Donna Clayton: How to wait on the Lord for your future spouse

hey guys welcome to faith flavor you know every day involves waiting we wait for the light to turn green we wait in line at the store we wait for breakthroughs in our lives but what about waiting on the Lord for your future spouse saving yourself for marriage is part of the waiting process and today we’re going to hear the testimony of beauty expert Jessica Hoffman who is going to share her journey of waiting I really hope that her testimony encourages you to continue to wait for God’s best and another reason we wait is for our dreams to come true but what do you do while you wait well you get ready so today I have for you eight tips on how to land your dream job take a look I love this mug it says the best is yet to come so don’t lose hope because the best is yet to come today I’m going to give you eight tips on how to land your dream job just in this past year alone I’ve really felt like I’m finally walking in my calling and in my when I got the role as tvf Tulsa coordinator I really feel like I landed something where new doors have been opened for me and so today I really just want to give you guys at home tips on how to land your dream job I know there’s so many of you out there that are watching that maybe you feel like you’re not walking in your destiny and you’re calling and you’re not really sure where to go well I want to let you know that I was that girl at one point in my life I didn’t know where to go and I really felt like there was more to me than what I was doing and so I just want to give you a few tips that I have learned along the way before I got to where I am now tip number one is find out what your dream job is you know we all have things dreams and desires that are in our hearts and I want you to know that there’s no reason why that desire is birthing inside of you there’s a reason why it’s there and it’s up to you to figure out what exactly that is what are you naturally good at what do you see yourself doing for the rest of your life make that vision plain write it down and stick with it tip number two be faithful you know before I lived in my dream job I was working as an administrative assistant and I really felt like you know what I was doing it was just to get by it wasn’t really something that I was walking in my calling or destiny but I knew that in that season and that moment in time I had to be faithful and what I was doing in order to get to the next step you know the Bible says be faithful and little and the Lord will reward you with more tip number three take baby steps goal every baby step counts and if you’re making consistent baby steps to where you want to get to it will pay off in the long run I mean I look back in my life and I think I always had this dream about being on TV and so I went to school for broadcast journalism and you know I could think of countless nights where I was you know setting up meetings for a school project or staying up late because I had to work on paper while every little step that I took led me to where I am now and that is working you know in the field that I want to work in it tip number four is to hustle you know I remember spending countless hours interning working for free doing things that were not required of me but things that I knew I had to do in order to get to where I am now and those countless hours those times that I’ve put in where I didn’t get paid they paid off in the long run because now I’m hustling but I’m doing something that I absolutely love to do and you need to know that nobody’s ever going to hand you anything you’re going to have to work really hard and if you work hard enough eventually you will land the job of your dreams tip number five is to stay motivated you have to continue to keep that dream alive by reading books working towards your goal and remember that if you work hard enough you’re going to get to where you want to go so stay motivated stay positive and the number-one rule is don’t quit because nobody likes a quitter tip number six is enjoy the process you can’t order the process is part of the journey and if you can continue to remind yourself that you need to enjoy the process eventually when you get to the final destination you’re going to enjoy it even more because it’s all part of the story tip number seven is be patient I need to remind you that patience is a virtue and you need to know I know you probably have heard this before but Rome was not built in a day I mean I graduated high school and I did land my dream job until nine years later those work nice dress painful excruciating hard years I’m just kidding but eventually you know all those nine years they paid off because I landed the job of my dreams tip number eight surround yourself with like-minded people now I know that this tip can be a little hard sometimes because sometimes you can’t find friends that really match your goals but it’s very important to find those friends whether it’s online or find a group that you can really connect with because those friends will help you you know and motivate you and help you to stay motivated and you’ll be able to be accountable to them to reach your goal well that is all for this video thank you so much for tuning in – and just remember you know with God all things are possible I don’t know where you are in life but I do know that there’s a God who can make your dreams a reality and if you stay faithful to him everything else will fall into place and I want to leave you with this you know the Word of God says in proverbs 3:5 and 6 trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding but in all of your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths and that is your promise for today I really hope that you enjoyed my vlog and that those tips were helpful for you as you prepare for the job of your dreams and now I am so excited to introduce a dear friend of mine and her future husband to the show Jessica Hoffman and business here oh my gosh thanks for having so good to have you um you know you guys have a great story to share so I’m just gonna get right into it because our favorite story how’d you like it too so you know let’s first dive into what we’re talking about today we’re talking about waiting on the Lord guide topic what does it mean to wait on the Lord Jessica man it means to be flexible to the Holy Spirit that’s a huge lesson that I learned in life but also as a single girl waiting praying hoping you know holding on to that belief that God would have a godly wonderful husband for my future you know it’s trusting I mean literally that is the most important thing to trust God and when I look back on my life I’ve said this before many times the only thing that I regret in life is not trusting God more because I can look back on all the painful times and know that that pain originated from my lack of trust and kind of going and doing my own thing and so when you ask me that what is it like what does it mean to wait on the Lord trusting in him which means knowing the word getting the word in your heart and being flexible you know and not be so committed to your way but going okay God if I’m going to follow you and wait on you it means that I have to hear from you and actually do what you tell me to do exactly what about you Vincent what I think she nailed it honestly that’s a beautiful answer and just to include patience in the mix of move it’s it’s such a hard lesson to learn and one that God has literally taken a frying pan and just humped me over the head with it multiple times to teach me because I asked him to teach me patience so be careful what you pray for kind of thing but just having patience and and truly having that trust because to trust means to really just have a hope and really believe in something and who better to believe in and mister Lord Jesus and I think the reason why a lot of people don’t wait is because they it’s hard to wait it’s not easy right it’s it’s something that you have to have patience for and you know but why is it so important to wait on the Lord because he knows best honestly we made our plans but his plans prevail above all else yeah and we might think something is great and wonderful but when you truly trust them in wait right it’s just so much better and He loves us too much to let us go down a road that we weren’t meant to take to overlook our sin and so when we don’t trust him when we do our own way we inevitably Finn we move from doing God’s will and going and doing our own will and He loves us way too much to let us stay in that so it’ll be painful you know and we grow a lot in pain and I just went through a really painful season we’ve talked about before but thank the Lord that he loved me enough to kind of again hit me over the head be like wait don’t that’s not what I have for you come on back and like a precious metal being held in the fire and the hottest part of the fire that pain really shaped me brought me back to falling in love with the Lord my whole Bible was like yellow highlighted all over and I loved it and I just the intimacy level that I had with the Lord through that painful experience was actually looking back really beautiful and I can really thank God for the broken hearts and for the pain because it led me to the path that he had for me all along which has so many beautiful rewards when you follow that path yes and and that path started with the relationship with Jesus so let’s talk a little bit about your individual journey you know about coming to know the Lord we’ll start with you Jessica oh okay well um when I was five Oh Kenny all kind of a quick one because you I like to tell a story but I grew up in it in a home that loved Jesus and talked about the Word of God and we sang worship songs together and you know I had a loving mother and father and family well my dad he passed away when I was young five and having that you know just ripped out of my life I really am so thankful to for for how God met me in that pain in that moment because at five years old I remember going outside and looking up to the sky and asking God to be my daddy because I missed my daddy and I’m like what the heck you know that was just God having his hand on me and the Holy Spirit leading me to him you know and so young age I knew that the Lord was my daddy you know and then through the challenging years of high school and when I were back brace for scoliosis and I felt like I had no friends when God was my best friend you know so I really through all the painful moments I always turned to him and I’ve always loved our love story the most I think every Christian should love their love story with God because and he called me I I knew that he called me at about 12 years old to stay pure and it said okay if I jump into the geography job right definitely and I remember God just breaking it down the way I as a 12 year old can understand it and he showed me you know if you want to win in a game you have to listen to your coach I am your coach look at life as a game that you want to win not just win and get by and we barely made it but thrive and be victorious so if I’m your coach you have to listen to what I’m about to tell you and I want you to wait till you’re married to have sex and to enjoy that that gift that I’ve given in unto marriage you know and and I was able to look around and see all around me teenage pregnancies and what happens when you don’t do it God’s Way and the detours that you can go on which I was really painful you know and definitely I just said lord I don’t want to have to give up all my dreams that you put in my heart I want to do it your way okay I promise that I felt like I made a deal with God I follow you then you better give me a cool life penis I mean I’m not saying that the best of it as a twelve-year-old that’s the conversation that I had good and I one of my favorite scriptures Psalms 119 32 I will run in the way of your command because you’ve set my heart free and I think I was only really able to follow God with my whole heart because I knew he brought me through all the painful times and I was really kind of him so good what about you Vincent uh I started out actually without any sort of spiritual guidance any sort of religion my mom was Christian dad Jewish and they didn’t really discuss how they would raise me but since I can remember I have always felt the presence of a higher power and always felt that there has been something watching over me and there was just a higher calling beyond anything that I had heard about and when I was 12 mom and dad asked me what I thought about going to church going to synagogue etc etc and so basically we lived in Chicago at the time and we went to synagogues and churches and I was drawn toward did the Holy Land and really just my Jewish faith yes my dad was born in Israel Wow and he’s just an absolute incredible man and there’s all these things because he travelled a lot when I was a kid so I didn’t get to know him very well until the recent years actually so that kind of was a window or a doorway to my lineage so I was really attracted to the Jewish faith and had a Bar Mitzvah at age 14 and then shortly after moved to Alabama and being in the middle of the Bible Belt you know of course I was subjected to lots of believers but at the same time I didn’t really feel much of a real realistic thing behind what they said so in church they would say one thing outside of church they would say and do something else and then right before senior graduation of high school I met some people that went to First Assembly of God and tuscaloosa shout out yellow stone church brother Herbert Cooper actually was a gentleman there at a revival and I literally just felt the Lord just help me up out of my chair and lead me right to the altar and I just I cried my eyes out and people knew my background being the Jewish faith and we’re just cheering and jumping for joy and and that church family will just always have such an amazing place in my heart but since then I mean my college career was five six days at church just amazing whether it’s praise and worship leading the youth having like coffee houses and stuff for the local kids getting in vans and like grabbing the kids to come to church that weren’t fortunate enough to either be invited or have even a vehicle to get there and then I actually got married right out of college and she was a believer and we were on that path and unfortunately it didn’t work out so I went through an extreme time of pain and in those pains that you mentioned sweetheart just resonates so deeply within me because yours are of a back injury and I just felt like I had no spine I mean just down in the dumps and you know the enemy trying to do whatever he could but at the same time I always felt that presence that I felt since I was a kid that I could always remember and always just just really turn to so god no matter what’s going on it’s just so beautifully faithful and of course it took a while to heal but man my faith grew incredibly just exponentially so and and I feel like now I can actually reach other people yeah after enduring that and it’s for a while I really judged myself because of divorce and you know then of course realizing how high a percentage it is these days yeah even in the church but moreso than that just God is our Father yeah he loves us so much and he’s just so forgiving and so he can use everything and he does use everything you know today we’re talking about waiting and just the waiting process and everything and for you Jessica like I know you personally and I know a little bit of your journey but tell our viewers a little bit about you know the waiting process and was it difficult for you to wait oh yeah yeah 35 year old virgin it was kind of difficult but I’ll tell you what so you grow your faith in your hope when you’re single and in in that waiting game time that’s when you grow all that the fruits for the spirit that God talks about and I’m so glad that I had all that all those years of waiting to really work on my relationship with the Lord and become you know very confident in my identity is in Christ and then nothing that I apply nothing that I wear but something that God put on my heart to do is to start writing down prayers that I’ve been praying for my future husband and so I don’t really even tell you that but I have been writing some prayers for my future husband and I made a commitment to start praying for him faithfully every day in March of 2005 and that was when you were going through your year divorce and when he told me I was like oh my gosh Wow there I was in Hawaii you know a single girl thinking do I know him yet do I know his name where is he what he’s doing and I just felt God going you pray for him like I need you to pray for him every day you know and so it’ll be I was actually very sick at that time Wow voice hadn’t actually started yet but man I was sick in every way and her telling me that it was a couple days ago yeah me that and it’s just the most amazing thing that God through everything is just like hey and that is Grace I mean because here you are a divorcee but you get to marry this amazing girl who waited herself for you I mean that is just an amazing testimony in and of itself there’s so many people out there that have gone through a divorce and they might feel like there’s no hope but there is hope in Jesus and I really want to get into what happened the day that he proposed so I want you guys all at home to watch this video we are going to travel back to the day when Vincent proposed to Jessica take a look at this video yay baby look at me daddy all right then if it’s still doing Oh okay like true love’s first kiss what oh the guy we could kiss bill on the screen baby this is so natural and wonderful thank you Jesus Oh oh my goodness being a 35 year old virgin and waiting for her husband it’s just their time so it felt so long like so far away my early 20s my mid twenties now I look back on the life that God has allowed me to live in the ventures he’s called me to and the love that I have with him and and now that I’m kissing you knowing that you’re gonna be my husband girl doesn’t even feel like anytime it just felt good it just goes so worth it and like the struggle is like let’s struggle this is oh my goodness so all y’all women and men the only thing I regret in life is not trusting and God more so if you’re single and waiting like I have been for 35 years just trust him more that you will not regret happy for 50p I haven’t have a feel safe but y’all see this is my fiance and it now I’m gonna be using my left hand hello she’s mine go get your own find your own princess your own Queen your own woman that brings joy beyond all belief to your life that’s what this woman does you get more beautiful every time I look at you cat if you just started tuning into the show today’s topic is all about waiting on the Lord for your future spouse and here with me today is a success story of two people who are here and are about to get married because Jessica miss Jessica over here is amazing and you know in that moment it’s such a candid moment and I’m watching it back it’s so beautiful I mean thank you not only is it romantic but it’s such a testimony of all those years that you waited you know and yeah I want you to tell me okay so tell me the backstory here did you know was happening when it was happening did you feel it or why man we went on this vacation with family friends and I had no clue that what was to come and the fact my dad even kind of spilled the beans I called Vincent wanted to take me to breakfast tomorrow I go oh oh he loves you day before we left or lake chest a long road trip beautiful time coming I had been searching for a ring for two months and I would I resell it to her dad but didn’t want him to ask it to be a secret because of course I didn’t want him to know that I was going to ask him the question so then she text me oh you’re taking dad to breakfast I was like oh yeah yeah yes I yeah but they’d get along really well so even that I just feel you know it’s like the Holy Spirit keep him availed for a little bit but right when we were in that vineyard we got done with a hot air balloon ride it was our seven-month anniversary of meeting each other which I say seven months of dating because when I met him when he walked in the room I thought whoa this is someone who’s gonna change my life I really really thought did you know like did God I really feel that I that the Lord allowed my spirit to see his spirit oh and in fact one of my favorite stories is when the Lord told Samuel I’m anointing a king I have your king don’t worry go into Bethlehem I’ll reveal him to you and family I was like oh look at that shopping in man and God goes no no no don’t look at our parents look at the heart not the one not the one when David came out on the same God told Samuel very quickly anointing him he’s the one I go –speed the Bible can tell you the lawyer tell you who the one is yes and so I did I had that feeling that something remarkable would happen and Jensen why did you pick a vineyard honestly I went through all of the craziness of two months of looking for rose gold and the things that that I loved about her that’s now she’s like oh how did you know I was like Oh mr. Jesus clearly so that was just such a huge not an ordeal but almost and so basically I then began praying about the perfect way to ask this perfect for me woman to marry me and so it got to the point where God was like Vincent I’ve already ordained it ask her so I was like okay Lord you’re going to show me exactly where exactly when we went on a hot-air balloon ride we had been to the vineyard before so beautiful John 15 popped into our heads we’re singing praise and worship songs dancing together in the vineyard and making praise videos about testimony and then he goes baby I want to do one more video and that I went oh oh my god I want him to propose oh gosh yeah I turned on the camera went Wow stuff the big ring box in the back of my pocket walked over to her with a very telling cute low smile oh yeah you could pray we prayed I prayed that she would also not feel the ring box in my pocket yeah and then I asked her if I could ask her a question like oh sweet Jessica we’re running out of time here but I really want you to look into the camera and just encourage somebody who’s watching that’s waiting for their future spouse encourage them to wait oh my gosh girls I love you you are in exactly where God wants you to be right now and he will meet you exactly where you are for me if I have someone just kind of shake me and say don’t buy the lie Jessica do not buy the lie that the enemy tells every girl that they’re not lovable that they’ll never find the one you know whatever you’re going through don’t personally the devil tom says everybody with that same lie and get in the word know the truth have in your heart the Holy Spirit will remind you of the wars and will direct you and where to go and use this time before to to find your joy John 15 and Biden him and your joy will be made complete and I always say I’m wearing even a t-shirt happily engaged but I’m only able to be happily engaged because I was happily single and so find that wherever you are right now get to the point where your joy is complete only in the Lord and then when he brings you your dream that you know desire that he’s planted in your heart then you could just he’ll add to your joy and happiness he won’t make it you know and and it’s two people coming together hole that’ll make a hole thriving relationship and yeah I believe that for you so we love you and get into this thing it’s amazing well thank you guys so much for being here on the show with me it’s been such an honor to share your story on favorite flavor about waiting and thank you so much for watching faith of flavor you know the Bible says those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagles they shall walk and not faint that is your promise for today god bless you bye bye amen