Money scared me. So you can only imagine my horror 7 or 8 years ago, when unforeseen circumstances pushed me out of ‘ministry’ and into the workplace.
TRANSCRIPT
Please note: this transcript is auto-generated so forgive any (or many) errors 😲 – click the timestamps to play that section directly in the audio.
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I’m getting very close to earning my first million dollars from book royalties, and when I say book royalties, I’m talking about short self published books. But the truth is, I was really never much of a businessman. In fact, the truth be told, the whole realm of business and moneymaking and anything that went with that was so foreign to me that I had like the xenophobic zeal to stay away from it. I like people who knew me back in the day will testify to that fact.
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You know, I was really conflicted here. I was like CIA background. My wife, Larna and I background is church planting missionaries. And it seemed less than beneficial for me back in the day to spread my energies and attention across too many demand and disciplines. And and to be honest, I felt more comfortable being creative in the realms of public speaking and evangelism than I ever did in business. To me, business at the time. And this was like obviously for whatever reason, I was wearing a certain coloured spectacles I was looking through.
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But to me, business was full of people who are less than happy chasing after something that would never satisfy them. And, you know, although I feel like I’m sitting in confessional right now, like expressing my then prejudices, you know, I’m certainly not saying that I was correct or justified in the assumptions that I’d made. But the truth be told, I think underneath it, underneath it all, in the realm of business, I was just woefully insecure.
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Money scared me. So you can only imagine my horror seven or eight years ago when due to unforeseen circumstances, I stepped out of ministry into the workplace or the marketplace, really. And although my history was as a graphic designer and website builder before I went into church planting, my skills were so rusty. You know, my portfolio of work was very sparse, you know, and from way back in the day and on top of that, really any reasonable doors that open for creative work were flooded by hundreds of applicants, most of whom were teenage geniuses.
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And he was, I think, long in the tooth, it seemed, even though I was still quite young myself. And, you know, it really I knew I needed something, a solution that didn’t depend on my natural competence. And, you know, I understood that my creative gifts and talents and skill and history would only take me so far and to be honest, not far enough. And then I found an answer in the scriptures. Who’s ever found an answer in the scriptures that has let them up.
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Deuteronomy 8:18, says, You shall remember the Lord, your God for it is he that gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. You know, God promises here that he would anoint these same hands that had been laid on the snake that had cast out devils. These same hands could create wealth. His power and grace could be applied to building a business in the same way that it worked to build a church or a family.
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And honestly, that revelation was such a relief that this wasn’t all down to me. The financial future of my family did not depend on me alone. Your financial future does not depend on you alone. I saw elsewhere in the Scriptures that were told that God will supply all our needs according to his riches and glory, not my riches or lack of them. Yeah, but his riches. And he has lots of them and say, my encouragement in today’s episode is that you would invite Jesus to be your business partner.
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He is the best business partner that any man or woman could ever have. I mean, this this dude owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the hidden treasures in the oceans. And really pretty much everything that exists belongs to him. Yeah. What a great investor to have backing you as you step out. And on top of that, he will be your best friend, a marvellous mentor and a perfect partner to you, as well as being the king of your heart.
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And all of that really means that things stack up in your favour, you know, and, you know, I. And believe that business breakthrough, I can believe for business breakthrough, you can believe for business breakthrough in the same way as any other project of faith that you undertake. You know, if I take time to hear his counsel and apply my creativity to money generation, I’m virtually guaranteed to step forward into success. And success, incidentally, is not success compared or measured by the world, not measured by what others are doing or not doing.
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But it’s going to be entirely fitted to your own unique set of gifts and personality. Roll forward now. And I mean, seriously, it may be somewhat of an exaggeration, exaggeration to just say I rolled, I tripped, I stumbled, I cried. I hoped I tried. I failed. I feared. I prayed, you know, forward those three those years, you know, and I could, you know, believe in God is not something that is necessarily always easy.
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And you may not come through it unruffled because he’s dealing with you in the midst of you dealing out there in the world. And, you know, this was an entirely new realm to me, business was entirely new to me and previously I’d been terrified by it. It’s not an easy journey. Sometimes when you are having to bore your heart up, when ideas fall flat or, you know, bills try to convince you otherwise than what the scriptures are saying.
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But that’s where faith and patience come into work, isn’t it? And as you keep believing, as you keep coming back again and again to the knowledge that you are not alone in business and that your success is not based only on your own limited capacity, but on God’s boundless generosity, you’ll discover that Deuteronomy 8:18, works for you. You know, as I’m really now close to a million dollars in royalties from self published books. And on top of that, there are other creative projects that are growing and bearing good fruit.
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Now, that may not seem like a lot to some people. It seems like a great deal to me, you know, and and through obedience to Deuteronomy 18, you know, some of the ideas that I’ve acted on are making me money month after month, even years after completion. And the greatest thing is, you know, you can go into entrepreneurial endeavours and entrepreneurial business without needing to compromise. You don’t need to twist and turn things and see your own conscience in the process.
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You know, my my business meeting, you know, the most important business meeting of the day is the one in the early hours of the morning Father, Son and Holy Ghost, where we can sit down together and allow our imagination to run wild. You know, they are really are a formidable team. And, you know, as the junior entrepreneurial partner in my own business, I am I’m happy to have them on my side. And fears that held me bound for so many years I found were unfounded.
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You know, invite the Holy Ghost today to take the senior position in your creative business, arrange a board meeting. Yeah, maybe. Maybe for later today. Maybe for tomorrow morning. But make sure you arrange a board meeting at your nearest opportunity, because I believe he already has ideas to share with you because truly, God is the best business partner. Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com.
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Have a great day.
