David Lee Martin

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.

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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.

Never fall for the lie that you must wait for a bolt from the mysterious blue. The Inspirer dwells with and in you. He is present and always ready to infuse your heart and mind with ideas beyond your own making.

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Today, I want to talk about the inspired life, life filled and overflowing and receiving inspiration, because it really living and inspired life as a son or daughter of God like you are, should be completely natural. You know, you don’t need to pay any homage to the muse. You don’t have to sit around waiting for something to fall out of the sky into your heart, like a big revelation or groundbreaking idea, because the truth is you have a greater one than any muse living in you.

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You know, you don’t have to wait for this bolt from the blue to take you over whatever it is you’re trying to conquer, because the truth is he lives in you. His present, the Holy Ghost is with you and he’s ready to infuse your heart and mind with ideas that are way beyond your own making. The Passion translation renders Proverbs 12 five. And I really like this. I’m not sure how entirely accurate it is, but I’m going to receive it by faith anyways.

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It basically says that the lovers of God are filled with good ideas. The lovers of God are filled with good ideas. Proverbs 12:5 in The Passion translation. You know, and really the most important skill that we can learn as sons and daughters is to lean into his indwelling and hear his still small voice speaking within us. And the beauty of this process is when we learn to be more comfortable and confident in what we hear and acting on what we believe we’ve heard, we will grow in confidence because we will see that it was indeed the Holy Spirit speaking to us and within us.

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And, you know, that path from our heart to our hand, from kind of the the H on the inside to the actualisation of it, we’re through through our actions and our obedience becomes less fraught with friction the more we do it. You know, we’re not caught in that place of self-doubt as often as maybe we once were. You know, the scriptures tell us in one Corinthians 2:16, you have the mind of Christ one Corinthians 6:17, says he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

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I mean, how more how much more inspiration do you need? How more inspired could you be than to have the very spirit of all creation living within you and feeding your mind with his wisdom in this fusion of his divinity and your humanity makes for such a powerful, creative coupling in fellowship with the Holy Ghost. You’ll second guess yourself less and you’ll respect the ideas that bubble up from within you more and more. You know, I mean, I know in the early days, and to be honest with you, I’m not going to pretend, you know, even even many times now, you know, there’s the creative life is full of let me let me think about it.

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How to put this. The creative life is full of the challenge because we’re always stepping beyond our comforts. You know, we’re never stepping off. Well, most of the time, we’re not stepping into something that’s guaranteed. We’re putting our ideas into the world, you know, with a level of faith. The foundation that they’re built on is not like a nice iron clad guarantee. X plus Y equals Z. It’s more like, wow, I feel inspired by God to do this, to share this, to step out in this.

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But the results are really out there waiting to be realised. And that does take courage. It does take faith to do that. And I know certainly in the early days, even more so, you know, my ideas, it was like I put them into this big oven called insecurity, and they would cook away in there, you know, insecure oven of self doubt and depreciation of my giftedness that that that tendency to compare with other people, all of the things that go into that kind of crazy kitchen where we cook up our ideas.

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And, you know, it was like, you know. Look, and I would think, well, real writers, as if I wasn’t one, you know, it would always, always be looking at others as if they were somehow different to me. But the truth is, we are all the same. We are all in the same boat. You know, most of us are like the rest of us. And you know that that sense of being a pretender sometimes can hog the steps that we take and kind of bite at our heels.

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But, you know, I began to realise that, like, this is what people call imposter syndrome is actually just an indication that you are probably moving in the right direction because, you know, if we’re not imposing on new territory, if we’re not stepping over our present boundaries, stepping out of our own self-imposed status quo and into into destiny, you know, then maybe we need to put a little fire underneath our thoughts and a bit of fire underneath our prayers and a bit of fire underneath our actions and begin exercising those faith and creative muscles a bit more, because creative life, by its nature, is courageous.

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It’s not designed with comfort in mind, but however uncomfortable it may feel. Yeah, it is not ill fitting. And this is the thing. There’s this juxtaposition of, you know, being willing to step outside of our comfort zone, yet being increasingly comfortable doing so. You know that David, David, like of David and Goliath fame, he felt compelled to run toward the giant with his slingshot swinging while all the rest of them stood cowering in the crowd.

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You know, he broke free from the crowd, claimed his covenant identity and stepped out onto the field in his own clothes with his own familiar weapons and vitally aware that he was the majority because he was in relationship with God. So it’s not a matter of faking it until we make it. You know, we live an authentic life aligned with our passions and we pursue God’s best with every step that we take. And however imperfect those steps may appear, they are nevertheless ordered by the Lord.

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And everyone that we take leads us closer to fulfilment. You know how David put Seoul’s armour on, he would have been left dead in the dust. There’s no question about it. And I believe that it’s the same with our creative Christian life. It’s not about us copying others or squeezing ourself into somebody else’s mould. It’s really a journey of discovery of who we are as individuals. In your creative life and pursuits, a well fitted to your personality and your specific God given gifts, you are essentially in the business of being yourself and becoming more and more and more and more of that as you go forward.

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I love the scripture in the amplified Bible one Timothy 4:16, it says, look well to yourself, to your own personality. This is Paul speaking to Timothy. You know, Timothy was an insecure guy when you read Paul’s letters to his essentially what was like a son to him in the Lord Paul. The language of it and the way Paul speaks is very much like a father speaking courage to the hard of a somewhat questioning son. And I think that we are often a bit like that questioning son.

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But in doing so and then Paul encouraged him, hey, look, you don’t have to be like me. You don’t have to be like someone else. Look well to yourself and to your own personality, Timothy, and live courageously and confidently from that place. Be who God has made you to be. And in doing so, really living and dealing true to our own convictions and values and personality, accepting increasingly who we are and the way that God has made us, will immediately cause us to stand head and shoulders above the crowd.

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Because often the natural tendency, the tendency of the natural man is to want to blend in. But the tendency of the God infused man or woman is to stand out, to stand up, to step up and say, hey, I’m ready to be counted. I’m a son. I’m a daughter of the living God. I made Obey in his image and I will not be silent, you know? He continues in that verse, Timothy 4:16, persevere in these things and hold to them for by so doing, you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

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There’s a perseverance and a holding on to this truth that God has made us in his own unique image. And we stand alone. The only one who is us. You are the only you, and you will only ever be the only you. That’s why you’ve got so much to bring, you know. And together with the rest of the body of Christ, we are meant to be a vibrant orchestra. We don’t just all play the same instrument.

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Jesus put it this way. I love this. As you can tell they’d like. I love all of these scriptures. They’re so empowering, so liberating. Jesus said, take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And you know, God’s yoke for us isn’t easy because it’s insignificant or paltry. Some tiny little matchstick. It’s a young man. It’s like a solid bit of kid that goes over the shoulder. You yoke yourself together with him like the old and the young orcs ready to plough the ground, ready to prepare the way and God’s yoke for you is easy because and it’s light because it is well fitted.

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It sits smoothly on your shoulders. Carrying the weight of it together with the king is not a burden to you. It is a joyful journey, a fruitful discovery to walk with Jesus and work out what he is working and working in, working out this creative calling, working out this entrepreneurial journey, working out how you can better bring yourself to the table and add value to the world and share your worth to the ends of the earth. And your job is not to strain your way to success.

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It’s to yield to God’s leading and follow his example as he speaks to you, as he shows you and as he leads you. And so the inspirer, the spirit of God himself, the very breath of God himself to be inspired, means God breathed inwardly, God’s breathing, God’s inward breathing. He dwells in you, and he is partnering with you every single day to bring his creative power to bear on all that. You put your hand to say, if you’re going to be diligent in anything, be diligent in this, stay connected to the flow.

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You know, it’s going to carry you far beyond anything your talent alone could ever take you. And so inspiration is not in short supply. You know, Jesus is not kind of scraping around in the bottom of the barrel thinking, man, it’s been like over 2000 years and were running dry here, you know, here and there. There is not there is not a drought of inspiration. There is no drought in heaven. There is more than enough.

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And if we will connect and stay connected to the vine, if we will trust him and listen to him and walk with him and love him and worship him with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength, we will see magnificent results. I love the Philippians again. Another one. I love Philippians 1:19. In the amplified Bible, there is a bountiful supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ. And you, my dear brother, my sister should live full of eager expectation that bountiful supply being poured out in your life and through your life.

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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. Have a great day.