Episode 217: Learning to Trust God As You Work Toward Quitting Teaching

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Y’all. Patience is a virtue. One of the things that I have noticed recently is how there’s this desire and this hunger to get to the end goal. For example, I really need to make money from home, or I really want to leave this job, even though I just started working towards getting out of the classroom yesterday. Urgency and this desire are in your heart to get to or finish this thing. And I totally see that because I am that person. I am part of Overachievers Anonymous. Patience is really hard for me when it comes to my virtual assistant business. I feel like I need to do more to be more, to work more all of the things. But one thing I’ve been learning a lot recently from God he’s just been showing me is that patience is biblical. It is tied to trusting God while digging through the Old Testament, I’ve been learning about the different tiny sins that we don’t even know we’re making. For example, impatience, comparison, judgment, even worry, these can all be a sin because we’re not trusting God enough. The Israelites were literally stuck in the wilderness for 40 years because they weren’t trusting God and were being impatient.

[00:01:21] Okay? It’s just in our nature. We wanna have control, but we need to relinquish that control and trust God that he will get us where he wants us to be in his time. So I have some verses and some hard work for you to w to work through. Patience is going to be a recurring theme in building your virtual assistant business, especially as you focus on growth and trying to transition out of teaching. It’s really difficult to stay in that patient trust and to trust in him believing that God’s timing is perfect and it prevails, and it’s really hard to understand that all we have to do is show up and trust and continue to do the work every single day that God asks us to do. So I wanna share with you three verses to help you build that patience and that trust in God.

[00:02:17] So the first one, ecclesia, I can never say this word. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that he has made everything beautiful in its time. This verse is clearly stating that whatever we are working on, when it is God-centered, God called and God created. It will be something beautiful in its time. God is promising us that beautiful things. They take time. Beautiful things need that space and room to grow, to flourish, be crooned, sometimes rebuilt and refined. These are pieces of the growth process and they have to happen in order to make something beautiful. God is just reminding us in this verse that it is going to take time, so we need to rest knowing that that beauty is coming and we need to trust in him. Now, whenever that timing might look like, God knows what he is doing. And also he knows when we’re ready. I truly believe that if God had handed me the business that I have now three years ago, that would’ve been really detrimental to me. I wasn’t in the right head space. I did not have enough experience, and I didn’t have the right structure in place to support that growth and that trust in him.

[00:03:35] God’s plan is bigger than ours, so I want you to trust that God has a plan and it is so much bigger than just you thinking he’s not giving you what you want. Sometimes we aren’t ready even though we think we are. Even when it feels like if I just had “blank”, that would make everything good. I know it’s hard to trust that he has all the pieces laid out in his perfect timing, but he knows each and every day of your life forever. If I could go back and talk to myself in 2019 when I was scribbling in my journal about wanting to be home with my daughter and things not working out, wondering how I was gonna get out of teaching, I would’ve told myself that patience is a virtue and to relax because you’re not ready at this point. And in the meantime, I could have worked on trusting in the Lord and focusing on bettering myself and serving others without worrying about what the next step was going to be. I. So maybe you’re sitting in a similar position to where I was four years ago. You’re like, I want . I need it. I don’t understand why I don’t have it right now.

[00:04:45] You’re doing everything right, wondering why nothing is happening. What kind of wise counsel could you give yourself? If you were the five years from now version of you, maybe sit in that and bring it to the Lord and let him remind you and guide you through the process of patience. It’s not easy. But it will always be better when you do it his way, and honestly, it’s never going to work if we force it.

[00:05:11] I literally just had a student in the TTVA program that was struggling with not finding clients and just feeling like she was letting her family down, not providing for them, and I said to her, I mean, I gave her suggestions on what to do to find clients, but I also said, are you giving this to the Lord? Are you taking that time to ask him? And she’s like, no, honestly, I’ve just kind of gotten away from that. I’ve just been so stressed. I’m like, okay, well I’m gonna challenge you to get back to that first and foremost, and then put the other tips I gave you after that. So she did. She literally, after we talked, she prayed. And then a little bit later, she prayed again through tears, and then she went and checked her email and she had a client ready to hire her. You guys, literally, sometimes it’s just giving the control to the Lord and asking him to provide for us. Okay? It’s sometimes we forget. It’s really easy to forget, but the beauty of remembering to trust God. It will just benefit you tenfold.

[00:06:23] All right, the next Bible verse I have is Psalm 27:14. It says, “Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.” Y’all. I don’t know if you just noticed, but wait for the Lord is said twice. This verse is asking us to wait on God to be strong and to have courage in that waiting process. For me, this often looks like waiting on God because I haven’t gotten confirmation on something waiting to take action. Or maybe I am taking action, but I’m waiting because there’s no fruit yet, because God is doing something in the sowing. There’s not always fruit and success that you can see. A lot of times God is working behind the scenes.

[00:07:09] We have to continue trusting that it’s not even about us, that it is so much bigger than us. This is about the mission and the calling that you have and the people you’re supposed to help. So we just have to wait on the Lord. It’s as simple as that. The first verse I mentioned is reminding us that it’s going to take time. The second one is saying, wait on the Lord, and while you wait, be strong and take courage as we wait. It’s not easy. The waiting is not peaceful. It’s often difficult. It comes with a loss of willpower. The internal dialogue, the inner critic, the spiritual warfare. The waiting comes with all the other obstacles you’re going to have to overcome. Otherwise, God wouldn’t have said, be strong. Let your heart take courage. We’re gonna need that courage in the waiting. So what do we do to do this? You guys? You have to get in the word, get into a prayer life that’s super intentional daily. Be vulnerable and God led. You journal, you seek Christ’s counsel. Surround yourself with other Christian people who have your back. You pray for your heart and your mind every morning, and pray these scriptures over yourself, for example, Lord, help me wait on you. Help me to wear Psalm 27:14 over my life. Help me to be strong, grow my strengths, amplify my strengths, equip me so that my heart will be courageous as I wait on you.

[00:08:38] All right. The next verse that I have for you is Philippians 4:6. It encourages us not to worry about anything but to pray about it. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving. Present your request to God.” God is saying, don’t be anxious either. You’re gonna deal with stuff as he’s telling you to be strong and courageous, but we don’t have to be anxious about it. Don’t worry about it. For everything that comes your way, he wants you to pray and petition him. So this is your request, either written or verbal that you’re bringing to God. And then also bringing it with Thanksgiving, for example.

[00:09:22] Lord, I give thanks for this waiting. I give thanks for this opposition because that means I’m getting closer to what you are crafting. That is beautiful in my life. Again, present your request to him. Sit with him, be with him, and grow in that relationship with him. God is holy and we have to come to him with reverence. He’s also our counselor, your friend, your father. We can go to him and all seasons with all things. So these verses really show us that leaning on God’s word is going to help you weather the waiting. We know that what we’re called to do is going to be beautiful, but it’s going to take time. You’re gonna need to wait on him with strength and courage.

[00:10:05] And lastly, in order to get through that waiting, we have to pray and petition with Thanksgiving. So I know that you can get through the seasons of growth and the seasons of pushing through, even though you want it to happen sooner. I know you can trust in him, believe in the plan that he has for us, and keep on walking. So I pray that this episode blesses you and that the scriptures I gave you would be an anointing, a fresh wind, a word over you, your life and your business, your mind, your heart, that you would be refreshed to keep on showing up and doing the good works that God has called for you. If you want to walk this out with me, head on over carefully, consider working with me, whether that be through learning everything you need to know about becoming a virtual assistant so you can quit teaching and our teacher turned virtual assistant program, or if you’re already a virtual assistant, growing your business with God at the center. Making it into something that is profitable for the Kingdom of God and for your family and the Scaling Virtual Assistant Mastermind, either of those programs we have. So you can just grow stronger in your faith and lean on him through your journey out of teaching or growing your virtual assistant business.

[00:11:20] I’ve got your back so you can find the Teacher Turned Virtual Assistant program info at teacherturnedvirtualassistant.com. You can find the Scaling Virtual assistant mastermind info at ariannavernier.com/mastermind. Either way, I would love to partner with you and just. Grow together in sisterhood with like-minded Christian women who are just trying to do this thing. It’s better themselves, their family, to grow their relationship with God, to trust in him more and all the things. So I hope this encourages you and blesses you, and challenges you and helps you become the most God-centered version of yourself as a business owner, mom, friend, wife, sister, and everything else that you are.