or called you to live out? Right. I think that this should be assessed every year.

so that you can know and you can even look back and you say, God, like, am I living the life? Have I been doing the things that I should be doing? Not should, but who you've called me to become. You've called me to be a communicator. You've called me to be a friend. And is my fruit really showing that, right? You would know them by their fruit.

Many feel like ⁓ that we have to achieve to be loved. And as a result, we struggle when an achievement addiction that it never seems like enough. And we know that what is like approved of, but we all few know the experience of being loved of who we are. And if I could say anything to you, are loved who you are today, whether you gain weight, lose weight.

whether you accomplish much or you accomplish little, your life by itself. You were made, wonderfully made complex. I love the complex. That means I'm not simple. You've got many ideas. You've got many goals and aspirations and all of those are from God. God is a multitude, variations. If you see all the plants that he had made for us so that we can still breathe and live and we don't even know all of the, that's God. Why would he give us one thing to do?

I would also say that unhealed wounds open us up to habitual sin against God and others, especially of understanding this emotional balance and yeah, just really wanting to dive deep. so ⁓ I hope that blessed you because it's a season where I'm just like, okay, God, it's not just emotional intelligence, but it's like also the spirituality. And I said I was going to share this book with you guys because it blessed my life.

I have it here. It is called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and it's by Peter Scascaro. And as y'all can see, I didn't annotate it, all of the things. I'm do it for you. ASMR for you. But it was such a great book. And some of the ideas did come from the book. I'll totally like, you know.

But there was also some times in me just kind of feeling myself and like, this is why I do what I do. And I think the biggest takeaway that I received from this is that emotions actually connect me closer to God. I think that's the hierarchy thing that I understood. Like when I'm feeling something, I'm like, God, I'm angry at this person and I can bring that to the Lord and that actually grows me in intimacy. And you know what that happens? Then I could have reverence for the Lord.

then I can love the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul and all of my mind and love my neighbor as myself. That's what I got out of the whole book. If I could do it in one or two sentences, that's what it was. And so I'm going to drop a link if you're interested. I'll drop the information in the show notes so that you know. But, and if you have not subscribed, followed and done all of the things, look, it's a new season. It's a new thing. And I'm excited. But before we leave, I would...

love to pray for you in this season as you're trying to find balance between the doing nature of life and this becoming that God has always created us to be in the very beginning when he created the heavens and the earth. So dear heavenly father God we thank you. We thank you for the ability that we are emotional beings God and that you receive us with our emotional state whether we're angry or glad or upset. All of our emotions we can bring to you God. Lord I just pray for understanding

And not only just understanding, but knowledge and wisdom that we take this knowledge and we apply it, that we can grow stronger, that we can produce more fruit, that we can be all that you called us to be, whether we accomplish much or little God, that we do not associate our value, our identity Lord about how many things on our to-do list that we finished, how many people that we please, how many businesses that we ⁓ produce.

How many things, Lord, that all by ourselves we are loved, we are chosen, we are redeemed, and we are seen with you through the eyes of Christ, Lord, as holy and matchless God. Lord, I thank you, Lord, that you love us all by ourselves, Lord. I thank you, Lord, that there's nothing, like it says in your word, that can separate us from the love of God. Lord, we thank you, Lord, for your redemptive nature, God. I pray for every person that their hearts be changed, their minds.

would be open to receive that they have eyes to hear and ears to listen God, Lord to do the good works that you would call them to do and just becoming a light like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden Lord. So we thank you, we glorify you, we magnify you God in your son's precious name Jesus we pray, amen.