Episode 164: How to Accept God's Timing Over Your Own

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Blessed and Bossed Up Podcast. Can I just tell you guys how much I love this show? Last week, I answered a question from someone who was new to an area; I forgot the details of the question but I remember she was new to the area. And she just wanted help with building a Godly community as well as finding some things that are fun to do but still of God.

She recently moved to Philadelphia and I got an email from another listener who was like “hey, can you connect me with the young lady who you answered the question for on the show because I’m in Philly too and I have a great church that I go to.” She was telling me about the different programs and things they have at the church and she would love to connect with her. I was like “oh my God, let me check,” so I went and checked with the person who wrote the email who I answered the question for and she was okay.

She was excited to meet the other person so I sent a quick little email to both of them introducing them but how awesome is that? I know it's probably not easy for you guys to write emails and asking questions, I pretty much keep all of them anonymous simply because even if someone doesn't specify. I just want to just make sure I’m on the side of caution of protecting people's privacy so I keep everybody anonymous but I’m sure that it's not easy sometimes to write into a podcast host because I don't know y'all for real you know what I mean.

This is a show that you listen to every week and we don't know each other personally so I’m sure it takes a lot to write in and just open up in any type of way. So, it's just awesome that God just really met her right then and there right on this platform and I was able to connect them and I just pray that so much comes from that connection. But I thought that was just so exciting I had to share it here on the show. Moral of the story, y'all that listen to the show are really the real MVPs, y'all are just awesome. Okay, so let's get into today's episode.

The title of today's episode is How to Accept God's Timing Over Your Own. Now, this episode came about because I was recently doing a podcast audit and that's one of the services that we offer under Anchor Media for established podcasters. We pretty much just do a deep dive into the state of the show and come up with the strategies on how to take the show from where it is to where the show host wants it to be as far as listenership and income is concerned. So, I’m doing this podcast audience audit and I was specifically looking at the host target audience for part of it and thankfully, she already had done a survey for her audience about a year prior. I was able to really dive into the audience and I was really excited and had a lot of fun doing this because there are a lot of overlap between her audience and mine. And so, I was able to learn more honestly about part of my target audience too by doing this audit for her.

But, the more I discover about the audience if I’m being real with you guys, the more that I became a bit frustrated and that's what really triggered this podcast. So, when my frustrations came in is that a lot of people were expressing as I was diving deeper into the psychographics of this target audience. I was realizing that a lot of people want the blessings right, we want God to open up the windows of heaven and pour us out a blessing where we don't have room enough to store it. We want God to bless our finances, we want to break these generational curses over our family, we want the blessings but we don't want to do the spiritual work in order to make them happen.

And so, as I’m reading these questionnaires, she was asking people to rank what their immediate needs are and consistently their immediate needs were one; help with business two; help with money and spiritual guidance or spiritual growth was always at the bottom. Anytime there was a question presented to kind of rank what their immediate needs were and what they wanted to learn about, short term faith was always at the bottom. But then when the question was asked about the kind of results they want to see, the blessings were always at the top and I was really frustrated by that because I didn't really understand.

I’m like “well, how do you want all of these things, how do you want the blessings, how do you want to break the generational curses, but you don't see the value and building a relationship with God?” It was really frustrating me as somebody who wants to see everybody just living the fullness of joy that comes with obeying God and just walking according to his purpose so it was frustrating that part of me. I was also just looking like “where is the disconnect?” and then as I was digging deeper. I was learning that a lot of them as they shared like their favorite youtubers or podcasters or Instagram pages and things like that a lot of it was motivation and inspo based.

And even if it was any type of influencer of or even if it was any type of voice that was in the faith space. It was voices that were more so around motivational speaking with scriptures in it as opposed to truly teaching you how to live a life of God or teaching you how to build a personal relationship with God. Then it really hit me that there is a huge disconnect here, there is a huge disconnect with our generation and so as I was kind of talking to God as I was doing this because I was frustrated.

I was like “God, what is it, why don't people understand that if you make your relationship with God the number one, if you make him the CEO, if you prioritize your spiritual development that all of these other things will come in place?” Even in the midst of you waiting for the blessings, you're still going to be covered, why wouldn't anybody want that? And for me, now that I’ve kind of experienced that after I stopped playing and really living my life for God; now that I’ve experienced that, I want everybody to experience it.

And so, my heart was just hurting because people are hurting and people are so misguided thinking that they're going to get a quick fix in the form of all of this motivation as opposed to truly leaving it all at the father's feet. Truly opening up the Bible and doing all the things that we talked about on last week's episode. Usually when I get frustrated in these type of spaces I’ll always hit up my girl Tish; if you guys are new to the show Latisha Carr is the host of the Refill Podcast. She's a great friend of mine; she is the Ayala to my Oprah, that's my girl okay.

I probably talked to Tish more times during the week than my mama, we always talking; we'll be having one conversation via text, another conversation via Instagram DMs at the same time. But Tish is my girl because she has that psychology background and she has a master's in mental health counseling. Her strength is really debunking the psychology behind why people do what they do and coming up with psychological solutions and improvements. We talk about everything but especially when it comes to things like this, I always hit her up.

So, I sent her a voice memo and I pretty much explained to her what I just explained to you guys and what my frustrations were and just me thinking as somebody who is in this space, how can I do better? Like, how can I solve this problem that's frustrating me and Tish broke it down so eloquently. She was like “the issue is or the disconnect is instant gratification” and the reason why so many people aren't able to accept God's timing over their own is because of our psychological need for instant gratification and especially with us millennials.

So, the majority of the show listeners are millennials so with us, we are in that instant gratification generation. The generations before us were more so delayed gratification and that's why a lot of them followed that path of going to school, getting your degree, getting a job and then working that job for 40 years. Then retiring and then doing what it is that you want to do and having a good time because they were pretty much bred off of that delayed gratification. Then here comes us millennials who have things like technology, so much information right at our fingertips, we're very active on social media.

Social media gives us the opportunity to have immediate feedback so if you post something, that's where the likes come in and the comments come in, those things are feedback. So, because of the way that technology has advanced that has only fed our desire for instant gratification and I believe instant gratification has its place especially in business. Because if you play towards instant gratification that's a really great marketing strategy because if you play towards people need for something now, it's going to really help your conversion and your ability to make the cell.

But when it comes to your faith walk, instant gratification is another thing that our flesh wants that's working against the way God is telling us to live and so it was really important for me to talk about this on today's episode because I wanted to shed a light. If I could do anything with my platform my goal is to plant a seed and God will use somebody else to water it, I don't know who he would use, it doesn't really matter, that's not my responsibility but I just want to plant the seed. Maybe water a seed that's already been planted or shift your perspective at least a little bit so you could recognize the schemes of the enemy.

Whatever the episode was where I talked about identifying the schemes of the enemy or recognizing these schemes of the enemy. We talked about how a roaring lion is loud and how we could just see what it is that he's doing then we can make the necessary adjustments to make sure that we don't fall victim to it. And I believe this is another one of those opportunities to really see what it is that he's doing in this area of our life. So, when we're talking about how to accept God's timing over your own, I personally believe that we all have enough understanding that God's timing is God's timing right.

We all know that his timing is perfect, we all know that there's an appointed time for everything, we've heard these scriptures and we understand these things. So today I don't want to spend too much time on just talking about God's timing because like I said, I believe we get that. But instead, I want to talk about this aspect of our human nature that's blocking us from being able to accept God's timing. This aspect of our human nature that the enemy is using to keep us frustrated, to keep us anxious, to steal our joy from us in the midst of waiting for the things that God had for us.

I really hope you guys quote what I said earlier; it's such a beautiful place to be in when you make God number one and when you focus on building that relationship with him and then doing the things that he tells you to do. Because even in the midst of you waiting for whatever it is that you want, you're still protected, you're still provided for, you're still covered, you still have joy, you still have peace. And the Bible says, “In his presence there's fullness of joy.” And so, a lot of the things that we're chasing with instant gratification are already provided for us if we tap into the real source and not the counterfeits that the enemy loves to throw in front of us.

So, as I was having this conversation with Tish and preparing for this show, my mind was just moving I was like “wow, this is why so many people get into things like the crystals.” Because you think if you put this rock on your counter that's going to make your home more peaceful, no baby, if you really sit before God and cast your cares on him, then that is what's going to give you peace. If you really tap into the benefits that you have as a believer, then that's what's going to give you what you're looking for; it’s not the object, it's the creator, it's not the creation, it's the creator.

But it's our need for this instant gratification and our lack of enthusiasm or desire for doing the real work that it takes to build a relationship with God that's keeping us from that. And I’m so glad we talked about building a relationship with God last week so I don't even have to get into that but I really want to tackle this element of instant gratification. So that we can start recognizing it for what it is and compartmentalizing it the way that it needs to be compartmentalized because there is a time and place for instant gratification.

But when it comes to your walk with God and your contentment with the process that we all have to go through whether we like it or not, it’s contingent upon your ability to not accept this aspect of your human nature in this space. I hope you guys get what I’m saying; instant gratification, there's a place for that in your life but the place that it don't belong is when it comes to you being able to accept God's timing. That's when it's working against what it is that God has for you. So, on today's show, I’m actually going to identify three pillars of instant gratification and what you can do to work against that or to counteract that as it relates to your faith walk.

I hope I get through this in enough time because I wanted to answer the question that we didn't answer last week because I believe that that question is very relevant to what we're talking about today but we'll see what happens. Let's first define instant gratification though before we get into the pillars of it. According to the internet’s, instant gratification is a desire to experience pleasure or fulfillment without delay or deferment. Pretty much, it’s that mentality of “I want it right now so I need it right now” and I said earlier that, us millennials which is the majority of those who listen to the show we're called that instant gratification generation.

But as Christians, it's really important that we're able to readily identify when our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings and even our human behavior is contrary to how God tells us that we should live. Instant gratification in this trait that we have as humans or this trait that our flesh has is what keeps a lot of us frustrated, keeps a lot of us in sin and it keeps a lot of us with one foot in and one foot out of the will of God. Because any time the will of God and instant gratification don't line up because of this desire that we have we choose the wrong thing so it's important that we identify this thing as what it is.

And that's why I made sure that I said this, as Christians, even the human behavior that is described here, if anything rises up against the word of God it is the opposition, okay. It is something that has to go and it is something that cannot stay and like I said, sometimes God's will and instant gratification may overlap but sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, we have to identify as “oh, I’m not accepting this or I don't care how pleasurable it may be, I don't care how much I want this right now, I ultimately want what God has for me more.”

I ultimately want to please God more and I believe that the root of what's missing in a lot of us of truly walking in obedience and walking in the things that God has for us is the lack of desire to simply please God. I’ve talked about this before that when I was transitioning from just being an entrepreneur and then my faith being on the side to putting things in the correct order God had to change my definition of success. Because I was doing all the things that I thought I was supposed to do in order to be successful. I have the vision boards and I have these things that I’m visualizing and these things that I want to happen in my life.

And God was like, “Yeah, all of that is cool, all these material things that you want is cool, I want to give you the desires of your heart.” “So, if the nice cars and the beautiful homes and all these things are the desires of your heart that's great but success is not any of that.” “Success is simply pleasing me and you got to accept that before I can bless you with anything.” And I had to really wrap my mind around that and get on board with God's definition of success before he was able to bless me with any of the things that I said that I wanted.

Even looking at the way my business is blessed now, I don't think I would have been able to handle that had he not changed my mindset first. I probably would have been out here buying all types of stuff, I can buy a lot of the things that I want and a lot of things that fit my taste level because I got expensive taste; I was born that way. I could buy a lot of those things but I don't because I’m more focused on the long game, long term. No, I have this goal for next year so let me just deny the fact that I really like these shoes because I need to plan or I need to put myself in a better position for what it is I want years for now.

So, let me just deny the instant gratification so that I can have what it is that I want in the long haul or I could be able to do the things that God wants me to do in the long haul. Now, let's identify the first principle or the first pillar of instant gratification and I picked this one out, the first pillar is called the pleasure principle. This is defined as humans are believed to act upon the pleasure principle. The pleasure principle is basically the driving force that compels human beings to gratify their needs, their wants and urges.

These needs, wants and urges can be as basic as the need to breathe, eat or drink but they can be as complex as the quote unquote “need for a new iPhone, the need for that Chanel bag. The need for the nicer car as opposed to the car that gets me to point A to B or the need for some other cool product that may come out. And then when we don't get the fulfillment, our psychological response is anxiety or tension and what really stuck out to me about this pleasure principle is that when we don't get fulfillment our psychological response is anxiety or tension.

This was so important for me because I think that a lot of times if God doesn't give us exactly what we want, then our response is anxiety or tension as opposed to just accepting that “okay God, well you know best, you're my father.” I did a little Q&A; I was in the longest line of life at the MVA trying to change my name, finally legally taking my husband's last name. I was in the longest line and so I posted on my Instagram for people to ask me questions because I had nothing else better to do than to stand there.

So, someone asked me the question of, I have this big decision to make and I’ve been praying and I don't believe that God is talking to me, what are your thoughts? And my response to her was, “Are you looking for the response that you want to hear or are you listening to what he has to say?” And I think that's something that a lot of us need to consider when it comes to our relationships with God or the things that we're waiting on God for. We got to understand that confirmation or lack of confirmation is still confirming something; it just isn't confirming what it is that you want.

So, if you say, “God, give me confirmation that it's time for me to quit my job” and you don't get it because you're not immediately fulfilled by the response that you're looking for, you get tense and you get anxious. But, him not confirming that is giving you an answer, it's just not the one that you want to hear because him not confirming means don't quit your job. You asked him to confirm if it was time to quit your job and he didn't, that is still an answer and I think we have to really wrap our minds around this and stop letting our emotions in this human nature that we have keep us tense and keep us anxious.

Instead, we have to get to the place where we're like “you know what God, let your will be done and not mine” and honestly, I’m at the point now where I don't even really ask God questions that specific if that makes sense. I’d more so ask like “okay God, what are we doing?” to where I don't even have a recommendation; I’m listening, I got my journal, I got my pen; “what we doing and you tell me.” Then I’ll take that and I’ll apply the skills that you've blessed me with to it but what are we doing?Using the same quit your job analogy, with my understanding now going back my request or prayer would be “God, what do I need to do to prepare to be successful as a full-time entrepreneur?”

And I would just busy myself with that and I would say “you know what God, when you're ready for me to leave my job can you let me know?” And until then, I’m going to just continue to do the things that you told me to do that's going to prepare me to be able to handle what I’m asking you for and then leave it at that. So if you approach it that way it really eliminates the opportunity for you to be tense or anxious instead, you're taking that desire of your heart.

You're expressing that that's what you want but you're ultimately leaving it up to him and you can just go about living your life and when it's time for you to lead, he will let you know. And that honestly happened for me in a way because when I left my job I was preparing; I had a business coach who specialized in taking people from employee to entrepreneur. I was preparing financially and so I was working towards it and I had planned to leave in like the summer time of that year so that was 2017, almost three years ago.

I was planning to leave in July because my lease was going to be up in my apartment, I was going to bite the bullet, move back in with family so I could save money. Because I was okay with giving up temporarily my comfortability of living by myself in order to make it as a full-time entrepreneur. And without having to worry about being evicted from somewhere and so I just prepare, prepare, prepare and I had planned on leaving then but I was also open to “God, whenever you want me to do it just let me know.”

I didn't have a set date in mind I just had more so a time frame and I was just waiting for God to let me know when. As I was preparing, he actually told me to leave months before which made it a lot scarier but he ended up telling me to leave months before. Honestly, anytime I’ve submitted something to God or if I really wanted something, the key difference between if i was anxiously waiting or patiently waiting was in the way that I submitted to him or submitted to his timing.

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If I try to make what I’m asking him for fit in my time period, that left to me being tense and anxious but if I left it up to him to say “okay God, this is what I want and whenever you ready for me to have it, simply let me know.” Those are the times when I’ve been able to handle things with a lot more peace; I’ve been able to busy myself with something else so I’m not sitting around waiting and making it worse. And so, for you guys, we have to really work against this pleasure principle.

So, the solution that I have for you to get rid of or get out of this space of anxiety or tension that we naturally go to when we are fulfilled is to just receive and accept that pleasing God is pleasurable. Remember this is the pleasure principle, they're saying that or psychologists are saying that when we aren't gratifying our needs and wants is when we get anxious or tense. So, my solution to this pillar of instant gratification is to receive and accept that pleasing God is pleasurable, do you know how much joy it is in pleasing God?

I’m anxious when I know I’m dead wrong, any time I can gauge if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do as far as like staying in God's presence, praying and reading my word is when I start getting anxious or tense for no reason. And that was honestly what really drove me back to getting saved, saved because I was super anxious and tense all the time and it was frustrating me and it was just counterproductive.

Because how are you going to be your best and approach your marriage your best and approach your schooling your best or approach your business your best, or approach your kids your best if you're anxious and tense all the time? And so, for me, one of the driving forces that always drove me back to God when I was drifting back into the streets was that anxiety and that tension. I realized that whenever I was in the will of God and pleasing to him is when I felt the best.

And so I wanted to highlight that to you guys to get you to understand that if we change pleasure from being what our flesh wants to be and what God wants, then we've cracked the code here. Then we’ve cracked the secrets of peace that surpasses all understanding; so that was number one, the pleasure principle. And the solution to the pleasure principle say that three times y'all, is to receive and accept that pleasing God is pleasurable. The second pillar to instant gratification is procrastination; oh, this is a P word that so many of us are familiar with because I know I used to be the queen of procrastination.

And reason being is because I do very well under pressure, I can be very level-headed, I make very good decisions and I can get stuff done at the last minute very well. Unfortunately, that left me procrastinating a lot because of my above average way of being able to just get things done at the last minute as if I had been working on them for a long time. But I would get frustrated with myself because I’m like “well Tatum, if you actually did things earlier and plan for them, imagine how great they could be then?”

You want to rely on the fact that you can do something at the last minute but that's not excellence and so it took me a minute to get through this procrastination thing because let me tell you how I procrastinated my whole way through undergrad okay. But yeah, I know that procrastination is something that a lot of us deal with and y'all know what procrastination is. It's just putting something off when you don't feel like doing it and you put it off until the last minute and that's another aspect of instant gratification because you don't feel like doing it. And so, the reason why you're not getting something done on time or just getting disciplined with the way that you handle tasks or whatever is because of instant gratification.

You procrastinate because you want to just feel good in that moment and probably whatever it is that you're putting off isn't making you feel good and this messes us up when it comes to accepting God's timing. Because a lot of times there's a preparation phase that we need to go to or go through before we get to the promise and so a lot of waiting for God's timing is preparing for the promise. And if we're procrastinating, then we're not adequately preparing for the promise and the things that God has for us.

A way that you can learn to better accept it is if you get rid of this procrastination habit because if you feel like you're working towards something even if you haven't received it yet, it makes waiting a little bit easier right. If you know that “okay, I’m waiting on God's timing but the things that he has me doing right now are preparing me for the desires of my heart.” So even though I don't have the millions, it's this learning how to budget and me being more disciplined in my spending and me paying a little bit extra on my credit cards every month to help me get out of debt.

Yeah, these things are helping me get to the millions that he promised me and being able to handle the millions because I’m being a better steward over what I have now. So you can get a lot more excited about the promise and the weight becomes a lot more pleasurable. Because now, instead of procrastinating and God saying “Okay, here's the business, now it's time for you to quit your job;” I don't know why I keep going back to that maybe it's for somebody.

But instead of him just saying “Okay, go ahead, quit your job now and then you quit, you have no idea what to do with your time every day and you're not seeing the return or seeing the results in your business. So, it's actually making you even more frustrated because the money's not coming in all of that. But if you were to instead of procrastinating on the prep that he's telling you to do and do it now, it'll make you better be able to handle that promise. Then his timing will be a lot more enjoyable because you're ready for it so the solution to beating this procrastination is to create structure in your life.

One of my goals for 2020 is to read a book a month, I actually started in December; December I read ‘Becoming a Millionaire God's Way’ and I’m going to do a whole show on that because that was a great book. Then in January, I read ‘The Power of a Praying Wife’ and this month I’m reading this book called The Slight Edge. I really love this book because so far he's talking about what takes people from failure to success and this guy is somebody who has been a complete failure and a complete success.

So, he went from being an average student to moving and being a beach bum as he called it to where he was like a caddy on a golf course not really doing anything with his life. He was pretty much carrying the golf clubs for all of these wealthy people and he trying to figure out “what's the real difference between them and me?” And so, he was like, “You know what, I’m going to work really hard so that I can be a success like these guys who I’m carrying these golf clubs for.”

He went back to his hometown, got back into college, graduated top of his class, got all these jobs where he accelerated quickly and then he ended up leaving a job to starting his company that was extremely successful, a millionaire then he lost everything.

Then he was really trying to analyze what happened, he was trying to figure out like “well, I was able to go from nothing to reaching these different levels of success. Be it in corporate America, in college, in business and now I’m back to nothing so what happened that got me here?” So, the slight edge is all about creating that structure in your life, he talks about how most people really zero in when they're kind of at that failure type of line.

So, they apply this work ethic and they do all these things in order to get successful and then once they've reached a certain level of comfortability, they end up going back down because they don't keep doing the things that it took to get them there. So he was saying with him as he analyzed his behaviors in each point of his life. He realized that the success or the traits that he embodied that allowed him to be so successful at each different point was not in the big changes that he made but in the small things that he did every day.

He was just talking about successful people; the difference between those who are highly successful and those who are not is that successful people just do things that work consistently. And people who are not end up falling off from it and I was like “man, this is so simple but it's so true” because if we think about ourselves, how many times have we said “okay, this is going to be the year that I’m going to be debt free.” So, for the first few months we're doing all of these things and then somehow, we fall off or somehow, we start procrastinating.

Or somehow, that instant gratification is no longer there because you're used to doing it at this point so now it's not as fulfilling, it's not as important anymore and that's where procrastination comes in. But if you create a structure in your life that allows you to do the right thing consistently, that's what gets you to success and that's what keeps you at success. And so when it comes to you accepting God's timing, if you develop a system in your life like I was talking about before. Just saying “God when it's time, just let me know” and then in the meantime preparing.

If that's your system to handling things, then you're going to be able to accept his timing a lot more easy because you're not tripping over when it happened, you're just trusting that it's going to happen whenever the time comes. If you want to build that relationship with God because it's that relationship and that trust in him that's really the foundation of being able to accept his timing. If that's what you want to do then you create that system where “okay, I wake up every day at a certain time and I go into my prayer closet and I’m reading.”

“I’m journaling, I may have a devotional but I’m praying and I’m talking to God and before I get ready for bed, I go and I pray some more and I journal some more so now it's you're making it a habit to spend time with God, to hear from him.

To seek him so that when these things do come up or when instant gratification tries to take over, now you have that foundation to where you're readily able to handle it. The third pillar that I’m going to cover with instant gratification is the ‘you want it now mentality.’ Pretty much, what that means is you don't want to delay gratification; you'll rather have it now than to make the necessary changes for the greater good. The solution to this is you have to keep the vision top of mind but don't marry yourself to any particular method or time frame of getting there.

So, keep what God promised you at the top of mind for that motivation, for that inspiration but do not connect yourself to any particular time frame or any particular method because that's what's going to mess us up. God gives us the promise and then we try to rationalize and figure out how that's going to happen and we attach ourselves to that when that's not our job. God is not going to just tell you the what, he's going to tell you the how and he's going to tell you the when so let him be God and stop trying to be God in the things that he's giving you.

Do what you’re supposed to do and let him handle what it is that he's supposed to handle, it's as simple as that. I think if a lot of us really just freed ourselves from the need to be God of our own life, we would have a lot more peace about the process that he has us going through. Man, when I free myself of trying to be my own God, life became a breeze; well, not really but it became a lot more peaceful because now I don't have to carry that on my shoulder it's not mine to carry. You know circumstances and our upbringings and things like that mold us or create this need in us to be able to carry a lot that's not ours but we got to take these capes off and give them to God.

Back to this pillar though, keep that vision top of mind and if anybody tries to put those methods on you or those time frames on you, shut that stuff down. If they say, “Well, I thought that you were quitting your job this year,” you're like “Yeah, I thought I was too but I’m just going to wait for God” and if they try to push the issue, change the subject. Let me tell you something, I don't entertain nothing from nobody who's trying to convince me of anything that's contrary to what God has already said for me. When I first left my job do you know how many people told me what was practical?

“Oh, you should stay and you should work, you should have this, you should have that” and I listened to that until God told me it was time to go. Then I was like “Oh, well I can't listen to that anymore because all that's going to do is allow fear to take place in my heart.” All that's going to do is plant a seed that ultimately if I paid attention to it will cause me to be disobedient and stay at the job longer than God told me to so let me just cut off all communication for a second. And somebody else asked me something similar to that when I was doing the Instagram questions of like dealing with, they said toxic people but I just say people in general.

Because people could be well-meaning and not necessarily toxic and you still shouldn't listen to them but they asked me about dealing with people as you're pursuing what God called you to do. My answer was, don't expect people to be supportive, don't expect people to understand and don't expect people to cheer you on. It's great if they do but if they don't that shouldn't dictate what you do or how you feel about it. Your desire should be simply that I got to be obedient and either y'all are going to be on board or you're not.

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And I can tell you one thing, they’re going to always come around because the same people who would tell me “you're doing a podcast for free every single week, I don't know why you doing that, you need to be spending your time doing something else.” Or “you’re leaving your job and you're going to focus on it;” them same people, “Tatum, can you teach me how to start a podcast?” No, or them same people “oh, can you give me some money?” Oh, so my business is doing good and I got some cash, now you want some money, but back when I said I was leaving my job you had your nose up at me because I had to make the necessary sacrifices and you wasn't understanding it.

And I knew for a fact that I couldn't ask you for nothing but because I got it like that you want some money now, no, ain't happening. But again, anybody who is trying to plant those seeds and the enemy will use the people closest to you to try to plant those seeds of anxiousness or this hasn't happened yet; listen to those types of conversations.

When people start saying stuff to you that's specific to the time frame of whatever God told you, they're trying to make you anxious about the promise so pay attention to that and shut that down. And again, people are well meaning, I don't think anybody who says anything like this is necessarily trying to be a downer or trying to be used by the enemy. But at the same time, you have to be able to recognize it for what it is and not look at that person as “oh, this person's toxic.” Nah, it's a spirit operating in them that's trying to get you off so deal with the spirit and as opposed to getting mad at the person but that's a topic for another day.

Again, the solution to this ‘I want it now’ aspect of instant gratification is; keep the vision at the top of mind but don't marry yourself into any particular method or time frame of getting there. And I see this a lot when it comes to women who desire to get married and I think that this can be especially dangerous when there's a desire in your heart to get married. Because when you really want to get married, you tend to overlook a lot of things and when you’re like “oh, I want to get married this year, I want to be a wife by this age.”

You tend to let things slide with potential suitors that you otherwise would have noticed or recognized as the red flags they are if you wasn't that pressed about the time frame. And I think putting these time limits on God can be self-sabotaging especially like in that example of marriage to where you're thinking “oh, this is my husband, I’ve been praying for God to send my husband.” “And even though the enemy has sent me this counterfeit I can't even recognize it because I’m so happy that some guy is paying me attention so he must be my husband.”

No, hold on; let's take a second here to make sure that I’m marrying the right one because a healthy marriage is way more important than being married by a certain age. Having a man that you're able to partner with and pursue the mission and the mandate on your lives in a healthy manner, having a man to worship God with, having a man that's going to support you. A man that's okay with letting you be who God calls you to be and not being emasculated by him. Marrying the right person is way better than getting married by a certain period of time, but because we want to get married now, we're just accepting stuff.

And I caution anybody who may be in this space to just really give up that time frame for a second because the time frame that we have can be blinding and I need for that instant gratification of love and the romantic love can sometimes blind us. I have a friend who hit me up and she really believes in God for her husband and she sent me a message and was like “oh, I just met this guy.”She sent me his Facebook and said “he wanted to take me out to dinner” and I was like “well, if he wants to take you out to dinner why did he give you his Facebook and not exchanged phone numbers?” And she was like “I don't know” and I’m like “Okay” I mean, that's weird. First, I’m like “alright, this is a red flag to me but maybe I’ve been out the game for too long to where I just don't know how things work” but I was like, “okay.” She was like “do you know him” because apparently the guy and I were Facebook friends.

I’m like “girl, I made a Facebook in 2009 when it came out so I’m probably friends with a bunch of people that I don't know in there.” So, I went to his page and the dude got like a whole family. I was like first of all, he's stupid; why would you give her your Facebook when you know you got whole family pictures on there? But I guess you couldn't give her your number either because your wife may see the text message but either way it was dumb. But stuff like that though, she was definitely excited that “oh, you know I’m looking for my husband, here's this guy that I met at the grocery store or whatever.”

But stuff like that, I can see the potential of being very excited leading you to being blinded by certain red flags and if I even talk about my own journey to marriage. When I first met my husband, I was at the place where I believed in God for a husband, but I didn't necessarily want to get married at that time. I wasn't ready for marriage but I was tired of playing games, I kind of wanted to just meet the person who I was supposed to marry and date them for maybe like five or six years and then get married. I wasn't ready to get married right then and there.

And this was a huge timing lesson for me because usually we think about timing and the aspect that we've been talking about it on this show has been based around like “okay, I’m waiting and I’m getting impatient and waiting for something.” But God's time is sometimes he'll make us do something before we're ready for it and I gave the example of quitting my job before I thought that I was ready. And the same thing happened when it came to me meeting my husband. I wanted to meet my husband but again, I wasn't ready to get married right then and there.

So, when I met him, we were co-workers so we had the ability to be cool for a little bit before actually dating and so we maintained a little friendship and really just got to know each other casually without all the pressures of anything else around the office. Then we ended up dating months after that and within a year, we were engaged and I was a little bit scared to be honest because I didn't think that I was ready.

We got engaged a year after officially dating and I remember praying and before that I knew the engagement was coming so I wasn't really that surprised and my husband and I are seven years apart. My husband was 30 when we met and I was like 23 or something like that.

Yeah, I was 23 and he was 30 so he’s like “listen sis, I have been through my 20s, I have been through my whole phase, I’d have been out doing whatever, I want a wife, what's up?” I liked that of course and I’ve always been mature for my age, but I wasn't sure that I was ready for what God was sending me and because I was spending time praying and God had confirmed that this is my husband. This is the man that I made for you and so that made me more comfortable with God's timing of this and so even when I knew the engagement was coming, I would pray.

And in my own personal time “God is this the right time? Is this the right time because I don't want to mess this up.” One of my big things is that I always wanted a healthy marriage, I didn't grow up around healthy marriages so marriage is always something that was a big deal to me and I really just didn't want to mess it up. So, I was like, “well God, is this the right timing for this?” and God just gave me all the assurance that not only was of course he my husband but the timing of it was the right timing. Even though it was sooner than what I thought that I would have been ready for.

And then even through our engagement season of me going to therapy for myself, us going to counseling together and things like that; looking back on it, me getting married when I did, I don't think that I would have or me meeting my husband. Because prior to marriage, he was just a huge part of my life so looking back I don't think that I would be here without being with him. I don't think that i would be here if I didn't meet him at that time and so looking back, I’m like “God, you are so strategic because everything that I’ve been able to accomplish, my husband has been right there helping me.”

Like everything that I’ve done that a lot of people give me the credit for it it's a lot of the way that he loves me, the way that he works in the business, the way that he does things that has allowed me to be who God has called me to be. And there are a lot of things that are being manifested in him even though he may have been older and mature. Quote unquote, “there's a lot of things that God has used me to bring out of him to where he may not be at the level that he's at if it wasn't for me” and I think God brought us together at the right time.

And if I would have adapted or married my timing and said no, I’m going to wait a few more years before I get married or I’m going to wait a few more years before I’m engaged or I’m going to have a multi-year engagement or something like that. If I would have done that, I might have derailed everything that God was trying to do in my life. But I do believe that marrying him and being with him when I did was one of the best decisions I could have made for my future. And I’m not even saying that to be like all mushy or whatever because thug life but I’m just giving an example of giving into God's timing.

So again, we really have to separate ourselves from being married to the time frame, we have to get out of keep the vision in mind. The vision was I want to be a full-time entrepreneur and I wasn't married to my time frame which is why I was able to quit months before I had originally planned to. The vision was to have a healthy marriage where my husband honors me and loves me and supports me and we're building generational things together, that was the vision.

And so while I thought that it would happen a little bit later or I may have wanted it to happen a little bit later so that I could have a little bit more time to do whatever it is my little young mind was talking about. But God was like, “No, this is going to happen now because it needs to happen now in order for my plan to unfold the way that it needs to unfold.” So again you guys don't let this instant gratification, this human nature that we have keep us from the things that God has for us.

Again, the title of this episode is How to Accept God's Timing Over Your Own and these are the ways that you do it so let's go over the pillars of instant gratification one more time with the solutions and we're going to end it here. So sorry that I didn't answer the questions today you guys but time. So, the first pillar is the pleasure principle and the solution is to receive and accept that pleasing God is pleasurable. The second pillar is procrastination; the solution is to create structure in your life.

The last pillar is that you want it now mentality and the solution is to keep the vision top of mind but don't marry yourself to any particular method or time frame of getting there. Thank you, guys, so much for tuning in to another episode of the Blessed and Bossed Up podcast; post us on the gram, tell me what you thought about today's episode, rate the show, subscribe, share with your friends and I love you guys and I’ll talk to you next week.