Finding the Right Someone: How to Navigate Relationships Pt 1 | Sadie Robertson Huff & Ben Stuart

y'all i'm just gonna tell you that this podcast is gold if you are struggling in any season of relationships single dating engaged married this is for you i couldn't stop asking ben questions and because i couldn't stop asking big questions we went a little longer than we normally do so we're going to break this up into two parts and so let's just call it a valentine's day two-part special with ben stewart y'all this book is insane i mean he wrote this book years ago it's not even like promoting the book this is just like it's so good i want all of you to read it um but if you haven't read it yet or even if you have there is so much here that i know you're going to learn from and be encouraged by so give it a listen what's up fam ben i was so excited that you are on the podcast this has really been a long time coming because i've had a million questions to ask you even though i feel like you've already answered all my questions because of this book so i'm super honestly so thankful for this book i've told you that so many times you know we gave this book away to like 2 000 people because we just love your the words in that book but just backstory for people who don't know i know you've heard this a few times but for people who don't know you know you used to lead breakaway ministries in texas let's go our next-door neighbor let's go and i used to listen to your uh podcast i had the breakaway app and uh christian also did before we met so anyways we meet christian and i start dming all the stuff and christian sends me this dm and he says sadie you know i think i'm going to need your number because for some reason the link i want to send you to the sermon i want you to watch won't go through instagram dms which was so sly so i'm like weird and i'm kind of happy about it so i send him my my number through the dms and the very first thing christian sent me if you scroll all the way up to the very top of our text is your message single dating engaged married um so this message before even really we read the book we listened to your sermons on it and then you know the book also impacted our life so much so i know that's not the only thing you've done you're also a pastor at passion city dc let's go so many fun things and you and donna are just great people so super excited to have you on the podcast well thank you sadie it's awesome to be here with you it's been so fun to watch you and christian do all that you're doing for the sake of young people in the name of jesus so inspiring and you know when i wrote the book and the talks it was really just trying to do my best to help a young generation navigate relationships well and so to know that we got to play a part in y'all's success story i'm like oh that's great that was the hope you know it's like man if i can help bring some clarity into a confusing world that's a win for me so i love it and it was so cool too because i really knew that christian was using that book as a guide like funny enough because i was reading it too and he was reading it i was noticing like you're doing exactly what we're reading but i didn't mind it i was like if you're gonna do anything like you're reading something or watching something i would hope it would be this book and so you know we need that we need a guide i think especially nowadays we have a lot of different guides we have like the bachelor and all these different shows that are giving us this idea of relationship that's not rooted in a biblical principle and you gave us that um and you're super real like you're super relatable and i think that's probably because you spend a lot of time with college students you know college students you kind of go back to when you were that age it's not like you're just saying all this stuff it's so relatable to where we're at um and you and donna said a great example she's awesome by the way at passion after passion at like two in the morning me and her were like drinking a milkshake having the best conversation i love it well uh and me and your man were doing an interview with shelly that was really fun too it was good i know so excited well let's get to the question that i ask everybody before we get to the book um what is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given man um i know big just dropped i would say um existence over occupation and here's what i mean by that right when i graduated college i had this crisis of like what am i supposed to do and i got this job that i'm like am i doing the right thing and am i what yeah and i had a mentor tell me he's like ben you need to figure out why you exist before you figure out what you're gonna do and then he dropped on me he's like ben i exist to walk with god and he was grabbing that from colossians all things exist by him and for him he said so ben i exist for god and my work is an overflow of that relationship and then he was like so catch this man he was like ben i so i work at this particular ministry or job and if they like what i do they'll keep me if they don't i'll work somewhere else but i never lose my reason for existing it's not tied to my occupation and that was really freeing for me to go i'm a man of god and the more i know him the better i know me and the better i do the things i should be doing so existence over occupation yeah i feel like do you feel like that's helped you with like even moving to dc from texas and all the different things you've done just knowing that like it's not just about where you're at or what you're doing but about like who you are yes absolutely it's awesome yeah that's so cool and it's been fun to watch over time you know community helps you figure that out it's kind of a process of elimination like i did a lot of things i was bad at but then i look and i go hey when i do this it helps people so i should do more of this that's good i love that and dc's all young people it really is it's all 20s and 30s and so when don and i showed up here we were like we were built for this that's cool it's exciting yeah that's awesome i'm so excited that you all have passion city in dc and that you're leading i think that's awesome well let's jump into the relationship uh portion the single dating engaged mary because i know everybody's super excited to talk about that um okay i want to start right off the bat because in your book you talk about some signs of toxic relationships and i've had my fair share of toxic relationships and so what is um what are some of those signs to look for for people out there that's like i might already be in one i'm not really sure i might be entering in one what are those signs that we can see this might be leading to a toxic relationship oh gosh yeah there's so many i would say maybe the big guiding one for a lot of people is you need to look internally saying am i looking for a savior or a spouse you know am i looking for a companion or am i looking for like a christ figure that's going to fill every vacancy heal every wound fix every problem you know if you're looking for someone to fix what's wrong inside of you no human being can handle the freight of that no relationship can handle that so if you hear somebody say something like well if i just had a boyfriend it'd be fine or i just need a man if i just need this uh girl to do this you're like whoa be careful that you're trying to put a god size need into a human being and that's where you see a lot of them go wrong you know and the bible speaks to that you know the woman at the well jesus encountered you know she had dated or married multiple guys and was living with a guy that wouldn't marry her and jesus starts using that kind of metaphor of thirst he's like you're going to this well and thirsty again you need to come to me first that you get a relationship with god right you can get a relationship with a guy or a girl right but if you don't have a divine source of love like god loves me then you're going to look for that validation and approval from other people and when you look for it from other people you become a drain not a fountain you become a sucker of life not a giver of life and that leads to paranoia so who were you talking to what were you doing or that leads to anger you're not giving me enough attention and at least that all that insecurity is a siphoning of energy from somebody else so if someone's looking for you to meet a god-size need in their soul they need to get that relationship with god right or they'll never get a relationship with you right wow that is so good and i can just say from personal experience that was like totally a relationship i was in i didn't realize it at the time i just thought like oh this is how it is people said relationships are gonna be hard people said you know relationships are gonna be tough there's gonna be hard conversations but i feel like there's a difference in it being hard and it just being wrong and at the time i didn't really realize that and so for so long it was all that paranoia and the questions and all this stuff and then eventually we broke up and years later we were able to have a conversation which always doesn't get to happen but i'm glad that it did and one of the things he said to me was you know i didn't realize this at the time but you were god to me and when you left it felt like god left and that's when i realized it and that's why i never felt like i was enough or doing enough or giving enough because i couldn't be god to him and so what you're saying is so real and i just want to say from a personal experience like that is very true and so if you are in that position that you've been saying i need this or if i only had this that's a very real thing to consider that you know you're looking for really a savior so that's so good i'm glad that you that you talked about that yo any cereal lovers out there i not kidding i love cereal the magic did not leave whenever i was little it is still alive today but i know a lot of you guys you used to love cereal but you don't eat it anymore because there's so much sugar but guess what i got some magic for you literally it's called magic spoon this cereal is healthy and delicious literally it has protein in it it doesn't have sugar so you get the magic of cereal but you get the health benefits of the magic spoon y'all this is pretty brilliant stuff me and christian love it they have a variety pack of flavors they have cocoa peanut butter fruity flavors everything is just delicious we have thoroughly enjoyed our magic spoon also they have like a little game on the back of the box that we definitely play and think that we're 11 again and it's the greatest but hey let me tell you some facts on this pretty legit zero sugar 13 to 14 grams of protein and only four net grams of carbs in every serving plus only 140 calories per serving it's keto friendly gluten free grain free soy free low carb gmo free it's everything free but it still tastes delicious the variety pack has floor flavors cocoa fruity frosted and peanut butter it's delicious go to magicspoon.com woah to grab a variety pack and use my promo code woah at checkout to save five dollars off your order that's woe w-h-o-a go get you some cereal and remember get your next bowl at magicspoon.com whoa whoa to save five dollars off your next order of some delicious cereal that you talked about that when i was reading this but i mean you can see that i have like oh it might get like bent and torn but literally like besides so much i'm like wow that was me like all this stuff like it's so good man well i'll tell you one of the reasons i wrote it it was birthed out of pain i mean you could ask any of my college buddies my dating relationships were an endless source of comedy for them it wasn't funny to me i was like why are all these so terrible and i figured until i get me right i can't get a wii right i was like let me work on ben for a bit and uh that is good when i was a healthier human then i could interact with donna in a healthy way it wasn't perfect but some substantial healing came in my relationship with god for sure that's great until again you're right i can't get away right now i just i need that um so you talk about obviously all the stages of relationships which i love because you know a lot of people um you know really need the message of singleness or really need the message in dating but you really cover it all which i'm so glad and you don't you don't cheat any section like every section is filled but you talk about the purpose of singleness and a quote that you said is sometimes the most loving gift god can give us is singleness which i just when i read that i'm like man that's so contrary to what people think that that singleness is a gift and so how do you begin to see singleness as a gift yeah that's a great question you know paul called at that to the corinthians about his own life and in that same context he starts talking about um how the time is short so i think for me realizing singleness the opportunities of singleness are perishable goods that helped me when i was in my 20s i just realized singleness is going to end and so the benefits that come from being single will end and namely their freedom and time like when you get in a relationship it's you're going to lose a lot of that freedom right you know when i when i got married i was happy to be married but i watched single friends you know when the tsunami happened in thailand a single buddy jumped on a plane that night flew over there to serve people i was like i don't have any money i just got married i can't just up and travel and i realized oh i love being married but i lost freedom and when you're single you just go man you have freedom and uh it will go away and kids will change it too it'll go away so you want to leverage the opportunities in your stage and i think what happens with a lot of us is we see the benefits of a different stage and the limitations of our own and we're always unhappy but if you can discipline yourself to go my stage has particular benefits that are perishable then you want to maximize them i don't want to waste a second of this and i think when we think singleness goes on forever we'll waste time on our phones and go no wait i can travel the world now i can go make a difference in my city now and uh there's a lot of gifts god's given us in singleness and i just don't want people to miss it and you know one of the ones i hit there really big is just the paul says it it's it's for devotion to the lord like if i got to get that relationship right first a lot of this freedom is so i can get that relationship with god right first and i want to get really good at walking alongside him and uh when i figured that out singleness was a lot happier for me wow that's awesome i love that christian talks a lot about his singleness and it's so powerful to hear him say because like a lot of the biggest moments of his testimony like the encounters with jesus the times where he was like okay i'm going to stop watching pornography i'm going to stop and get serious about the way that i you know think about the lord and read his word and just immerse myself in and who he is like all that happened in his singleness and like prepared him two years before we ever met and so i've always just thought that was such a beautiful picture and such a good example of how to use singleness and he'll tell you i did not do everything perfect and of course he didn't but he did take that singleness seriously and that's when his relationship with the lord got serious and so i love that such a good point um i love this quote you said finding someone is easy but finding the right someone the right way is not and that's true people are struggling out there like how do i find how do i find this guy and so or this girl so what are things that we can look for and what are things that we should kind of be on the lookout for if you will when it comes to finding the right person the right way yeah that's a great question and a huge one you know one of the things i present first is that whole get a relationship with god right i picture it like running like you want to pursue who god is with all of your might and as you do that you're chasing after him uh there's gonna be people that are running past you chasing other things i'm chasing fame i'm chasing money i'm chasing success in this business venture and you go hey that person was cute and funny but they're running a different direction if i'm running after how god built me you're going to look and see some other people running alongside you so that's the first sifting criteria for me is you want the same cause because if you marry bind yourself to someone who's chasing something else all that tensions on your marriage bond and i i i mean when i got into church ministries sadie i talked to so many a lot of women who were divorced that they married a guy because he was cute and funny and when they got married his values were totally different so his decisions were totally different and it put all the strain on their marriage bond so you needed to go are they chasing after the things of god if they're not let them run right on by and then you look for a godly character and are they being shaped by god's character because um you want a christian that when they showed up for you you go hey he was pursuing honorable sexuality before he met me he wasn't just doing it for me he wasn't just doing it because i was cute he was trying to get married to me uh because what happens if something goes wrong and i don't get cute i have a medical issue that suddenly messes me up will he still be there for me you want to know someone that's got their sexuality under control outside of their commitment to you so you want to look for that character and then the last piece is chemistry do i like hanging out with them and that's not nothing because most of marriage is hanging out and obviously there's a million things we need to say underneath all this but those are like the big pictures are we chasing the same cause do they have a god-shaped character and then chemistry do i like hanging out with them do i look forward to talking to them or are they a drain and i talk to so many people that stay in relationships because they think they're supposed to and they sort of don't look forward to talking to the person on the phone you're like you don't have to do this to each other like you can go that is so good i love that point because i think people like put chemistry aside because they don't think that's like that's as important and they're like well at least he's a good person or at least they're nice or at least they love the lord and it's like yes but also do you all even like each other like do you have fun do you have a good conversation because you're right when you get married especially if the world happens to go into a pandemic and you're quarantined together then you're gonna really hope that you have chemistry um yeah i i dated a girl my my only dating relationship i feel like i kind of got right in college she had was chasing the lord had amazing character but we would just run out of things to talk about and we ended up having a great conversation we were just like i don't we don't think we're a fit and we both cried over it we're like that's kind of sad because you were cool your parents would have made good in-laws but we just don't love hanging out and uh donna made me laugh and that's not nothing yeah that is not nothing that's so honest that's so good i'm so glad you said that guys i want to tell you all about skillshare i've mentioned this before but i want to remind you about it because this is so legit it is an online community a place where you can go and learn take classes for things that we're actually really interested in there are things that are probably tailor-made to something you want to do right now i actually took a class and diy product photography which is really useful for me because i'm sitting here all day at my office i have all this product in there and it would be good for me to know how to take a picture right the class was taught by daniel and rachel which is really cool too because you actually get to know who your teachers are they teach you these incredible skills and and you learn in a really cool way one of the things that i learned is that you don't have to have some kind of fancy camera to take product pictures you can actually use your iphone which again is really helpful for me and so they teach you how to do that there's some other classes i know you'll be interested in one of the things was a video for instagram how to do a minute long video for instagram that's engaging that people would actually want to listen to so if you're trying to grow your following that would be a great one another one was like find your style and it was just ways that you can express yourself and show yourself and really find who you really are through your style so so many just practical things a lot of photography classes on there that you can take it's super simple so go on skillshare.com and bring some color and beauty and fun into your year as you learn a new skill so go explore your creativity at skillshare.com whoa that's w-h-o-a and get a free trial of the premium membership you can get a free trial of their premium membership if you go to skillshare.commo right now so go check it out and get yourself a new skill i love how you talk about the importance of someone with integrity and you talked about the the purity and sexuality with that and you got very real and last night as i was rereading it i was like man this is like when i first read this when we were dating or even whenever we were not even kind of there even yet we were more so just figuring out if we were going to be in a relationship and reading this book this this part didn't mean anything to me but now it really does and you talked about how like whenever you have a baby and then there's a time and let's just get real you said you're not gonna be able to have sex they're like and it's in that moment that you really hope you have a man with integrity and i was like dang like i when i read that i probably just skipped through it because i'm like awkward haha but then like that's real like that's life and so what is the importance of making sure that who you're with is a person of integrity yeah well you're experiencing it right now sadie with just the lack of anxiety for you of you're not going to worry about where is christian spending his nights if he's in the other room on a computer what's happening or if he goes on a trip without me um his character gives you a sense of safety you know that you know i'm going to be fine because that man is strong for me and we need that you know the book of proverbs is so good for evaluation you know the bible doesn't talk about dating because that wasn't the method to find a spouse but it talks about evaluating people all the time if you read the book of proverbs it says when the when the righteous is a king the people rejoice why are people happy because they know that person is going to do right by us they're going to do the right thing and so when you're married to someone that you go they're not gonna be perfect but they're always looking to do the right thing then you don't have to worry about are they gonna stab me in the back are they gonna empty the bank account or they go like you go no they're trying to be right before god and that benefits me they want to be righteous in the way they handle money so they're not going to put me in a dangerous place financially they want to be right in the way they talk to people so i don't have to worry about them being violent towards me like their their allegiance to god if they take that seriously leads to a whole host of virtues when they deal with you they will be kind they will be gentle they will be strong and you want all those virtues in your life you're blessed that's proverbs 31 when a guy finds a girl like that it's like he will rise up every morning and call her blessed like her commitment to god makes her good to me even when i'm at my worst and you want a person like that in your home that's so true it's so good and i i think you know do you know like anything about the enneagram are you an enneagram person oh my gosh donna is so into the indie agreement and i have not taken it and it makes her crazy but go ahead because everyone loves it yeah go for it okay well i have to just say because as a six on the enneagram it's like the loyalist and the biggest thing that they struggle with is like trust and they value security and i always thought like you know in relationships have been in like trust was just gonna be a hard thing for me because because trust is hard for anyone right and it's especially hard you know with this personality type and all this stuff and it was really hard in other relationships to trust but i will say it is not hard to trust christian it's not like it's not like something i have to muster up and try to like really hard just trust him like don't get jealous don't ask him what he's doing on his phone don't let no i just don't have to do that because i know who christian is and he has so much integrity and i know like you said he's not perfect but he's always looking to do the right thing and his relationship with god is more important than his relationship with me and so ultimately he's you know obeying god not just you know trying to not do something wrong for me and so i will just say to people who are out there who are like it's so hard to trust like if you're dating somebody like ask yourself why is it hard to trust like is it hard because maybe it's your own insecurity maybe it's hurt from the past maybe it's jealousy stuff like that or maybe it's because they haven't shown you the integrity that you really need in a person so i just loved that point i thought that was awesome yeah um it's not it's not based on your activity i'm sorry to interrupt you but yeah it's not basically whether you're performing so you don't have that anxiety of oh does he if he doesn't think i'm doing this right or that he might go do x or y you go no he's going to handle me right even when i'm not at my best that's a good feeling that is the best feeling so good i love that um so i already kind of went to the awkward zone but i'll stay there for a second because you can't talk about relationships and not talk about sex and the thing is too it's like you we would be naive as a church to not because of how much culture is talking about it and i love your comparison to sex like a fire um i thought that was such a good analogy um can you kind of touch on that a little bit and explain that to people because there's a lot of people listening to my podcast who grew up in church a lot of people who don't you know so they might not understand why is this a problem that kind of thing um and so i'd love for you to touch on that yeah absolutely um yeah i compare sex to a fire in the sense that you know i heard a guy ask once do you start fires in your living room and that question's so crazy of course i don't he was like so you don't own a fireplace you're like oh okay we naturally think fire is good fire's good in a home it'll bring warmth and life if it's boxed in by strong boundaries brick and steel then it'll bring warmth and life but you get a fire outside of protective boundaries it will burn down everything you love and sex is the same way and as a society in america we still have some holdovers of christian sexual boundaries namely it should not cross from adult to child the broader culture has said that yes sex should have boundaries you go okay but we loosened a lot of those boundaries it used to be socially just acceptable to have sex within marriage now it's socially acceptable to take it outside but if you watch the broader culture have we benefited from that i would say no in every statistic you look at for people our loose sexuality has hurt us it's taken something good and taken it outside protective boundaries and outside of that protection we've hurt ourselves and so what sounded like freedom sexuality without constraint has actually become deeply painful for us and you see it in in men you know because primarily they're the consumers of pornography women do too statistically one in three women it's much higher for men um nine out of ten and uh it looks like freedom but then it becomes addiction and not only addiction all the stats we see now is then it makes not just getting married more difficult although it's done that it's made interaction with women more difficult even at an interpersonal level so you go what looked like freedom this discovery of sexuality on a screen has stolen from me the value of a relationship and the value of getting to know people and for women it's interesting donna freitas did this big study of college campuses of the hookup culture of casual sex and she said the highest praise it got was the word fine no one said it was awesome no one said it was great she said the best they gave it was was fine wow 40 plus percent said they felt abused and they felt hurt and these were not christian people but they were saying like this belief i should divorce sexuality from my emotions and take them to the culture and just sort of enjoy it as a physical expression it's not true our sexuality is tied to us now we know chemically dopamine it makes us happy oxytocin it promotes bonding it's meant to create the joyful bonding within the emotions of another person so when you try to divide the physical act from the emotional bonding of a relationship you're doing violence to your soul and the statistics are in we've hurt us we've hurt men we've hurt women we've heard children so out of love for people i tell them let's put this good fire back in healthy boundaries you know good it's good for you yeah that's so good i love that what you said what looked like freedom has actually hurt us that's so real and that's so good and also that you you do say all this stuff out of love and it sounds like love because it's like i don't want you to get hurt and i think that that's heard from people who have read your book and who listen to you that's why i'm so thankful that you're willing to talk about it because not everybody i would get on a podcast and ask that too but i've seen how you how you touch on that and it's it's so loving and it's so biblical and it's also so like this is not just for christians this is just like the world the statistics it is what it is and so thank you for touching on that [Music] hello hi hi is this aj yes hey this is sadie and christian christian hello hi so we hear you have a question for us yes my question was how do you stay positive through you know all the negative stuff in the world great question first of all you have such a great voice you're so cute um how do i stay positive and such a negative world honestly you know what i realized in my life is the times that i'm most positive is when i'm actually just like weeded out the negative things that i'm putting into my mind so for instance you know used to watch tv shows that i literally couldn't even sit through now and i would listen to music that was just negative for so many different reasons and just kind of didn't care as much about what went into my mind and my soul and my spirit and now i take that really seriously so now i've you know fill my mind with the word of god and feel my you know time listening to things with podcasts or friends who are uplifting um and it's not being you know an optimist it's just filling your mind with truth the bible says to think about the things that are true honorable noble praiseworthy that's the things you need to think on and so when i shifted to that i think that's whenever it became a lot easier to be positive what about you christian yeah that's so good well i definitely agree with everything you said you know for me i can look at my life and when there are times in my life where i have um let more of those worldly things kind of into my mind i can be um whether it's more negative or whether it's more anxious worrying that kind of can take from me being positive but the thing for me is if i don't read my bible daily and if i don't fill my mind with that and try to fill my spirit with that then i know that i'll be um less positive toot i'll be a toot yeah from the standpoint of like i'll be i'll be less um less uh like i'll be less patient with you i'll be more on edge and i'll be less positive and and those things can take can take from that so for me the biggest thing to help me be more positive is not look at the news read my bible and that sounds super simple but that's been the biggest help for me is just read the bible listen to worship and then hopefully out of that will come an overflow of yeah positive that's great positiveness positivity aj thanks so much for calling and asking that question that's so good and you sound like a really positive person but i hope that those little things helped yes thank you guys so much yes have a great day bye bye bye good job i love how you are like this 24 7 like and then we actually start rolling and you're talking back here i was i was thinking back here that i was slowly moving towards when i hadn't thought we want to keep doing this so if you just send in your questions to the whoa that skill podcast instagram page we're gonna go look through them and we would love to give you advice so we'll pick whoever that is dmu and next you know we would love to hop on a call uh and feature you on the podcast so i'm so excited to get this thing going and that was such a great start to this whole question thing and i can't wait to see all the questions people ask us we're gonna do a mix too it's not just gonna be serious some are gonna be fun it can be about our life it can be about the baby it can be about god or whatever you wanna know we would love to hopefully give you some good advice [Music] you

Channel: Sadie Robertson

Views: 98,226

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Id: Cp7raL_9K6w

Length: 35min 2sec (2102 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021