Raise The Praise

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

Welcome faith friends. Let's get ready for today's episode.

My goal is to educate and encourage the faith community to reverse the conditions of our traditions, take back our health and live the life we deserve and complete our purpose on this side.

I am not an expert on authority or an authority on anything, but I will share with you as a witness. With attention to our health and putting actions behind it helps us enjoy a better quality of life as we pursue our purpose in God.

So my prayer is that you may hear something that will help you on your health journey or learn something that causes you to reflect, revise, renew, revive, revisit. We commit all the re's, whatever that helps you to know that God is concerned about your health, and He wants the best for all of us.

So I just want to start with a quick prayer because it's just on my heart to do that, so...

Father, I honor you today, I thank you and appreciate you for this opportunity to share what you have laid on my heart today, I pray that hearts and minds are clear. To hear your voice through your word and what is shared during this episode, I ask this in Your son, Jesus' name, Amen.

Alright, so three words I want us to focus on as you listen to this episode, are you prepared to fulfill your destiny, those words on fulfilling destiny and holy. For the sake of this episode, for Fulfilling, we're going to say it is to carry out or bring to realization as a prophecy or promise is to perform or do as duty, obey or follow commands. Fulfilling is to bring to an end, finish our complete as a period of time, the word Destiny is something that is to happen, it's that pre-determined course of events, it's God's unique purpose, His special plan for your life, and that is tailored just for you. And the word Holy, meaning dedicated or devoted to the service of God, the church, your fit, having a spiritually pure quality.

Those are the definitions that I want you to keep in mind as you listen in today.

 

WAYS TO CONNECT WITH ME…

• Website: https://raisethepraisepodcast.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jbell2007

• Facebook Group: https://www.choose2praise.com

 

SHOWNOTES:

•    Well, in order to fulfill our destiny as holy women, we must understand and attend to our mind, body and spirit. Our mind, that capacity to think. Our body, which is the temple, and the spirit, that which connects us with God. So let's talk about the soul, where the mind resides. What we think, believe and feel matters and plays a part in fulfilling our destiny, however, we can think and talk ourselves out of a lot of things, so we must keep our minds, which is our thoughts, and emotions in check with the Holy Spirit. So how we do that, we do that by renewing our mind. (4:47)

•    Sometimes you have to encourage yourself in the Lord and whatever you are pursuing, trust me, encourage yourself, let's go on to the Spirit now. The Spirit, that which connects us to God, the way we communicate with Him, there is no other connection to you. You can't send Him a wire, you can't send Him a tack, you can't DM, God, you can't look them up on IG or Snapchat or even have a Zoom meeting. The only way for us to commune with Him is through our Spirits, we were created to do just that. (6:25)

•    1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20 says glorify God in your body and spirit. Or, do you not know that your body, this physical structure, is the temple place where God dwells of the Holy Spirit? It was in you. When you have from God and you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are gods. (9:10)

•   This temple that houses the Holy Spirit, how I do or how can I honor value and take care of it? Well, I'm glad you ask because it all depends on how we take care of our health, let's talk about our health, what is it, what is it not? And, how we've been conditioned by tradition over the years that has impacted our help, especiall

WHAT THIS EPISODES ABOUT:

Welcome to Raise the Praise where we reclaim our joy and thrive in life! I just want to say a huge thank you right up front to my special guest Stefanie Gass.

Stefanie shares her God-led calling by finding clarity through Christ and knowing the truth is what makes you free.

After becoming a corporate powerhouse by 26 and realizing she needed a way to end the 60 hour workweek and travel so that she could settle down and start a family, Stefanie was introduced to network marketing. 2 years (and a TON) of hustle later, she had “made it”. I.e. The top 1% of this company, paid for cars, free trips, and even walked the stage holding a life-sized, 50K bonus check…

Only to find her ego and insatiable drive to financial success wasn’t sustainable. Nor was it making her happy… with all her eggs in this one crushed up little basket, and a team that was off and looking for the next best thing she was knocked to her knees. 60 pounds overweight after her second son and borrowing money from her kid’s savings accounts to cover cash flow problems, Stefanie was searching for purpose, worth, and her calling.

Stefanie was led to renewed spirituality and went through a massive life transformation to find her truth.

Learn what Stefanie discovered, listen in to today's episode of Raise the Praise...

 

 

WAYS TO CONNECT WITH ME & STEFANIE…

• Website: https://raisethepraisepodcast.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jbell2007

• Facebook Group: https://www.choose2praise.com

• Stefanie Gass' Website: https://www.stefaniegass.com

 

SHOWNOTES:

•     I came up with this idea of being a mom and just really embodying that, and then also being an entrepreneur, that's the word MOMpreneur plus Jesus because where else does any of this come from? The provision, the vision in our business, the spiritual gift, things that we all have. Our precious children, it's all from Jesus. And then finally, what's the final secret ingredient to living my best life? It's coffee. (2:16)

•    I had climbed the corporate ladder really quickly, and I was the first, well, the youngest financial controller in the solar company, that was a global company. I was jet setting to Germany and Spain and running this finance division. It was so cool because it was just me. It was just me and myself, and I. And I didn't have a family, or I didn't have anybody to worry about, but it never felt right. What did feel right at the time, so I thought, was money, rank, raises, the corporate ladder, and I come to realize that some of my spiritual giftings are also the enemy's favorite way to control me, thank goodness for the truth being revealed. (4:47)

•    I know that sounds really crazy, but the self-piece of who we are ego, the worldly Stephanie had to die in order for the Christ-like Stephanie to be born. And here's what God did, he did the shake up again, and there was a moment where I sat up at the bank account thingy on the computer and I'm looking... And like we literally have no more money. There's no more money here, and I can't work any harder, like I'm literally going to either kill myself with a nervous breakdown, or I'm just going to give up... There's nothing else I can do. And I went to my husband, I'm 60 pounds overweight, I'm like two seconds from having our second baby, there is just no money left, and I'm like, Hey, by the way, we can't pay the bills this month. (11:46)

•   But I kept being brought back to the truth, and so I found that verse that I love so much, and it's, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And that's John 8-32, it's the promise. It's the promise that when you finally find the truth, you will be finally free, and I kept going, isn't there a way to be free, free from anxiety, free from the work-aholism? Can't I be free to not work on the weekends, can I be free to just have the money that we need to just be... To give back and I wanted to tithe so badly for so many years and we just literally c

Let's get ready for today's episode. Everyone has a story, and your story is meant to be shared because, you'll never know who it's going to touch, who it's going to bless or even possibly save.

WHAT THIS EPISODES ABOUT:

Welcome faith friends. Let's get ready for today's episode.

So where do I begin?

Well, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. So I was that little girl, that school girl who always wanted the extra workbooks. After school was out for the summer, and I would play school, and of course I would be the teacher with my friends in the neighborhood.

I grew up in the Church of God in Christ and I was told by my pastor at the time that you are going to be a teacher, and I told him, I don't think so because you know teachers, they don't make any money. I'm going to be a doctor. When I was grown, I attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, entered the school to be a doctor, but changed my major to education. God has a plan, right?

So this is my story. The evolution of where I came from. I'm beautifully broken and I'm working on me every single day. 

Listen in...

 

WAYS TO CONNECT WITH ME…

• Website: https://raisethepraisepodcast.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jbell2007

• Facebook Group: https://www.choose2praise.com

 

SHOWNOTES:

•    I grabbed a hold of this poem that my mother in-law gave me called 'I Can' by George Washington Carver. I posted that poem right above my door, so every day I walked out, I could see that I can... I can... Long story short, of course I graduated, and as I walked across the stage and I saw that particular Dean of Education sitting there, and I kind of pointed my degree, like... There you go, I did it, I did it. And he gave me this smile, I just remember, I was thinking, either he said those words to me to encourage me, or he really felt that I wasn't teacher material. Either way, I made the decision that I was going to do whatever I need to do. (3:37)

•    He's not only my husband, he's my friend, he's everything. So now we go on and we're doing life and family, faith and careers, we're just doing life. And God has blessed us with three amazing human beings. Kirsten, she's married and she started her life as a nurse, and we have our son, he is in the Air Force and he's doing well, and we have our baby girl who is currently a college student at the University of Texas in Austin, so we're doing life. And, I get my dream job. (6:31)

•    And that call was a call that I got from my hometown to say, You need to come home and see about your mother. You see, my mother has been challenged with Colon Cancer, and it just got really bad in about 2017. I go home, and you will hear from my mother on this podcast, that is my hope that we can get it together, so that you can hear her story. But long story short, four weeks I was there with her in the hospital, I spent the night there, staying with her day in and day out, and saw her declining. All these doctors coming in and going out.. We don't know what's wrong with her. She wasn't in pain, she wasn't hooked up to any tubes, she was just declining. She didn't know who I was, and then the doctors are saying, we've done everything we can do, so we're going to have to move her to hospice. (9:01)

•   God tells me on the drive home, it's time to leave your job. And I'm like, What? If the joy was pretty much gone from doing what I did, because I always said when the joy is gone, it is time to to do something else. I did not know what that something else is going to be. But when I heard God say, leave your job, I thought, Okay, I'm going to leave my job. You all can listen to the episode 01 to get a little bit more about the whole story about me leaving my job and what God had for me next. So, I jump full speed into helping others to live healthy and well, I started to focus on faith community, to live 3 John 2, God wants us to be healthy, he says it in his word, I want you to prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. (15:02)

•   I activated my faith, and one thing I do know for word, I know we're guaranteed to move the hand of God, and that is Lord, your word says, because God tells us to put him in re

Welcome to the very first episode of Raise the Praise, I'm so glad you decided to stop by.

I just want to give you a little background about the journey of this show and also its purpose. You see after leaving my job as a school administrator, which by the way, was my dream job, I found myself out of sorts, lost and wondering, what was I supposed to do next in life?

I asked God, Who do you want me to be?

Join me in today's episode as I share with you God's answer and so much more...