if you want a godly man, raise your standards.

if you’re frustrated with the men in your life, it’s time to look at your standards... AND your standards of God. because the truth is, if your view of Him is shallow, your expectations for men will be too.

what i talk about:
✨ why you can’t expect a man to lead, protect, and honour you if you don’t even know what that looks like in God’s Word
✨ the dangers of settling for “good enough” and why it always leads to frustration
✨ how godly men lead in purity, purpose, and spiritual authority - don’t settle for less
✨ why your own relationship with God sets the tone for the kind of man you’ll accept

scriptures i mention:

• proverbs 31:10 – "an excellent wife who can find? she is far more precious than jewels."
• 2 corinthians 6:14 – "do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers."
• ephesians 5:25 – "husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her."
• psalm 37:4 – "delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."
• matthew 6:33 – "but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness."
• proverbs 4:23 – "keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."

if you’re out here settling for men who don’t reflect Christ, you need to pause. your standards of a man will only rise when your intimacy with God deepens. the closer you walk with Him, the clearer you’ll see what you deserve.

Transcript

0:09

Hey, homegirls. I'm back. I'm back and I'm better. I want you better. Don't. Let me just let. Let me not get copyrighted. I wanna give you better. I just realized I got a microphone in front of me. I wanna give you better. ASMR welcome back to the Less of Me podcast. I'm your host, Elodie Kristina, and I love you guys. And I love you guys so much that I'm willing to be honest with you guys. And if you know me, you know honesty is the best policy for this girl. And I'm not about to sugarcoat anything, because if you want a YouTuber, a podcaster, an influencer that's gonna tell you what you need to hear, tickle your ears a little bit, go find someone else, because it's not about to be me. Because when I was thinking about this podcast, I was like, man, someone's gonna get upset. I'm gonna have to be real. We're gonna have to talk about stuff that's uncomfortable. But I was like, I'm the girl for the job because I don't care. I care so much about you that I don't care. And you've seen the episode title, and you probably clicked on it out of curiosity or you clicked on it out of pride. Because if your standards are being low, you're probably thinking to yourself, man, I need this perfect guy. You know, he's gonna tell me that, like, I gotta level up and, like, fight for the man of my dreams. I'm so sorry, because that's not what I'm about to say. Whilst I'm going to be talking about how men, Christian men, are called to a certain standard, I'm also encouraging you to call yourself to a certain standard because there is a spiritual maturity that comes with seeking a man of a certain spiritual maturity. So you can't be all the way down here. Let's looking for Mr. Perfect all the way up here. You gotta get on this level, baby girl. And also you gotta realize that whilst you want him up here, you might meet him here, meet him here, and grow together. Perfection in a relationship from the start, let alone ever, is sorcery. It ain't gonna happen, baby girl. It's not true, it's not biblical, and it's also not refining, because let's get down. I'm gonna get down to the cores of, like, husband and wife in a second. But let me just preface by saying that a relationship is supposed to mimic our relationship with God. It is supposed to be two People who have found the perfection of God, but have come to the perfection of God by recognizing their own imperfections and they are running this race together, which means someone's gonna fall down, someone's gonna crawl at times, someone's gonna need you to hold their hand, someone's gonna need you to carry them. And as a husband or as a wife, it is your responsibility to recognize that that is not even a possible outcome, but an inevitable outcome. And this is not to say that marriages should be toxic. It's not to say they shouldn't be unhappy, but they are to be human. So, ladies, I'ma talk to you in this episode and I am going to talk about men and the standards that you need to have. But I want you to, for the entirety of this episode, be thinking in your mind, how can I serve as a woman of God, serve God and then serve my husband? But in this, not really at all talked about in the world, the concept of dating, how you navigate that, Prepare yourself as a girlfriend who's going to be a wife, and also look out for the right signs for your boyfriend to know if he is the man of God that God called you to be with. And then for two though, to walk as a team and to think of ways that you can be supportive of his very difficult task that is going to be being a husband. And let's talk about me, because I'm pointing a lot of fingers. I'm sorry, I don't mean to point fingers. I'm only pointing fingers because I'm talking to myself. And I have experienced way too much experience for my age on men. You know, there's probably so many other people who are older than me can give so much relationship advice, marriage advice as well. I got saved at 18, but I lived a life. I lived a lifetime before then. It's not good, but it has given me deep wisdom for relationships. And I don't necessarily mean deep relationships in the sense of like, I can give marriage advice. If you're listening, I'm pointing at my non existent ring on my finger. So what I'm about to do, even though I'm about to talk about marriage in the sense of like preparing for marriage, talking about dating, we're talking about dating. Marriage advice is a no go for me. I'm not about to give it. What I'm about to give you is from a Christian woman's perspective, a young Christian woman's perspective, who has had the experience of worldly dating, had the experiences of trying to know what to look for in A man trying to know what to look for in myself as a woman who would be desirable and good for a man. And then going into a Christian relationship. Praise the Lord. My first ever Christian relationship. And we still going strong. So when I point at this finger, Naz, I hope you're listening. This finger, Naz. Is not Naz going to be Naz lonely for much longer? I hope Naz listen, I'm joking. Leave my man to do what my man's gonna do. But all I'm saying is I have gone through a whole lot in this time, and I've been dating my boyfriend for three and a half years, and I know a thing or two about navigating Christian relationships as a new Christian, developing into a more mature Christian, but still being young, still learning things, not being perfect, not having it all figured out. And then also from the flip side, how it's been for Naz and how his experience has made me think about my experience. Because dating isn't for you, it's for God and it's for the other person. Dating is the hardest thing to do, but because it is the very thing that you think is for self, but it is anything but that. Dating is literally the most selfless, tasking thing you can do. Because it's saying that I have this feeling in my heart, but I have to guard this person against my feelings. Is that the right way to put it? It's not that, like, you're guarding them from your feelings, but, like, okay, when you fall in love, like, your whole flesh is, like, in love. You're just so in love and you just want everything to be how you want it to be. And then you start to have your own timelines, then your own expectations and then your own cultural ideas of life and family and friends and church and work and money and kids, like, all these different things start coming up. So you're now, you now have this pure idea of love, but these unpure aspects of life that are shaping the way that you love and you expect your partner to love. And I have very much battled with that. And when I entered my relationship with Naz, I had gone through a whole lot of relearning, praying, understanding what it was to be a woman of God, having been in multiple relationships prior to becoming a Christian and one relationship situationship whilst being a Christian, but not really knowing, like, what I was doing or I knew what I was doing, but I was, like, not being mature enough to be convicted about it and move on until, like, God slapped me in my bed one Night. And it changed everything. Basically, that relationship was over because not only did I do it out of, like, a selfish. Not selfish. I wouldn't want to say that. Like, out of, like, oh, this is my relationship with God and I need to prioritize this. Meaning, like, we can't do what we've been doing. You can take that how you will. We are not. We're not doing what we're doing because I have to value myself as a woman of God and I have to respect my body. But I was also really convicted in the sense of, like, he clearly was more spiritually immature than me. I was still pretty darn immature to be doing what I was doing and not praying about it and seeking God on it, but I felt guilty and convicted by God to be like, this is not just your decision to cut this point blank, period, cut the sex off, because what are you doing, like, in the sense of for yourself. But this is my child as well. He is my child. And you in one breath want to grow in this godly relationship with him and do these Bible studies. Next minute you're doing Bible studies and the Bibles aren't opening and the studies aren't studying. No. So I had to do some groundwork with God. I had to reevaluate. Okay, who am I as a woman and who is the man in which you have called me to be with to the point where I was like, for the first time, hello. Since I was 14, I didn't think about men. 14 years old was when I had been exposed to romantic relationships. 14 was when I had the quote unquote glow up. And it wasn't that I didn't like men before me, but men never liked me back. I was kind of like that awkward kid. She had the braces and the glasses and, like, I didn't know how to take care of my hair. I was just awkward. I was awkward looking, right? And no men ever paid me no mind. Which meant that I barely paid men mind. Fancy. The boy knew he'd never fancy me back. Just got on with my life. 14, the Lord miraculously changed me. And whilst I kind of thought, oh, maybe like, I'm, you know, growing into my face a little bit, like I'm growing up a little bit. It was only when men started showing me attention that I was like, oh, so I'm looking at myself a little bit differently, so I walk a little bit differently. I felt like I came out of my shell a little bit in the sense of my personality. Because I thought, well, if they Think I'm pretty, I'm gonna be a bit more bold in myself. And that literally led to a cycle to the point where I was 18, broken, messed up, let men take advantage of me over the years and took advantage of myself, made myself a object for these men. And, you know, Now I'm nearly 19 years old. It had been nearly five years that I'd been just men on my mind. All I was thinking about is boys, is men, is relationships, and eventually sex. And I had to have a little bit of debrief. So for the first time ever, I started thinking, okay, what. What is a godly relationship? Slightly. But God was like, I want you to focus on what is a relationship with God. So I went full blown in that. Told myself I kind of understand who I am as a woman. And like, if a man comes along, I know how to carry myself, but I am not looking to even get to that point. And then, ding dong, my man comes along who I didn't know who was gonna be my man, but I wanted him to be my man. Oh, my gosh, I wanted him to be a man so bad. But I was like, lord, I just told you I'm not gonna be about. Not gonna be about the man life anymore. And he re right. He, naz, don't look at him too much. You can look at him if you want to, but he's mine. Look at him, right? And he is objectively handsome. There's no doubt about it. He has the most beautiful face, beautiful skin, beautiful hair. Just yes, on paper. I remember showing a picture to my friend one time when me and Naz were like, I don't really think we were in proper talking stage yet. But I was like, I liked him anyway. And she was like, oh, my gosh, Elodie, he's literally your type on paper. He was my type on paper, but he was my type of my heart. You know why? Because he was the first man that showed good standards of, like, himself. And I felt not guilty about liking him because I wasn't liking him for material, fickle, temporary things, but I was liking him for who he was. So cut a long story short, here we are, we're dating, finally, after liking him for a long time. And I thought, like, that was it. Like, I thought, okay, you're a man of God. You talk the talk, you walk the walk. I'm a woman of God. Not long got out of, like, a dodgy situationship, but I've done a lot of growing, and I do believe that I'm ready to like, move forward and start a relationship with you. After a lot of prayer, like, I'm not talking, like, I just jumped into this relationship. Like, it was sunshine and roses, me picking my pick type thing. I prayed so fervently, Lord, like, take him away. I was not messing about with that prayer. I was praying that prayer every day. And I was praying, like, to God, like, thank you for showing me. I remember one time in the shower. The shower is where I pray. The shower is my secret place. If I'm in the shower for 20 minutes, mind your business. And I was praying to God and I was saying, lord, thank you for showing me a man like Naz, and thank you that he will be an amazing husband for someone one day, even if he's not mine. Like, I just knew that he was, even if he never ended up being my husband. He showed me for my age, you know, Naz was 20. About turn 21, I was 19. And he showed me, like, in that stage of my life that there are men my age who show the light of Christ and can treat a woman well. But, you know, that's a great concoction to start a relationship. And I'm so grateful. Me and Naz are so grateful. We don't take back starting dating. We are so in love. We love each other. It's all good. But I. I thought that was it. I thought that, like, me liking him and liking Jesus and him liking me and liking Jesus was like, we gon be for life and we never gonna argue. We never gon fall out. We toiled for years to get to where we are now was so much toil. Like, I will do a podcast with him one day where we kind of talk about the stuff that we went through and the spiritual frustration that we went through. Spiritual lack, spiritual confusion. Not because we were the wrong people for each other, but we had the wrong mindset about relationships. And we just kind of thought it will just kind of piece itself together and not really recognize, like, there are so many false expectations and so many false roles that we're both taking on that we were never meant to take on. And that was why we were messed up and arguing and going round and round in circles, and we then had to really shave back what it meant over time. This wasn't like, oh, we're arguing. We need to figure out what's wrong. It really was like a chipping over the years of, like, these are the things that we need to work on. And I want to start this episode, even though we're like a little bit through, but I was just given a background. I want to start this episode by saying I want to challenge you women to deepen your understanding on what a man of God is meant to be and how you, as a woman of God, can align with that purpose and recognizing that through that. This isn't just traditional marital roles and things that you do to have a good marriage. This is on the core of biblical principles on how you thrive as a woman outside of your marriage, outside of your relationship. Because what I have realized in my relationship with Naz, as I have grown in understanding who I am like in this relationship, as a godly woman, as a godly girlfriend wanting to be a wife and striving to be a wife in the near future, that hasn't just helped me love my man or see God more in the center of our relationship. This means when Naz isn't around, I see myself better. I talk about myself better. I'm in prayer more fervently because I know who I am as a woman, and I'm confident that Naz is growing in his understanding as a man of God in whatever else he's doing in life. And that neatly leads on to my first section, the concept of leading and the concept of submission. Girl, when you clicked on this video and I was talking about standards of men, you were probably not thinking that I was going to tell you to submit. And here's the thing. I'm not actually telling you to submit because you're not married. I'm talking to the single ladies and the dating ladies who are still single. Let me just. Let me just put that out there. That's why you don't sleep with men before marriage. That wasn't what the episode was about, but I just wanted to put that out there. That's. That's why. That's why you don't do marriage stuff before the married bed, because you were still single. Girl, I bet you didn't think I was gonna talk about that. But I want to go at it from a perspective of I will never submit to Naz until we are married. Like, properly submit, but I still have to learn about my role as a woman before marriage. But we're gonna go. We're gonna go into that in a second. But why Leadership matters. So in Ephesians 5, I'm gonna read this out in Ephesians 5, which is something that a lot of people like, misinterpret. And it is this scripture, wives, submit to your own husband as to the Lord, for the husband is the Head of the wife. Even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour, people look at that and be like, the Bible's so misogynistic. The Bible just doesn't want to see women win. Elodie, you don't want to see women win because if you wanted to see women win so bad, you wouldn't bring up such a misogynistic scripture that puts me back into the patriarchy. Well, I want you to read Ephesians 5. I'm going to go into, into this podcast, but like, first and foremost, biblical context. Please read the rest of that chapter. But second of all, when, if, if you. Okay, I'm talking to Christians right now. Majority, if you're not a Christian, stick around and understand my point of view. But I'm talking to Christians right now. If you can recognize that when God says that he is your God and he has been your savior, he is your Lord and he has authority over you, you are not seeing that as condemning leadership or tyranny. You are seeing that as a God who so loved the world that he gave up his one lonely son to die for your sins so you shall not perish. We are talking about a God who loves, who came to serve, who came down into this broken world to save the very people who rejected him. So why is it when we see this scripture that we all of a sudden indicate that as being misogynistic and patriarchal and exercising old fashioned, really restrictive, I hate women mentalities. The only people who take the scripture and do that are not Christians because they don't know the word of God. They don't understand the grace of God and they don't recognize that actually this calling for husbands to be the head of his wife is such a holy, sanctified, difficult task to take on. And I didn't realize this. I remember talking to my friend Priscilla about this particular thing when I was struggling with the concept of submission. As I said, your girl ain't submitting because she is not married. But, but there's certain things that come up in conversations when you're dating that you have to start realizing, oh, you're, you're going to be the head of our house. And as we are preparing for marriage, I've got to approach this relationship right now as helping you to prepare to be that in that role and me preparing myself to be the other role. And I remember talking about it and I, over time began to realize that leadership isn't about control. A man leading and a woman Submitting isn't about control and it isn't about one being higher than the other. It's about sacrificial love. And it is about a man protecting, guiding, cherishing, washing his wife with the Word, which we're going to go into later on. And when women have the recognition of wanting a godly man, but not wanting what biblically comes with a godly man, they will never have a godly man and they will never be truly satisfied in marriage. And I'm not saying, you know, that your man should be forcefully putting on certain things onto you, because that's not what this scripture is saying. Because, hello, did you come to Christ by force? If you did, let me pray for you. Because that's not what God wants. If you came to God by force, it wasn't God that made you come to him by force. It was someone who was using his power or her power to exercise in the name of God. God gives every single person free will. And when we come to Christ, we have made that bold, conscious decision that God has the final say because we trust that whatever God says is going to be for our well being. So when a woman takes certain attributes from a man, but then takes away certain attributes so she can keep some, she will actually end up in spiritual lack in her relationship, just in dating, because she's going to go about it railroading her way of how she wants to be when she's married. But then when she's married, she's going to be lonely, she's going to be upset and she's going to be frustrated. And submission is hard, Submission is hard. And that expectation and that standard of a man being your leader is hard to grapple with. But I think it's only hard to grapple with because of pride. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of different reasons as to why you can be afraid to submit to a man. That is abusive relationships. Whether you've experienced it yourself, someone near and dear to you has experienced it, you've heard different things, whether online, on tv, whatever it is about these traditional Christian relationships, that the man just like has his way and is very forceful on his wife, I can understand that. But when you're dating and you're praying and you trust the God who's going to provide you with a man, and you trust the God to give you the wisdom when you have the man, whether you should keep this man, you should marry this man, you should have kids with this man, you're going to trust that God, if he is a loving God, and he is a sacrificial God, and he is a protecting God. He is going to give you a sacrificial, protecting, loving, caring, intentional man as well. So when you recognize, okay, I have this loving man and I know that he's not going to hurt me. I know he's not going to exercise his power over me or be forceful or, you know, make me feel like I'm not a person. If you know that and you still don't want to submit, you're acting in pride. We live in a culture right now that women are their gods. Feminism has taken what was good about it at the start, that is voting and the right to work, and ran with it. They've essentially said, women are not just the same, but better than men and we are more able, more capable. And not only are we more able and more capable, we are actually less able and less capable when we also have a man in the picture. So we're not just saying that we are better than men. We are saying that we don't need men. All of those things are completely wrong. And you know what's so funny? Just a little side note, I was talking to my friend not long ago, just about periods and just girl stuff. And I was talking about Naz, my boyfriend, and how, like, you know, he's working, he, like, works loads and he does his freelancing and then he goes to the gym, he goes does athletics, he goes and meets his friend, he does all these things. He cycles everywhere. And we were just saying, like, genuinely, like, that's impossible. Like, we would be genuinely exhausted because going through our cycles, how are we meant to do that? 365 days in a year, like, we are so up and down. And we had this conversation basically saying, like, love the fact that women can go and do what they want to do, but this expectation that women can be like a man is just not biologically correct. And we're setting ourselves up to try and achieve a role that we were never meant to achieve. Putting us back in bondage when we were fighting for freedom and going back to relationships. Submission to a godly man isn't about losing independence. It's not about, oh, when I get married, I'm not going to be elody anymore and I'm not going to be able to make wise decisions. I'm not going to be able to, like, go and work and choose what I want to do in life. It's about aligning with God's order and aligning with God's protection as women. When you think about chivalry, you think about the traditional ways that a man should treat a woman. That is beautiful, that is a real representation of the fact that a man should view a woman as delicate and not delicate as in she's dumb and she's incapable, but delicate in the sense of I want to protect something so valued by God, meaning that I equip you to do all the things that God has called you to do. I give you a holding hand, I give you the encouragement, I give you the provision. I'm able to spiritually uplift you to make you excel in what you're doing. This right now. This podcast, this podcast would not be a podcast. If I didn't have my man supporting me to do what I want to do, I would be discouraged. I'd be in my own head about it. It takes him being the one to sometimes push me with the Holy Spirit to be like, babe, you can do this. You're capable. Showering me with the word of God. And this took time because I was the very woman that I was just describing. I didn't realize it because in my previous relationships, having not been comfortable, the men being very, like, overly, like, taking leadership role and running with it, like taking the manly alpha male role and turning that into just borderline forceful, which made me quiet and down to be this like, weak feminine version of myself. So that's not what God wants. He wants me to be strong, recognizing my man's strength as well. But going into my relationship with Naz, he's very different. He's very kind and very caring and very soft. And all of a sudden my alpha female personality trait started to come out. And I've always been quite strong minded. Like, go back to my old videos, like on my old YouTube channel, and I always had something to say. And that was in the times that I was in certain relationships. So it's not like it came out of nowhere, but in the sense of relationships and wanting to lead came out heavily. And the spiritual consequences of this are so strong, which is one of the biggest things that me and Naz had to go through. To be honest, it is the biggest thing because whilst me and Naz have been through so many other, like, pockets of struggle, pockets of hardship, all of it has come down to him just not taking on the role of the man and me not letting him take on the role of a man because I want to be the man by accident, by purpose. I don't know. And the biggest thing in this, the spiritual consequence is that when you lead and when you force and when you push on a man, the man will step back and this impacts the relationship because you're frustrated and you want him to be a man, but you're not letting him be a man. Make it make sense. And then spiritual growth, because he's not seeing himself as a man of God. He's not praying from the point of authority in the sense of, lord, help me to mold myself into the man of God that you have called me to be so that I can love on this woman right now whilst I'm not married to her and make her feel comfortable that I will be able to lead her in a godly way in marriage. He's not going to have that mindset if you're constantly pushing on him. I know I did it and I know that Naz became a weaker man as a result of it. Is that because he is weak? Is that because he's not capable? No, I just didn't let him. And I've got written here, women become frustrated because they're carrying a role they were never designed to bear. Men stay frustrated because women aren't letting them do their role. So now we recognize the natural order of a man of God and a woman of God in a relationship with each other. Whilst I know that submission doesn't fully come into play because there is no covenant until marriage and the same as leadership, there are certain standards when you accept this that you will look out for and be mindful of in the dating process. Because I see a lot of different people sort of having this debate in the sense of like, a man should not lead in the dating relationship. A woman shouldn't submit. And I agree with that. Because who am I submitting to? The only person I submit to is my father, my heavenly father, my earthly father, and the only person now should be leading is no one. He's not leading me because I'm not his wife. Until that point, you can jog on, but I think there's a difference between leading and taking the lead in the sense of a man needs to show his leadership qualities in a relationship. It's the same as you are an employee and eventually you would love to be promoted to manager. You have this desire to be manager, so you begin to put those leadership qualities across within your team, showing it to your manager to say, hey, I can be a good leader. I can, you know, support the team. I can be there for them in their professional growth. I can lead up a project and make sure that everyone knows what they're doing. I can, you know, support people in a way that just goes beyond being a colleague with them. I can be someone who they can lean on for advice and support, but I am not their manager. I'm not going to tell them what to do. I'm not going to exercise that authority. But I am going to be a leader in the workplace, so my manager knows that I have the capability of doing it when that time comes. I think the same goes for a dating relationship. You need to know that your man is going to take the lead on certain things, because dating isn't just about, like, that kind of purgatory period in between, like, meeting each other and getting married. And, like, you know, we're just gonna have, you know, vibe get on and we're just gonna get married. Dating, especially when you. I think, in general, anyway. Okay, let me say. I'm gonna say you still are going to face a lot of trials, and you are still going to have to begin to get yourself comfortable with the concept of leading, as in the men. And as a woman, you're going to have to start getting accustomed to the concept of, do I trust that he will lead me correctly? Does he lead me, period? And is the way he's leading me in certain aspects in alignment with God? As in, are his promptings showcasing a godly leader? Does he make me feel encouraged that he is going to protect me in marriage? And what I was going to say in the sense of, like, me and Naz, for instance, we've been together for three and a half years, coming up to four next year. And you got three years. You got three years. And you. You're going to use it to vibe and use it to wait for the clock to turn to the point where your wedding bells are ringing and you're married and you can enter this space of covenant, or are you going to be purposeful in that? And I did see this video the other day, and I want to go into that another time, talking about how Christians should not be dating for three years. Three, four years. What are you doing dating for three, four years? Money, age, career, money. Career, money, career, money, stability, location. Me and my man don't even live in the same city. And I was 19. No job, no life. He was in a gap here in uni, which meant that we had to make it work. And only now, like, I can only say in the last six to nine months that we are adults and we are capable of getting to the point of genuinely providing for ourselves. I live at home. He lives at Home. I didn't want him to live here. I know people do it and I don't judge. I think, you know, do whatever the Lord tells you to do. But this will not be my married bed with my parents next door. Absolutely not. This is my teenage bed. This is. This ain't my married bed. This ain't where me and my man gonna be doing what me and my man do. And this household is not a married household for me and my man. This is my childhood home where my parents live. And. And for me, until I leave my parents home, I will never see myself as a full blown adult, let alone a wife. So there needs to be that separation. I want to move on. Which means that me and Naz have had to work our butts off in our careers, save like crazy, pray like crazy, and commit to growing up together. We were children. Which means that in this period that we have grown up together and our whole entire adult lives are with each other. I have not been an adult outside of Naz. I was a kid when I met Naz. I am now a full grown woman. Full time career, making my money, saving my money, planning for where my money's going to go. We've had to be very intentional in that point, which means that I have had the opportunity to see areas in which Naz is going to lead me and he has had opportunities to lead me in certain areas and see how I react to that. As I said before, girl didn't handle it very well. But these two things I want to go into impacted the way that we went about certain things. But what I want to talk about here is that when you have that mentality of pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing into a man and leading and taking on the role that you were never meant to take on, your standards are lower because you don't expect your man to take the lead or you do. And there's some inconsistencies because you can't expect your man to take the lead in certain areas and be, you know, this spiritually driven, godly man and protecting you and guiding you and caring for you. When you don't let him do that, you don't take a step back and say, you know what, I want to nurture this man and I want to ensure that he knows that I've got his back, that I'm gonna let him, you know, make certain decisions and not, you know, what decisions have you really got to make when you're dating? Let me just go into it whilst I'm beating around the bush. Sexual purity. You're pushing at your man. You're forcing your man to do whatever. You're shutting your man up. You're being a bully to your man because you're a strong, independent woman and no man's gonna tell you what to do. But then when you lead into sexual sin, it's his fault, which it is, because it's the man that's supposed to be protecting you. But in your standards, it shouldn't be his fault if you're so, say, mis. Independent and you and your man fall into sin and it's his fault. Hmm. Haven't you got a part to play in that, in your standards? And this is why I say that you need to begin to up your standards. It's almost like you have to. It's like the less of me, more of him. You have to lower your fleshly standards and up your spiritual ones. The standards that I'm saying, like Christian women, your standards of men in relationships are so low, you're looking at that and you're being like, yeah, I need a man that's going to provide for me. I need a. Need a man that's going to do this to me. I need a man. You're not thinking about what you can give, what you can sacrifice in this relationship so he can give you more, so you can know who to look at for one. Stop settling for these scrubs. They can't give you nothing that you're in relationships with for nine, 10 years and nothing's happening. You know, naked finger with no ring on it because your. Your man is not spiritually leading you. You keep falling into sexual sin. You haven't prayed together ever. And every time you do, it's because you're prompting it, but because you want to be a strong, independent woman. You don't even allow a man who's going to lead in those areas to enter your life. But we're going to go with sexual purity first, I believe, genuinely, don't get me wrong, as a single woman and as a woman of God, I have a responsibility to take care of myself. But when I make that commitment towards working towards marriage with a man, a man who is going to eventually me and my children, he has the ultimate responsibility to protect me in the pursuit of marriage, which means that he has to call the shots. And he is meant to be the one that puts in these boundaries. I'm not saying there aren't certain things, certain boundaries that you gotta say, you know, how you feel, whatever. But I feel like there's like, okay, there's Those really sensitive, you know, boundaries of, like, I don't know, there might be something that, like, turns you on or something. Something really sensitive like when you touch my hair, just, like, just don't do it. It just makes you feel some type of way. There's nothing, like, biblically wrong with touching someone's hair. But when we're talking about the core boundaries that are so clearly the devil's playground and the devil's tempting arena, that should not be up for debate by you. That should be put in place by him. And what we're talking about is sleeping in the same bed. What we're talking about is inappropriate touch. And he should not be grabbing your bum and you should not be telling him not to because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. We're talking about suggestive comments. You're telling me that your man says, oh, babe, your boobs are so nice. Oh, babe, like your bum in that dress. Wow. Oh, babe, like, when we get married and I'm gonna do this to you, we're living for purity. We don't have sex before. But you're doing everything. But you're literally flirting with sex. You might as well have sex because your conversations are so dirty that, like, really and truly, right? My mum will, like, laugh like, oh, okay, let's say, like, I look good in a dress, right? And she's like, let me not say it, Naz. Like, I know you just want to marry her, whatever, and we're just laughing about it. But any conversation that I can't have in front of my mum, I shouldn't be having at all. A lot of you are flirting with that line, and you're letting your man flirt with that line. I'm not saying that you shouldn't take responsibility for it, but you should take responsibility for it by letting that man go. If he isn't willing to make a change in making sure that you two are protected, you protect yourself by getting out of there. I trust Naz to protect me so I don't have to overly protect myself and get out of that relationship, because I know that he is in his word and he has the wisdom of God to know that we ain't going to be doing that stuff. And I want to ask you, if he can't respect your godly boundaries now, how will he lead you as a wife if he sees you as an object? Now, how will he see you as a wife if he's willing to flirt with the lions? Now, with you being a single woman, with you being A child of God, a daughter of the Most High God, who He has ultimate responsibility to take care of. How do you think he's going to take care of your marriage? How do you think he's going to respect your identity as a woman? Second of all, spiritual growth as women, I strongly stand by the fact that we can have such a unique relationship with God that whilst I know that men can too, I'm not a man, though. But just talking from a woman's perspective, we have that sensitivity and that empathy and that emotional intelligence that make our relationship with God so strong and so unique. And that's a great thing for ourselves. And I'm not saying that can't drip through because you should be so spiritually strong and together with your partner, but that spiritual sensitivity that you have with the Holy Spirit should not then become positioned from a place of leadership. I'm not a man, but I can understand, don't get me wrong, that God pulls on men's empathy. That might be harder to get out originally, but like, he gets there in the end with the sense of empathy, emotional intelligence, the sensitivity, all the more feminine qualities that we have as women. I have no doubt in my mind that those things don't come up because our God is all encapsulating. He doesn't work one way for a woman and work one way for a man, but he also knows the roles that he has designed them to be. We are both in the image and likeness of God, but we have slightly different images, all for one image. So when men are in their relationships with God, they should be prompted in leadership. Which means that when he is in a relationship with a woman, a man of God should be initiating prayer and Bible study. A man of God should be encouraging Christian fellowship. And a man of God should be showing spiritual authority in alignment with God's Word. I'm not saying he pushes stuff on you. I'm not saying he tells you, like, girl, this is what we're doing. And you have nothing you can say about that because that's still not even biblical in marriage. But what. What I'm saying is, I'm not saying that he should be walking in these marriage principles and having the final say on certain things. But he should be showing you, I love you so much that I'm willing to go hard with God on behalf of you. And I want to show you and court you and flirt with you with my spiritual understanding, really and truly, women, because our standards are so low that we look for a man who's got a good Pickup line. And we don't look for a man who can sit and pray, who can sit and decree and declare the word of God, who can sit and have powerful prayers and not weak, mindless, boyish prayers. That should be the thing that makes your heart tingle. Not when he's, you know, grabbing up your bum and telling you, or you're. You're a pen gal. Like, no, that is not what God wants, and that is really not what you should want. But that might be the only thing that you want, because you want this, like, alpha male in one area. But then you're almost subjected to the fact that he's going to be a weak man in another area. So he's strong in his voice and his influence over you and making you feel oh, so feminine, oh, so weak, and you just melt at his presence. But when you get in church, he didn't want to be there when it's time to pray. He didn't want to open up his mouth when you're talking about the Bible. He doesn't even know any book of the Bible. He can't tell you any scripture. He can't tell you who any character is in the Bible because he don't know God. He don't know his Word. But yet you're going to be there. Oh, it's okay. You know, I'll teach you. Don't get me wrong. I have certain understanding that maybe Naz doesn't have in certain areas, but I have no doubt in my mind that Naz doesn't know his Word and that he's not inclined and actively working on growing in his understanding of his Word. So when I say, Naz, I want to have a Bible study, he can leave my Bible study. I can. I can give, you know, my perspective, and he can be like, you know, I never thought of it like that. But I know that my man is eager to show me that when we get married, baby girl, I'm gonna take care of you. Not just, you know, by giving you the money, not just by sa. Satisfying you sexually. I am going to be a man of God, which means I'm going to be aligned with the word of God and aligned with God, period. I'm gonna have that relationship with him, so I can have one with you as well. And then I want to also go into where we get our standards from as Christian women, because our standards, some of them are godly, but some of them lack that spiritual covering. And then the ones that might be godly might not be fully aligned with the ultimate truth. Of what is godly in the sense of you want a man that's going to provide, but you don't recognize that there's so many other components that go with being a good man. Like it's sort of like cherry picking from the Bible with the type of man that you want and then chucking the rest out. That doesn't really suit us. And I want to talk about like where we get that from. First things first, social media. Let's just be real. I'm assuming the category of age I'm talking to right now. Social media would have a massive impact in the way that you see relationships. And you may think that the way you see relationships are godly, but they are often worldly ideas of what are relationship should be like. And you put the word Christian in front of it, you put the word godly in front of it and then you, you have all the same standards of what you wanted a man to be like before you became a Christian. When you became a Christian, you just added, he reads his Bible, he prays with me. There's so much more to that. There's so much more to that. And I think it's a real challenge. But I want you to think how much you know about the worldly behaviors and worldly standards of men versus Gods plan for a godly relationship and God's plan for you as a godly woman and what you seek in a man. Because I think a lot of the time, like social media, it's the influencers and the trends that massively impact the way that we see marriage and men, time frames and behaviors and really unrealistic standards. Like we'll literally see like a video of a man give his woman flowers and they'll be like, this is all I want. We have lost the plot. We will see. Don't get me wrong, I love those videos. I'm like, oh my gosh, like he really loves her. But we see this one thing, this one sound bite and it's like, if he does this, I'll love him forever. And we minimize these standards by giving unrealistic standards. Like we have these really crazy, stupid, abstract, non important ideas in our mind of how we want a man to be. We don't have the core foundational things in the sense of his character and his pursuit of God. And then number two, cultural norms. This could be just your culture in general, your family culture and your family traditions distorting biblical expectations. And this may be that you aren't from a Christian family at all or your culture isn't driven by Christian values. But I especially like kind of want to talk to those who have, you know, the Christian values, the Christian culture, but in the name of their culture. I really want to challenge you to remember that humans can distort things massively. And just because something has the word Christian attached to it doesn't mean that it's biblical. And I think especially from a woman's perspective, men as well, men have their family expectations push on them massively at times. But I think as a woman, you know, you being the woman and you're precious, we want to protect you and whatever. There can be that real pressure to confuse honoring your parents and honoring your family with idolizing. You can honor your culture and your upbringing, your traditions, but it doesn't mean that you worship them. And a lot of the time we will take what has been so heavily pushed on us by our family and our upbringing and apply that to how believe that a man should be. But when we look in the word we can't find it. But then we go to church with our families, which is what I'm going to go on to after we go to church. And then they suddenly use that scripture and they twist it to whatever culture it is and what's the norm in that culture. And you have to be really wary of that to not rob yourself of the joy that godly marriage brings because you are so bound by your culture. And as I said, this leads on to church culture. Church traditions are not always biblical. Let's just put it out there. They are not always biblical and they do not always align with the word of God. And a lot of the times they can be extremely damaging for Christian couples and eventually extremely damaging for Christian marriages. Test everything against the word of God. This isn't to say that you should be superstitious, constantly looking behind you and like trying to catch people out. But if you know the word, you can very easily be like, doesn't sit right with me. I'm a prayer, but I'm a read about it. It doesn't change my perspective on that person. Doesn't make me want to leave my church unless it is really bad. But like, you know what I mean? Humans are humans. Humans mess up. And if we take everything that a personal authority does or says, like a parent, you know, a high standing family member or a pastor, spiritual leader, we will get really caught up in just people pleasing. Because I think a lot of the time, even on social media, I think like I think I. So I saw this video, like I said earlier that video about that woman saying that you shouldn't date for longer than three years. And obviously, like, the comments, some of them were like, yeah, you know, me and my boyfriend, we got married in six months, yada yada yada. And she was replying, oh my gosh, it's so great, like, God is good, whatever. And then people in the comments obviously, understandably having the same view of as me and being like, we just didn't have the finances. And for me, the finances could have been there. I just didn't have the age. Baby girl, like, I was ready to start dating. I fell in love with him. But like, we were still figuring ourselves out. And you might have your own opinions on that, but like, me and Naz needed that. Like, we needed to take that time. And I'm so blessed. And God has really been at like the driving seat of our relationship, steering us towards where we are right now and where we're going to be. But I could see that, and I could take that as gospel and be like, wow, people are going to look at me so bad. Like, you know, to be honest, afterwards I was like, are you trying to assume something about my spiritual growth? Because her whole video was essentially saying about how, like, you'll lead yourself into temptation and you like, aren't showing like, the values of commitment and what really, like, dating isn't meant to be this period of time. And like, you're basically flirting with like, the idea that you'll be fine and whatever. And I was like, are you assuming that I've not got self control? Are you assuming that I haven't put things in place and we and Naz haven't gone back and forth about, you know, these are the, the boundaries we're putting in place and we won't go over these boundaries and we'll respect each other. And God has been working in us to ensure that we get to that point of marriage abstinent, with a pure heart for one another. And like, I was getting like, offended. I was getting offended and I was like, man, people can look at me in some type of way because I'm not like married yet. And like, are they gonna assume that like, me and Naz are sleeping together or like we are like burning in lust? And I was like, oh, like these people just, you know, like, making me feel bad and whatever. And like, this is like the problem of idols because we get, and we get an offended heart and then we get a people pleasing desire and then we act out of of man and not out of God. I Know what God has said to me. I know what God has said to Naz, and I know what God has said for us as a couple, and I'm confident in that. But as soon as someone else will say it, then I'm just starting to feel shaky because someone says something that wasn't what I thought. And this is what we have to be so careful of, that we don't get swayed away by Christian culture. Like, if you get married in six months, congratulations, Could I do it? Absolutely. Never. At the age that I met Naz, 100% not. I did not have a penny to my name, girl. No. Like, that. That would have been so unwise for me, but for other people, maybe. That's right. And I'm not gonna argue with you. And if God was in the mix, then God was in the mix. Hallelujah. All blessings and joy and peace and prosperity over your marriage. I pray that you have a happy life. But that's not me. And I think there's a very, like, clear thing, even when it comes to the culture. I'm not to say that, like, some things aren't wrong and the way that some people do things aren't wrong, but sometimes, like, we hear a word from God, and then we hear a word from people that are of godly standard, and then we assume that they're God, and then we don't listen to God, and the Holy Spirit is sort of, like, kicked to the side. Don't do that in your relationship, because you will lead yourself down a path that not only is spiritually unfulfilling to you, but it will eventually be spiritually unfulfilling to your partner. Because if you are following certain things that are putting your partner in uncomfortable positions, you will eventually start fighting against them because you are fighting so much harder for your cultural standing. What your family says, what your parents say, what your church says, your pastor says, and you're not fighting for God and fighting for your relationship. And then your standards weaken or your standards heighten because this person is not fitting into the mold that everyone else around us is telling us that they fit. And then maybe you're having unrealistic standards and you're letting go of relationships you weren't meant to let go of. You're fighting against your man when God's like, he's okay, I don't know your situation, but I'm just saying that can happen. Colossians 2, verse 8 says, See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. According to human tradition, According to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ, I'm going to leave it there. And I am going to leave it there actually entirely. And I'm just going to leave you with the encouragement to be encouraged by God and by God alone. Because in all these things, there are outer voices getting to you, whether it's a voice of yourself and your flesh and the enemy or voices of others. And sometimes the enemy is using those people to be of a bad understanding of how you see relationships. It could be your friends, it could be your circle of people that you might see as godly. One thing I've had to realize is there are very few people I can take genuine relationship advice from. The people that I'm not taking advice from, does that mean I don't love them? No. Does that mean I don't respect them? No. Does that mean I think that they don't have my best intention at heart? No. I think that they love me, but they are not in the capability of leading me in the way that I need to be led. And that's completely fine. I don't expect my married friends to come to me and ask for relationship advice. So I'm fine. Like I'm gonna come to you for advice, really and truly. I'm not saying I can't sow a seed into your life and your marriage, but I don't. I don't have a clue what it's like to be married, so I won't give that advice. But a lot of the time we're letting social media, our friends, our flesh, our pride, and all of it, I think all of it comes from pride because all of it in relationships, whilst you're so in love with this person, this man, you're in love with this man, but you're in love with your idea on how you see this man. So whether it's in the concept of leading, whether it's in the concept of the standards that he should have, as you begin to love him more, so your mind will tell you that he has to fit into these standards. And a lot of the time these standards aren't godly. And a lot of these standards actually let him down spiritually and then let you down even more. And I want to end with this scripture. Proverbs 3, verses 5 to 6, my favorite scripture of all time. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, your own social media's own, your flesh's own, your pastor's own, your parents own. We can fill the gaps in there and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. God wants the best for you and in this whole episode I wanted to make sure that came across. I didn't want it to seem like God should knock you off your pedestal and make you unhappy in your relationship but in fact he's, he's realigning what you see as happy. He's realigning of what you see as prosperous. He's realigning on what you see as a fruitful God driven relationship. But I love you guys. I pray that this was of benefit to you and yeah I think it's, I think it's first of all like I probably should have started with this but I'm gonna end with it. Your standards of men are only as high as your standards of God. Take that how you will but yeah love you guys. Have a blessed week and I will see you in the next episode. Love you. Bye.