Intimacy + Desire Initiate with Confidence | Taste + See the Goodness PART 3!

How we approach intimacy MUST flow from the RIGHT order! This allows us to be filled from the vertical to then overflow to the horizontal. If we approach from the WRONG order, we get stuck in low level "fixes", box checking, and wrong heart posture.

Learn how to stop filtering physical intimacy through your flesh, and start learning sex within covenant marriage in the Spirit! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Tulsi Holm, your host, and we do Marriage God's Way here. And right now, we're continuing a series on intimacy by God's design and how that physically gives us a space to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, to understand his desire for us, and how we walk that out in desiring one another. Now, I want to start this off by talking about intimacy must flow from the right order. The right order is God, you, your spouse, your kids, and then everything else, including work and all that other stuff. Okay. It has to start with that right order. Otherwise, if we have any other order, we move in these low levels of walking in the flesh in an agreement with the old self. And we get stuck in the offenses and weeds of hurts and hangups and all of that. But when we when we start with the right order, we are then able to overflow, right? The the filling of the vertical is then able to overflow in the horizontal, which is includes ourselves, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. That is the first and most important command. Everything else follows that. And then the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That's why you are second and then your husband. That's where the order comes from. It is biblical. It's God's design, it's his commands. So we have to start there. And then we have to move. In the last episode, I talked about these patterns of self-protection, that we have to have this radical awareness and surrender to do the messy inner work and just get super real with each other in ourselves, right? And to go before the Lord and ask him to expose and reveal the things in us that need his healing, that he wants to heal in us and the areas that need to be exposed so that we can be transformed and surrender of those areas, right? And so we have to start here when we talk about intimacy, because if we don't, again, it's going to come from our flesh. Everything's going to be channeled through that filter of our flesh of this for that, if you I will. And we can't ever move past the flesh into actual intimacy of walking in the spirit and living by the spirit. And so I wanted to dive into initiation. Okay. So talking about desire and initiation, right? My husband is a very simple man. And he's said this over and over, but it's so interesting because I wanted to overcomplicate this. So he said, you know, just be like woman. Let's not well, me not woman. He said to me, woman, just tell me, like, hey, let's go upstairs and let's do it, right? Like, um, it has it, it can be as obvious as that and as simple as that. Like, my husband is a very simple man. He doesn't need all of the extras, like the lingerie or the flirtiness, but all of those are like icing on the cake, right? But the whole point of initiation, right, is what it does is it exposes and reveals anytime there is fear present. Because that fear is going to be present in the hindrance to us initiating. And this is where I was that I was afraid to look foolish, or I was I was afraid to be rejected. I was afraid that you know he wouldn't like what he sees or whatever. And all of these were stemming from um, well, many things, right? Not taking my thoughts captive to Christ, not walking in confidence of the new identity, the new man, the new creation that I am, right? Um and so, but when we talk about initiation, I just wanted to share some simple tips with you, like how to, as another, as an awkward female who is not the smoothest or the most uh what's the word I'm looking for? Scandalous, if you will. That's an old, sorry, sorry, I'm clearing my throat here. That's an old uh joke that we used to use on my middle name was Scandalous because it it wasn't. I am like extremely awkward. I am the one that I'm not gonna give you a lot of details here because this is between my husband and I, but we're goofy and I laugh a lot at inappropriate times. And you know, if you're not laughing, you're dying, I guess. That's my approach. And you know, sometimes I say the silliest things at the most inappropriate times. And I'm always like, honey, you're the only one who gets to experience the fullness of me being me. Aren't you lucky? Aren't you blessed? And he's like, Yes, so blessed. I get all your weirdness, but I also get all his weirdness too. So anyway, but like it's this freedom, right? Because we have this covenant of marriage. If we're talking about God's design, we have this freedom, freedom, right? And most people look at like the fence as to keep you in. But truly, the fence, the boundaries that God has established within a covenant marriage is to keep us safe, to keep us pure, to keep us holy and set apart, right, from the rest of the world. And so then within those bounds of marriage, there is this absolute freedom of walking out desire and desiring one another and expressing that and initiating and doing all these things without fear, without condemnation, without shame. Right. And this has been a struggle for me, again, as like an awkward female who is continuing. The Lord is teaching me how to move out of my masculine self-protection mechanisms and mannerisms and into being feminine and soft and unguarded and open and receiving and creating life and creating an atmosphere, shifting an atmosphere that invites, that supports, that helps. And so I just wanted to give you some, first of all, some encouragement on initiation. That bottom line up front, your husband just wants to be desired. And I know you're having that thought in the back of your mind that it's never gonna be enough. Because that's what I struggle with too. That like, if I if I initiate, like he's always gonna want me to initiate, and it's always gonna, right, because I was coming from a fleshly my own understanding, right? And not understanding who God is and how God doesn't, God has given us everything. He he doesn't demand that we then prove ourselves to him, right? It's an overflow in how we strive to do his work for his glory, to the praise of his glory. Not because we need to earn it or because we need to prove it, but because we get to, right? And so applying that same mentality within marriage towards our husbands, that, you know, think about that. Like, think about how you obey the Lord, how you follow the Lord, how you're surrendered to the Lord, how you align your heart to his heart. Um, what would that look like if all of a sudden you were like, God, you know, I don't want to tithe too much to you, or, you know, I'm gonna sit out this serving of you because I'm afraid you're gonna ask more of me. Now, I think subconsciously we do that, right? Like, this is why so many Christians are lukewarm because they don't have any actual transformations in their life and their lives don't look any differently than anyone else who's not following the Lord, right? Because there's been no actual death to self, right? And so therefore, there's no hard, no challenging prayers, right? The prayers that say, break me, Lord, search me, Lord, send me, Lord, right? Prune me, Lord, press me, Lord, test me, test my faith, Lord, because I know that that produces perseverance for your kingdom, right? Those are those are hard prayers. Like I said, wreck me, Lord, for my husband's heart to be desired in marriage and what intimacy your way looks like, right? And so I think some con we we subconsciously say that as lukewarm believers, that like I don't want to give too much because then you're gonna ask more of me, right? Or we have this very fleshy mentality that, like, well, I don't want to give that to God because He's gonna He's gonna ask more of me. And I I don't know that I want to give that, right? Like, that's all walking in the flesh in our own understanding. But that's not actually following the Lord. That's the rich young ruler who then walks away sad. But what we're talking about is is is following the Lord, being that four percent that deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him. And so, how does that apply into marriage when it comes to intimacy and initiation, right? Of not holding anything back, of tearing down every wall that divides or separates us, of removing every distraction that gets in the way of our connection and intimacy, right? Of being extremely intentional and disciplined about these things, right? And not being calendar disciplined in the sense of we have to schedule it, or it has to be this many times per week, or it has to be you initiating 50% of the time and I initiate 50% of the time, right? It's this idea of idea, this concept, this Christian concept, God's concept and design of outdoing each other in acts of service. That is God's way, right? And how are we doing that in marriage? Are we doing that because we want to get something out of it, or are we doing that completely from the freedom because we have a heart posture of complete surrender within marriage, within the bounds, within the covenant? Not from a place of pressure, but of freedom, right? That completely changes your approach and how you show up. And as I said, this is God working real time in me to get to this place because I've always understood the concept of intimacy within marriage God's way, but I've really struggled to implement it consistently over time because a lot of it was not being diligent, not being intentional, right? And when we're not diligent and intentional, then we we work in complacency, right? But as you've grown, as the Lord has refined you and continues to refine you, you get to this certain point where it's like, this is not how we do things here. This is stupid. Like, what are we even doing? This is not acceptable, right? Like, I'm not accepting this of myself, and I need to completely lay prostrate before the Lord and and invite him to do work in me because this is not it, and we're not gonna continue down this path, right? Like, this is not us outdoing each other in service, and so this needs to be corrected immediately, right? Because we're not we're just not gonna tolerate it. Um, and so initiation starts with this shift in identity, right? It starts in this shift of understanding the boundaries of marriage and the freedom within those. And it it starts with this um, it starts with this confidence, this mindset of outdoing one another, right? What would your marriage look like with intimacy? How would your interactions with your husband and his interactions with everyone else in the world, how would those be shifted if you went first and initiated a hundred percent of the time, aim to initiate a hundred percent of the time, right? Because marriage isn't 50-50, marriage is a hundred-a hundred. Right? What if instead of looking from a mentality of doing, you looked from a mentality of heart posture and alignment and ministry to one another? Right? So when we talk about like just walking out in the practicalities of initiating, right, understanding what it is that your husband responds to. Is your husband a lingerie guy? Well, put the lingerie on, right, and surprise him in that. My husband could couldn't care less about lingerie, he wants the birthday suit, okay? And that does it for him. But for me, I I do like the lingerie because that puts me in a mindset, right? In a heart posture and an alignment of desire and intimacy, right? As someone who is a responsive desire, right? I still have to position and posture myself for that. Whereas my husband is an initiative, initiative, initiator desire, right? Where like it's like the light switch can turn on and off. Whereas I'm more of the slow burn, right? And so understanding yourself too and how that works, and then how you don't let that become the excuse or the fallback. Um, you let that launch you forward, right? And propel you forward into outdoing one another in in acts of service. Um, and so it could be flirty text, pictures, videos. It could be um, I mean, my husband couldn't care less about food, but it it could be that, like making his favorite meal. Ask him what he wants, ask him how he responds most to being desired. Like, how is that? Like, how would if you did this, right? Like, I would feel so wanted, right? If you did this, I would feel so surprised in the best of ways, right? And not in a box to check kind of mentality. Again, that's that's moving in the flesh in our own understanding. No, we're not in that, right? We are God's way here, right? From overflow, right? So asking him those things. Or if if you know, maybe he doesn't know or he's not in that space to be able to communicate those things to you, study him. Try things, right? Like send him a text if you never do that. Um it could just it could be as simple as I said, like my husband, of hey, let's go upstairs right now. Or maybe it's a little bit more elaborate and it's like, hey, I planned this week in a way, here's what we're doing, right? Um, it doesn't have to be complicated at all. And understand that your depth and ability to connect and have um intimacy that blows your mind, for you as a woman, it's going to start with the emotional and spiritual intimacy. So, how can you go first in that to create that environment and that space that invites him into that? Because you're going to respond to that in an overflow of physical intimacy, right? You're going to posture and position yourself in a much better mind space and physical space for that. Whereas your husband, the way that God has created and wired him, is he responds through physical intimacy that opens the gate and the doors for the emotional and the spiritual intimacy, right? So understanding how all of these things work together for each of you and how God uniquely knit you and also generally knit you as man and woman, right? And how how you can study him and create the space in the environments to just blow minds, right? Because your intimacy is going to feel so much deeper and just off the charts if you have gotten emotionally intimate with him and spiritually intimate with him beforehand, right? And so, how can you foster that environment? It's not waiting on each other to create that environment, it's you intentionally and diligently doing that out of a heart to minister to him, to taste and see the goodness of the Lord within the bounds of your marriage. And that then is going to overflow into everything else. It's going to overflow into your kids, into your work, into all of your other relationships. And if your husband is like mine, everything is going to be on his face that he's feeling. And um, it is going to be an overflow. So, uh, so yeah, so I would love to know what is one thing that you can take a step in, or what is one area that the Holy Spirit is revealing to you that you can start to be that 100% initiator and start to create that space, right? To create that environment, to go first, right? Because you've diligently done the work of inviting God to heal the places and expose the places that He needs to refine in you. And so now you're overflowing, right? You got that right order. Remember, back to that right order. It has to start there because it has to be that vertical filling so that we can then horizontally overflow. I would love to know what that is for you and what is that one thing that you're gonna be like trying or doing or implementing to initiate. I know for me, just this morning I sent my husband a picture. It was an older picture, but I liked it. And I sent it to him, you know, and that's that's something that has been a hindrance to me because I was channeling it through just wrong thinking and through my flesh and my own understanding rather than stepping back and seeing what God is doing in us and through us, and this mutually shared desire that we can intentionally and diligently work to increase for one another. Um, so there you go. So that's my thing, and I am continuing going forward. Unfortunately, my husband is out of town for the next like 10 days. So it's like, ah, like all these things to implement um out of the right heart posture and out of the box checking, but he's not here. So I get to do it from afar, which is actually really good and a mercy of the Lord because he knows that I am more bent on doing and more hesitant on um what that looks like over distance when we are separated for a time because of military. And so the Lord, by his mercy and grace, has positioned us in this space to really let me learn and to implement and to walk out in a way that would have been easier, but not as impactful had we been together, right? So I'll see you on the next episode.