What does it really mean when someone says they want a "God-fearing" partner? And what harm does that language do to how we show up in relationships?

In this episode, Kayla unpacks the phrase "God-fearing" — where it comes from, what it reveals about patriarchal religion, and why conflating fear with love creates unhealthy relationship dynamics. She explores how externalizing our connection to the divine through gatekeepers (priests, pastors, religious leaders) disconnects us from our own divinity and reinforces hierarchy and control.

Kayla shares the difference between Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energies (fire and container, not dominance and submission), and reveals the sacred partnership between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that patriarchy erased from history. She invites us to shift from "God-fearing" to "God-loving" — choosing unconditional love over fear, connection over separation, and co-creation over control.

This episode is a call to remember: God is love. Not fear. And healthy relationships — with the divine, with each other, with ourselves — are built on love, safety, and sacred union.

In this episode, we explore:

• What "God-fearing" really means (and why it's harmful)
• How patriarchal religion externalizes our connection to the divine
• Why conflating fear with love creates unhealthy relationship dynamics
• The difference between patriarchal masculinity and Divine Masculine
• Divine Feminine as fire, Divine Masculine as container (not control)
• The Great Mother: unconditional love with no conditions
• Jesus and Mary Magdalene as sacred union (the lost teachings)
• How Jesus embodied love for the marginalized, not fear and separation
• Why "God-loving" is the shift we need
• We are all divine — we came from a womb, our souls chose to be here
• Sacred Fire Circle announcement (April 12, Gig Harbor WA)

This is Liberation Wisdom. Always choose love.

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Welcome to Liberation Wisdom. I'm Kayla Moore, a sacred feminine priestess in training and guide on the path of walking as love in a world of chaos.

This podcast is for seekers, healers and anyone who feels the old world crumbling and the new one trying to be born.

Each episode we explore how to liberate ourselves from patriarchal wounds, weave the divine feminine and divine masculine back into harmony and witness the real tangible evidence of the new earth manifesting through collective consciousness shifts. This isn't about bypassing the darkness. It's about alchemizing grief and rage into fuel for co creating what comes next.

We are the light and the love. When we choose love and peace internally, we are also sending those vibrations to be mirrored the world around us. This is Liberation Wisdom.

Always choose love. Welcome beloveds, back to the Liberation Wisdom podcast. I'm Kayla, your host. I go by she, her, hers, pronouns.

I am a feminine liberation coach and a priestess in training and I'm here to help liberate us from the patriarchy by healing core wounds that we have from this patriarchal society, by weaving the divine feminine and divine masculine back into what it means to be human and in our culture and to give you real time evidence of what it looks like for for new Earth to be forming, that it's forming with inside of us and then being birthed out into the world. So let's talk about what people actually mean when they say they want a partner who is God fearing.

And if that actually has harmful implications on how we are trying to partner with somebody, spoiler alert. I believe that it does. So let's take a deep breath because this is a triggering topic. I know for a lot of people.

I also know a lot of people hate that word trigger, but we're using it. I know this is a hard topic for people to talk about, so let's take a deep breath. Let's ground for a moment. Just close your eyes for a moment.

If you have the ability, take a deep breath in, let it out. Feel your feet on whatever surface they are on.

Really feel energy being pulled down into the earth, energy being lifted up through your spine all the way up into the heavens. And then our horizontal energy being spread to all living things, all humans, all plants, all animals.

We are in a divine spiral, a divine circle of everything is connected. Heavens, earth and everything in between. All right, let's jump into this.

So I like to watch some reality tv and lately I had been watching Age of Attraction, which is a new reality TV show on Netflix. And one of the couples in that show talked about how they wanted to be with partners that are God fearing.

Now this is not going to be a discussion around religion at the crux of like whether we should believe in this or not. My goal is to talk about the harm that talking about God in that way can have. So what does it mean to say God fearing?

And I will also give the disclaimer. I grew up Catholic, but I did not actually get a lot of this God fearing messaging growing up.

I did not grow up in a denomination where there was a lot of fear mongering around our spirituality. So.

So I will just say like I don't actually have firsthand like experience hearing this and understanding what that actually fully means to the people that are in spiritual face that are being told this on a regular basis.

So I am going to come at it from a place of what I think of in my own clinical and spiritual knowledge and my own background with faith and spirituality. But do take it as a disclaimer that I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. So this is really just from my own perspective.

So when we are saying God fearing, I just really want to understand like why are we fearing God when God is love? Right? And I use the word God very loosely.

I personally don't believe in God as like God the father of thinking of God as a male entity the way that a lot of religions think of God as I believe in goddesses, I believe in the universe, I believe in some type of higher power. But I don't necessarily have like a concrete, this is what that looks like image for me and understanding for me.

So God is very loose term in this conversation in terms of whatever higher power you believe in.

But when we say God fearing, it does actually talk about the patriarchal systems that have been influenced or have been kind of intertwined in our religions, that a lot of religions are patriarchal religions where men are at the head of that religion. And you know, we obviously know there are many religions where women are not able to be spiritual leaders and are not looked to as being spiritual.

Really. I, not too long ago went to just a. I don't know really what you would call it, but just a Christian church.

I don't know exactly what denomination, but just like an open like new faith Christian church, kind of like new ag Christian church for a family member's baptism. Don't love going to church.

Been a long time since I've been to church and it was just like a stark contrast to me of how little they talk about women in any capacity. And really the capacities that they talked about women were very much in a patriarchal role of women at home as like a partner and a homemaker.

And it was just. It's a very stark contrast from being in spaces of divine feminine spirituality where everything is about women, but also it's very much about.

Our spirituality is about coming into ourselves and having our own connection to the divine, that we are all connected to the divine because we are all divine just by being human. We were created through a womb, and that itself is divine. Our souls chose to be here at this time for a reason. And that in itself is divine.

And so we all have our own connection to the divine.

But patriarchal religion likes to externalize that connection to whoever is at the head of that, you know, religious body or congregation and say that you have to go through them to be able to experience the divine.

And that means that they're the gatekeepers of the messaging and the marketing and how you are actually digesting that information that you don't get to decide for yourself what it means and how you connect. You have to go through them. And so there's already that baked in to this understanding of God fearing.

But then inherently it's saying that there's something that we need to be afraid of.

And I think that's the part that I don't fully understand the breadth of and can like speak fully to, but just from my own thoughts and beliefs, I just don't understand how we. How you would say God is love, but then also we must fear God.

And that directly comes into how we then think of men and just the role of relationships within our culture, that it gives way to thinking that fear can be conflated with love. And that when we are holding power and control over someone and instilling fear in them, that that can still be an act, love.

And again, I don't know if that's actually what they're saying, but it's what it sounds like to me. And so it's interesting when people are choosing partners, particularly around this idea of like, I want a God fearing person.

I know that just socially in society that typically means like, I want somebody who believes in God and I want like a Christian, somebody who consistently goes to church and like practices their spirituality in that way.

But it also means, especially when you're looking at gender roles in our society, again, people who are saying this tend to be in a religion that is more patriarchal. So they are looking at gender roles more specifically in a patriarchal lens within our Society.

And when I hear women say I want a man who is God fearing, it's really interesting because I think a lot of younger women who are saying that, again I'm totally generalizing here, but at least the women that I'm hearing saying that on TV are saying it in a way that's like a juxtaposition. Like I, I want this, but I don't want that.

Like, I want this feeling of like you are dominant and you are going to like take control of something, but I don't want you to have control over me. I don't want you to like overstep those boundaries.

And I want you to be kind and I want you to be empathetic and I want you to like be emotional, but I also want you to be dominant and fearing God and like taking the like role of the man in the relationship. And those things to me are kind of at odds with each other.

I personally think that the more we lean into the patriarchal understanding of masculinity, the less we are going to get of somebody who is kind, compassionate, definitely that is emotionally intelligent and that has the abilities that you're looking for in this particular couple. Though I do actually think that the partner that she chose was very caring, was actually extremely well versed in communication.

And I think honestly was more emotionally intelligent than the younger woman was. Which, you know, I think also plays to like time and putting work into yourself.

So I'm definitely not saying like all people who say this are not going to be good partners, but I just really wanted to talk about the harm that can be done when we are saying things like this and what we actually want in this world. I think we all want a world where we are seen, where we are heard, where we are, where we are understood, where we are loved.

And typically a patriarchal structure does not fit into those things. It typically is the opposite of those things. It is extracting, it is power over, it is control, it is greed and it is top down.

Again, this like I want a God fearing partner typically means I want somebody who is at least what I've seen. I want somebody where there's gonna be a hierarchy in our relationship. And again, some people may want that.

I, I would again challenge that idea and say like why, why is that the way that we think is like a healthy relationship of having someone that is higher in rank than you in your relationship and there's this power dynamic that happens in that then? And again, that doesn't mean that all people that say this think that way.

I'm just wondering when we say those things, are there parts of this that are coming out and playing a part that maybe we don't even realize? And so again, one of my pillars and what I want to talk about is talking about the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine. I.

So I think of both of these as like a campfire.

If you think of the Divine Feminine as the fire, I like to do this because it's kind of like the Kundalini, Kundalini energy and the snake that slithers up and is just pure potential energy.

That's really what we have in all of this Aries energy right now is like this pure potential energy that can go any which way and can be fully embodied and can create anything that we want it to create. And then the Divine Masculine is the container that it's held within.

So we don't want fire to spread and to create a forest fire, that would obviously be very bad. We want to contain it, but in a safe way, in a way that isn't. We're not squashing it because if you squash it, the fire will go out, right?

We're containing it in a container of safety. We are protecting life. Fires definitely a, like symbol of life.

We couldn't really do a whole lot in life if we didn't have fire to like cook food and keep warm. So it's the Divine Masculine I see is really this container of safety, but it's not a container again, of power over.

Because if, again, if we put something on top of the fire, it's gonna go out. So it's coming alongside of the fire.

And in humans it is being so like rooted in yourself and in your alignment, in who you are, knowing specifically, like, who am I? What is my purpose here?

And when you're so solid in that, then we don't have all this like fear mongering and needing to control because you're safe, like you are okay. You don't need to have power and control over something to make yourself feel better. You just know, I'm okay, I am in alignment, I am okay.

And from that alignment is where the container of safety comes from. So, you know, usually if you think of a campfire, it has stones or bricks that go around the campfire.

Those are heavy, those are weighted and they're from the earth, right? That a rock is part of the earth.

And so it's heavy, it's weighted, it's something that is steady and sturdy and can hold the safety, but it knows that it's grounded, it is part of the earth. It is grounded, it is not separate from, it is part of. And that means it's connected to all things.

So the Divine Masculine is connected to all things, just as the Divine Feminine is. And they work together in tandem. They need each other. And we all have the defense, the divine Feminine and divine Masculine within us.

We are all created from an egg and a sperm. And so this is not inherently like women are only divine feminine and men are only divine masculine. We all have both of these energies within us.

And then when we're in relationship to each other, especially in a heterosexual relationship, we play off of these energies with each other. Sometimes you might be in your divine feminine, sometimes I might be in my divine Masculine, and vice versa. And we play with those together.

But I think when we get stuck in one or the other, that's when we have issues and that's when they kind of become corrupted. And in our current society, they have been corrupted into what we know as feminine and masculine.

And that is not actually what they mean in the actual true sense of their energies within a spiritual context.

So I think if we were able to switch our thinking from God fearing to just being able to embody these energies and being like a spiritual being, it doesn't matter what religion it is.

I would love if religion could like uncouple itself from patriarchy and we could weave women back into the fabric of what it means to be spiritual in whatever religion you are in. I think our world would be so much healthier if we were able to do that that we don't need fear along with love. Love is just love.

One of the most beautiful things that I've ever heard in working in the archetype of the Great Mother is she is just pure unconditional love. She doesn't do anything. She just is. She is a being of unconditional love.

And a same that a lot of the spiritual leaders that are leading me right now are spiritual mentors that are leading me right now. A phrase that they feel like comes from that energy or that frequency of the Great Mother is I love you.

There's nothing you can do to make me love you more. There's nothing that you can do to make me love you less. I just simply love you.

And I really think that that is what any creator that you believe in embodies, that we don't need fear. Because fear inherently means that there is a power dynamic that I need to fear you in order for you to love me. And that doesn't make sense to me.

That is Not a loving, healthy relationship.

And I think it, you know, even if it's not consciously something that people think about when they say I want a God fearing partner, it already is setting up the relationship in a way that I really don't think is a healthy way to do that.

The last thing that I will tag in here is in the sacred feminine teachings we look at how Jesus was not who a lot of again patriarchal religions tell him to be. He actually lived at a time that I think is very similar to the time that we are in currently.

And he was actually sent to earth to try to weave back the divine feminine and divine masculine into the collective consciousness again into the fabric of society. Again. Jesus actually lived during the time of the Roman Empire where patriarchy was really getting a foothold. He lived under Roman occupation.

Does that sound familiar?

He lived under an authoritarian regime and was there to help weave back in the divine masculine and divine feminine a common misconception of Mary Magdalene that again was erased through the translations of the Bible.

When the Bible was used then to perpetuate patriarchy and help create a society that had a shared set of values that was then used to have power and control over the people. There are lost teachings about Mary Magdalene and she was painted as the whore, as the temptress and the foil to Mother Mary.

But in the teachings in the sacred feminine spirituality tradition, we are starting to learn more about Mary Magdalene. And there are actually lost gospels of Mary Magdalene that have resurfaced and that were re remembered. And she was actually a counterpart to Jesus.

She was the embodiment of the divine feminine and he was the embodiment of the divine masculine. And together they were a sacred union together. There's debate on whether they were actually like intimate with each other.

And a lot of people would have a hard time understanding or believing that Jesus was actually like intimate and could have had sex with somebody. But he was also there to be just as much human as he was divine.

And so I wouldn't, I personally, as a also certified sex therapist, like to believe that that was true and that they were actually partners. Whether it was more of a spiritual partnership or a spiritual and human partnership, they were partners. They were two halves of a whole.

And they were supposed to be going around and basically like campaigning to all the people about what it could look like to lead from love instead of fear. And Jesus was punished for that. He was nailed to a cross and died because the empire didn't like what he had to say. Again, sound familiar?

Jesus was an embodiment of love. He was with the sick, he was with the poor. He was with the people that were ostracized from society and deemed not worthy in the patriarchal system.

He was not out there saying, we need to be only about me, only about us, only about this one group of people and everybody else can get the fuck out of here. He was there to say, everybody matters. Everybody is included. Everyone is part of this whole system, this whole Earth. We are all whole together.

There is no separation. That is what the patriarchy wants us to believe, is that we are separate, but we are not. We are not separate.

We are one with all of humanity, or we are one with the whole Earth. We are one with all of the plants, we are one with all of the animals. Together we all create this ecosystem that is on this planet.

And if we harm one thing, it has a ripple effect to harm the rest. And so I really encourage us to all really think about what does it mean to live from a place of love?

What does it mean to radiate a frequency of love and light? It does not start with fear. It does not start with God fearing. It starts with God loving.

It starts with us loving all of creation just as much as God or whatever higher power loves us all unconditionally. We all need to remember that.

And I think that is a deep, deep wound that a lot of us need to heal, because a lot of us in our human experiences have not experienced unconditional love. The patriarchal system has taught us that fear is love and it's not love is love.

Everyone deserves to be here and everyone gets to be in the co creation process. Now, to say no more, we no longer want to be in a patriarchal world.

We want to be in a world where everyone has their basic needs met, where we have free healthcare, free childcare, our water, our food, our air is clean and healthy, and we are devoted to taking care of it and not allowing chemicals and pollution to pollute it. Because when it pollutes it, it pollutes us. It makes us sick, it makes the Earth sick, it makes the animals sick.

We are all one and we get to live in that earth, if we can believe it, if we can see it, if we can create it. Thank you so much for listening.

Before I go, I wanted to remind you that I have a beautiful offer coming up April 12th in Gig Harbor, Washington, at a beautiful space called a Touch of Marrake. And this is an alchemizing circle. It is called the Sacred Fire Circle.

And this is a circle where we are alchemizing grief and rage into joy and pleasure.

We are going to be witnessed in our grief and rage and have a chance to actually voice it, to name it, to say out loud to the group what we're feeling inside and be witnessed in that. We will burn it literally. Then we will really like embody our rage and grief through song and dance. I sing, I am a singer, so I will sing.

I will also play music and we will move it through our body. Everyone is in charge of what feels comfortable to them. So if this sounds like it would be really cool to do this.

But I don't know if I could put myself in that type of position. I totally understand this is for people that are willing to take that brave step. I totally get that it is hard to be vulnerable around other people.

Absolutely understand. I am here to hold that safe container for you though. This is where we finally get to express the emotions that have been building up over time.

We've been scrolling on our phones, we've been watching the news, we've been trying to just stuff it down, stuff it down, stuff it down, move through life like things are okay, even though we know things are not okay. I think more people are talking about it because it's just so loud right now.

But I think there's a lot of us that are still feeling like I'm not sure who to talk to. I'm not sure how much I can talk about. Some people are okay with me talking about it, some people aren't.

We kind of like hedge ourselves in like how much can I really say before somebody is like, it's too much, I don't want to talk about it anymore.

This is a space where we get to talk about it, we get to say the thing and then we don't just say it and just keep word vomiting and getting stuck in it and just going in a downward spiral. This is where we get to feel it, we get to move it and then we alchemize it into joy and love and pleasure.

Which just means it doesn't mean sexual pleasure necessarily. It just means like feeling fully alive in your body, being able to be fully present and enjoying the people that are in the room with you.

It is amazing to be able to be in a circle of other women or other like minded people and experiencing this frequency together. We get to co create joy, love and pleasure together. And then from that frequency we are going to together cast the vision for the earth that we want.

Because that's manifestation. We are telling the universe like this is what we want. We don't want what's out there.

If we focus too heavily on what is out there, then we are putting our time and our energy into it and fueling it. And it doesn't mean that we're bypassing it doesn't mean that we don't still look at what's happening so that we know, because we have to witness.

We have to witness the ugliness so that we decide for good that humanity is not doing this again. And those of us that are in this space, I think we already know that. We already know we don't want that.

But we collectively have to witness the ugliness in order for us to say no fucking more. We're not ever doing this to each other ever again. And in this circle we are saying to the universe, this is what we want instead.

We want love, we want light, we want joy, we want whatever we can dream up in our imaginations for what that world could look and feel like. And then we will process at the end a little bit, talk about your experience. And if you come to this first circle, you will get a surprise.

There is a really big offer that I have coming that I want to launch first with this first Circle. So if you are at all interested and are able to be in Gig Harbor, Washington on April 12, please, please, please come join us.

Please comment down below if you have any questions or subscribe to my newsletter and then you can email me with any questions that you have. I really want people to feel comfortable doing this.

I know it's a big ask for a lot of people, but this is the time, this is the time that we really need to root in ourselves to find that bravery and to say this is what we need to do. So I hope to see you all there again. If you want to subscribe to my newsletter, there is also a link down in the show notes for that.

It is called also Liberation Wisdom and I send that out on the new and full moon every month to give you just a little update on what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and how that coincides with the vibe of the moon, the energy of the moon. I usually give you some journal prompts and then you have a front row seat to whatever new offers I have coming up too.

Take care all and remember, always choose love. Finally, I do want to let you know that I will be taking a two week break from my podcast and from YouTube next week.

I really want to focus on getting everything ready for my sacred Fire circle and just need some extra time to do that. So I'm cutting this out of my schedule and then the following week is spring break and I will be with my son and taking a full break from work.

So I will be gone for I guess three weeks in terms of when I will post again, but I will be coming back and recording and doing all the things that I normally do the following week. So you won't hear me or see me again for three weeks. So I hope that you enjoy April. It's gonna be loud and a rough ride.

So you know, go back, listen to my other videos or my other podcast episodes.

I have a lot of content out so there's plenty for you to go and listen to on this break and I look forward to seeing you or talking to you when I get back. And again, if you want to stay in contact with me, I do have my newsletter that I will be sending out on the next new moon that we have in Aries.

So stay in contact if you would like and I will see you when I'm back. Thank you for being here, Beloved, for listening, for choosing this path.

If you want to stay connected and go deeper, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter.

I send wisdom twice a month on the new and full moons, sharing astrology, feminine liberation insights, and guidance for navigating these shifting times. When you subscribe, you'll also receive my free Sacred Body Workbook, a guide to healing body image and embracing pleasure.

It's foundational work for everything we explore here. You can find the link down below in the show notes. Until next time. Remember, always choose love.