Welcome to Supernatural Saturday.
If you're new here, if this is your first Supernatural Saturday with us, please raise
your hand.
We'd love to see who is new.
Maybe you just joined during this last challenge and this is it, this is your first time with
us.
Lakeisha, welcome.
So glad you're here.
All right.
So what do we do on Supernatural Saturday?
This is the day of the week where our community gathers together to look to the Lord and for
current prophetic reality.
What is the current prophetic reality?
Not the old prophetic reality, not yesterday's manna, not the promises that we are all stewarding
in our personal lives, but what does God have for us corporately?
What is he saying to us?
What instruction, what guidance does he want to give us?
That is what we do on Saturdays and it's always something different.
Sometimes it's something very practical.
Sometimes it's something, you know, supernatural and practical.
I feel like the practical can become supernatural when we invite God into it.
Sometimes a little bit of course correction that God is doing for us.
And then sometimes it's just encouragement.
It's just hope that's being released prophetically.
And so it's always a good time.
I know I get a lot out of it.
I know God always speaks to me, but he also speaks through me.
And so I love that about Supernatural Saturday.
So I want to tell you something that I'm noticing in our community.
It might not be happening anywhere else, but something that's happening in our community,
in the Last Year Single community, extended community, is I'm seeing people that have
been around for a while get breakthrough.
Yeah, I'm seeing them get breakthrough.
I've actually seen two ladies that have been around for a while actually step into marriage-minded
courtships and engagements.
And they've been around for a while.
One of them is a private client.
One of them has been a coach and a teacher in this movement even.
And so I just want to let you guys know that I believe that they are harbingers of what's
to come in a good way.
I do.
I believe that we've been pushing up against this thing for a while and it's moving.
It's moving.
And both of them are old enough to know better.
They're both in their mid to late 60s and I'm sorry, mid to late 50s.
And I just want you to know that regardless of what's been going on in your life, just
stay consistent.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
We're going to talk about some practical stuff that once again, I believe if you apply the
supernatural to it, it can be life transforming.
Because it's time for us to take our love stories, but actually just our own lives seriously.
We got to take these things seriously.
I think that we think that's just an added bonus.
It's the cherry on top.
If it happens, great, wonderful.
The problem is, is that we don't take our individual lives seriously.
So it's hard to take a love story seriously.
It's hard to take a partnership seriously when we're not taking ourselves seriously.
I know for a fact that two of these little popcorn kernels that have been in the oil
for a while now that just popped, that's what we used to say at the beginning of this movement,
like who's going to pop first?
Who's going to meet someone first?
Back then it was just women.
Who, who, who, who is actually now that Holy Spirit's reminded me, I actually have had
several long time men, men, clients actually step into relationships to men that were super
picky, men that were very avoidant, men that were not emotionally available, men that had
to do heartwork, not just a month of heartwork, not just six months of heartwork.
In fact, in one case, this guy has been with me since the very beginning, he's been with
me since October, 2020.
And I just had a one-on-one two days ago with him and the woman that he wants to marry.
Come on.
When I tell you that this guy didn't make it past two or three dates, I ain't lying,
friend.
And it's because he always would find some reason why they were not the one or God wasn't
saying yes.
It wasn't compatible.
Really, it was all just fear.
I'm not saying that this is not the best choice.
She seems wonderful.
She seems lovely.
They seem very compatible.
The most important thing is that they're both at a place in their life where they're willing
to work through the yellow flags.
They're willing to work through the stuff.
When I first met this guy, when he first came into my program, he wasn't willing to work
through any stuff.
He wanted to move in ready house.
He didn't want to have to put any work in.
Can I tell you that if you don't have good habits, if you don't clean, if you don't steward,
even moving into a move-in ready house, that place is going to be a wreck pretty soon.
Isn't it?
That place could look like an episode.
set of hoarders before you turn around.
Why is that?
Because it's not just about the thing being perfect,
the love story being perfect,
it's about you being prepared for it.
It's about you being able to steward it.
And so I wanna talk to you about that
because in all these cases,
there were hardships that were necessary.
There was transformation that was necessary.
There was a moving around of priorities that was necessary.
And so I want you to ask yourself the question,
do you take yourself seriously?
Do you believe that your life matters?
Do you believe that your life matters
or you're just here kind of coasting through it,
just trying to get through it, trying to survive it?
I mean, heaven will be better.
It is true.
It will definitely be better.
It'll be a better version of this,
but we can have a slice of heaven on earth.
I believe that.
I do believe that we are here
to actually bring heaven to earth in situations.
So let's talk a little bit about pruning
in this spring conversation.
You know what pruning really is?
Pruning is you making a decision about what's important.
That's all it is.
It's about you and me,
because I'm in a pruning season now right now too.
And it's great because it's springtime, right?
And summer abundance is ahead of us,
but we have to make a decision about what's important.
I do believe that you can have it all.
As a child of God, I believe that God is a good father.
I believe he's the giver of good and perfect gifts.
I do.
But I also believe that you cannot have it all
at the same time.
You're gonna have to prioritize, all of you.
So as we're getting ready to go into summer,
summer starts in June.
We're about two months out,
little less than two months out.
New beginnings require endings.
Some things in your life are going to have to die
so that other things can live.
You know what one of those things is not?
Mentorship, accountability.
So I don't want you to be like,
oh, I'll just prune off last year's single.
No.
Mentorship, accountability,
people to hold you accountable to your pruning,
people for you to share what you're doing,
to get feedback,
that's always going to be necessary in our lives.
But this morning I got up and I put on my weighted vest
and I did my walk.
I did my steps.
Guys, I can think of, dude,
if you gave me like a minute,
I could think of at least 30 other things
that I would have rather done besides that.
Maybe more, maybe more.
I didn't want to do that.
And I think this is important for you to understand that
just because you're prioritizing something
doesn't mean you like it.
And it also doesn't mean that you want necessarily to do it.
But I had a grace to do it.
I have a grace in this season
to try to get my body in order.
I just turned 50 and I can see the writing on the wall
that if I don't get some things in order
and I just let year after year after year
after year after year after year after year go by
saying I'm going to do it later,
I'm going to do it in this season or that season
or after the first of the year or this or that,
it's never going to get done.
And then at some point in time,
I may cross over a line where I'm not able to get
as much breakthrough in that area
as I would have been if I had started now.
I do believe in grace.
I do believe in supernatural help from heaven, okay?
So I don't want any of you to hear like,
oh, it's too late.
No, start now.
A year from now, you will wish you had.
You will.
And listen, this is a message for everyone
because it's not a Jackie thing.
You have to prioritize muscle.
I do not want this to turn into
some kind of health coaching call
because I am not a health coach, okay?
Please do not follow me in this area.
Please do not be looking for advice.
I am just thrown against the wall and seeing what sticks.
I am listening to voices that this is their thing,
this is their anointing, this is their place in the world,
this is their lane.
But there's a lot of different voices out there
saying a lot of different things
and I have come to believe
it's not about what God can do,
it's about what you believe he can do
and what you put your agreement with.
And I believe that the organ of longevity is muscle.
If you want to live a long life,
you have to prioritize doing muscle building
and bone building activity.
All right, so if you guys, if you do follow me on Instagram, starting not next week but
the week after, I will post some of my favorite things, tools I've been using.
They're all inexpensive.
You can find them on Amazon, okay?
I like to do bougie on a budget, okay?
That's who I am.
I like it to be quality.
I'm not going to buy some crap, especially with the tariffs, I'm not going to buy some
crap from China that's going to fall apart in two seconds, okay?
I want the best of the best, but on a beer budget, champagne and caviar on a beer budget,
friends, okay?
All right, so we have to prioritize these bodies.
So many of you are hoping for spectacular relationships with your spirit mates and you
should.
You're expecting to travel, you're expecting to have sex, you're expecting all this stuff.
Well, you know what?
You got to get some stuff in order if you're expecting to do that.
I travel quite a bit for this ministry and it's exhausting, right?
Even the good kinds of travel, exhausting, hard on your body.
You got to get yourself together.
You got to get that immune system strong.
You got to get that frame strong.
You got to get that muscle strong.
Do you know if you lose muscle in your glutes, that's one of the biggest muscle systems in
your body, your glutes and your thighs, right?
If you lose muscle in your glutes, it actually becomes really painful to sit as you get older.
Your tailbone doesn't have anything protecting it.
Your coccyx doesn't have anything protecting it.
And that actually started happening to me, started happening to me because it doesn't
matter if you have a booty there, you got some fat there.
But if you don't have the muscle, the muscle is what's holding your body up.
It's what's helping you.
The core muscle, of course, is especially, also especially important.
I don't want this to turn into a health call, but it looks like Holy Spirit's kind of leading
us this way.
A little bit of layman's knowledge.
I'm a layman for sure.
Okay.
I'm not a master, but I'm just telling you, this is what I've prioritized.
You know why I know so much about it, even though I'm not a master, is because I prioritized
it.
You know what's going to happen if you prioritize something?
You're going to know some stuff about it.
Why?
Because it's important.
You guys, in order to do what I'm doing right now in my life and prioritizing in my life,
specifically my health, some other things had to end.
New beginnings require endings.
Did you know that?
A lot of times we try to have new stuff and keep the old stuff too, and then we just have
a cluttered schedule.
We're overexhausted.
We're overextended, and it doesn't work out, and guess what's the first thing to get pruned
off then?
The new thing, not the old thing.
Why?
Because we love familiarity.
We are creatures of habit.
So some things have to die, you guys.
They have to die.
Some things have to be put on pause, and some things have to be canceled, straight up canceled.
You might need to cancel your Netflix account.
It always cracks me up when people come to ... It doesn't crack me up, it actually makes
me sad, but it also is kind of sardonically funny when people show up in our emails at
Admin and say, oh, I just don't have time for this.
I'm just not using it.
I don't have time for it.
Really, what are you doing?
Because I guarantee that you're watching Netflix.
I guarantee that you're sitting down at the end of the day, instead of looking at something
that is going to accelerate your life, you are looking at something that's just going
to medicate your broken heart.
That's all.
It's going to entertain you for a very short amount of time.
It's going to entertain you for a very short amount of time, and oftentimes after we're
done watching it, we're like, ugh, we feel icky, we feel slimed.
There was a bunch of things that happened in that movie or in that show that are not
Kingdom, and then we just feel crappy about watching it because it didn't leave us full
of hope.
It left us full of leh.
Am I wrong?
I've lived it.
I know.
I've watched very, very little television, but I will tell you this, you could be scrolling.
You could be scrolling, just mindlessly scrolling, watching other people live their lives on
social media, looking at other people's highlight reels, looking at other people's vacations,
looking at other people's relationships, reading the news.
God forbid, there's so much news when you scroll and all of it's bad news.
Be honest.
If you've ever just seen someone that you barely know on Facebook for whatever reason,
you're friends with them, and you see them post about some tragedy that happened to someone
they know, and then you go down the rabbit hole trying to research this person and find
out what happened to them.
Even though they're not your friends.
You don't even know them.
You barely know the person that posted about them.
Raise your hand if you've ever just tried
to like find out the bad news.
Like what in the world?
What happened?
I wanna know.
And then you spend the next 15, 20 minutes
trying to find out what happened.
Just trying to read about something
that's gonna definitely depress you.
Why?
Why do we do this?
Why is this human nature?
Because it is.
You know?
It is.
The old folks used to say that an idle ground,
an idle ground is the devil's playground.
An idle mind is the devil's playground.
Remember?
The older folks saying that back in the day?
An idle mind?
Oh, we should be engaged.
What should we be engaged with?
We should be engaged with our plans.
We should be engaged with God's purposes over our lives.
We should be focused on what Philippians says
to focus on, the things that are good and perfect
and true and of good report.
That's what we should be focused on.
We should be going after those things.
We should be going to bed every night
at a decent hour to get enough sleep
in order for us to have enough readiness for the next day
with nothing on our mind except excitement
about how we are gonna continue to implement
the plan that we've come into agreement with with God
that we are working through in the season of our life
to our goal.
We shouldn't be going to bed, rolling in bed late,
fat and bloated from a bunch of crap that we ate
that our body doesn't like.
But we were binging at nighttime
because we were bored with nothing else to do,
scrolling on social media, watching the news
or watching the television or whatever.
Dragging our tired bodies, weak muscles into bed
dreading the fact that now we only have six hours to sleep
before we have to roll out of bed and do it all again.
No friends, Jesus did not die on a cross
for you to live that life.
Every single one of you without exception
should have a reason to roll out of bed in the morning,
super excited about your life
because you're working towards something.
Guys, I've had very little in my life.
I've had very, very little in my life for long seasons,
decades of my life, I'm only 50 years old.
I've only been living in the fruition of my prayers
for less than five years.
All the rest of my life, I had to use what I had.
I had to use what I had, but God's given me a gift.
He's given me the gift of being a visionary.
He's given me the gift of looking at the future
with hope and excitement.
He's given me the gift of hope.
I have a supernatural gift of hope.
He's given me the gift to be able to make a plan
and start to work it, not perfectly.
Look, I'm not a hustle and grind kind of girl,
but not perfectly, but working it
and being excited about what I could accomplish.
He's given me a gift of believing
that if I partner with heaven, if I pray,
but then I also take action
that I can have what I have asked for.
And I release that over you
because people that aren't preparing,
people that are not taking action,
it's usually down to a lack of hope.
It's usually comes down to a lack of belief
that anything can change.
So I want you to ask yourself,
are you someone who avoids endings?
Are you someone who's hanging on to old
and useless things in your life?
You guys, this is not just stuff.
All of us have stuff in our closets
that we could get rid of.
And that may be where you have to start.
Guys, something happens energetically.
And I know the new agers use that word
and then we have to shy away from it,
but you guys, we can't shy away from it
because it is what it is.
Just because they have a kingdom without a king,
listen to me, just because they have the kingdom,
but they don't want the king,
doesn't mean they don't have any of the kingdom.
A lot of their ideas are very kingdom ideas.
They're not religious ideas, they're not churchy ideas,
but they are very spiritual ideas.
They're very kingdom mindsets.
They just don't want the king with them.
They don't want the king with the kingdom.
And that's why it can only work to a certain point.
Don't mistake what I'm saying, it does work.
It does work.
The laws that God put into order
when he put the universe in order,
the laws that govern the universe, they do work.
They do.
The problem is, is that Jesus is the way,
the truth, and the life.
Jesus is the king of that kingdom.
And so it doesn't matter how.
you feel on earth, if you don't have the king,
then you don't have eternity,
you don't have eternal actualization.
And a lot of times what happens
because they don't want the king is they end up,
you know, they end up making other things,
other things their masters, right?
In that paradigm that they are living in.
So energetically, it does make a difference.
If you need to start at just doing
some spring cleaning in your house, yes, do it.
Do some spring cleaning.
Get rid of those dust bunnies in the corner.
Do stuff that you don't usually do.
Wash the windows.
Yeah, you're gonna feel so good,
you're gonna feel so accomplished.
And you know what?
It's going to feel hopeful.
That change is on the horizon,
that the winds of change are blowing.
Go in that closet, get rid of those clothes.
Get rid of those clothes that you haven't worn in years
because they don't fit.
And actually get rid of some of the clothes
that you have worn for years.
They do fit.
Some of you, you're just the same size
that you were in high school,
and you're always bragging about,
look at this dress.
Look at this dress.
I wore this dress in high school.
Well, maybe it's time for someone else to wear that dress.
All right, unless it's vintage, friends,
unless it's vintage,
maybe it's time for you to let go of that.
If you have the same hairdo that you had in high school,
it might be time for a change.
You might need to prune your hairdo.
Guys, we helped several people early in this movement
have makeovers, like we did makeovers on them.
We had a women's retreat here in Austin.
By the way, we're gonna have one again.
I promise you, we're just trying to look for dates.
Austin's kind of a weird bird.
We have a lot of big festivals that happen here,
and I don't ever want to plan a retreat
around you guys coming,
and there being really expensive flights
and really expensive hotels and all the things
because of these festivals.
And the problem with the festivals
is that they happen in the spring and the fall
because the summer is hell's front porch here.
We're not having anything in the summer here.
Okay, it's so hot,
and the people that organize these festivals know that,
and that's why they took up the spring and the fall.
So we're trying to figure out
possibly November of this year.
You can kind of put an earmark on that
way before the holiday
is when we're thinking about trying to make that happen.
You guys, we need new.
So we help those ladies have makeovers.
You guys, they look like totally different people.
They've been wearing the same ugly glasses forever.
I mean, ugly, guys.
I just can't mince words here
because glasses were just straight up ugly.
They made them look harsh.
They were not the right shape for their face.
One of them, the girl was in her 20s.
I actually match made her.
She's married now.
She had transition lenses as a 26 year old.
Running around looking like a little old lady
with her little transition lenses glasses, you know?
You'd be talking to her inside
and her lenses wouldn't have transitioned yet.
So they weren't sunglasses,
but they weren't glasses either.
They just made her look dark and brooding and older,
way older than she was.
Guys, you would be amazed at how much little tweaks.
I wanna use that word with you guys today, tweaks.
You don't need a major overhaul, you need tweaks.
Little tweaks, you'd be amazing
how little tweaks can change your mindset,
can change your outlook.
Some of you are all or nothing kind of people
and you're gonna go into your house
and you're gonna like,
you're gonna tear that sucker down to the studs
after this conversation.
And okay, if that's what you feel like you need to do,
all or nothing people,
I may or may not be one of those people.
Moderation, what's that?
I don't know.
I've learned.
I've learned to be a lot more moderate with myself.
Because what often happens
is you get into a project like that
and you don't finish it if you have ADHD like me
and you end up sitting on the floor in your closet
with like your homecoming sash on and your wedding dress
and crying over some old pictures and nothing's done.
Everything's a wreck.
Things might've been semi-organized before you got in there
but now you've torn everything apart
and you're gonna leave it like that if you're me.
Because now you have gone down the rabbit hole of nostalgia
with the things that you found there
and then it's just a hot mess.
And then that closet's gonna stay like that
for the next six and a half months.
I'm just calling myself out.
All right?
Just calling myself out.
So you guys, bite-sized pieces that you can actually finish
if you're gonna prune like that practically.
If you're gonna go in your closet.
Just go ahead, you know, for most of us, spring is here as far as weather.
Go ahead and take, go through all your winter clothes that you're not likely to wear anymore
this season and prune them.
What do you not want to wear next year, next cold weather season?
What do you, what do you not see yourself wearing?
What doesn't fit?
What has stains on it?
What isn't good?
Let's go ahead and Marie Kondo that crap.
Okay.
Thank it and let it go.
Some of it's going to go to the dumpster and some of it's going to go to the local Goodwill.
You guys try to find charities that actually give things away to the unfortunate instead
of selling it to them.
Frickin hate that.
It's like I'm giving this to you and then you're going to sell it and you're like, oh,
well they use the money for good things.
Do they?
I don't think they do.
Okay.
And so I think they use it to get rich.
That's what I think they do.
And so let's give it to charity that gives it to people in the spirit of charity.
I mean, that's just, that's my soapbox.
You can do what you want, but that's what I would do.
So go through your season and print it and then take what you're not going to wear and
put it to the back of the closet.
If you have another closet in your house that you can put it in, great.
If not, put it to the back of your closet or put it in a bin.
Store it.
You're like, I'm going to wear this next season.
This stuff is good.
It's stylish.
It's going to be in style when winter rolls back around.
I just bought it.
It's nice.
It's this, it's that.
I really like it.
Don't keep anything that you don't really love.
Don't keep anything that doesn't bring you joy.
I think that is the Marie Kondo thing, right?
If it doesn't bring you joy, release it, let it go.
Remember when that craze was happening?
I know because I used the marketing.
Back then I was just launching heartwork, not LYS, but heartwork.
And I was like, let's go through the boxes in your heart and anything that doesn't bring
you joy, let's let it go.
Let's thank it and let it go because I remember that being one of the videos that I made back
in the day.
So guys, we're getting ready for abundance.
That's what we're doing, but we have to have endings.
And so if you have to start practically with just things that are right in front of you
to kind of get in the spirit of this, then that's great.
Do that.
We don't want to be hoarders, not in our houses and not in our hearts.
We don't want to hang on to old, useless things, things that have outlived their purposes.
If you have skis, but you haven't hit the slopes since 1993, you got to let go of those
skis.
You don't need them.
Now if you go skiing, you're going to break a hip.
You got to let it go.
It's done.
You can find something else to fill that hobby with since you don't do that hobby anymore.
You can go play pickleball.
You can guys, do you understand that if we let go of old things, we will actually end
up with new things.
Years ago, it's probably been, I think about, let's see, Reagan's 24 or eight, about eight
years ago, my family was on the Steve Harvey show.
If you guys haven't heard this, it was a crazy time.
We went Amish.
They sent us to Amish country.
We dressed like Amish people.
You know, Steve's camera crew was there.
It was like a reality show with my family as the stars.
And it was hilarious.
I think you could just imagine me, imagine me walking into an Amish house and looking
at the dresses and being like, I'm not an off the rack size.
None of this stuff's going to fit me.
These Amish ladies are super small.
I put on the dress.
I was real skinny there then, thank God, but I put on the dress and I promise you, it was
like a mini dress on me.
I milked a goat, made shoo fly pie, all kinds of crazy stuff happened.
Got chased by a donkey, just fun times, good times, but we were on the Steve Harvey show
and Steve has a famous story and his story is this, but he was up and coming comedian.
He's still living at home with his mama because he couldn't afford to live anywhere else and
he was trying to make it in comedy.
He had an old car that he had kept going forever.
This car had been faithful to him.
He knew how to work on cars, so did his buddies and he just kept it going.
You guys, he was going to ride it till the wheels fell off and one day that's what happened.
That car gave up the ghost.
It was done.
There was no fixing it.
It didn't make any sense to put the kind of money into it that would need to be put into
it to fix it, so he needed a new car and he started coming home after bumming rides and
complaining to his mom about his need for a car.
Mama, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Mama, you better pray.
Mama, I need a car.
Mama, and she continued to give him the same answer every time.
Well, Steve, you know you got that car out in the driveway and he's like, Mama, I know
I've explained to you a million times that that car is done.
I can't fix it.
It's too expensive.
It doesn't make sense.
I need to get a new car.
I need to find a new car, but I don't really have a lot of money and I need to find a car
that I can afford.
And every time he would come to her with this problem, just, you know, venting about it
because they lived in the same house, she would say the same thing.
Well, you know, Steve, you got that car out in the driveway and finally he was just like,
Mom, I need you to stop.
saying that. I told you, that car is done. And she said, I understand that, son. But I just want
you to remember that you have that car out in the driveway and you need to do something with it
because it doesn't work anymore. And where are you going to park your new car? She's being very
practical, but also very spiritual. This is what our lives look like. We want something new,
but the old things are still sitting in the driveway. She's still sitting there,
up on blocks in the driveway. And so the story goes that Steve had the tow truck company,
the Junkyard, come and tow that car away. And not very long after that car was gone,
he was able to get a new car. He got into a situation where God blessed him and he was
able to get another car. So you guys, very practical, but it's important that we remember
that we have to make space. We have to make room. And if I was going to title today's
People Natural Saturday, that is what it would be. We've got to make room for what's important.
We do. I say this with all sincerity, you guys, and I say it with a heavy heart,
but I have seen couples come into this. I have seen singles come into this program
and get success in this area of their life and get married. And then because they haven't made
room in their lives, in their hearts, in their schedule for relationship, they start to really
struggle in the first year, like really struggle because they wanted the old life, but they just
wanted to add someone new to it. They didn't want a new life. They wanted the old life with a new
person. And that's not the way it works. I've told you this before, and I'm going to tell you again,
your life's going to change. It's going to change. It might not all change immediately,
but eventually it will all change. All of it. It has to. It's not the same life.
When you get married and you partner, God will open new doors for you as a couple.
New things will happen, and you have to be willing to let go of the old things,
old friendships, old communities, old churches, possibly. You might find a new church together.
You have to let go of old mindsets. It's not me anymore. It's we.
It's not me. It's we.
You have to be able to do that. And if you don't, you're going to have a lot of conflict,
a lot of conflict in that first one or two years of marriage, and you might not make it.
I can think of at least one marriage that ended because of very superficial reasons like this,
not wanting to make room, not wanting to change lifestyle or habits.
Guys, we even had one bride that after the honeymoon, her husband was supposed to move in.
He wasn't officially living with her, of course, until after they were married,
but they went straight from the wedding to the honeymoon. Not everyone does that nowadays,
but they did. And so he was supposed to move in after they got back from the honeymoon.
And after the honeymoon, you know, when he's going to move in,
she doesn't want him to bring any of his stuff.
She likes her furniture. She likes her stuff. She doesn't want anything from his house in her house.
Guys, this is real talk, okay? That was just the beginning of a long list of change that didn't
happen in that relationship. And guess what? They're divorced now. That's right.
Waited 50-ish years to get married, finally got married, and now divorced because you can get
into a rut. You can get into this idea of life and you're just looking for someone who's willing
to live that life with you instead of you being willing to change your life.
Guys, we have another couple that's divorced over a cat.
And just so you know, I add a lot of different details to these stories,
so no one could ever figure out who it is. So, like, I mixed, like,
a lot of different stories into one story, but it's still true.
But we do have, because I, you know, because I'm not here to put people on blast,
but I am here to use other people's experiences to help you avoid disaster.
We have another couple that's divorced over a cat.
They agreed on the cat during courtship.
Can I tell you something that is probably a little crass?
You got to make sure that you really agree and that you don't just want to have sex.
Because when we're caught up in the infatuation of the relationship, we're so excited about
this person that we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever you want, whatever, I'm sure you
have a cat.
Yeah, I'm definitely allergic, but bring it on.
It's all good.
We're laughing, you guys, but this is real talk.
It is because I've seen it happen in so many different instances with so many different
things.
Like, oh, I'm okay with that.
Yeah, I'm great with that.
Then after you're married and the marriage is consummated and the kind of infatuation
starts to wear off, because it will, I'm not saying you're not going to like that person
or be attracted to them anymore, but that crazy, those rose-colored glasses of infatuation
and love and lust and desire, that fades pretty fast.
And then, you know what you're left with after that?
A cat that you were never okay with, that you somehow magically thought that your love
could overcome your hate for this cat, and specifically cat hair.
And that's what, that's literally what this couple got separated over, cat hair.
This cat was a long-haired cat, it was a shedding cat, and one of them could not handle, the
one that didn't own the cat, could not handle cat hair.
They weren't allergic, they just were a neat freak, and they could not handle pet hair
on the couch, in the house, all right?
You guys, these are really important things.
They're very important things that you have to take into consideration.
It's not going to be me, it's going to be we.
Right?
Yes.
All right, it's not going to be you, it's going to be two.
Two, two, two.
All right, so Holy Spirit took us on that little rabbit trail, and that was important,
and a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, so that's good.
A little fun there.
Okay, so, endings are necessary, you guys, but the truth is, and this is really what
I want to get at today, is that we don't do endings really well.
We're not taught to do endings well.
Think about it.
All the stuff out there is how to begin something, not how to end something.
How to start something, not how to finish something, but how we finish is important,
and that we finish is important, and things have a natural life cycle, and when their
natural life cycle has ended, we have to release them.
We have to let them go.
All of you that have owned pets, you understand that.
That pet came into your life as a little fur angel.
I believe that God assigns animals to us when we need them, and they're with us, they're
our companions, they love us unconditionally, they're therapeutic, they reduce our anxiety,
they make us feel loved, but when we no longer need that pet, it goes on.
The creation goes back to its creator.
We have to let go.
There's a natural life cycle.
Endings are necessary, but the truth is that we don't do them well.
Okay, but we do need them in order for us to have good results in our life.
Endings are important for bad situations to be resolved.
You guys, we want bad situations to be resolved, but that requires an ending.
So I want to talk about a couple things that I have written down here, and you guys, and
I've been teaching this message for years.
I used to teach this back to my wow women back in the day.
I taught this to my very first heart workshoppers when it was just a heart workshop and it wasn't
a ministry for singles.
And so I want you to write this down.
This will be available in replay, you can come back and look at it.
The number one reason, here's some of the reasons that, here's a list of reasons that
I've written down about why we botch endings.
We hang on too long when we should have ended it right now.
Guys, a lot of times we're looking for like the easy way out, and especially when it's
concerning people, like we don't want to do it abruptly.
We want to be kind about it.
We're kind of people pleasers in the ending.
When you just, you were worried about what other people will think of us.
You just, if it's time to end it, then you just have to end it.
Clean breaks heal the fastest.
You just got to do it.
You do it.
You have to do it.
That's where you need accountability.
That's where this community can come in to support you.
Here's the next reason.
We don't know if an ending is actually necessary.
We're confused.
We actually really don't know whether we should end it or not.
We kind of think we can fix everything.
Are you one of those people?
I can fix it.
I don't need to throw it away.
I can fix it.
I don't need to let go of this.
Oh, it'll work itself out.
No, it won't, it's done, it's over.
It had a life cycle and the life cycle is finished.
It is.
Here's another reason why we don't end things.
We're afraid of the unknown.
What does it look like
to not have this thing in my life anymore?
What does it look like to not go to this place
every Saturday, every Sunday, every week?
What's it look like to move to this place
instead of living where I live now?
We're afraid of the unknown.
We don't know what we don't know and we don't like it.
The next thing is we fear confrontation.
How are other people gonna act?
How are they gonna feel?
What's gonna happen?
You know, it's noble to not wanna hurt someone,
but that's the next reason.
We're afraid of hurting people.
We don't wanna hurt people.
Guys, sometimes you have to let other people
dislike you for a season in order for you to love yourself.
Codependent connections are hard to untangle ourselves from.
I had, you guys, this is a true story.
I had a client who I introduced them
to someone long distance
because they said they were open to long distance.
And I introduced them to someone long distance
and they started seeing this person
and it was going really, really well.
They were traveling to see each other.
It was going really well.
And it came to that point
that all long distance relationships come to
where there needed to be a move.
There needed to be someone moving
so that they could get deeper into intimacy
and date every day and get to a place.
They were an exclusive relationship,
but get to the place of getting engaged, getting married.
And so the woman in this story, she's a teacher
and she had been a teacher for years
and she had been an integral part of her community
that she taught in the school system where she taught.
In fact, she had one teacher of the year even.
And so she went to talk to the administrator of the school
about moving on, about, hey, I'm gonna,
I think I'm gonna move out of state.
And the administrator actually not only
were they not in favor of her doing that,
they tried to talk her out of it by using fear.
Oh, well, I guess we're gonna have to tell the board
and they're gonna revoke your teaching license.
This teacher had been a faithful teacher,
had been one of the best of the best,
had served this school district for many years,
faithfully going above and beyond.
And then as a single woman showing up and saying,
hey, I think I met someone,
I really wanna explore this relationship.
I need to move.
Instead of that being, oh, yes, we're so excited for you,
let us try to figure this out, let's get a sub,
let's do this, let's do that.
No, instead it was met with, oh, no, you can't leave
because if you do, we're gonna revoke your teaching license.
You know what that is?
That's codependency.
Sometimes codependency gets ugly
if you try to remove yourself from it.
You think it's all great, wonderful.
You try to leave your job that you've been at
for a long time and then they start acting ugly to you.
Why?
Because no one's gonna do what you did there for 25 years
and they know it, they know it.
They know that you were going above and beyond
and a lot of times because you're a people pleaser,
you were going above and beyond,
you shouldn't have even been doing that stuff
in the first place and they put a lot of stuff on you
that they shouldn't have put on you
and now you're trying to leave
and they don't want you to leave
because who are they gonna use now?
Who are they gonna get to do things
that are not with good boundaries now?
So that's another thing that happens so often, you guys,
so, so often when we try to end things with relationships,
communities, jobs, places where we haven't had
good boundaries and we've been the giver
and they've been the taker, that happens a lot.
All right, the other thing is,
is that we're afraid of the sadness of letting go,
the sadness with endings.
We don't possess the skills to execute the ending,
like we don't even know how to do it.
We don't know the right words to use
and then a lot of us have had way too many painful endings
in our own personal history that were out of our control.
Other people brought endings to you,
someone died suddenly, someone divorced you
and you thought you were gonna be married to them forever,
they were your forever love,
a parent left the home abruptly,
something happened, painful endings with your.
your pets, with your children, with your friends,
and you didn't have any control over those endings.
Those endings just came to visit one day
without any advanced notice.
And because of that, we avoid endings
because we know how painful they are
and we don't want any more of them.
Because, but it's a natural life cycle for things to end.
So we're going to unpack this on Friday night.
I'm sorry, on Sunday night, tomorrow night,
we're going to unpack more of this.
We're going to unpack more of this, okay?
But in order to unpack more of this,
I need to give you these three categories of pruning.
And I want to release this scripture over you.
Everything has a life cycle.
We read that in the book of Ecclesiastes.
There's a time to be born, a time to die,
a time to build, a time to tear down.
There is a time you guys, there's a time.
And if you feel like your life
is not full of abundance right now, in any area,
if you feel like you're just not abundant,
it's probably because you've not been respecting
the process of pruning.
I'm talking to myself.
We've got to respect the process of pruning, okay?
All right, so good for great is the hardest pruning
because oftentimes God is asking us
to let go of something that's not that bad.
It's not really broken, so why should we fix it?
It's not broken.
Why would we fix it if it's not broken?
But we have to let it go because God is asking us
to let it go, or at least to prune it back.
Why?
Because let's just use my rosebush
in front of my house as an example.
I had this gorgeous rosebush.
I loved it.
It was there when we rented the house.
I didn't plant it.
I'm not a green thumb kind of person.
I mean, I keep plants alive,
but I'm not outside planting plants, okay?
And so my husband, at the end of the season,
went out and pruned it
because he watched a YouTube video about pruning.
He didn't even tell me he was gonna do this,
and he did it.
And you guys, he cut it down to the nubs.
I called that bush nubby after that day
because it was all nubbed out.
And I really did not believe
that it was gonna come back to its previous glory,
but it did.
And what it was about was there were too many rosebuds.
Yeah, it was gorgeous, but there were too many rosebuds.
And when there's overcrowding with rosebuds,
it will divert the energy and resources to all of them
instead of to the best of them.
Does that make sense?
Well, it didn't make sense to me, but it worked.
And that rosebush was even more beautiful the next spring,
and I just couldn't believe it.
Couldn't believe it, you guys.
So what does this kind of pruning require?
It requires the word no, a lot, you guys.
It requires the word no a lot.
Just because it's good, just because it's a fun idea
or maybe a quote unquote good opportunity
does not mean it's a God opportunity.
It doesn't mean it's God's best for you.
Let's just apply this to dating.
You can't have them all.
Maybe all of a sudden you're on a great streak
and you got like four or five great suitors, ladies,
or gentlemen prospects,
but you're gonna have to prune it down, aren't you?
Because you can only have one.
You can only have one.
True story.
I almost partnered with a guy
at the beginning of this movement
who had a singles community that was growing rapidly.
I was on his podcast several times.
He was a newer believer, but really loved Jesus,
but he wasn't really getting discipled.
He didn't have a lot of mentorship in his life.
Guys, mentorship is so important.
He didn't have a lot of oversight in his life.
And long story short, he became a polygamist.
He believed that he saw in the Old Testament
that you could have more than one wife.
Why should he just pick one when he could have many?
And he did that, okay?
So no friends.
You can only have one.
I'm so glad that I did not.
True story, you guys.
I was on my way to do a photo shoot with him
to launch a co-brand and I got super sick.
Not that God made me sick,
but sometimes things happen at the greatest times.
And I didn't make it to that photo shoot.
And right after that,
a whole bunch of crazy stuff happened with him
that let me know that God was saying, no, no, no, no.
And then he came out later as a polygamist.
I was like, no, God, thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus.
Yes, I am God defended.
all God defended. Okay, so it requires the word no, you guys. If you're going to reach
your full potential, you're going to have to give things your best yes. Your best yes.
And a lot of times that's just about you having identity. This is something that God spoke
to me during a one-on-one call the other day. I was with a private client talking to them
and I found myself saying from the Holy Spirit, you don't need more choices, you need more
identity. Guys, we think that's why dating apps don't work. It's a smorgasbord of choices,
but when you don't know what you're looking for or what you want, more choices is not
what you need. In fact, choosing leads to confusion. Have you ever shown up at a restaurant
and you're not really that hungry and then you get the menu and you don't know what to
choose because you really don't know what you want because you're not really in the
mood for anything? Yeah, that's not good. It's not good. And I hate big fat menus.
You guys know how I feel about the Cheesecake Factory menu. It's like no restaurant can
do American and Mexican and Italian and Asian food, all that food well. One restaurant,
an American restaurant called Cheesecake Factory. Let me take a guess. I think that what you
specialize in is cheesecake, not Mexican, Asian, Italian, American food. And yet their
menu is like 20 pages long with every food in the world you can think of. And so I don't
like eating there because you know darn well you're just going to pick the same thing that
you pick at every restaurant. You're going to get a salmon and some rice. You're going
to get a chicken with some Brussels sprouts, whatever it is that you eat, that's what you're
going to eat. You're not going to try something crazy. You're like, oh, today I think I'm
going to do the ratatouille. No, you're not. You're not going to do the ratatouille unless
you're a ratatouille person. You're not all of a sudden going to wake up one day and have
a hankering for some ratatouille from the Cheesecake Factory. No, it's not going to
happen. So it's important that we start having more identity so that we understand how to
prune. Some of you don't even know what to prune. In fact, you're feeling anxious during
this entire call because you don't know what to do. And the problem is not that there isn't
pruning that's necessary. The problem is that you cannot prune from a heart that really
doesn't know where it's going. How can you make room for what's important in this season
if you don't already know what's important in this season? OK, so the best yes. Outsourcing,
delegating if you own a business, if you're at a business where everyone's putting everything
on you, start doing just your job. Start putting up boundaries. Don't do other people's jobs
anymore. Let them do their jobs. You do your job. Stop saying yes to overtime. Stop saying
yes to things that do not fit the plan of where you want to be by the end of this year.
The second type of pruning is sick and dying. You know that this thing has not been working
for a while. This relationship's not been working for a while. You guys, we hate to
let go of relationships, but relationships are for reasons and seasons. And you don't
live by that person anymore. You were great friends when you were next door neighbors,
but you haven't lived next door to each other forever. And yeah, you might see each other
a couple times a year. That's great, but they can't be your best friend. You need people
in proximity to you. God has new friendships for you. You might have a friend that you're
just doing all the heavy lifting. You only get together when you reach out, when you're
the only one to text. You're the only one that calls. Yeah, they pick up. Yeah, they
text back. But there's no reciprocation. And you can't let go because that used to be your
best friend. Well, you guys, once again, reasons and seasons for friendships. God has
a new best friend for you. He has a new support system for you, but you're not going to get
it unless you make room for it. You're not. All right. And then there's a category of
the thing that's just super dead. And the other category is sick and dying. You have
to decide what needs more of my attention, what just needs a little TLC, and it's going
to come back to life. And what do I need to just let go? I need to sign the DNR on it,
do not resuscitate, need to stop trying to put energy into this because it's not going
to come back to its full glory ever again. I just have to accept that its life cycle
is over and let it go. All right. And then the last one is it's dead, baby. It's been
dead for a long time. You've been dragging it around with you. You've got dead bodies
in your trunk. You need to stop and bury them. It's time to bury the bodies in your trunk.
You got to let it go. It stinks.
These are things that they haven't been good for your life for a long time.
They haven't borne any fruit in years.
And yet you're still trying to believe it's going to come back to life again.
It's not, it's done.
It's over.
Make room for things that are alive and good and fruitful.
Okay.
All right, you guys.
And then many people, including myself, we fall into the trap of only going
halfway with this kind of change, but we're going to pray now as we're ending
this call, if you want to show up tomorrow night and work through some of
this kind of dig in, we'll make some lists.
We'll do some practical application of how to identify where you should put
stuff in your life into these three categories, but go ahead, take a piece
of paper and make three categories.
Overcrowding.
This is all good stuff.
None of it's bad.
It's all fruitful, but I can't keep it all because I'm just one person just
with one life with 24 hours in a day.
And then the second category is this stuff.
It might be on its way out, or I might need to prune back some other things to
give this thing some more attention because it could be a fruitful again.
And I want it to be fruitful again, and God wants it to be fruitful again,
but I'm just neglecting it.
Or do I need to sign the DNR and let it go?
And then the third category on your paper is this is dead.
I just got to admit it to myself and you guys, you might have to grieve it.
You might have to grieve it.
It's totally dead.
There's no fruit coming from it.
You're so sad about it.
You want it to not be dead, but it is dead and you have to let it go.
Okay.
And another thing that I want you to watch out for is when we make space, we
finally submit to pruning, which is the natural part of our spiritual life.
When we finally admit that we need to prune and we do it, we might even ask God
to remove what's dead in our life.
And we're going to pray that today right now.
But when he does do that, you guys, it's going to leave a space.
It's going to leave an empty space, a hole.
And some people will just immediately take that as an invitation to fill that
hole back up with something that is equally as limiting and inferior as the
first thing that was in that space.
Do not jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The key to transformational change, you can write this down,
is leaving that space empty.
We've got to leave that space empty.
Do not rebound.
Process.
Wait for the good, good.
God has the good, good for you.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you didn't do hard work because I
talk about the good, good.
What's the good, good?
The John 10, 10 life, you guys.
You're like, well, what am I going to do with that empty space, with that empty
time?
I don't know.
How about just be instead of do?
How about take some extra time for prayer, for intercession?
How about take a walk in nature?
You don't need to fill every moment of your life up with something.
You don't.
And some of you, the opposite is true.
You have way too much downtime and it's time for you to commit to some things.
You're afraid of commitment.
How are you going to get married if you're afraid of commitment?
It's time for you to say yes to some things.
You've been no, no, no, no, no.
No is your favorite word.
You've been just your little pendulum needs to swing the other direction.
It's time for you to say yes.
This is your season for yes.
This is your season for community.
This is your season of yes to all kinds of things.
All right.
So Father, we are giving you permission to prune us.
John 15, two says that every branch in you, Jesus, that does not bear fruit, you
take away, but every branch that bears fruit, you prune it so that it can bear
more fruit.
And we know that you are the vine, but we are the branches and we are fruitful
branches, every one of us.
But we want to be more fruitful, not just for ourselves, but for your kingdom.
And so we're asking you, Lord, to help us.
We're asking you to show us what needs to go.
In fact, we're giving you permission to remove what's dead in our life.
And when that space is created, we will hold out for you to fill it with
something that is superior to what was removed.
Something that is supernatural, something that is important to the season of our
life.
We're not going to be afraid of divine rejection anymore.
We're going to allow you to prune us.
so that we're not wasting our time,
we're not wasting our gifts,
we're not wasting our talents,
we're not wasting this one and only life
that you've given us.
We're not gonna be afraid,
we're not gonna be anxious, Lord.
We're going to allow you to be our peace
and we are going to allow you to show us what's good.
Bring us new things.
Help us to end old things.
Highlight to us the things that need our focus,
that need our attention, that need our TLC,
that need our action, that need our energy.
And also highlight to us things
that we need to release to you.
Comfort our hearts if we have to grieve that, Lord.
Comfort our hearts if things didn't end up
the way that we thought they would
when we first started with whatever that thing was.
Comfort us, Lord.
Bring us peace.
Show us the good road, Lord,
so that we can take it.
In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, friends, show up tomorrow night
if you wanna dig into this even more.
But we will go ahead and record tomorrow night
for those of you that can't be there live.
And looking forward to next week, guys,
some fun things ahead.
See you soon.