Jennie and Levi sat down with Debra Fileta
Debra is a licensed counselor and author of the book True Love Dates and Choosing Marriage
We have to be working on a healthy soul.
We’re giving ourselves a life without quiet or solitude.
We ARE made for community, but if we don’t make any time for solitude then we don’t have any time for Jesus because He speaks during rest.
How much more could God do without burnout.
Counseling is typically a last ditch effort.
God is in it all, and He wants us to align to Him in all those areas.
Sometimes the emotional manifests as physical.
Identify emotions, express, and walk through emotions.
Our past can affect our present.
Bring someone else’s eyes into it.
You can get so used to your junk that you don’t see it anymore.
You can put so much of your best face foreword that you forget your real face.
How healthy are your
Thoughts
Physical Health
Interactions with others
Behaviors (what are you doing in your free time)
The power of “no.”
Difference between selflessness and passivity.
Put to death your sinful nature.
God has called us to do a few things well.
Everything I’m saying yes to means I’m saying no to other things.
Flesh and blood people who keep us accountable, and iron sharpening iron, and calling us out on our junk.
The choices you’re making today, the daily choices/disciplines/patterns affect the stonework of your future.
We is greater than me.
There has to be healthy me before healthy we.
The natural trajectory of marriage is “drift.”
The natural human nature is sin.
Have a time of confession and check-in.
We all are a work in progress.
I picked up her book after service and here are my notes from it...
Choosing Marriage by Debra Fileta
“At some point we all want out because we’re human, and there’s no one human being on earth who will give us everything we need.”
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
What has shaped me and which parts of my life need healing?
Where am I headed and what is God’s calling on my life?
In what ways am I allowing my relationship with Jesus to change me and fill me up?
“You can’t hold someone responsible for something you never told them they were responsible for.”
Selflessness is never about convenience; it’s always about sacrifice.
The enemy is on high alert because he sees the potential our marriages have to become great. He knows the great blessing a marriage can be.
God wants to strengthen us for the unseen spiritual and emotional battles we will face in marriage, but the only way we can prepare is by exchanging our emptiness for God’s fullness.
Receive it. Only through the love of our God can you be filled.
Filled enough to give.
Filled enough to serve.
Filled enough to sacrifice.
Filled enough to move from selfishness to holiness.
Filled enough to choose marriage.
The realization that we are just as capable of wrongdoing as everyone else has the power to not only increase our love for God, but heighten our grace for others.
You can’t experience real love with a person until you’ve experienced the entirety of a person — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.
We are often attracted to people who add something to our life. So yes, opposites do attract. But then as I like to go on and say, “Opposites attract, but then they attack.” The very same personality traits that draw you to someone initially are the exact traits that can cause conflict and strife later on in your relationship.
Interdependence
Marry someone who will make you better.
