Today’s a GOOD day on the blog, because I get to share a WTG episode I recorded with one of my favorite people – my husband! Christian and I get to answer some questions about relationships, faith, life, and all the things. I’m so excited to share this one with you! Let’s dive in to the DM’s!

Question 1: What were some things you did intentionally while you were waiting for each other?

There are tons of people out there waiting for their person and wondering what to do in the process. So, I thought Christian would be the perfect person to answer this one since he has great advice on the topic. Christian said prayer and building a community of guys around him were the two key elements in his season of waiting. In the season before he and I started dating, he was very intentional about spending alone time with God, and having bible study groups and prayer nights. He truly believes that time in his life prepared him for our relationship.

This same idea applies to girls as well. Find good Godly community with other girls who are seeking the same purpose! During that season in Christian’s life, he wasn’t just preparing himself for our relationship. He was becoming the man he wanted to be. He was focusing on the Lord and himself which is so important. You have to have a moment in your life when you’re focusing on who God is and who you are so that when you go into a relationship, you’re a whole person.

I love what I heard said once. They said that whenever two people become one, it’s not fifty-fifty. It’s two becoming one. And so many only have fifty percent to give because they were focusing on other things the whole time and never took the time to know yourself. But whenever both people truly know themselves and are rooted in who God is, two people becoming one make such a strong one.

Question 2: What would you tell your younger self who felt like they would never find the right person for them?

I think I would tell my younger self to just rest and wait. You don’t have to try to figure out who your person is. It’s just going to happen. When you say you have to “find love,” you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself because if you have to find something, then you have to go searching for it. If I’d tried to “find” Christian, I genuinely don’t know if I would’ve found him because I wouldn’t have been looking where he was. I never would’ve thought my husband would be in Seaside, FL, the day I happened to be there on vacation with my friends. I’m so grateful we found each other, but the fact is that we didn’t have to search.

You just have to show up each day with a willing spirit, present yourself in such a way that you’re ready to meet your person, and be in relationship with someone. And when you show up each day like that, you’re positioning yourself in the place to be able to meet your person. I think God makes that intentionally happen. So, I don’t think we have to find our person. I believe God connects your steps to each other.

Question 3: What have you been learning from God recently?

Christian said a lot of times when he thinks about God, he thinks “Father,” “Redeemer,” all these amazing qualities of God. But it recently hit him that God is his Creator. When he prays, it’s to the One who physically created him. All his attributes were created by God. I remember looking out at the ocean on Christian’s and my honeymoon and thinking, “Wow. The God who created the ocean created me.”

And the crazy thing is that when God made the ocean, the stars, and moon, He said it was good. When we look at those things, we think they’re amazing. And then He made us, He said it was good. But when He made man and woman come together, He said it was very good. That is so humbling to think about. And when you look at God as the One who created you, you begin to feel much more confident and loved. It also pushes you to want to further that relationship.

Question 4: Does God speak to you in dreams?

My answer is yes. I would love to share one of these instances with you! Before I tell this story, I want to say that if you’ve never had a dream from the Lord before, that is not a bad thing. That does not mean God’s withholding something from you. There are incredibly spiritual people who have never felt like they had a dream from the Lord. I will say, though, it is something to pray for. I used to hear about this girl who had God dreams and I wanted them so badly. So, I started praying for them and they started happening. It’s not like I have one every night. I probably have one once every three years. The way I can tell that it’s a God dream is when there is a moment in the dream when I feel the Lord speak.

Years ago, my team and I really wanted to go to a conference. At this point, we were hosting tours and gatherings, and decided we wanted to get poured into. Well, we saw the Global Leadership Conference was being hosted in London. So, we bought our tickets as regular attendees. A couple months before we bought our tickets, I had a dream that I was in a green room, which is the room the speakers gather in before an event. In the dream, I was looking at a map of places in the world where revival had broken out in. These places were colored in. Then, Pastor Michael Todd, who I’d never met at that time, walked in the room and looked at the map and said, “This is a divine holy moment.” Right after that, we started singing the song “Set a Fire” and all got down on our knees because the presence of God felt so heavy. I woke up and wrote down the dream.

Months later, the people from the Global Leadership Conference see my name in the sign-up list and reached out asking me to do a Q&A. This was all in March. So, I get on this call with these pastors from London and Nicky and Pippa Gumbel start speaking to me. They said, “I don’t know if you know it but this is our GLOBAL Leadership Conference. So, we’ll have leaders from all over the world representing.” Then Pippa said, “That Monday night of the conference, you’ll be speaking, along with Pastor Mike Todd.” As soon as she said that, I knew it sounded familiar. Like I had lived it before. I went back to November in my book with my dreams, and read out loud to them what it said. They had chills.

Fast forward to May. We’re in the green room and they bring in a map and say, “If this is the dream you had, we’re going to pray into it.” So, we prayed over this dream that revival would happen all around the world. After Pastor Mike and I had preached, Nicky asked me to come back up and pray for an anointing on my generation like never before. The presence of God was so thick in the room and all of a sudden, Mike Todd starts singing “Set a Fire” and everyone is on their knees praising God. This was definitely one of the craziest experiences of my life, and it was undeniably because of the Lord. But when you look at the God of the Bible, God spoke in dreams all the time. So, why wouldn’t He speak to us in dreams?

Isaiah 26:9 says, “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.”

It’s basically this prayer of longing to see God. Before I go to bed at night, I tell God that my spirit longs to see Him that night. I encourage you to keep a prayer journal by your bed and always write things down if you feel the Lord speaking, whether it be in a dream or any other time.

However, not every dream means something. Both Christian and I have crazy dreams that don’t necessarily mean anything. For instance, you might dream about your biggest fear, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to come true. I dream about losing Christian, but that doesn’t mean I actually will. I have to remind myself not to panic. I don’t think God speaks in fear. We need to have the wisdom to discern what is significant and what’s not.

Question 5: If I want to break a bad habit, where do I start and how do I do that practically?

I used to have the bad habit of being sensitive. My mom used to call me “Sensitive Sally” because it was so extreme. This habit drove me crazy. If someone looked at me wrong or said the wrong thing to me, I would be convinced that they didn’t like me. And I would get so upset about it. I feel like I grew out of that by making the conscious decision to grow thicker skin. Thank God I broke that habit because if I heard all the opinions I get from people now and was still as sensitive as I used to be, it would be terrible.

Let me say this to the person who is sensitive or anxious, you actually can control you. At the end of the day, you are the only person who can choose to change you. So, if there’s something about you that bothers you, fix it. Don’t stay in it. Ask God to help you in doing so.

As far as sinful habits go, Christian had a great take on handling them. He said that at some point, you have to lean into your conviction. And if you’re truly a follower of Christ, you should have conviction.

Hebrews 10:26 says, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left.”

Christian went on to say that though we still struggle with things and battle sin, there’s a difference between habitually sinning and turning from sin. However, if we do sin, we have one as an advocate for us.

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” (1 John 2:1)

I asked Christian to address one of the biggest struggles in our generation: pornography. I know his friend group had an incredible breakthrough from this and I wanted him to share. He started by talking about his friend group in college. Week after week, we would ask for prayer over our struggle with pornography and lust. Finally, after a few months, we all asked, “What are we actually going to do about any of this?” We took the initiative to actually do something about it. We began to hold each other accountable and slowly watched each other’s struggles deteriorate. If you struggle with something and don’t make a change, you can get comfortable in it. But the moment you decide to make a change and repent, everything shifts.

For people listening, I think there’s a couple takeaways from Christian’s experience:

1. They held each other accountable as a group. They didn’t try to do it alone.
2. They actually did things to help them stop. It wasn’t just a weekly check-in. They were intentional about holding each other accountable. And they hung out so much as a group.

If you’re walking through something right now that is a sinful habit, I encourage you to get with someone dealing with the same thing and decide today that it will no longer be a struggle. Yes, it is going to try to fight, but y’all will be fighting back. That doesn’t mean that you won’t mess up every now and then, but it is saying that you’re not going to let it own your life. Practice the things you have to put in to play to make sure it goes away. Because when you are fighting a giant like that, you have to know how to fight back.

I pray all this advice speaks to you and meets you where you’re at, friend! xoxo, Sadie