Hey, everybody. Welcome back to our broadcast. It's good to be with you today, and I hope everything is going well with you—in your life, in your businesses, and as you're moving forward.
I tell you what, we're living in a difficult time.
A lot of people are talking about the difficulties in business. Even here where I live, there are several businesses—and, in fact, we had this one business that had been at its location for 36 years that just closed down.
And we're seeing this: taxes, fees, inflation, the value of the money that we're dealing with going down, and different elements.
So there are key principles that we should pay attention to, and that's what I want to talk about today.
And so I want to welcome you to Money, Business, and Christianity. We're a financial podcast from a faith perspective. So everything I talk about—I pastor a church, and everything I talk about is biblically based.
I may not quote the verse of Scripture, but these are principles found within the Word of God. And the reason we do this is because the principles within the Word of God are the principles that work.
And so, if we do what works, we'll get the outcome of what works.
And today I want to talk about something that maybe you don't really even think about, and that is your conscience.
You know, it's interesting. When God created mankind, He gave everybody a conscience. The conscience is innate within us. It's a natural part of us.
Everybody's been given one. And it doesn't matter whether a person is a believer in the Bible and God, a believer in some other religion, or not a believer at all.
The Bible teaches that conscience is a moral awareness, an innate ability to know what is right and what to do.
Wait a minute. If I'm doing what is right, I should get right responses to it, right?
I mean, even though religions talk about—you know, the Bible talks about how you sow, you reap. Other religions talk about what goes around comes around, you know, karma and yin and yang and different things like this.
But there's an internal knowledge among people, no matter what kind of life they live, that how we conduct our lives determines what comes back to us.
And it's all birthed out of a biblical principle because the Bible talks about it.
But when God created man, this inward witness, this conscience, this conscious area, distinguishes within us the difference between right and wrong, even if we don't have a moral guide, such as a Bible, that we draw from.
And so this is the ability.
So it's interesting, in what has been set up, that you and I innately know what is right and wrong.
Now, in that conscience, the Bible talks about how the conscience can be seared. It can be desensitized. It can become hard—hardened.
And when it becomes that way, we no longer look at that internal element of what is right and wrong. And we start functioning from our thoughts of what is right and wrong.
And typically, what we'll do when we get into an economy like this, a world economy like this, where things are just, you know, very hard to maintain—I read an article yesterday, I think it was, or the day before at the time of this recording, that here in the United States, $135,000 U.S. dollars is added to every house through government fees, regulations, and everything like that.
My goodness. Can you imagine if you could take $135,000 off the price of a house for things that, you know, it's not necessarily that they're bad; they're just not always useful?
And the buyer doesn't have a right to say, "No, I don't want that element," you know, so on and so forth.
So I want to read a verse. I don't always read verses on the Bible, but I want to read it because I think it's very applicable to this conscience and how we go, because it talks about everybody.
And it says, "Indeed, when Gentiles..." Now, understand, when you're reading "Gentiles," from one element, Gentile is a non-Jew, but from another element, it's anybody without the covenant of God.
So whether you believe in God or don't believe in God—and this is specifically addressing those that don't follow the Bible and don't believe in God—when Gentiles who do not have the law, that would be the Word of God, the Law of God, God's direction on this, "This is how you do it," or so...
So those people that don't have that law do by nature, or by the natural things required by the law.
So there's a lot of people out there that, you know, the Bible says, "The Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill," but there's a lot of people who would never kill.
Why?
Because they believe it's morally wrong. They wouldn't put themselves in that position.
There's a lot of people out there. The Bible says, "The Ten Commandments" again, "Thou shalt not steal."
There's a lot of people out there that would not steal, even if they had an opportunity to steal and not be caught.
Or they may think, "Man, I could take this and never be caught."
They still won't do it because they have a moral conscience telling them not to do that.
So it says they are a law unto themselves.
So they become a governing law unto themselves to do what is right.
Now, here's where it gets really tricky, because we can start cheating a little bit.
And we think that in the cheating, we'll prosper a little bit more. Our business will get a little bit of an edge.
But whatever goes out is going to come back.
And that's what we've got to do. We've got to enhance this moral conscience to do what is right.
Even though they do not have the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.
And so there's times when we do things and our conscience is accusing us: "Man, I shouldn't have done that."
And then there's times that our conscience says, "No, you stood your ground. You did right. You stood on what was right."
You may have paid a price for it, but it's going to come back and bless you.
And in these times that we live in, this element becomes very important.
I remember when I was 16 years old, 17 years old. I started work at 16.
And I worked at a grocery store, and it was a union grocery store. So the pay was very good.
I think our minimum wage here in California was like $2.65, you know, back in those days, an hour. And then you could graduate up, and they had a journeyman clerk in this grocery store.
You know, it's based on time, hours, work, and things like that.
And the journeymen were making $16, $17 an hour, which was really good money back in the day.
I mean, I think our minimum wage now is around $17 an hour.
And so, I mean, people are just now getting up to it as a minimum wage.
So this lady was making really good money.
And they had these little quart-sized milks.
She went on a break, so she grabbed a milk and took it back with her because she wanted to drink some milk, I guess.
And the store manager walked back there. Her name was Lana.
And, you know, just talking: "Hey, let me see your receipt for that."
"Well, I hadn't paid for it yet. I was going to pay for it when I got done, as I go back up there."
Fired her right there on the spot.
$17 an hour. I don't know what that's equivalent to now—probably $30 an hour or something like that.
Full health-care package.
What did she do?
She did something that was morally incorrect.
Now, whether she was going to pay for it or not, I don't know. Maybe she really did intend to pay for it.
It makes sense logically, where the checkout stand is. She walked back. It was about three-quarters of the way back to the back of the building.
The building was quite large.
She grabbed her milk, went back there, drank it, and was going to come back.
It was probably $0.35 or $0.50, something like that.
But she knew the company policy, and morally correct would have been to walk back up there, or before she walked back, say, "Hey, I'm going to get a quart of milk. I'm going to pay for it. Give me a receipt."
And then grab the milk on the way back.
So it makes you kind of think maybe she wasn't going to pay for it if she didn't get caught.
I don't know.
I'm not going to judge her on that.
But when you have a moral conscience, you do things that are right.
And in this time that we're living in, where things are not working the way they've always worked, it's becoming harder to make a buck. It's becoming harder to be profitable in our businesses. It's harder to find good-quality employees.
It becomes easier to cheat.
But follow your conscience.
Don't let your conscience become seared.
In 1 Timothy 4:2, Paul, talking to Timothy, describes false teachers in this verse.
He says, "Having a conscience as seared as with a hot iron," meaning that they repeatedly did things to where they became desensitized, violating the conscience that is inside of them.
They became desensitized from doing things right, and they began to cheat, to make a different path.
And the more you do it, the progression of this is: you cheat a little, and before you know it, you're going to be cheating a lot.
"Well, I'm just going to do this. It's only this."
And then we see something, and, you know, right is right here, wrong is right there, but I'm basically doing it.
And we keep moving inch by inch until all of a sudden we're over here.
And we're liars.
We're cheaters.
We're manipulators.
We take advantage of people.
And in order to make the sale or to move forward in the next big deal, we don't tell what's actually right.
I was in a—it was a timeshare, which I know not everybody here is from the United States, but timeshares are where you can co-op and own property.
So you buy into the system, and you can go and establish it.
And I decided not to do it because it was too expensive for what you got.
But then they tried to cross-sell me to a bonus pack that was much, much, much cheaper.
And they told me and explained to me what this package does.
And then I had some very—because I could see where this would actually be worth it for me, and the cost of this is a lot cheaper than the cost of what I'm wanting to do—so I asked some very specific questions.
"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah."
"Oh, yeah."
And they were lying.
She was a flat-out liar.
Why?
She wanted to make the sale.
She probably had a quota to meet, and it did not matter to her that she was lying.
You know, the unfortunate thing is, the Bible is truth.
It's God's Word.
And it says, "All liars shall have their part in the lake of fire."
I hope she figures out her life before she meets her Maker.
But I want to encourage you today in how we conduct our lives.
Don't let the pressures that are coming at you cause you to make decisions that violate good moral character.
God gave you that.
He put that inside of you so that He can work with you through things and make sure you don't get in trouble.
Because you are going to receive based on how you sow.
And in the end, we're all going to walk in.
Well, hey, I want to thank you for joining us on Money, Business, and Christianity, a financial podcast from a faith perspective.
I believe the Word of God.
I believe God's done this.
And make a comment, like, subscribe, do whatever it does on there.
We appreciate it because it gets the algorithms working right.
But in all things, keep your moral character, because it's going to get you to the end of where you need to be successfully.
Look forward to seeing you soon.
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