You Don't Have to Be Perfect to Start - God Gives You Strength

Show Notes:
God wants us to surrender our lives to Him & ask for His help.

But, we often live to impress the world instead of honoring the Father of Everything.

Galatians 1:10, “Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.”

We think everything needs to be perfectly planned & ready to go before we can take that next step. 

Matthew 11:28-30, “Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’”

But we don’t. God is the only one that loves completely unconditionally. He wants us to come to Him, battered & broken, willing to surrender it all to Him

Romans 5:8, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Here are 5 tips I have for you to no longer allow the need to be perfect or ready get in your way of taking the next step:

1. Stand Up to Your Insecurities
   1. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, “Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So not I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
   2. God’s strength is seen through our vulnerabilities. 
2. Practice Giving Grace & Forgiveness to Yourself & Others
   1. God calls us to forgive others & extend grace, just as He did and does every single day. 
   2. Ephesians 4:32, “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”
3. See Your Life as a Way to Serve God & Others
   1. Give your life to God so He can use your life to save someone else. 
   2. Galatians 6:9-10, “So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”
4. Trust God, as You Have With Other Things
   1. If you’re still stuck on how to trust Him, just ASK Him to help you trust Him.
   2. God has done SO MUCH for you already, so why not trust Him now? 
   3. Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.”
5. Spend TONS of Time in Prayer
   1. Prayer doesn’t need to ONLY be reserved for quiet time/devotional time. You can pray any time you want. 
   2. Philippians 4:6-7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

Transcript

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This is the Real Positive Girl podcast and I am your host Sabrina, and I am here as always chatting with you about your emotions, about your mental health, how to take those first few steps towards being more honest, more vulnerable, working on your self-awareness and doing that while referencing scripture and how God can help us every single day. So if you are new here, welcome. I hope that this episode and any other episodes you decide to listen to that are in the archive that have just happened are really beneficial to you. Um, and if you have any suggestions, take a quick peek down to the, into the show notes below and it has an email for you in a way for you to get in contact with me via social or email to give any sort of feedback or desires that you would want me to talk about or you know, what, how you feel about the shows if you are new. And, and even if you're not new, welcome back and you can still check out all that information down in the show notes on being able to contact me, which we'll get more into in just one second. Uh, today we are gonna be chatting about, you don't have to be Perfect to start and I think this is gonna be such a fantastic topic to discuss and I ask God to really reveal to me what would be the best thing to chat about today. And this actually related a lot to the devotional that I did this morning. And so I am very excited for this like fresh wind and topic to bring to you today. Um, but before we jump into that, as always, as I mentioned, if you pop down to the show notes, you'll see an email for you to email me with any questions, comments, concerns, pro request feedback, topic suggestions, whatever you have. There's also an opportunity for you to become friends with me on social. So whether it's Instagram or TikTok, I am at Sabrina Joy Perso if you prefer Twitter, I am real Sabrina, joy on Twitter as well and feed. Please feel free to send me a dm, let's become friends online. Let's chitchat, let's go ahead and build that community together. I cannot wait to hear from you. Um, again, if you prefer email, there is that too. And the other things down the show notes is like to sign up for the weekly newsletter that we'll be back probably within the next month. Uh, so if you wanted to go ahead and just get on the list for that now. So when it does relaunch, you're ready to go. You can also check out the link to the YouTube channel for the podcast and it has the video version of a lot of the episodes, uh, starting this year, this calendar year and slowly being updated to catch up with what we're doing now today. And um, there's other stuff down there. So just go ahead and take a peek down the show notes, figure all that out, see if you're interested in any of those things. But let's go ahead and talk about what we're here to learn about and chat about, which is you don't have to be perfect to start. So I definitely struggled with the desire to be perfect growing up. Absolutely. I've shared that like so many times over the years that this podcast has existed because I'm here to be most vulnerable, honest, transparent with you about anything and everything that I've struggled with, um, because I think that's only fair in talking about these types of topics. So I definitely struggled with that desire to be perfect growing up and you know, being a perfectionist and like a people pleaser, those are definitely my calling cards. I like wore a badge. It's like, you know, that is who I was, who I really identified with being most of my life. But it's interesting and shocking that I didn't allow this idea of the need to be perfect and to, you know, be everything for everyone. Uh, keep me from trying most things, you know, cuz the topic of the podcast today is like, you don't have to be perfect to start, but I didn't necessarily allow, allow perfectionism to get in the way of me starting. And you know, that might sound really great. You might be like Sabrina <laugh> then how do you relate to this topic at all? Um, well I do because it wasn't really great. It's actually because instead of allowing perfectionism and people pleasing to hold me back from starting and, and taking steps in my life and to move forward in all the things that I wanted to do, um, I actually allowed it to push me to the brink of craziness because I wanted to like prove to everyone that I could do everything on my own. So if I was requested or asked to do something, then I wanted to be able to say yes and like that that's where the perfectionism like really lived of like I can be, I can strive to be so perfect that I don't ever have to say no, I can do it all like this. It's like a fantasy that I was living in for so, so, so, so frigging long. It's craziness and you know, it's, it's interesting. So maybe if you are struggling with perfectionism and you feel like oh wow, this feels so familiar because maybe you've had other people tell you stories about how their perfectionism got in the way of them like taking chances and stepping outside of their comfort zone and you're like, why struggle with perfectionism too? But it wasn't really like that. Maybe it's because you are on the flip side of like, no I can do it all because I'm seeking perfectionism. So regardless though of how your deal and your struggle with perfectionism, you know, was displayed to others and to yourself and to the world, it is still you trying to, you and me at the time trying and sometimes still no one's perfect. It was still like you and me trying to accomplish everything in our own strength. Like we're just trying to do it all our own, saddle it on our back, the biggest burden. But we're like, we're going to be able to handle it and that's actually not the best way to live our life and it's actually the the best way to live a life that feels so empty, so complete and not exactly how we envisioned it or how it was supposed to be. So when we put off stepping. Into like a new season of life or like trying something new, you know, stepping out of our comfort zone to really like, you know, experience something different or even in my case trying to do everything to look perfect to other people and to feed into the people policing of being everything for everyone. We truly actually rob ourselves of the opportunity to do whatever it is that we're seeking or wanting to do to the absolute best of our ability because we try to do it in our own strength and a lot of times we get so caught up in our ego and our pride and allow our insecurities to like just yammer on in our mind that we do get caught up in wanting to do everything in our own strength to demonstrate to everyone else that we can. Cuz it's like this trophy and this medal and this honor that we grew grasp so tightly to and want to show the entire world. But you know, God wants us to surrender our lives to him and ask for his help. You know, he wants us to rely on him and have faith and belief that he's gonna come through and he's gonna take care of us and we don't have anything to worry about, like truly. And so, you know, there's this dichotomy of like, we wanna be able to do it all on our own and tell everyone that we did do it on our own. And yet God's like no, that's like not the point here. I want you to rely on me. I want you to like, you know, want my help and ask for my help and have faith that you know I'm gonna come through even if it looks differently than you imagined it. Cuz he knows better and he understands the nuances and the things that we don't see coming cuz he already knows what's going to happen. So he knows like where we should go, the steps we should take, what we should do, what we're gonna learn in those experiences coming up. But for any of this to happen, like at all, we have to trust him and you know, we have to trust that he knows what is better for us and you know, be able to just give up all control to him. And in the last episode of the PO podcast, I kind of talked a little bit about giving up control because it is such, well lemme the last one but I'll be in the last couple. It's been like sprinkled in there. It's, it's kind of difficult to let go of the control that we think that we have and we really don't have it. It's kind of like this pretend like fantasy land that God's like, okay, well whatever, like you need to <laugh>, you're living in a fantasy world but I will be here when you're ready to surrender and ask for my help, right? But we're thinking, oh my gosh, we're just like doing it all and we're really, we're really not, we're missing out on so much. So we have to be able to like give up the control and giving up control is not easy for us as I'm sure you know, as I like I used to like really be a really hardcore control freak of wanting everything to go a certain way and people to do a certain way and thinking that I know best and all of these things I was so caught up in. Um, but that's not the way that we should be going about it. You know, we often have control issues because we're still struggling with insecurities, but we want everything to go like a very particular certain way because we want to impress the world instead of honoring the father of everything who already knows like what's going to happen. Yet we're over here like okay well let me impress all of the people in my community at my job, at my home, my who I want to be in relationship with and be my family someday. Let me impress them with all of these things that I think that I am saddling on my back and making happen through my own strength. It's craziness. So for any of these things to happen for us to like fully trust and have faith in him and like, you know, for us to like be able to let go of perfectionism and just fully embrace what he has for us and align for his will, we have to have that real trust. It has to be real and genuine and heartfelt and we have to dedicate ourselves to him. In the book of Galatians chapter one verse 10, it says, obviously I'm, I love the way it starts. Obviously I'm not trying to win the approval of people but of God, if pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant. So it's very clear here, like if you're not trying to win the approval of people, people of the world, then you are focusing on getting and gaining the approval of God. So you're doing whatever he asked you to do, you're committing your life to him. You're surrendering everything that you have to him. You're not allowing worries and anxieties and problems and struggles to weigh you down. You're allowing the peace and joy and comfort of God despite whatever struggles you may be currently encountering and experiencing. You're allowing him to just guide you and comfort you and wash over you because you know that he has your back. You know that he's going to continue to help you push through. And so, but if we are not, if we're trying to please the world and just, you know, have everyone around us really give us a pat on the back and tell us we're doing great and just kind of think that we can push God aside for a moment, then we are not serving Christ at all. We are deciding to just like really lean in to what the world has for us and engage in sin and just be like, oh it'll be okay for a minute when it won't. Like if you come back and repent and ask God for forgiveness and truly in your heart, like recommit yourself to God, then yeah, yeah, he's gonna like be like, okay you please, you know, come and come back home and and be recommitted and allow me to lead your life. But if we're trying to like have one foot in each side, like one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the world, it's not gonna work. You can't serve both of those things at the same time. So, but unfortunately our society, at least here in the United States as far as I know and probably other places too, if you were listening internationally, please let me know, our society often dictates needing to be as close to perfect as possible. At most things that we do, it's just there you might be like, oh no Sabrina, that's not how people are. Yeah, maybe that's not how like some of your like immediate community friends, family, people are. But if you were to take a step back and widen your perspective of what's happening, you know, in the United States or or wherever you are, you might see that the society is pushing us to be perfect and be seen as perfect. And that's what gets you kudos. That's what gets you past the back. That's what gets you to climb up the corporate ladder and to gain more and have more and be more and blah blah blah and all of these things. And also agree that it's okay to chastise the people that don't meet those standards like as perfect, as perfect as they can be, quote unquote. And it's okay to chastise them, it's okay to bring them down and that should actually be expected if we aren't hitting these imaginary, crazy, unrealistic high expectations of trying to be perfect at everything when no one can hit perfect, God is the only one that will ever be perfect, right? And that's part of what's wrong with the people of the world today is that they only care about how they are viewed by others and not by God. They're not looking for the approval of God and maybe they say they are, but if they're really just focusing on looking good for other people and what they think and you know, really allowing things to like slip and, and um, make allowances for some bad things or things that they know in their heart of hearts that they should not be involved in. Um, and I know that we all do it cuz no one's perfect, you know, and I sin you sin, we all deal with it. But it's, it's a matter of like our heart. And are we gonna come back to God? Are we gonna repent? Are we gonna ask for forgiveness? Are we gonna allow the Holy Spirit to like, you know, permeate within us and be like, listen, we should not have done that. You shouldn't let not, we like, like you should not have done that. You need to ask for forgiveness, you need to come back to the Lord and you need to not do that going forward. Or you need to, you know, do all these things too, not allow yourself to do that going forward, right? But a lot of times we just so get so caught up in the praise and the love and the appreciation that the people of the world give us, that we will soon forget that we were supposed to actually be serving God and not the people of the world. And it can become so confusing and overwhelming for us and we just allow ourselves to get lost in that. And so all of this plays a big part in our need to be perfect and ready for things before we give it a try, right? We have this, this feeling and this fear that if we're not ready, if we're not perfect, if we're not have all of our ducks in a row, then we can't try that new thing. We can't get started. We think everything needs to be perfectly planned and ready to go before we can take that next step. And there's a difference between uh, you know, being prepared and being like, like feeling like you're ready. Like if you are about to take a new job, of course there's gonna be a couple things that you, you know, realistically, logically need to do. It's just like, okay, is the new job that you're doing requiring you to move to a new city? Okay, well of course before you can take that job, you need to be able to move and whether you have family involved or not and find a place to live and be able to transfer all those things. Yeah, that's like true, honest, real preparation as opposed to like, do I feel ready? Do I feel like I'm in the right spot in my life to do this? Do I feel like I have learned all the things to actually take the next step? It's like if God is leading you do like go in that direction, just take the steps because he is going to be able to guide you in every step, in every corner and turn and every, everything you're gonna do along the way if we trust him, if we give it all to him. And so, you know, we just think it needs to be all perfect. And again, this could be with like a new career or like a new relationship, a new passion, uh, a new purpose that's revealed to us or even a new or renewed relationship with Christ. You know? And we actually believe that we have to have it all together before we can commit and surrender our lives to Christ. That's the worst one where we, and that was part of the devotion that I read this morning. We're talking about how we think that we have to be perfect and have it all together before we can just come to Christ and lay it all at his feet and be like, okay, Lord, I commit my life to you. No, no, he, he wants you to come as you are. And speaking of which, if you look in the book of Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30 it says, then Jesus said, come to me all of you who are wary and carry burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart. And you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy to bear. And the burden I give you is light. Jesus is telling you straight up, listen, just come as you are. You don't need to prepare anything, you don't need to do anything. You just need to come genuinely with the heart to just give and surrender to him and to give your life to God, to Jesus and and be a light for him in the world. Now as opposed to all these like selfish desires and and feelings that we had to impress the world. We just need to be living and and being, um, willing and, and and only seeking the approval of God. So you know, we think that we have to be all prepared even just to like submit our lives to Christ. But we don't, God is the only one that loves like actually fully, completely unconditionally. Like it's the only one. You might think that you love people conditional unconditionally or maybe you know someone in your life that you feel like no, they also are like ultimately the most completely unconditional. No, no one is more unconditionally loving of us than God. He wants us to come to him battered and broken and willing to surrender it all to him and genuinely love him, genuinely, genuinely, genuinely, genuinely love him and serve him all the rest of our days. And it doesn't feel like that much to ask for how much he gives us, how much he's there for us, how much he comforts us and loves us and is just always there, you know, doing the best for us, helping us. It's just amazing. And again, sometimes you think that he doesn't come in the way that you wanted him to or that you think would be best, it's because he knows better and he knows best and it's just so radical and amazing that he just knows best and we get so caught up in, in seeing our lives in a certain way and what we want and what we think we need. And he's just like, no, that's nice but we're gonna do it this way and don't worry you'll appreciate it. Just trust me. In the book of Romans chapter five verse eight it says, but God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. While we were still sinners, people were still running amuck on this great earth, people being crazy sinning, doing all the horrible things. But God was like, no it's cool. I mean it's not cool but it's like no, God was like, you know, I'm still gonna send my son to die for our sins. Despite all of that craziness, despite the fact that people were still like being ridiculous running muck and even now, even now it's day 2023, June 16th, I had to look at my watch. Even now we can begin our lives getting caught up like in the craziness and the mistakes and the failures and the sins and all the things that we go through. We can get caught up in all those crazy things at the beginning of our lives but still come to God. Have that moment, that breaking point where we still come to God and we ask for forgiveness and we surrender everything to him every single thing and be free and clear of that sin in his eyes. And it's the most wonderful gift ever. We just don't recognize it because it's not like some sort of sparkly thing we can hold in our hand. Unlike all the other things that we are trying to live our life to get, to earn, to buy, to steal, to have, you know, God gave his son to die for our sin so that he could offer us the opportunity to have eternal life. To have eternal life with him forever. It's just, oh man, because he loves us so much. God loves us so incredibly and knows if we just like shake our focus of the world long enough to see the goodness of God, we will come back home to him. He knows that and we just need to like get our lives together. But shiny things, shiny things, we allow the distractions to sweep us away and just like be like, oh we're gone <laugh>. So if you are putting off stepping into the next phase of your life or something that you know you've been putting off for some time, all for the sake of you know, needing to feel ready or to be perfect, I please ask you to listen to the five tips that I have for you on how to let go of the need to be perfect or be ready in order to move forward in your life. But first we're going to jump into our mini disclaimer and then we'll move into the tips. So the tips and advice I'm about to give you is all based on my own knowledge in research and experiences and the experiences of others with you. If you find that what I'm about to share does not align with what you need to better understand that you don't need to be perfect to start, I encourage you to seek someone that you trust, even if that's like a counselor or a therapist, to really help you and talk to you and have that one-on-one conversation that will help you figure out what would actually be most situation. A better understanding like you know, knowing that you don't and truly believing that you don't need to be perfect to get started. If you don't wanna do any of those things, I understand you can just go to our best friend Google and just type in keywords like dealing with perfectionism or needing to be perfect or ready. And that will give you like so many articles and videos and podcasts and opportunities for you to better understand like what you should do on your own journey to really figuring out that you don't need to be perfect to start. Okay, let's jump right into it again, here are five tips I have for you to no longer allow the need to be perfect or to be ready get in the way of you taking the next steps in your life. So the first one that I wanna share with you is stand up to your insecurities. Stand up to your insecurities. In the book of two Corinthians chapter 12 verses nine through 10, it says, each time he said, my grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So not so I, I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, hardships, persecutions and troubles that I suffer for Christ for when I am weak then I am strong. So you know, Paul's talking about how all he needs to do is just know that in the weaknesses that he has, Christ is shining through those things. And so when he's weak he's actually strong because Christ is like I am there for you, I'm holding you up, I am making you strong. And so any sort of like insecurities or vulnerabilities or things that you just feel really shameful or guilty about or things that are getting in the way and causing you and leading you to think that you need to be perfect or you need to be a certain level of readiness, quote unquote before you are able to take those next steps in your life, you need to know that you don't have to and you don't want to allow those insecurities to get in the way of you moving forward because you might think that the weaknesses and the problems and the mistakes and the failures that you had in your past or even experiencing right now will get in the way of actually dedicating your life to Christ and taking those next steps that God is pushing you to do because it aligns with his will. You might think that those things are gonna get in the way and they actually are not going to get in the way. So I encourage you to just really read this verse again, again Second Corinthians chapter 12 verses nine through 10. If you don't remember that or didn't write that down, you can always check the show notes below because even though I have to like cut the show notes down to fit them in all the different places you listen to the podcast, if you're just listening, the verses always stay. I don't generally ever like cut those out. So it's like the best thing for you to reference, I'm better understand what I'm talking about. So you can always go check and look it up and then look it up online like look up commentaries to better understand it if you want to really know what it means even deeper and also read the whole chapter to have a better understanding of the context of what is being spoken about. But again, stand up for your insecurities. God's strength is seen through our vulnerabilities, okay? We don't need to allow these insecurities to hold his cactus and tell us who we are. A lot of times we do allow these things to tell us who we are, that we're weak or that we're not ready, that we're not capable. But God has already told us who we are, we are his child and we are so special to him that again he sent his son to the cross to die for us so that we can be eternally with God forever. And that's all that matters. And it may be hard for you to accept that that's the only thing that matters, but it truly is. And we need to get that into our heart and share that with him as many people as possible so nothing can get in the way of God's love except for ourselves. A lot of times we can just like, you know, not surrender to God and not give it all to him. And we sure do get in our own way a lot, don't we? And so we can't, we just can't be good at everything. I want you to remember that we can't be ready for everything. There's no possible way. There's gonna be so many like you know, surprise opportunities that come our way that we need to just be aligned with God's will and go and take steps and allow him to guide and lead us in what we're doing. And we cannot know for sure what will actually happen if we like, if we don't like before we take those steps. So we can't like live in that fear or that anxiety or the feeling that we have to be perfect already. Like we don't know what's actually gonna happen if we are or if we aren't. So we just need to rely on God and keep moving forward cuz he'll always be there for us. Okay, so the second tip I wanna share with you is practice giving grace and forgiveness to yourself and others. God calls us to forgive and extend grace to other people just as he did and does every single day with us. You know, he initially did it in so many different ways in the Bible and he ultimately gave his son as a living sacrifice so that we can have our sins wash away by the blood of Christ and still he still will like we're still fallen people so we'll still make mistakes in, in sin, but he will continue to extend grace and forgiveness to us when we come to him and ask him for that. So we were supposed to be, you know, chasing after the image of Christ every single day. So doing your best to adopt this behavior is what needs to happen. Giving grace and forgiveness to other people. And again, when you give forgiveness to people and not necessarily asking you to forget what happened, especially if what happened means that you need to move forward with implementing boundaries to keep yourself safe, that's fine. However, when you forgive you don't like look back in your memory of what happened and then hold that against that person or have your heart hardened towards them. When you forgive, you are allowing it to just be like thawed, no ice and just move forward. You know? And understanding that people make mistakes, they they take wrong turns and you know, sometimes they still wanna continue to do harmful things, but God's gonna give you a way to create those boundaries, enable them and then enforce them and then keep your, keep you safe. But other times we wanna say that we forgive someone but we wanna continually bring it up and like try to push someone towards guilt and shame. And that's not true forgiveness, that's not true. Uh, offering of grace to someone. I just want you to know that in the book of Ephesians chapter four verse 32, it says in instead be kind to each other tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you. So if you ever have a moment where you're like, my goodness, why do I have to forgive anyone? It, it sucks. I don't wanna do it. It doesn't seem fair. Just so you know, life is not fair, it's never going to be fair. And that sounds harsh but it's true. And we don't really need to focus on that if we just surrender our life to God cuz he is gonna take care of everything as long as we surrender to him and align with his will, right? But you know, we think how upset we are with what people do against us and we don't wanna forgive them but think about all the bad things that we have done against God and who he is and what he's done for us and other people that have done worse things like think about that and what God did and the fact that he is forgiving of everyone gives grace to everyone. It is, it is like the smallest thing for us to do the same to other people in our lives. So practice giving grace and forgiveness to yourself and others. And so if you've made mistakes and failures in the past, don't allow those things to get in the way of you taking that next step forward to doing whatever you need to do. Because you can just give yourself grace and forgiveness as you're giving that to other people, as God is giving it to you and everyone else continually as asked. And it will allow you to not get so caught up in this feeling of needing to be perfect and ready to take the next step. Just take it, just forgive yourself and just give yourself grace and move forward and know that every um, mistake and failure is the life's best learning lessons. Stand by that forever, forever. Number three, the third tip I have for you today is see your life as a way to serve God and others. Now when I was writing these notes and that was like the point that I came up with like the tip that I wanted to share, I immediately was like okay we kind of need like a mini disclaimer for this one. Um, so in regard to seeing your life as a way to serve God and others, do not try to take me out with any comments about this leading to like people pleasing or even more perfectionism. Cause I know that there might be some people that feel that way and that's not true at all because it won't lead to people pleasing or more perfectionism if you do it while surrendering everything to God. When you're doing everything under the umbrella like the true, honest, genuine umbrella of God, you are good. Okay? He's not gonna trick you or allow you to just like slump into people, believeing, perfectionism, all this ridiculousness. If you're actually surrendering and giving everything to him and genuinely serving him, wanting to align with his will, doing everything we can, taking action being a light in the world, our life is for Christ, then you're fine. You know, we get sucked into people blazing imperf perfectionism because our focus turns from God and pleasing him and wanting to like have his approval to instead focusing on pleasing the world. That's where it shifts. Hear me what I'm saying? You're like we shift our focus away from God and then we get all caught up in the shiny things like I was talking about before. It's like allowing someone that says they know how to fix your car and will give you like a really good discount if you allow them to do the work instead of someone you know is competent, knows how to fix it, has done it in the past and it's asking a bit more of you, right? You're like oh no, I want the discount and this cool person as opposed to the person that you know can do the work but might be asking for a little bit more. And the more that's being asked of you is really only letting go of control, which again feeds back to surrendering to God, giving it all to him, dedicating your life to serving him. He will work through you and strengthen you to do all the like your like have all the things that you want and need in your life and also be a light to shine to bring other people to give their life to Christ as well. You know what I mean? And so allowing our lives to be used to serve others and serve God will not fall into people pleasing imp perfectionism. I just want you to know that it's the true facts. So if we are continuing to keep our eyes on the prize, which is God, then we'll be good. Okay? So give your life to God so that he can use your life to save someone else. Think about it that way, right? Because by being alive in this world for Jesus, I I, I don't think I can say it enough times by being alive in the world for Jesus, you can lead the way back to God and eternal life with him. It's quite beautiful really. And I felt like I was almost gonna come to tears a couple times when I was writing notes Cause I was like it's amazing He is allowing us to be in on this fantastic like mission and desire to bring more people into the kingdom and be saved forever by using us and being a light for him. Being out there to tell people how amazing God is. You know, focus on giving your life to serve others with the talents and the gifts God has blessed you with that he has decided to give you. So it's not just like on your own accord, you just fans and like suddenly have all these abilities like God blessed you with these things instead of focusing so much on being seen as perfect and being seen by the people of the world as capable and being able to do everything in your own strength and strap all the burdens to your back and do it all right? Only God is perfect. It's only him. It's reserved for him. So, and that's forever ever and ever and ever and ever continuing forever. So by doing so, you are allowing God to work through you to benefit others. Allow God to work through you to benefit others just as this most likely happened to you but you just don't realize it. You just don't realize that God sends some sent someone else to go to you and to work through them for the benefit of you coming back and seeking the kingdom of God and giving your life to Christ. We just don't always realize it or remember it but it happened. And it doesn't matter whether we like recognize it in the moment or not. You know, there's not always gonna be like balloons dropping from the ceiling when things like that happen. But it is a glorious celebratory moment. We give our life to Christ. We don't always remember like the journey of getting there and that's okay. But we also wanna be a part of that journey by allowing our light to shine to others, to draw them back in to Christ. So see your life as a way to serve God and serve others and that'll allow you to kind of like let go of being perfect because you are just a vessel for God to use in the most best perfect, amazing way for him working through you. And it just takes the pressure off really cuz he's gonna do what he needs to do through you. He's got it covered. He can do it all in the book of Galatians chapter six verses nine through 10 it says, so let's not get tired of doing what is good at just the right time. We will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up. So we can't give up, we can't give in. We have to continue to work, be a light in the world to do as God is telling us to do. Do the right things and it's all gonna be worth it in the end. I truly believe that I have faith that that's true, especially since it's written in the Bible. God has told me so great. Uh, tip number four, trust God as you have with other things. So if you're new to trusting God, this might be a little bit more difficult for you, but still doable, not a problem. Uh, you have to truly just like believe that he can do anything and everything which he can. He just can like ask other people what God has done for them and you'll realize like, oh wow, he can just do all the things. It just depends on like what's happening for that person's life, what is the layout and the plan and the will that he has designated for their life. But you know, we get in the way of this because of how we act. Sometimes we, we act in a fool running amuck being ridiculous, ridiculous really. And yes, he could just like make like whatever happened anyway, like because he's God, um, because he can do anything and everything, but he desires a true, true, honest, full relationship with us. Not something that's forced or manipulated or anything like that. So he waits, he's gonna wait for us to come to him and like, yes, God also bless us even if we're like riding that struggle bus every single day and really just like not fully like there because God is such an amazing loving, unconditional, loving God, but he really wants to wait on us to come to him and, and like have that relationship with him because then it's true, honest and genuine, right? So he waits more patiently than we ever could than we ever could. Can you imagine seeing someone that you actually love so much out there in the world running amuck, being ridiculous and just being like, ugh, I really wish they would just get their lives together and come back to me so that I could help them become their best selves. Like that's, that's how I imagine it is for God. It's probably like, you know, wildly different. But that's how I imagine it is in the way that I'm able to understand which everything that God does is like beyond our understanding. But that's how what I can make of it. But he like knows what's best for us, but he is so patient. But if you're still stuck, like if you're new to trusting God but you're, you're, you're having a problem trusting God, just ask him to help you, trust him. Like it sounds so simple, it sounds so incredibly. It sounds so incredibly simple just to be like, Hey God, can you please help me trust you? Can you please help me surrender it all to you and know that you're gonna come through? He will, he will. But you have to genuinely like be there and ask him and pray and be like, listen, please help me. I need help trusting you. I don't know what to do and just call out to him cuz it's the most like real way to do it as opposed to like like oh my gosh, do I have to do this, that and the other? No. If you really are struggling with it, just come to him and ask. Be like, Hey God, how can I trust you? Uh, help me trust you. You know, leave me to trust you. Please help me and be genuine about your request. God has done like so much for us again that we don't even know or realize or recognize it was him. So why not trust him now? So if you were able to actually, like if you're not new to trusting God and you're able to reflect on the times that God has come through for you, why not now? Why not now? Why are you allowing these ideas of needing to be needing to have everything in its like perfect place all coming together? Why are you allowing that to dictate what you do as opposed to just when God's telling you to do something, he's telling you to take that stuff he's telling you to move forward. Why are you allowing fear and insecurities and all these things to get in your way? Why are you not trusting him? Now maybe it's because you reneged on the control that you initially gave to him that you initially surrendered to him. I don't know. We let fear creep in and take too much space in our mind. We believe the world more than we believe. What God tells us about who we are, what we can be and what can do and what we're destined for and headed towards. Oh that sounds fun together. Destined to four and headed towards it's nice, you know, why wouldn't you trust him Now nothing has changed except maybe like your circumstances, but he hasn't changed. God hasn't changed, God never changes. He's God constant can rely on him. That's why we can trust and rely on him because he's constant. He doesn't change. You know, he's still the same yesterday, today and forever and that's all that matters. I promise you God has a great plan for each and every one of us and he knows what is best for us. And it may be really frustrating to wait around to know exactly what that will be or live in like a life of doubt of what you know he has told us already. I'm experiencing some of that myself just to be honest. And we will live through those things. We have to continue to just like every day, lay it down, surrender it to God and know that he will help us. And you have faith that he's gonna come through cuz he will So trust his timing and have faith in him to guide you through every single step to take that next step. And you don't have to be perfect or ready or whatever cuz he's gonna make sure that you have what you need and you are where you need to be in life to take that next step and who be successful or get whatever experience you need to become your best self in that thing. Number five. And the last tip, oh wait, hold on, hold on. I jumped over the verse that I was gonna share for you. Share to you in regards to trusting God as you have with other things. So in the book of Proverbs chapter three, verses five through six, it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. Think about him in all your ways and he will guide you on the right paths. So trust him in everything. Don't trust your own sneaky mind that has so many like false things planted in it. It's like a mind sweeper man, but you don't know that you're hitting the bomb until it's like boom. And, and if you don't know what mind sweeper is, it means that you're young. Congrats <laugh>. Um, look it up on the internet. Google it. Google the game. Mind sweeper. But, but yeah, trust in him with all your heart and think about him in all your ways. Think about him in everything you do, every set that you take and ask him to guide you to have you take the right turn. It might seem so trivial if you're like at the grocery store and you're like, God, what should I get for dinner? He might just like tell you, just ask him. Ask him to guide you. Maybe you know, you feel him stirring to like say something to someone or do something like just allow him to guide you in everything in your life. Okay, number five. And the last tip I wanna share you today is spend tons of time in prayer. Tons of time. This kind of leads into what I was saying before about like allowing God to just lead you and guide you in everything that you're doing. Prayer can happen any, anywhere at any time. And there are no rules for a specific duration of prayer or how eloquent or fancy your words need to be. It just needs to be genuine and honest, truthful to him. And also I've talked about being honest in the past. There is no reason for you to not be honest with God cuz he already knows the truth. He just wants you to trust him to tell him that truth. Okay? So you might think, oh you know, I'll just like not really acknowledge that to God, which I've been there of course, and I might be there again. I wouldn't doubt it, but God already knows and I remind myself of that all the time. God already knows. So why are we lying? Why are we being dishonest? He already knows. So just be honest with him. And prayer doesn't need to be only like reserved for like quiet time or like devotional time, Bible reading time. You can pray anytime you want. You can be like doing the dishes, driving your car at the grocery store, whatever in the middle of your workday. You can pray. And it doesn't need to only be when you need something or an emergency. In fact it shouldn't be. It should be all the time. It should be like really wanting to craft and create and deepen this relationship with God by praying and talking to him on the regular. Just as regular as maybe you text your friends or call them <laugh>. I'm not, I laugh because I'm not sure how many people actually call their friends on the telephone these days. But calling your friends, texting your friends, posting something on socials, it needs to be as regular as that. Even more so I'm telling you. And it's something that I need to work on as well, but I've, but it's just like we think that we make, we make serving God so legalistic sometimes when we're like, oh, all these rules. When really if we're just genuine in our relationship and desire to seek him and the actions that we take, he will guide us and he will love us and accept us. And that's all we need to do. It doesn't need to be the co. I bring copy of what they tell you from the pulpit. You just need to be honest and genuine and all in for God. It's really what it is. It's gonna look different for everyone I believe. You know, I mean if that's new for you, then yes, like wherever you go to church or wherever you learn about God and read the Bible and things like that, like you could get like a template or a blueprint or like an understanding of like where you can start. But as your relationship de like develops, it's gonna look a lot different. All like, you know, you're gonna be praying all the time and talking to God all the time and telling him everything that's going on with you. You, even though he already knows, but he wants you to establish that trust and connection and Him by telling him all the things like you would anyone else in your life that you're close to and that you love and cherish. You know? So you can pray anytime you want. Don't pray just for emergencies or when you need something. We should be praying to deepen our relationship with God and grow closer to knowing him more and more and the way that we can adopt the image of Christ, the mindset of Christ, the behavior of Christ to be like Christ. Be Christ like. Often when people are talking about it that way, it takes time in relationship with him. You can't become like someone if you don't spend time with them, if you don't know them. And that's the same with God. You have to know him. Prayer can also be a source of like comfort, joy, peace, you know, especially if you're in the tornado of like struggle and problems. You can be praying and be going through like one of the worst experiences of your life and have peace and joy and comfort wash over you and be like, okay God, you've got this. You're gonna help me. I'm gonna struggle, but I'm gonna continually surrender and depend on you and it's gonna be okay. You know, I just encourage you, tell him all the things and seek God out for wisdom. Also, to know like what to do and how to align with his will for you. Ask him questions. Ask him to give you confidence and strength from him working through you to help you. Let go of the perfectionism to let go of this fear, anxiety, need to be like quote unquote ready before we take the next step and move forward in life. Just ask him, talk to him. Be grateful. Tell him what you're thankful for. Tell him like how awesome he is. Praise him and talk to him like a friend and humble yourself before him and honor him in every way you can. And be a light for him in the world. To draw people back in, to give their life to Christ. Was that creepy? If you're not watching the video version yet, you're gonna be like, what is she talking about? I'm doing like weird spirit fingers that started away from me and draw me in when I was talking about drawing people to Christ. It all makes sense though, you get it. Last verse, Bible verse I'm gonna share with you is from the book of Philippians, chapter four, verses six through seven, one of my favorite verses right here, here, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then you'll experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. His peace will guard your heart and mind if you pray, if you seek him, if you ask him to help you. If you thank him for everything He's always, he has given you and he's continued giving you and he will give you. You can experience God's peace in the worst moments of your life and you can. You can experience God's peace in the best moments of your life. You can experience God's peace in the most neutral, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre moments of your life anytime all the time. You just have to be willing to connect to him, pray and have that relationship and genuine connection and love and desire to surrender it all to him. Giving continually, daily, laying it down to him can give you that peace. And people might think you're crazy. They'll be like, oh my gosh, how do you have peace right now? How are you calm when it feels like the sky is falling? God, it's because God can do anything and everything and he will help me make the best decisions, take the next steps, do the things I don't have to get caught up in perfectionism or feeling ready or like, you know, being held captive by fear, anxiety, and whatever you other people's opinions, the world. Cuz I got God, cuz you got God, he's there. It's amazing. Excuse you smile, sharing it with people. So that's it. That's all I have to share with you today in regards to knowing that you do not have to be perfect to start anything. You don't have to be ready. You don't have to be anything to seek a relationship with God. Realign yourself with as well. Take the new step, next step towards new career, new relationships with other people, whatever it is, just surrender to God. Ask him what to do, pray, connect with him. Have a relationship. Be a light for him in the world and allow him to lead you where you need to go. Sometimes it'll be uncomfortable or like weird, like why are we going this direction? But it all works out for good, even the bad things, the things that we perceive as bad and hard and difficult and struggles. Thank you so much for listening to The Real Positive Girl podcast again with me, Sabrina. I appreciate every single one of you listening, watching, eventually, and uh, sharing with your friends. Please do. And again, don't forget to check. Take a peek down into the show notes below. Come say hi to me on socials, send me an email, whatever, all the things. But I sincerely and genuinely look forward to the next episode that I get to share with you about how God can help us literally through anything and everything, specifically our emotions, mindsets, any mental health struggles. But until next time, have a good one. I'll see y'all next time.