In this episode, Joseph dives into the topic of being the spiritual head of the home. He emphasizes the importance of taking on this role even before entering a relationship and shares personal experiences of rushing into relationships without fully developing himself as a leader. Joseph reflects on his journey of understanding that being a spiritual head starts with being a spiritual head of oneself. Joseph explores the concept of serving and sacrificing as a leader, drawing from biblical references and highlighting the need for effective communication with God. He encourages listeners to spend time in quiet reflection and develop a deep relationship with God, as this foundation will help them navigate the chaos and noise of life. Joseph also discusses the importance of serving and supporting one's partner in a relationship, emphasizing that leadership in the home is a shared responsibility. He addresses the misconceptions around leadership and submission, stressing the importance of mutual respect and the ability to fulfill different roles within a relationship. Joseph concludes by encouraging listeners to invest in their own personal growth and leadership development, as this will ultimately lead to a more fulfilling and blessed life. Tune in to this insightful episode as Joseph provides valuable insights on being the spiritual head of the home and the benefits it brings to relationships and personal growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Being the spiritual head of the home starts with being a spiritual head of oneself.

• Leadership in the home is a shared responsibility.

• Effective communication with God is crucial for understanding His guidance and direction.

• Leadership is about serving and sacrificing, following the example of Christ's love for the church.

• Building a strong foundation as a leader and cultivating personal growth is essential.

• Alone time and self-reflection are valuable for personal and spiritual growth.

Tweetable Moments:

1. “A lot of times God will give us the answer to something before we ever even have the question.”

2. “Leaders create what we want through people.”

3. “This is where the model of leadership starts. It starts with us knowing and understanding that we've going to communicate with God.”

4. “If you'll learn to spend time with God in the quiet times and learning to hear his voice in the quiet times, you will not struggle to hear His voice in the chaotic times.”

Connect with joseph James at:

Website: https://thealphaleadership.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alphaleadership

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/?hl=en

Joseph: Okay. There it goes. Father God, we just thank you for this wonderful night for bringing Michael and anybody else that's able to make it tonight. Father, we just thank you for everything that they're, that you're doing in their lives. So God, that you're drawing them closer to you each and every day, or as we dive deeper into becoming who you've called us to be as leaders, God just lead us and direct us. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us throughout the week, throughout each and every day to just build who we are, who you've called us to be as Kingdom men, father God, kingdom leaders. We thank you for this, and we just ask you to just pour out your spirit tonight as you speak through me, father God, in Jesus name. Amen, amen.

All right, brother. One thing I wanna to the main thing I wanted to talk tonight about is I'm just looking at my notes, is being the spiritual head of the home, okay. And to me, this is something that far precedes ever being a relationship. A lot of people wait until they're married to do certain things within a relationship, and I think that's where we mess up, we mess up sometimes waiting to be in a relationship to start doing things. All right, I get a lot of people and I know we talked about this the other week, about, just being alone right now, being in that season of being alone and not being in a relationship, and I look back now and I'm. Man, I wish I would've took more advantage of my season of being alone, even after my wife passed away. I was in such a hurry to get help with raising the kids and having a mother and things like that, and going back to being in a relationship, and it took a long time in my development, developmental with the development, I should say, in the relationship with Rachel because there were things that I had to work on my own. And ultimately being a leader, being a spiritual head of the home, we have to be a spiritual head of ourselves, right? Our body, us our soul is our first home. Saying that we're, we live outside of, our parents' home and things like that, right? I remember it wasn't my, it wasn't my job to be the spiritual head of my home growing up as a child. Of course, that's not our role. But I do remember being able to change the atmosphere at different times and so knowing and understanding that knowing and understanding that I had the ability to be able to change the atmosphere as a young child, I know that I had the ability to be able to do that as an adult. And the way I did that as a young child is simply just I remember when things would get toxic. That dad was fighting, we were fighting dad, we were getting abused by dad. He would, do something to mom and then he would leave or whatever the case is. It always seemed like it happened a lot on the weekends ‘cause mainly we're all, we were all home on the weekends and especially during the summer. And so I remember as a kid putting on, worship music, music that we would listen to at church, on the radio or on the, at the time, the cassette player, and I remember like the whole dynamic atmosphere, the atmosphere would change and it would completely shift to something that was very chaotic and very toxic to. Something that of peace and we would just have peace just come about our home, right? And so even though I wasn't the spiritual head of the home, I was able to change the atmosphere within the home, even as a little kid, okay? So God's called us to be that spiritual head, right? And how do we go about doing that? Man, the first thing we have to do, especially in that time of being alone and not lonely. I wanna make sure we have, we distinct, the two is really pursuing after God and really chasing after God, if you look at the scriptural reference of David King David, the little boy that killed Goliath, right? It was in his time of hurting sheep and feeding his brothers and serving that he was alone with God, that was the time that he began to develop the relationship. One thing that I have struggled with and a lot of people do across the board, and I'll never forget this, when it really, when this revelation hit me, When you go through things, let's just say a job change, right? Or you're feeling restless about this job or even in a relationship, right? And you're like, I'm praying God, is she the one? God, am I supposed to stay here at this job? I don't really like my boss. There's a lot of things that are speaking to us at that time, our own thoughts, our own fears, our own emotions, and it we can really confuse or let's say not have clarity on the voice of God at that time for us, because there's so much speaking at us, right? It's kinda having, being at a concert and somebody's trying to speak next to you, but yet you got all the blaring noise, and it's, if you're good and I'm never been good at this, but my mother was, and so is my wife, Rachel, they're very great at reading lips. Okay, so if I'm standing in a room, and if you ever see me across the room, go, huh? And you're trying to mouth something to me, just know I don't know what you're saying. I'm even liable to me mess up the words, I love you, okay. All right, but my wife and my mom, they're really great at it. They recognize being able to see those lips move and have practiced long enough, when we spend time enough with somebody, we can get good at detecting their voice. Okay, and I make this correlation also, I was in chorus when I was in high school, it was not because I could sing, it was because of, I thought it was gonna be an easy class, okay. But what I was able to learn and pick up on is, even from a noisy place, even from multiple people singing, is I would be able to look at that individual singing and pick out their individual voice, even though it was coming through the sound system, at the same time, other voices were being sound okay. Even within a choir, I can look at somebody, even though I may not be able to understood what was their mouth was moving or lip syncing or reading their lips, I'm sorry, is I was, I'm able to distinctively look at it and then know that this particular voice matches up with this particular person. Simply because just getting to know somebody and I even can do it without that. The more we get to know somebody, the more, especially in struggle and struggle times in chaotic times and noisy times, in times of not feeling peace, is that when we're asking God, What is it that you're speaking to me about? What is it that you're calling me to do? Is it, is this e this relationship? Is this who you have for me? I'll be honest. When I met my first wife, of course you know that she's deceased. But I, no, God did speak to me that she was the one, it was more like, I'm 25 years old and I'm running out of time. That's how I looked at my life at that time, and we met, we hit it off and, we made it work, we made our relationship work, we made relationship work y and of course we were married for almost 14 years before she passed away, but if you asked me, she's if you asked me the question, did God tell you she was your wife? No, I don't even know if I asked them, but if I did I probably vaguely remember that if I did ask him. That even if he said, no, she's not your wife, I would not have been able to clearly hear because I was so wrapped up in her emotionally, by the time I started asking. Now, Rachel, my wife now is, I remember the Holy Spirit speaking to me before I ever even friend requested her on Facebook. Now I was not the one that like jumped out it and says, God said you're going to be my wife, I probably would've ran her away, okay. However, it was in those quiet times that I was able to hear the voice of God, so that in the struggle, in the midst of chaos, in the midst of loudness and abstractness and being distracted, I can clearly hear that voice. A lot of times God will give us the answer to something before we're ever even looking for the, before we ever even have the question. We get the answers to problems before we ever even get in a situation, to where we need this. And so then when we do go and ask and the Holy Spirit says, no, God speaks no to, or maybe you're just like, God I recognize your voice. The word of God says, my sheep will hear my voice, okay? And ultimately in that right there is knowing and understanding that leading comes from me being a spiritual head of my home. But it happens in those times of aloneness and being developed when there's, I wouldn't say nothing else going on in your life, but in the building process of your relationship with you and God. That's the absolute first thing now, let's take it a step deeper, you get into a relationship with somebody, okay? I've heard it said multiple times that you know if you're not married, then you shouldn't be the head of the home, okay? They should be showing you, let's say, your spouse. She should be showing you that she could be, a helpmate and you should be showing her that you could be a leader. Okay, but it's not, we're not called to lead at that moment, alright? That's a time of us actually looking and seeing, is this person going to be a fit as a wife? Now, of course, God, hopefully, God, you've already asked God and God has already spoken to you about that, right? But for a lot of occasions, a lot of times we don't ever get to that point, we get to that point when things are struggling, when things are like, Okay, God, is she really the one, we're about to get married, and I'm like great time to start asking now, but if you understand or if you look back in Genesis, God created the family, Adam and then Eve, when he created Adam, he not create Adam to dominate, but he created Adam to lead, and that was in the example of God giving Adam the job to name and give him the responsibility and the entrustment to care over the land and the animals. And that was a position of leadership, not domination, not dictatorship, but of leadership, and I believe there's a big difference between the two. And then ultimately the model of the family at some point in time, and I don't know the timeframe, it doesn't biblically share that, but there's a timeframe that when God sees Adam needs a help mate, okay? And he sends him a wife, so no one in understanding that when God put Adam to sleep God looked at Adam okay and says, you need a help mate. God knew before we ever knew what we needed. If God would've waited us for us to ask I'd, he'd probably still be waiting, especially for a woman as a helpmate, okay. Knowing and understanding that right there, God saw that we had the need. He provided us the helpmate by putting Adam to sleep, creating Eve, putting her on the earth to simply help. So no one in understanding that role, that as we are to be the leader she is to help us, that does not mean that we're not equal, okay. And there's a lot of things, of course, society says that, a man should, and I just made a post about this on Facebook, man versus male versus female, and the hierarchy of patriarchy of a man and his abuse of power. And so women needs to rise up and take that power back, okay? It really has to do with not power or the abuse of power, it has everything to do with the poorness of leadership because leadership is about helping other people grow. It's about helping them evolve, it is not about telling them what to do in terms of you can only do this within the household or within the confines of the house. God, so if you think about it, I don't know at what point if Adam had everything named on the earth, but whatever the things that he was doing, which what God told him to do, he says, I need to send you a helpmate. So ultimately at some point in time, Eve was created to help Adam do his job, right?

Michael: Yeah. Even if he, go ahead, even if he, the Bible, when it talks off marriages, talks about two people becoming one body and like you don't really like the misconcept where, oh, marriage is slavery, whatever. No, you don't make your own body a slave to whatever you're doing, there's a role in it.

Joseph: Yeah, absolutely, Michael, great job. So that's the ultimate model is that we together, as husband and wife, okay? And you can start these things even in your relationship. Because here's the thing, Michael, is, this right here is I'm not, it says a man that Findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, not a man that findeth a girl developing into a wife, not a man that findeth somebody that eventually one day will be a wife, okay. Is that he fine with the wife? So does that mean she's gonna be perfect? Absolutely not. Does that mean she's gonna be a complete? Absolutely not. It is going to be that she is wife material that we as leaders can develop into the wife that God has for us. That's what leaders do, leaders create what we want through people, if I feel like I need help in this area, then hey, I teach this person this, or I hire this person that already has that skillset, and I develop it into what benefits me as a leader, whether it's of a business or whether it's even my family. No different than my children, if I'm raising children, I want to develop them into the women and men, okay. That God has on their life, not the, I didn't make it as a pro baseball player, so I'm gonna mold my son into a baseball player, and then I'm gonna force him to play baseball his whole entire life, okay. That's not leadership, that's control ship, okay, and the recipe for this hasn't changed. God hasn't changed this as a model of a family. Adam and Eve eventually had two, two boys it was the model of the family. So when we understand that God is a loving father and who cares for us it's that very thing that we have as the life is the gift from him. But this is where the model of leadership starts. It starts with us knowing and understanding that we've gotta communicate with God, we've gotta learn how to communicate with God, we see the breakdown in marriage and relationship is, when God told Adam not to eat from the knowledge of Tree of Life. I'm saying the tree of life and with that when he, not, when he did not communicate to Adam, I mean to Eve, there was a breakdown in communication, there was a breakdown in leadership right there, so ultimately when Adam, when God called out to Adam, it's not that God didn't know where Adam was at, it's that there was a disconnect between the relationship of God and Adam. The purity, because sin had now just entered in was completely gone, but that's where we look back at the role of leadership within a home, if we want God's blessings the big thing about, is doing what God has called us as men to do, and this says in Ephesians, husbands love your wife. Is Christ, love the church, what did Christ do for the church? He came to serve and he came to sacrifice, okay. We have to be willing to serve our family, we have to be willing to serve our wife, we have to be willing to serve even ourself, that's crazy. It's like, how can I serve myself? We serve ourself by taking care of our body. I know you're very avid in eating healthy and drinking healthy, you're taking care of your body, okay. So with that right there is, we have to serve and be a servant of ourself, but we also have to be a servant of who God has called us to be within our own home. That starts during that alone time, okay? So how do we know? How can we truly have God bless our relationship and bless our own individual? We have to do what God is blessing, okay? We always pray, and I used to pray this like this for years, God bless this, God bless what I'm doing, God bless what I'm doing, okay? And it's not that God's not in the blessing business. Why don't I be a part of what God is already blessing versus God being a part of what I need blessed, and I think that's a powerful statement, is if God is saying, love your wives like Christ, love the church, serve your wife, okay? Be willing to sacrifice for your wife, alright? If I do that according to, I know that by biblical principle I'm going to be blessed. So I am doing exactly what God has called me, to do and to do number one, but I've also been a part of what God is blessing already, and so that's another way of building the blessings in your own life because what culture tells us to do is compete against each other, you go out and do this, Michael, and you have your wife go out and do this, and hopefully she doesn't make more money than you. Society's telling her that she needs to make more money than you are, because eventually one day you're gonna get divorced and she needs to have it all on her own, that's what society's paint, painting the picture, that's not God, how God designed everything, God designed everything to and for us to lead to be that biblical example as a serving, husband or serving? Mate, okay. And we see this all throughout the Bible when the biblical aspect of when different people. I accepted Jesus how their family was blessed because of what he did with their family, okay? In John 4:53 in Atlanta, Cana, the centurion in Cornelius in Acts 10, all those people right there were blessed because of what they, what God had called them to do, ultimately we have to look at is how can we be a leader of our home, is do what God has called us to do, and that is to serve our wives, love your wives as Christ loved the church, he came to serve and he came to sacrifice. Alright, so the and ultimately and I kind of wanna, I don't wanna go too deep in this, but there's a lot of different ways to serve biblically, we there's different ways to serve, but serving in a home is more than just cooking and washing clothes. It's ultimately meeting the needs of each other, I know Rachel and I have conversations daily about how can she'll come to me. She's babe, how can I help you with the business? How can I help you? Whether that's with the alpha leadership, whether that's with professional canine solutions, the dog training, whatever it may be. It may be something as simple as writing content, editing videos, making a Facebook post. She's asking me how can she help. She's asking me how can she serve, okay? And then of course, I'll do the same thing, babe. You're going out and doing something, is there anything that I can do? Yeah. I need you to fold the clothes. I need you to cook dinner. Hey, I need you to let the dogs out. We're serving each other in different roles, but here's the thing. This is what I love about the helpmate and a man serving, right? They're both called to serve, okay? Christ's example of serving the church and a woman's example by God saying, I'm sending you a helpmate, okay. And so we know biblically, and of course it says for a woman to respect or another word is submit, okay? Submission is not being controlled, it's not being dominated, right? It's not an attitude, it's a spirit of serving, okay? Is there are roles that we will fill within a relationship that benefit the relationship from one, from another, and what I mean by this is this right here, is I have handled my own finances for 44 years of my life, I handled it in my first marriage, I can't say that I'm the greatest at it, I like to spend more money than what's in the bank account. Now do I keep a track of my bills? I finally have, okay, after I used the bounce checks and write hot checks and borrow money and put more money on a credit card and get over insufficient funds and overdraft fees, and I wasn't managing my money right, okay. Even though I have been taught multiple ways to do it, I like to spend money, I really do, okay. I would probably be the guy that win wins the lottery and spends it all in one day, okay. I'm not smarter now, so it would be investing more in one day than anything, but Rachel, on the other hand, my wife on the other hand, she's very frugal, so she doesn't like to spend money, she likes to say that, she likes to be like, okay, this money is allotted for this and this money. So I know that if I need to manage things properly, I can do one of two things. I can either say, Hey, can you help me with the budget and make sure we stay on track or I can sit there and say, babe, I've done a horrible job for the last 44 years of my life managing money, here you go, I need that to be your role, can that be your role in this house? Okay, some husbands love to absolutely cook, okay. I grew up cooking. I can't say I didn't like it, but I had a wife, my first wife, she loved to cook. I'm like, okay, it's all yours. Alright, hey Rachel, even though she cooks a little bit more than I do, we had times shares I'll pop the pizza in the oven. That's me. Okay, alright, she's making spaghetti with meatballs and grilled chicken and things like that, and I'm like, okay. There's some leftovers or there's some microwave wheel meals, we still serve the purpose, it's just in two different aspects, okay. So that's ultimately how we can truly serve each other. And it can be in a lot of different ways in terms of the things that come around the house, if I see her doing something, I don't like folding clothes, but I'm like, okay. I'm either gonna help fold clothes or I'm gonna hear her, okay. And I'm like, I'll choose the lesser of the bottle clothes, don't talk back to me, okay. Clothes don't give me an attitude, so I'd rather just go ahead and help her fold clothes and have to hear her, say things about, why can't you help me or why can't you do this? Why? And I'm like, get the kids to come and get their clothes. All these different things, right? But ultimately we are called to help and serve. So what is our role our role goes back to the biblical foundation of what God created Adam, okay? God spent before, before Eve was ever in the picture, Adam dined. He spent time with God, you look at different people, you look at Moses, you look at Joshua, you look at David, you look at great leaders across the world. Today and they'll tell you, it's my time with God, it's my time with God that I'm spending those alone times, you look at people that are living extremely blessed lives, they may not have the greatest relationship with God, but they have a relationship with God, most of them do, can't say all of them, okay. But it's that alone time that we're spending and developing in God, we've all heard the phrase you know about do things in private and it'll be rewarded in public, okay. That's ultimately, God's plan is, God wants us to have a divine relationship with him so that he can bring favor on us. People will sit there and say, oh, he got lucky, he got lucky, he made this amount of money, or he got lucky. No, you don't know the work I've been spending behind closed doors when nobody is watching, when I'm crying my eyes out because I don't know what to do when I'm asking, God, will you speak to my heart, will you speak to my life? But if we can, if we can't, Michael, if you can take away this one thing right here and those that listen to the recording, if you can take away this one thing, if you'll learn to spend time with God in the quiet times and learning to hear his voice in the quiet times, you will not struggle to hear His voice in the chaotic times, because it's in the quiet times that he speaks when everything else is so loud. I don't know about you, brother, that was some good stuff tonight.

Michael: Yeah, it was.

Joseph: And ultimately Michael, that's who God has called us to be first. He's called us to be leaders within our home, leaders within ourself first, and that comes, leadership comes in so many different ways. It comes through so many different styles and highlights of, different leaders throughout time, throughout the bible, throughout history, but it's the I go back and I reference people like David that killed Goliath, it's Goliath had already been out there for days yelling and taunting the Israelite children the army of the Israelites, and nobody would step up, and finally it was day even doing what he was called to do. He was called to serve his brothers by, he was serving his father too, serving his family and bringing lunch, so to say, back and forth to his brothers in the midst of also, hurting the sheep, protecting the flock, right? So in the midst of him doing what he was called to do, okay, in the midst of him serving, he stumbled upon somebody that was doing, his God. He's I'm not putting up with this anymore, and of course we all know the story about him hitting Goliath, Y, but it was the fact that he was there to serve, not how great of a slingshot, kid, he was not, whether he had killed a lion or a tiger or bear or anything else like that. What the Bible says when he was protecting his sheep, it was a fact that he was serving, he was spending time with God in those quiet hours so that when the noise and the ruckus and everything was here, he knew without a doubt, he didn't have to sit there and say, God, am I supposed to go out there? I'm not really sure, maybe I need to call my friend up and get them to answer for me, maybe they'll give me a really great dialogue, maybe they'll give me a scripture verse, let me call my pastor up, he knew right then and there, the moment he heard Goliath taunting his God, he's I already know. And the way I already know is because God has been preparing me my whole entire life for this very moment when he was doing it in a different way, he wasn't having him kill Goliath every single day, he was having him protect what God has had given him. He was protecting, he was serving, and then the moment the chaos came, he already knew the voice of God. So when God spoke to him about things, it was that time to relinquish what God had for David, and of course that's where the favor of God came on him, it's not that the favor, like all of a sudden David picked up a rock and a slingshot and for the first time ever, he slung that thing and it hit Goliath right in the forehead, okay? It was a fact that David had been protecting his sheep for so long, practicing with the slingshot and the rocks, so when the con right came, it wasn't a matter of luck. It wasn't a matter of God guiding it, it was a matter of God had already placed his hand on David, that alone time to defeat the very giants when all the noise and the ruckus and the chaos is going on. So brother, I just encourage you tonight, spend that time with God, make this alone time in the season that you're in right now, the best season you can ever look at, so that when the time comes that God has the woman for you, you're already prepared, you're already ready, you're the husband material, you're the man, you're the leader, you're Michael the man, superman, right? Isn't that what Obama called you, superman? You are. But we do that now in the alone time, if we wait until we get into relationships, if we wait until getting into the business, if we wait till all those things are happening that are noisy and chaotic and maybe troublesome and worrisome and stressful, that's when we start to struggle to hear the voice of God for us, and that's when we start to doubt things, and that's when we're like, you know what? I'll just take it in my own hands to be in this relationship and I'll just pray that God blesses me in what I'm doing instead of me doing what God is already blessing.

Michael: Yeah, that reminds me of, that reminds me of time I was talking to Nate. He was like, a lot of times he was like, really the smart thing is to write at a plant as like a business owner, then go and do it, but he was like, how often do we as entrepreneurs just deep dive into something then, oh, I'll figure out the rest as they go along, and if you take that oh, like though, like Nate was talking about, like writing some stuff out, making some plans, that's your, like you've been talking about, that's your quiet time, that's your quiet period, if you do all that, put in the work, talk to God, then that pre the hard time said the entrepreneur approach of, taking grants, commit first, figure out the rest later.

Joseph: That's right, that's absolutely right. Absolutely right, brother, that's all I've got for tonight, man. I just wanted to cover that. And I know we're only 40 minutes into the hour, but I just wanted to share that with you and we're just gonna build upon that each and every week, and go from there.