Well, we're here.
We are here.
Welcome to the Young in Love podcast.
This is a podcast where being young in love has absolutely nothing to do with your age
in love, but has all to do with your maturity and your growth in love over time.
We talk about all things love and relationships here, and we branch them off, or I branch
them off, I guess I'm the only person here, right?
I branch them off in three different sections.
The first section is our spiritual love.
The second one is our love with others, whether that be relationships that we have, boyfriend,
girlfriend, husband, wife, fiance, fiance, or relationships with our parents, with our
siblings, with our friends, with our cousins, so on and so forth.
And then the last strand that we talk about here, which is probably always counted as
a second most important relationship, is a relationship that we have with ourselves.
I always like to say and always like to think I am no good to you if I am no good to me.
I am cheesing super hard.
If you were watching this on YouTube, then you know that I've been cheesing hard the
entire introduction because this is the first official episode of this podcast.
And real quick, I just want to be super transparent and let you know that all this podcast equipment,
you can't really see there's a light here.
I actually do like the box showing here, but there's a light here.
There's a light here.
There's a light right here.
There's a lot of here.
There's a podcast mic and a podcast stand here.
There's a recorder.
I forget a mixer.
The audio is going to switch.
Now there's a mixer because I didn't have it on the entire time.
Anyway, that relates to the reason why I was smiling and it's because this is the first
episode that I'm filming of this podcast and I'm laughing because I had all this equipment
probably a year between a year and a year and a half ago because I knew that I would
have a podcast.
It was always named the Young and Love Podcast.
I just didn't know how to start it.
And so one day randomly propped up the camera and I filmed a video and I told God that this
video gets 20,000 views in seven days.
I will march on and I will do this podcast thing.
And in seven days, I got a million views.
And so I was like, Oh, I guess I guess I really got to do this podcast.
Guess I really got to do this podcast thing.
Yeah.
Huh?
So we're here and we're doing the thing.
Today's episode, as you can tell by the title, is an episode that I want to start off with
because I think it's something that a lot of people might be dealing with, especially
in my age.
But really, I feel like you kind of deal with you can deal with this all throughout your
life.
And it is a it is a episode topic that is very relevant to the timing in my life that
I'm kind of dealing with right now.
And it's about being alive on purpose.
I think a lot of us, I think a lot of people are alive and struggling with finding purpose.
I think a lot of people are alive and just facing the challenge of not just not only
can you not identify what your purpose is, but since you haven't identified it, it kind
of feels like you're living life in a void, you're living life in a void that feels purposeless.
I don't necessarily feel purposeless, but I have made some pretty drastic changes, two
major drastic changes in my life that are attached to purpose.
The first thing is me sitting in this.
I mean, all of it really is me sitting in this apartment right now at the top of the
sea.
I moved out on my own.
Not only did I move out on my own, but I decided to move twenty five.
I decided to move six hours away from home.
In addition to that, I quit a job.
I quit a job at a company that I had kind of worked my way through the ranks a little
bit where my first started at and kind of gave up all of that because it didn't feel
attached to my purpose.
The church that I was going to at the time loved the people there, loved the church there,
but didn't really feel attached to my purpose.
And once I turned twenty five, I kind of made the decision in myself that I was not going
to do anything at all.
I don't care who was involved, didn't care if it was a relationship, if it was a job.
If it did not serve my purpose, then I committed to myself that I was not going to serve it.
And so I am in an interesting season of my life trying to define what exactly my purpose
is.
And I think that as we go along throughout this first season, which will just consist
of eight episodes, it'll kind of highlight and identify what season I felt like I was
in before I turned twenty five and then the season that I'm in as as as a moving forward
in life.
And so although I have defined or at least I've identified the path of what my purpose
feels like, I think if we were all to be honest, there are some people who struggle with as
crazy as it might sound.
There are some people who struggle with being alive because for them, there is no clarity
in what their purpose in life is.
Like waking up every day, the day to day interactions that they have either feel repetitive every
single day or it all just feels like a blur altogether.
And I hope that you never feel so overwhelmed or literally so depressed into the lack of
identifying or feeling that you don't have any purpose.
I hope you don't get so overwhelmed in that, that you forget the quest of identifying who
you are and what you were created on this earth for.
I don't think our purpose in life just falls out of the sky.
I think it is.
I think it is an actual quest that we have to go on to identify what exactly we are here
for and then how do we achieve the execution of whatever that purpose is that we have.
But before we get too deep into this conversation, I want to play a game.
And this game that we are going to play this week is called Roses and Thorns.
Wherever you're watching this at, you can participate with me in the comment section
below.
It's called Thorns and Roses.
I'm sorry.
Thorns and Roses.
You can participate in the comment section below.
Tell me what your thorn was this week.
What was the aggravation?
What was the aggravation that you felt like you had to deal with this week?
The thing that probably hurt, the thing that aggravated you, the thing that you could have
done without.
And then what was the rose of this week?
What was the thing that was sweet, the thing that was nice, the thing that you enjoyed?
Today is Tuesday.
I have a Bible study in a half an hour.
Oh my gosh.
Let's see.
My thorn this week was...
My thorn this week, if I'm honest.
I forgot to pay my car note last month.
And so I ended up having to pay last month's car note and this month's car note together,
which seems like a simple thing, but I actually spent the money that was supposed to go to
that car note.
I don't know on what, I don't even know how I missed the fact that I forgot to pay it
because it's not on O2Pay.
But anyway, I got a call from the bank today while I was at Starbucks and they were like,
bro, you got a car from us and we gave you a loan for that car?
You didn't make the payment on the car.
So I had to double up my payment, which luckily, you know, God is nice to me.
So I was able to go ahead and just pay it.
But my thorn was that I wish I would have just been more responsible with my finances
and paid the bill when it was due.
My roles for this week is actually, actually I have two.
My first role for this week is one, I'm doing this podcast, which feels like I don't want
to call it a dream come true.
That seemed a little bit extra, but it is kind of like something that I feel like God
gave to me.
And now it's starting to all come together and starting to all make sense.
Getting comments and DMS every single day of people asking me, where can I find this
podcast that I was literally you have to create the podcast.
It's a whole set up process that you have to go through to create the podcast before
you start uploading things.
And I went on Spotify and on Apple, I think like two days ago, and there's already people
who are following me on there and I haven't even mentioned that I have this.
But obviously, if you see it on TikTok and you're wondering where can I find this podcast,
you would search my name and podcast and it pops up.
But that has been my rules.
That's my first rules for this week.
My second roles is a very special friend to me celebrated her birthday.
Actually your birthday is today and I wanted to do this thing where I was like, oh, you
know, we'll celebrate your birthday as soon as it drops.
I'll call you on FaceTime.
You'll have a cake.
I'll have a cake.
But I waited extremely too late for it, but I ended up door dashing a dessert to her house
and I went to Walmart and I grabbed a cupcake and I put the cupcake.
I put the candles in the cupcake and I sing it birthday.
Yeah, that that was the rules for me.
I like creating memories and that was a memory that we got to create.
That was a memory of her birthday that we got to create together.
And so that was that meant a lot to me and it meant a lot to her as well.
So that was nice.
But yeah, let me know what your thorns are.
Let me know what your rules are down in the comments section below.
I would do my best to respond to what your thorns and what your rules are.
But I really, really genuinely do hope that everybody had a good week this far.
And I hope that you all had more roses or more experiences of roses in your life than
the thorns.
There's actually a scripture in the Bible and it says that all things work together
for the good of them who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose.
And so I think that shifting to this podcast episode today, I think that when we look at
our thorns and roses, not just from these past seven days, but even the thorns and roses
that we've experienced in our life, that every single bad part of our life and every single
good part of our life, they all shape.
They all work together for the good that God has called us to.
And I think the good that God has called us to is one is our ultimate purpose that we
were created for.
But secondly is our individual purpose that we were created for.
What do you say to the person who doesn't feel that the good things or the bad things
are working for their good at all?
What do you do?
One of the first Bible lessons that I taught at my church, at my home church, was what
do you do?
And literally the topic goes, what do you do dot dot dot?
What do you do when the good things that the Bible talks about feels completely opposite
of what you see currently in your life?
What do you do when everybody else seems to be following their dreams and living out their
dreams and finding their purpose and you feel like you are so behind in life?
Everybody else has a car.
Everybody else has their license.
Everybody else is moving out.
Everybody else is in nice relationships.
Everybody else has children.
Everybody else has college degrees.
What do you do when you are not where you want to be?
When at the same time you're surrounded by people who are in the places and have the
possessions of things that you would like to have?
I think the first thing to do is to stop and to take a second and to realize what you do
have.
I think that we it is so easy to be consumed with the negative things that people say it's
so easy to be consumed with the negative things that we see in our life that we don't always
appreciate as much the positive things that we do have in life.
Somebody today was texting.
I was texting back and forth with them and they were saying how they feel so behind.
They're in college right now and how they feel so behind in life and although their
feelings might be a hundred percent justified based based on the conversation that we had,
but the reality is this person is in college.
This person had a debt that had to be paid.
That was a pretty nice amount of money that had to be paid in some way.
Somehow people were able to come through to make sure this person was covered in those
expenses and just different aspects of things that this person needed or wanted that they
have today right now and I think that because the negative things sometimes cloud us or
they stand bigger than the positive things and the positive attributes that we have in
life, I think we oftentimes miscount all the good things that we have that are pushing
us towards our purpose and we highlight the negative thing so much more and I'll be honest.
I'll keep it a book.
When I know that this might seem so I don't know if this seems shallow or not, but the
comments that I get on TikTok, I'm going to say about 90.
I'm going to be honest actually about 99.8 of those were always positive comments when
I was doing the other kind of content that I was doing highlighting problems that women
in the world go through.
When I shifted over to this kind of content, it maybe went to like 98% were all positive
and then 2% were negative and I'll be honest those negative comments, I can remember them
verbatim more than I can remember any positive comment that I had.
I don't know why our brains are wired like that.
I don't know why we see negativity in a way that stands out more than positivity, but
I think that we have to actively remember that not only am I alive for a purpose when
those negative feelings or those negative emotions start to come up, not only am I alive
for a purpose, but I am alive on purpose.
I think that we have these negative thoughts and I think that if we were not supposed to
be here, if we were not meant for some greater purpose in our life, then according to my
faith, according to what I believe that we wouldn't have any purpose to serve, we wouldn't
be on this earth, we wouldn't be on this world if we were not here to serve any purpose.
Oftentimes, and sometimes I think that we have to remember that sometimes our purpose
in life is to serve people who one, will never see and then two, for people who we just can't
see right now.
That we'll have children, we'll have husbands and wives that are attached to our purpose
and because we might not know those people right now, we might not have children right
now, we might not be married or in relationships right now.
I think over time, as we learn, as we grow and as we develop, our purpose will be pulled
out of us and it'll be impactful, but we don't always see what we are to impact right now.
But I absolutely get, I absolutely understand the person who might say or the person who
might think that like, I would rather, there was a time in my life, if I'll be super, super
transparent, there was a time in my life where I, there was a time in my life where I had
suicidal thoughts, but there was also a time in my life where I just did not understand
what my purpose was.
I didn't feel like I served any purpose.
I felt like being alive was a waste of time and not that I'd necessarily wanted to, and
not that I was necessarily suicidal.
I was just like waking up seemed so pointless, like being alive seems so pointless, but I
promise you, if I can give one of the greatest pieces of advice or one of the greatest pieces
of wisdom that I've learned from that point until now is that it eventually starts to
make sense.
What you're here for eventually starts to make sense.
The purpose that you will serve eventually starts to make sense.
The people even that you will serve eventually starts to make sense.
Like the greatest advice is just live.
Like literally whatever your circumstance in life is right now, of course we are always
trying to progress and get to the next best thing, but learn how to live and enjoy the
moments of life that you have right now so that when it is time to serve your purpose,
you were not drained, you were not confused, you were not serving from a place of hostility,
but because you've learned how to enjoy, but because you have learned how to enjoy your
life in the moments where somebody else might look at you and be like, I don't know how
you're enjoying that.
I don't know how you're going through that.
I think when you will learn how to enjoy those moments, then when you get to a moment where
your purpose where literally I'm looking around where everything starts to make sense, where
the lighting is here.
Now I realize why I had these lights all this time.
Now I realize why I bought this podcast equipment, why I bought this system in a time where like
having a podcast didn't make sense.
I think when you learn to live and to enjoy the moments in life that you'll eventually
get to a point in life where you'll look around at the things that you accumulated in your
enjoyment you look around and eventually you'll be like, dang, like this, like I'm glad that
I listened.
I'm glad that I was obedient.
I'm glad that I spent some time and I enjoyed my life even in the time where it didn't make
sense.
I'm glad that I still allowed my dreams to dream.
I'm glad that I still allowed myself to dream.
I'm glad that I still allowed myself to hope.
I'm glad that I still allowed myself to vision to envision myself in a different place, even
when it didn't make sense.
Even when I didn't understand what exactly my purpose was going to be.
I'm glad that I still enjoyed those moments of life because now eventually you will be
in a place where you'll look around.
It will all like it all makes sense.
And I think that for people and I think that for good people, yeah, but I think that for
the people of God, people who really believe in God, like it always works out.
There has never been a situation that I've been in.
There has never been a prayer that I had.
Whether God was faithful enough to me to give me exactly what I was asking for or whether
God was faithful enough to me to give me something different that was not what I was asking for.
It has always worked out for me.
And I think that for the believer, especially I think that for, I remember, I remember hearing
somebody say that you will never, her name is Dawn Brunson.
I remember hearing her say, you can never beat God at giving.
Like no, I, I, no matter when, when I look back and I think about how much I served my
home church, like the years that I put in and the things that I did, I, I, I am so confident
in God.
I am so confident in God's ability to give back to me, not just like financially, not
just even now today, but when I get married, I'm so, I, I'm so invested in the future of
my marriage.
I'm so invested in the future of having children.
I'm so invested in the future of just living my life even before I get married, even after
I get married.
I'm so invested in it because I put in all this time and I know that I've been serving
a God literally all of my, literally all of my life.
Who is more faithful in giving than I can ever be.
Who has more abundance to give than I ever have to give.
Who has more resources to give than I ever have to give, like the ability to give at
all.
I think you'll listen to this and you'll probably be encouraged, but like a week from
now you'll still, you might still be in the place that you were when this episode first
started.
But I think that we have to constantly remind ourselves.
I want to just jump back to, I just want to jump back to real quick.
You can't be God at giving.
There's a scripture, there's a scripture that my youth director used to say to us all
the time and it says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these
things will be added unto you.
And so when I talk about that, I served my church giving all that time, that was literally
the action of me seeking first the kingdom of God.
There were other things that I could have did.
I don't mean like other things that I could have thought of doing.
I mean like there were other things that I was invited to do and as a sacrifice, I was
like, nah, you know, I have church or, you know, just different things that I could have,
I could have slept in on a Sunday because I like to sleep in sleeping is great.
Sleeping is nice.
I enjoy sleeping.
I could have slept in all those Sundays and decided, no, I'm not going to serve.
I could have said no to all the things that I was asked to do.
But because I was so invested in that scripture, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
and all these things will be added unto you because I was so invested in that and really
just genuinely seeking first the kingdom of God.
I can recall and recount to you all the things that I prayed for.
That God is faithful.
There are some things I don't see right now, but I still have hope.
I still have faith that God is faithful enough to bring those things to past.
So I think that you can listen to this episode and you can be encouraged and you can feel
confident.
But a week later, the reality, you know, starts to set back in an hour later, the reality
starts to set back in.
When you close your laptop, you close the phone out, you get, you know, you get in your
room and you walk back into the setting that put you in the that put you in a feeling of
depression anyway.
But I think that we have to constantly remind ourselves that it always works out like I
mean, you literally have to wake up every morning, put it on a sticky note, put as your
screens it literally my screen saviour right now says everything is easy for God.
I think that when we start to remind ourselves who we are, we start to remind ourselves that
there is a light at the end of this tunnel.
We start to remind ourselves that like this situation is terrible, but it won't last always.
I think when we actually remind ourselves constantly that life gets better.
And I think that when we remind ourselves that my purpose is bigger than my depression,
my purpose is bigger than my confusion.
I think that when we start to understand and to know that and to know that like it'll all
make sense and the timing that it's supposed to make sense when we know those things, we'll
be able to live and to operate in a way in life where we enjoy where we are now, even
when it doesn't make sense.
And then we'll get to a place where we eventually get to see that like it all it all worked
out.
It all worked out, man.
It all works out.
I'm telling you, it always works out.
It always.
And I think that for some people it works out fast.
For other people, it works out not fast.
It works out slow.
But I really do.
I can look at every single situation in my life and tell you that God has been faithful.
It always works out.
And I think it always works out when you are on the path that you're supposed to be on.
And when you put in the work to get to that path, I don't think you could just wait.
I don't think you could just wake up and say it's going to work out and go back to bed
and just sit in a pit of depression.
But I think that when you get up and you take accountability, you take responsibility to
making your life, to doing the things that you were supposed to do in life, to doing
the things that bring you closer to your purpose, I think when you wake up and make up your
mind that like, no, I'm going to do what it takes, I think then you'll start to put yourself
on a path of it all making sense that it all works out in the end.
You are alive on purpose.
I am alive on purpose.
You are alive with purpose.
I am alive with purpose.
And though it might not seem like it, though whatever the dream, the vision, the promise
is for you, though it might be hanging in the balance or it might just feel like, oh,
I don't see it right now.
Know that if you were doing the right thing, that if you were taking the time to enjoy
the phase of life or the part of life that you're in right now, that it will all work
out.
And I think that when you wake up and you make that your mantra every day, that it all
works out when you speak positive things, even in the light of negative situations,
I think that when you speak those positive things, then like.
You have no other option but to follow up with the things that you're speaking out of
your mouth.
So I hope that if you are in a place where you struggle with identifying what your purpose
is, I hope you at least learn what the path is that leads you to your purpose.
And I hope that you learn how to still be able to enjoy life while you're searching
for what that purpose is.
I hope that you're reminded.
I said this a thousand times.
I hope that you're reminded that in the end, it all works out.
I think that if you're good and according to my faith, that if you believe in God, then
you have to believe that it like it's all going to work out.
It's all going to get better.
And if you're a person who feels like you know what your purpose is and you've been
chasing it, but like it's not making sense, the results, which I'll be saying the results
aren't resulting.
I think that if you are a person who's actively chasing after your purpose and you feel like
the results aren't resulting.
But in that still, I hope that you don't give up.
I hope that you continue.
Listen, go back to the drawing board.
One of my pastors at my church right now, preached a sermon a few weeks ago and the
topic was pivot.
And I think that sometimes pivoting does not mean that you leave your purpose pivoting
does not mean that you lose your purpose.
Sometimes you just have to pivot the plan that gets you to your purpose.
You have to take a detour.
Detours always get us to the same destination.
So be encouraged.
This is the first episode.
This is a little fun.
It's a little scary because there's nobody in this room.
So I was going to say, I feel like they're watching me, but nobody's watching me.
Nobody's watching me because there's nobody in this room.
But if you enjoyed this episode, episode, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that
you like, I would love to hear what y'all have to say down in the comment section below.
I would love to have some conversations down there.
So make sure you comment down below.
Let me know if you have any tips or any comments on living on purpose or being alive with purpose
or if you have a struggle and you just have some questions that either I can answer or
I can direct you to a link that can answer or maybe somebody in the comment section has
been through what you've been through and they have some answers on what you could do
to kind of make it out of the rut and out of the pit that you're in.
Thank you guys for watching the Young and Love podcast.
Again, you can find us visually and audibly, I guess, on YouTube.
You can look in the description of wherever you're watching this and the YouTube link
will be there.
Otherwise, you can find us everywhere else that podcasts are streamed.
And make sure the important part, make sure you're following me on Instagram, the Darius
Covington.
Until next time, g'day govna.
I just filmed an episode of a podcast.
That's crazy to me.
It's crazy.
Tis is crazy.
Oh, wow.
Church started five minutes ago.
I gotta go.
I gotta log into church.
Log in.
Log in to church.
Log in.
Where is the remote?
I don't know.
Don't need a thumbnail.
There it is.
That's what it's got to do.