Hey, welcome to our podcast this week. We’re glad to have you back with us, and thank you for joining us today.
I want to talk along the lines of what this podcast is about: business, money, and Christianity. We’re a financial podcast from a faith perspective, and our goal is to help navigate life better.
We want to navigate our businesses better. And today I want to talk about a verse in the Bible and relate it to business and to the stresses of life. Because there are a lot of people who are stressed out.
In fact, one of the things medical science tells us is that stress is a silent killer. Many people view stress from the standpoint that it’s out of their control. Circumstances are building, it looks like things aren’t going to go their way, and then they allow the pressure and stress of it all to come down on them.
Here in the United States, people often say things like, “I’m under so much pressure.” And I always respond by saying, “Then get out from under it.” Don’t crawl under it. Don’t allow it to pile up on top of you.
The Bible actually talks about how we can manage our lives. There’s an element within Christianity that gives us the ability to manage these kinds of things, and it’s found in John chapter 14. In verse 27, Jesus says, “My peace I leave with you.”
If you do a little study of the life of Jesus a couple thousand years ago, you’ll see that his opponents—lawyers and others—would constantly show up and question him, trying to trap him so they could arrest him. They tried pushing him off a cliff. They tried all kinds of things. Yet one thing we notice about Jesus is that he just kept doing what he was called to do.
He kept moving forward toward his purpose. And that gives us insight into how we can manage our lives and our businesses. Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you,” not the peace that the world gives, but his peace.
What’s interesting is that, by natural standards, peace is defined as the absence of violence or the absence of conditions that cause stress or pressure. But we all know that in this life we’re going to face things we don’t want to deal with. The difference is how we deal with them—without having to get under the pressure of them.
History gives us plenty of examples. One that comes to mind is Winston Churchill during World War II, when it looked like Britain was going to lose to the Nazis. He kept pressing forward. Even in extremely intense times, he didn’t allow the times to control him. He controlled the environment.
The peace that Jesus left us is a peace that works even when things are chaotic all around us. There’s something on the inside of us—especially for a believer—that we can rely on, knowing that everything is going to work out.
Think back over your life to times when it looked like everything was going to fall apart, yet you made it through. You navigated it. Maybe it didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted, but you came through it. It didn’t kill you.
That’s what Jesus is talking about. Whether it’s in our home life, with our families—maybe budgets aren’t working, maybe there’s tension between husband and wife, mom and dad, or other pressures pushing in—if we can maintain our composure and presence of mind, and remember that God has equipped us as human beings to overcome, then the answers are already around us.
This element I’m talking about gives us the ability to handle today’s problems.
Here’s where things often fall apart: we focus on the problem. There’s a difference between thinking about the problem and thinking about the solution. Problems exist in this life, no doubt about it, but there is an answer to everything.
I’ve shared before in different settings that I used to be someone who focused heavily on the problem. I wasn’t necessarily a worrier, but I constantly carried the weight of it. Then I came to the realization that there is an answer for everything we face in life.
So I began using affirmations. I started telling myself multiple times a day, “David, there’s an answer to everything.” You can’t be in a problem in this life without there being a way through it.
The Word of God says that if you lack wisdom, ask God, and He will give it to you. It also says that He won’t allow more to come on us than we’re able to bear. That means everything I face in life, I have the ability to go through it, and there is an answer that I just need to find.
That’s what I started telling myself. That’s what I started declaring. And we’ve all been there—you meet someone or face a situation where you don’t understand the subject, or you don’t like it, or you have no interest in it, and you say, “I just don’t understand this. I don’t know how to do it.”
We’ve all done that. But when we say those things, we reinforce the belief that we can’t understand. Instead, I told myself, “There’s an answer for everything. Look for the answer, find the answer, and you’ll know how to move forward.”
I repeated this multiple times a day until I trained myself to respond differently. When something came up, my mindset became: “Okay, how do I handle this? What’s the answer?” I learned to listen on the inside for that answer, trusting that the Lord wants us to succeed.
Over time, I reached a place where I don’t really get stressed or pressured when things go wrong. I can get annoyed—especially when things aren’t working or when people oppose what I’m trying to do. I’m still working on that. But I know that what God created in humanity has the ability to succeed in every environment.
Within this peace Jesus talked about—“My peace I leave with you”—there’s power. But it’s not peace as the world defines it, where everything is calm and perfect. It’s peace that allows me to function, think clearly, and know I’ll come out ahead without anxiety or pressure.
What does that require? Practice. Training yourself to believe that no matter what comes your way, you have the ability to find the answer.
If we do this, we can keep ourselves out of stress. Stress only overtakes us if we allow it. What if we resist that? What if, when things look like they’re falling apart, we build confidence that we’ll know how to navigate it, that the answers will come?
Let me give you an example. We operated a recovery home for drug and alcohol addiction for over ten years. We started putting things in motion around March or April of 2010. I had a friend helping me, and for months people kept asking, “Where are you going to do this? How are you going to get a place?”
I kept saying, “It’ll work out when it needs to.”
We didn’t open until December. Then, in November, the person helping me arrived from another country. Around that same time, my mom—who’s a real estate agent—called and said, “David, there’s a house that’s been sitting on the market. I think it would be perfect for a recovery home.”
We looked at it, and it was ideal. It was listed for about $148,000. I ran the numbers and realized that as long as I didn’t pay more than $115,000, it would work. Even if the business failed, I could sell it and get my money back.
I waited, because the property had been sitting empty and was owned by a business. I knew they’d want it off their books by the end of the year. When my mom asked if I wanted to make an offer, I told her to write one up for $75,000. She said they’d never accept it.
They did.
They liked our plan, wanted to close before year-end for tax reasons, and everything worked out. I wasn’t under pressure. I stayed in peace, followed a logical path, and trusted what was inside of me.
We still own that property today through a corporation, not personally. It’s worth around $300,000 now and is still being used, even though we’re no longer in the recovery business.
That’s what this peace allows us to do—stay out of stress. Nothing in this life has more control over us than what we carry inside of us, but we have to train ourselves to think this way.
When your budget feels tight, at home or in business, slow down. Look at it. Think it through. Listen on the inside. It’s amazing how answers come when we stop panicking.
We don’t have to live under pressure. We can live with confidence, knowing things will work out.
Thank you again for joining us on the Business, Money, and Christianity podcast—a financial podcast from a faith perspective. I hope something today helped pull you out of stress or anxiety.
Remember to like, subscribe, comment—whatever your platform allows. It helps the algorithms find us, and we appreciate the feedback.
I look forward to seeing you again next week. Stay strong, take care, and bye.
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