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This is a quick take people. Come on. Today's going to be the epitome of a quick take. We are going to talk about a bunch of topics.
I have about six or seven rapid fire topics that I'm going to be dropping jewels on. You feel what I'm saying? We dropping jewels today. That's what I'm feeling like.
I'm feeling like, yo, there are a bunch of things that I want to say, but I don't want to spend too much time on them. These are topics that we may come back to one day and do four episodes on or something like that. But the idea today is for you as the listener to be able to catch whatever you can catch as many as you can, because I think there's going to be some thoughts and some things said today that I believe can literally change your life. You know, people say they want they life changed.
They say they want to find their purpose. But it's about how serious you are today. Like I'm going to find out who are the people that are serious about seeing their life change. I'm a person that believes in the result and fruit, the manifestation of faith.
I'm not a person that really likes talking a bunch of stuff that I really ain't trying to do. You feel what I'm saying? That bothers me. Hopefully it bothers you.
Because we are action oriented people. And today I'm about to give you some practical things that you can literally take. Imagine this. Imagine the jewels is going to be dropping today.
I say that humbly. And you catch them and you apply them and your life literally changes. Isn't that amazing? I'll tell you this much.
My life has changed during this podcast. Listen to the guests and the interviews. Like there have been things that have been said by other people. I'm not talking about myself that have literally changed my life.
I've heard people say things. I've heard people's experiences. Like man, I think of something like Vince Rhettley's story. We interview him.
He's been in a wheelchair for eight years, still full of faith. Still living for God with purpose. Kurt is Gilmore. You know, shot, I believe five to six times in front of his house.
He just started a food truck company. Like this is why you got to go back. If you're a new listener, go back and check out the episodes that we've done in the past. All the way up back to episode one.
I say this every week because it's really important. And I appreciate y'all who actually do like somebody hit me up today. Like I'm listening to episode 67. And a question, one of the questions we're going to do some Q&A at the end.
One of the questions. Well, I think I only got one question to cover today. But that question is going to be from someone who listened to a past episode. So I urge you as a new listener.
Yeah, check me out on this one. You know what you got to do? But after this, go back and check out some previous episodes because there's going to be even more jewels that you can pick up. All right.
How do we want to do this? What else I got to say before we jump into this? Because we bought the, it's, it's jewels being dropped today. They, uh, what?
Oh, um, upcoming episode on, on Sunday, I believe this is dropping on the Wednesday. And I know like, sometimes I don't like saying days and stuff because it puts the time on it. And people, you might be listening to this any day, any time in the future. But this is for my people who listen right when it comes out.
There's another episode following up this Sunday that's going to be an interview that I conducted with an amazing young lady. And that is going to bless you as well. Inspire guys, people, we in the process, we just trying to grow, trying to do what God called us to do, keep me in your prayers. Um, let's do it.
So the first thing I want to talk about is the process itself, right? We are actually approaching three years in just about four or five days on this podcast. Like thank you. Thank you.
Listen, we would not be here without you, man. I appreciate it so much. And look, here's, here's what I've learned as we talk about the process. My life has changed quite a bit in these three years.
Matter of fact, y'all might not know or see it because I, let me just be real. Sometimes like, y'all know I'm a pretty private person. I'm trying to learn how to share certain aspects and things that are valuable. You know what I'm saying?
But it could be very vulnerable for a private person to share their business. Cause then sometimes you feel like, oh, should I have said that? Like, okay, that come off a certain type of, you know, people judge you, you know, tell you something, you judge me now. I'm arrogant now.
I just like to keep my business to myself. But I am learning like part of the beauty of this community is y'all know me. Y'all been rocking with me for three years. If you knew, just give it some time, you know what I'm saying?
But I think y'all know the intention of information and share here. I really don't tell y'all 90% of anything. All right, let's keep moving. So as we talk about like the processing, I know a lot of people struggle.
So this is the first jewel right here. You know what I'm saying? Just get ready to catch it. A lot of people these days want to go viral.
They want to blow up. You know, it's just like, you know, I have this podcast. There's something that you're doing in your life, something that you've been striving to do, whether you make music or whether you wrote a book or whatever it is. And we struggle because quantity has eclipsed quality as like the most desirable thing.
So most people want, for instance, y'all, if I drop a YouTube video, I want a million people to see it, 100,000 people to see it. Now what doesn't get captured is when you see a YouTube video to say something like a million views, it might not say, oh, but 500,000 of these were people who watched the first three seconds and then his skip on that, right? That's not a quality view. What I'm trying to get people to see is that we should be going deeper, not wider.
And what I mean is that we should be reaching people, we should be striving to reach people at a deeper level, right? So that's what I at least strive to do with this podcast. Hopefully I'm somewhat successful. The goal is to reach you deeper versus trying to reach so many people.
Oh, I'm the biggest podcast in the world and this, that and the other, and there's no depth, right? And I'm not, look, I'm just focusing on what we do here at Inspire Guys, people. I'm not taking shots to nobody else. But my point is, although it is great to grow and to have a bunch of people listening to all those things, and I'm grateful by the grace of God, man, we reaching 10 to 12 countries a week.
But I've really tried to focus on the process. Like I told y'all, I want to go visual video one day with my podcast, but right now I just, I really don't have the time to do it. I'm a one man show right now editing all those things, and I would rather do it right. So I'm not saying it's not coming soon.
That's really a goal for 2022. But ultimately what I'm saying is like, all right, I may, I may not, it may be a group of people out there. I'm not reaching because I'm not visual yet, but the goal is really to connect with you in a deeper way. That's why we have things like our text community, where we send out video, video, you know, once a month or something by we, I mean me.
But my point at the end of the day is, okay, here's my example, and then I'm done with this topic. I think I thought about Mr. Miyagi. I know I love certain movies, especially like late 80s, early 90s movies from when I was growing up.
Those are amazing. The Karate Kid is one of my favorite movies of all time. I feel comfortable saying that. I love the Karate Kid.
I love back to the future, but let's focus on the Karate Kid right now. When I look at the Karate Kid, some of the things that I picked up on that movie are, Mr. Miyagi only has one student. Think about that.
Daniel comes to Mr. Miyagi. He doesn't know Karate at all. He's getting beat up, battered and bruised, right?
Daniel doesn't need to go to a dojo with a thousand students because he needs a certain level of focus. So like for instance, this podcast is for everyday regular people who need some attention. You don't need gossip. You don't need somebody that's just going to talk about the next trending topic every week and all that.
It might be funny. It might be all these things. It might scare you, but you need somebody that's like walking with you, that's focusing, that's giving you direct feedback and things that you can grab. You are Daniel's son.
This show is Mr. Miyagi. What am I saying? You have to approach your business as like, if I approach this podcast as Mr.
Miyagi, I'm able to focus on all the Daniels that are a part of this community. And maybe it ain't as many Daniels as it is somewhere else at another podcast or something, but I need to focus and you have greater results. So that's why Daniel ran through in the tournament all the students of the bigger dojo with more experience because he had detailed custom training that was specific for him. So whether you're Daniel or whether you're Mr.
Miyagi in your life and you're interchangeable, right? Sometimes you're the student. Sometimes you're the teacher. Here's my advice.
When you are the teacher, focus on the student. Don't overlook Daniel because your overall goal is to grow. And some of us, that's what we do. I want to grow.
I want to get here. I want to do this. So you overlook the small details in the process. So if you're Daniel, then this is what I want you to do.
Listen to the teacher. Sometimes there's people in that position of Daniel where God has blessed you with someone who's trying to reach you at a deeper level, someone that he sent customised for you to give you exactly what you need, but you're too busy following the trends. You're too busy following. You look into the like, oh, what are they doing over there?
That dojo got more people. I want to go and beat because look, we want to be in big crowds. That's what we that's how we are sometimes. But sometimes God has set you aside and set you apart so that he could develop and work on you and take you through your process to refine you so that when it's time for you to come out and go to the tournament and everybody is there, you didn't watch cars, you didn't paint it fences, you got to watch Karate Kid, the original one if you want to know what that reference is about.
But you've done all these small things to prepare for the bigger moment. But when you were doing those small things, it was nobody there but you and your teacher. Don't despise small big game names. Let's take it to the next topic.
All right, well we got all right. This is a quick story. I want to tell you all this happened last week, man. This is hilarious to me.
I had to work with this lady in the downtown Detroit area. And what happened is I'm a national manager and I was going to help the local team in the market. So it's like going to spend the day with them and I used to be in this local market too. So I love when I get a time, opportunity to go into Detroit market, especially downtown because back in 2011, I was the local rep in Detroit downtown.
And it was just cool because Detroit is a city that has gone through a lot of change the last 10 years. So I was really feed on the ground for my organization and developing partnerships in the community. And selling the businesses and things like that. So the see where it's at and I was always cool for me because I was not only do I live here, but I really work down here for some years, five or six years on the ground.
So all right, this lady, she hit me up like, hey, we were meeting in the morning. And I guess she don't spend a lot of time downtown. But because again, I work down here so much. I know like downtown, you got to find a good spot.
You got to know where to park. You got to know where to go. And so I got my little things that I do when I'm down here. I got my parking spots where I park where I know I can walk and get to places pretty easily.
So she asked me, this is what's funny. She asked me like, hey, where do you park or da da da da. I'm like, all right, cool. So I gave her the layout.
This is where I park. You can meet me over here. We can meet over here. Like, cool.
I'm working with you. This is your territory, but I'm telling you where to go. OK, that's telling me anyway. Let's get over that.
She might listen to this one day. Very nice lady. Much love to you. If it's you, God bless you.
So, Pete, she got there like five minutes before me. She caused me like, hey, I'm in such and such parking lot. And I was like, oh, OK, cool, which is not the parking lot that I told you about parking in, but that doesn't bother me because you're an adult. You could park where you want to park.
So I'm like, who I'll be there in five minutes. I'm going to the spot. I told you I was going to. This is what she says to me.
She said, oh, I would be more comfortable if you park over here. I was like, oh, well, I like parking over here. So I'll meet you down there. And we got off the phone.
Where's my point? My point is people will control you if you let them. This is something that corporate America has really, an area that has really allowed me to grow in because I'm the person that has to be mentally prepared. Like, if you catch me off guard with something like that, I find myself parking where she said it part because I wasn't ready.
Like, I didn't know it was going to be this mad aggressive moment with parking, but hey, through the years, I've grown. And once I kind of feel like, oh, learn like this, how people are, at least in the organization, I work in there, very aggressive people you deal with every day. And I'm not necessarily naturally an aggressive person, even though I do think that could be argued people who know me and are close to me, probably would say otherwise. So I'm not going to argue or debate that.
My point is this. I was just thinking about how in life, like sometimes Christians struggle with standing there grown because we somehow believe that humility equals weakness. So it's like, oh, I'm humble, so I'm weak. And one thing that I've learned and I want you to think about, right?
Just the second jewel that I'm dropping is like, don't allow the enemy to mistake your humility for weakness. Meaning you just because you were a believer in a Christian, you're not out looking for violence or trouble or argumentative or like, you're not looking for those things. But at the end of the day, you have to be prepared to stand your ground and people bring things to you to want to control you, especially when they don't make sense. It's like, ma'am, you asked me where to park.
If you were uncomfortable parking somewhere, you should have came where I was at. I don't, you don't get to control me. And I know this probably sounds like a small thing, but if I'm like, if y'all really knew how much this happens in corporate America with the smallest things, like I'm talking about this lady a couple weeks ago and I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast. We were working on this presentation together.
A deal that I brought her into, her side of the organization, I brought them into it. We are in the deal. I'm working on the deck and designing the deck. And, you know, we were working in Microsoft Teams where we could work live in PowerPoints so you can make updates live, I can see them vice versa.
I go in the deck that I created and I noticed that a logo was different than what I put in. And so I asked her, I was like, did you change that logo? She was like, yeah. I was like, okay, next time I would like you to bring it to my attention before you change something that I did.
Number one, she put in a low resolution logo. This frustrates me. I only use high resolution, transparent background logos, vector files as possible, or a PNG. So it's like, you know, clearly you don't even know how to do design, but you just like people are aggressive.
So I want you to check out, I don't know if it's still there, but there's this documentary called Push that was on Netflix. I watched it maybe five years ago. So I don't know if it's still there, but it's a really interesting documentary that shows you just how much trouble you can find yourself in if you're too compliant. If you're, if people can easily get you to comply with what they want to do, it's probably a little more dangerous than you think.
Because what ends up happening is that compliant people, I guess you kind of can be a people pleaser, but you can look up and be in a very bad situation. And that documentary could do a better job of bringing that to life than I can. But hey, I'm just telling you all it's something that I'm conscious of in any area of life. If you want me to do something explain it to me, make it make sense for me.
But I'm not just giving you compliance over my lifestyle or my like, you're not just going to have me parking anywhere because you want me to park there if I want to park somewhere else. So anyway, check out the documentary push. I think that's what it's called. I probably should have did some more research on that and wrote down like who is buying all that.
But hopefully you can go Netflix or YouTube or something, put it in push documentary and check that out. All right. All right. Let's move it on.
Next, Julie, that's about to drop the importance of being united by faith. This is something that y'all been hearing me say all year. And typically, I'm this type of person for all the new listeners out there. There are times that I just try to hear what the Lord is saying and where he's leading me and I stick to that last year, it was all about don't leave the pandemic empty handed.
This year is and last year was all about being united by faith. That was where the idea kind of sparked the first time I kind of felt led on that. But it has strengthened this year along with take your own advice, something that I'm living by right now, take your own advice. Meaning I could come on this show in different places and I can try to get people, I can make points to try to give other people the blueprint for, you know, some of the moves that I'm making are things that I'm doing feeling led.
But what the Lord really convicted me in is like, how dare you try to do a better job at convincing other people than following me for yourself with that same energy. So I'm all about taking my own advice this year from the standpoint of like, hey, when you have strong convictions and the Lord is leading you somewhere, you don't have to wait on other people or you should not even just wait on other people to follow God. It's like, okay, I'm willing to lead you, but I'm also willing to leave you if it means I have to follow Christ. What do I mean by that specifically?
If God has caught me to do something like, let's just say, get my finances together, right? I hadn't even, this ain't even written down. I'm giving y'all extra stuff right now. But if the Lord led me to get my finances together, which he did back in like 2012 to start my process.
And here I am nine years later in the process has developed and the goals have changed and the strategy has evolved and things have adapted and just all type of things. So what's my point? I can remember, and I'm just giving you all specific examples, all right? I can remember that when I first was on this journey of like trying to get my finances together, because I had realized the importance as a married man to lead my family, me and my wife, our future children set ourselves up for the best opportunity and success that we could have in the future.
I realized this in 2012, first of all, that I was failing in this area. Oh, we talk about know thyself. That's another thing that I'm talking all year long or the rest of the year, at least know thyself. Part of knowing thyself is understanding your weaknesses.
I'm not a person that believes that I just get to ignore my weaknesses and only think that I'm just this dope great person. No, I realize back in 2012, I looked in the mirror instead of just looking out the window. Most of us want to look out the window and point a finger. We should be looking in the mirror before we look out the window.
It's all type of jewels dropping right. Are you catching the jewels? All right. What's my point?
When I was real with myself about my situation. And said, you know what? You're not doing a good job leading your family. It's really on you because God has called you to be the leader.
And as long as you keep doing it this way, the household is going to go this way. I need you to change your ways. I need you to realize your flaws and your weaknesses. Also, I need you to understand that you grew up in poverty.
You grew up in an inner city where things are done a certain way in a community that does things a certain way when it comes to finances. And the reality of it is you're playing a different game than people who are successful. And it's not because, Jermaine, you don't have the ability to play in the game in the game. But do you have the persistence, the desire, and the willingness to give the effort?
Long story short, when I first started that path, I wasted most of my time trying to convince other people that they should be doing it. So the Lord had opened my eyes and I'm like, hey, y'all, look, we need to be safe. Hey, we need to be doing this. My family, I was getting on a nerve.
Some of y'all probably listening and I like, oh my God, he used to get on my nerves or steal, get on your nerves. And I appreciate the honesty. What's my point? I was doing this.
I was like this for years where the Lord would give me a direction. And I would put my energy into trying to translate the direction to other people, the vision. And the problem with that is it's not that I wasn't also following what he was calling me to do, but if I'm being honest, I might have been giving 75% to God, giving 25% to them and waiting on them to catch up so I can give the Lord to other 25%. Here's what I learned when it talks about taking your own advice and knowing myself.
Know thyself, recognize the flaw and change the flaw, repent, understand where you feel short. No problem. We all do it. Include me.
It's a constant thing. I have to constantly repent, constantly look in the mirror, constantly recognize my flaws. Know thyself, right? But then take your own advice is, all right, Jermaine, the Lord has called you to this.
So I know you're willing to leave them. Meaning, because see to me, I don't want to go somewhere and my friends and family could have went with me. And it's like, dang, I don't want to see people struggle, right? But what I realized is I have to make a decision that am I going to wait for you to follow God or am I going to follow God?
And I can still leave you bread crumbs along the way. This podcast is part of the bread crumbs. Part of the reason I talk about these things is to give people the blueprint. No matter, and I might fail, right?
But wherever I go in life, if somebody want to say, how did he do it? My goal is that you can push play from episode one. And the blueprint for everything that I've applied isn't is wrapped up in all of these shows. So I'm willing to lead you, right?
I got bread crumbs. I got a podcast. I record every week. I'll give it effort.
But I'm also willing to leave you. Understanding that I still have to go where God is calling me to go. So take your own advice. Know thyself.
Understand that you have to look in the mirror and correct your flaws. But you also have to be willing to leave other people in order to follow Christ. Not with the intention to leave them because you want to leave them. That's why you leave bread crumbs behind.
But it's just saying to them, I can't wait on you to live in my purpose. Now I said all that to say the topic I was supposed to discuss was being united by faith. All right. And here's what I want to say about that.
First of all, let's just take a look at the Bible, right? We're going to look at Mark chapter three. Go look at two verses 24 and 25. Now, ultimately what's happening here, let me just build a little bit of the context, right?
Because I'm looking at kind of an indirect or slightly different view of the scripture. So I just want to be sure that I paint the context correctly. Ultimately, Jesus is being accused in this moment, right? Of like, you know, by the teachers of religious law, like they're saying that Jesus is possessed by Satan.
Like that's where he's getting the power to cast out demons. So it's basically like, hey, Jesus is casting out demons. They looking like, no, I'm Brad. That's because he a demon.
And so Jesus makes this point. Now, also understand that, I'll say the point first verse 24 and 25. Jesus says, basically in 23, he says, how can Satan cast out Satan? All right.
So that's verse 23, one forward from what I said. How can Satan cast out Satan? But then he says in 24 and 25, these really, really powerful principles, I believe. He says, a kingdom divided by civil war will collapse.
25. Similarly, a family splintered by fueling will fall apart. So although Jesus was using this as an example, to combat the idea that he would be a demon or part of Satan's army, he's making this point of like, yeah, that doesn't make sense because, you know, a house divided can't stand, right? Civil war will destroy and collapse something.
A family that is fueling, I mean, fueling will fall apart. So those are the principles I really want to focus on in this really quick, this quick take right here. When I look at the church, the world today, even the country, America that I live in, right? And I know again, the show reaches multiple countries.
So I have to be mindful sometimes I speak from an American standpoint, and I don't know the dynamics of everyone's country. So this may or may not apply. But here's a couple of things that I've noticed over the last two years is that, and it's not that this hasn't already always existed, but I've seen it heightened over the last couple of years, is that there's a lot of division within. So for me, within America, and in also within the church.
So what I've seen is that these outside factors really driven by the world and their narrative, and I say the world because we, you know, a lot of these news and media sites, they're not driven by Christian principles, right? And we put this ultimate trust in the news and media platforms because of their reputation and because of their marketing efforts. But when you really look at it from the way they filter through the news, they're looking for stories and things that are clickbait and that make you watch, right? Their goal isn't necessarily to bring you the truth, but somehow we believe that.
So what that has basically created is this interesting dynamic of like, hey, let's create contention. Let's pin people against each other. And it's based on different things. We saw this unravel last year by way of race.
There was a lot of focus on race last year, right? In the world, I can't even say the country. And so there was, let's put black versus white primarily as well as some other minority groups and things like that, at least based on American standards, minority groups. Let's put, let's pin these two groups against each other.
And with this ultimate goal of the timing, because you got to look at the timing of, we really need people to be on one side or the other so they can vote a particular way, right? And so we don't want people to be friendly. We don't want them to hold hands and be kumbaya and to be united because we really need clear lines of distinction so that people can vote with emotion and anger, right? And so we saw a lot of things trigger racial tensions in America last year.
Now, yeah, I'm not here to get into all the details of all those things. I'm only speaking from a macro level and I'm just spitting facts right now. And so at the end of the day, there was all this contention and in that race also translates into politics, right? So you have really a strong, a really high percentage of African Americans that are at least traditionally on a democratic or liberal side of defense, although there are a lot of them that are Republicans as well or a lot of us.
But when I say us, I mean, black people, I'm not a part of a political party. So that's not where this is coming from. But hey, if you have whites over here and blacks over here, all lives matter versus black lives matter, we did an entire episode on that. So feel free to scroll through and listen to it.
But you create all this contention and division, right? Here's the number one issue. The rest of the world is watching. So when there's a civil war, then the house will collapse, right?
It will, the kingdom will fall. That's biblical principle from Jesus himself. And so what I'm looking at is like, man, it would be the equivalent of a husband and wife putting their arguments on social media. Why would me and my wife openly arguing debate on social media for the world to see, for the world to choose sides so that dudes could choose her side girls, but choose my side, it'd be people all over the world trying to break us up.
My point is we would eventually fall. That's not a safe, like you have to protect certain things because the enemy's watching. Now I'm going to wrap this up pretty quickly. The rest of the world, they're like, I don't know if we live in the reality of how the world works.
There are countries that want to overtake America, China being one of the primary ones who wants to become the economic world leader. That is what China wants to do. And that is kind of what they're on pace to do if you're watching, right? That's also where these dynamics of COVID come in and all of these controversies and conspiracies around where it came from or didn't come from.
And it starts getting confusing because all the news stories get thrown out all these different ways. But what I'm telling you is ultimately at the end of the day, these countries don't like America. They want to overtake us. But America is openly arguing for the world to see, which you have to step back and ask yourself for a question.
Does it make America stronger or weaker to be in front of their enemies? Ah, black lives matter. All lives matter. Ah, Republican, Democrat, not being able to ever work together, but openly just destroying one another, which is ultimately weakening our own home.
All right. Now, in addition to that, I've watched the church get involved in these issues passionately. Okay. I'm not here to judge whether how people get involved in issues.
Here is the concern for me as a believer. I have not seen the church this passionate on biblical issues. I haven't seen it. I'm just speaking from a macro level.
I'm not saying your church or you. I'm saying from a big picture perspective when you step back and look at it. We have you seen the church this passionate about something that is in the Bible directly, this passionate about worshiping Christ, this passionate about brothers and sisters coming together to do the will and the work of the Lord. This passionate about their faith, I don't see it at this level.
So what's happened? The church at a macro level is also becoming weaker. What do I mean by becoming weaker? I mean that a lot of the laws and things that are passing are more for an anti-biblical and opposite of the Bible kind of perspective and stance.
The world is becoming the leading voice on politics, on faith, on your children, on gender, right? Like the world is becoming the leading voice. And this all happens when the standards and principles of what really established America start changing, understanding that there are some things wrong with America, some things that need to be handled, some things that could be talked about amongst family and amongst friends. It's like this, I could talk about my family.
You can't, you know what I'm saying? Like my brother, my, you know, I might say something over my momma house and my brother might be like, man, I might leave and they might be like, man, it's a man, it'd be tripping, right? Okay, I'm their brother. I'm their son.
They can say that. You can't say that to them. So what am I saying? Ultimately, here's the message I'm trying to put up.
We need to be united by faith. If you find yourself being so triggered and emotionally ran into the ground and emotionally charged, as a believer, and I'm not saying, listen, righteous indignation is a powerful thing. It's beautiful. But my question is, are we sure that what we're passionate about is what Christ was passionate about?
You can't know that unless you're reading the word, unless you're applying the word, and that's what we need to get back to. We need to get back to biblical principles, where I don't care if you're a Jew or a Gentile. If you are, if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are my brother and my sister and Christ, and we need to find a way. If I'm black and I come from the hood and I got all of these embedded thoughts and things in my mind and you white and you come from, you know, the suburbs or you come from wherever we need to be able to talk, but because our cultural differences are so great and they're being amplified in the media and in the world, the church is buying into it, which is bringing division into God's church.
And I don't know about you. The Bible calls us the body of Christ. That means arms and legs are connected. The body is disconnected.
A body that's disconnected ain't nobody. So you think you're going to be the arm over here and I'm going to be the leg over here and we don't differ size. No, we need to be one body, knitting many members following and serving Christ because if we continue to allow the world to push this narrative of division and I'm just, I'm wrapping it up. I see a lot of believers buying into it.
I see us bringing into the pool pits and look, I'm not judging or anything. What I'm saying though is we need to bring wisdom along with it and can we ultimately say that we are doing the work of Christ or are we doing the work of the world? Are we pushing the agenda of the world? Where did the philosophies and things that we're following come from or are we just following our feelings because this feels right.
Hey, open up the borders. Let everyone in because that feels right. Let's not consider who they are what they're about. Well, that's not even processing and it's interesting the way I see things developing because it's like, wait a minute, we mandating our citizens and people to get something like the vaccination.
We're opening up borders and oh, y'all don't have to get it. Listen, man, I'll end this like this. At the end of the day, it is very important to be able to push all of these things aside and find a way to focus on Christ. And if Christ is not the center of these things, even in your politics or your views, if Christ is not the center and you're not praying and seeking Him, it doesn't mean we can't disagree.
It doesn't mean you have to agree with me or you have to vote how to next person vote. It just means that that shouldn't be the deciding factor of whether or not we can be cordial, whether or not we could be brothers and sisters in Christ. If you're a believer and I'm a believer, that should be our core. But we've allowed the world and these other things to be how we identify ourselves more than how we identify ourselves through Christ.
And I am one that believes that we need to be united by faith because together we are stronger. All right, look at us. We moving along to another topic. I told y'all this is the epitome of quick takes.
I'm just, we got a handful of jillies and we dropping them. Got a handful of jillies and I'm dropping them. Hey, anyway, what's the next topic? Oh, let's keep it in the Bible.
We're gonna go to 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3. I think we're gonna check out verses 6 through 10. I'm reading from the new living translation. If you're following along, please do email me.
Let me know what you think of the show. Let me know which jewels you picked up and let me know which ones you threw back. Jermaine Wilson music at gmail.com. You can find that in the description of the show.
You could also just DM me on Instagram or Facebook or things like that. Also comment on YouTube, which I'm horrible with the YouTube. It's just part of the process. When I get into the video more consistently, I'll figure out how to build some consistent YouTube content.
But it's very challenging to do. I'm not gonna sit here in front. I know myself. I know my weakness.
All right. 2nd Thessalonians. Now, before I jump into this, let me just say this. I made a post, I think last week.
I forgot exactly how I worded it, but it was just something. Oh, I said two words that people ignored all summer long, now hiring. That's all I said. I ain't even say what I felt about it.
This is always an interesting thing because I like talking abstract sometimes on social media, mostly because it gives me an opportunity to see how people think and just leave things open ended. Also, I was always inspired by the fact that Jesus talks in parables and he gave his disciples the reason why he talks about imperables in the Bible. I've always been intrigued by that. And so I've kind of, I adopted that.
That's when I started purposely being abstract. It was like, oh, Jesus is abstract. He talks in these parables so that those who truly follow him will understand, but those who don't will be confused. I like that idea.
So sometimes I talk abstract. I'm not saying I talk in parables, but I just like to present things in a way that is like, oh, cool. Let me just let this out and see how you respond. Of course, a lot of people thought it was funny.
Some people were upset. It's always interesting to me when people get upset just off of a statement, especially when it's kind of true. When you look at the employment rate in America and what some of these jobs and organizations are trying to do just to attract applicants, I mean, some organizations have record low applicants in the last year, right? I ain't even get to the detail of why or none of that.
I just said those two words people ignore it. And a couple people got charged up, right? And they, you know, made these points about, you know, some people, you know, started a business and this that I'm like, hey, look, here's one thing I understand. I'm not here to argue with anyone, but I think it's really important to understand how the world and the economy works.
And sometimes my concern is people are following their feelings, but they don't know how the world works. So I'll give one example. As the debt mounts up in America, right, we are continually taking on debt. So like when you when a country prints up money, which I think in 2020, I think it was 2020, I think it was 2021, I think it was 2020, America printed up 40% of the money that's ever been printed by America, period.
So think of that 40% of the money that was ever printed or created by America was printed last year. That is a staggering statistic because the country is in debt, right? And you have to pay that debt. And what happens is when you in trillions of dollars of debt, I don't know the exact number.
You can literally search it really quickly online. I'm just putting in like American debt, the United States debt in Google. What's my point? Well, our country works a lot like human beings.
Like you can't just mount up bills and not pay it, right? You got bad credit, you know, whatever, you have a bad credit. That means you have a weaker personal economy. And remember how I said previously in the last topic, like China wants to overcome us as an economic power.
They want to be the world economic leader. And there's a lot of things about how the world works when like your workforce and employment rate that that that strengthens your economy as a country, right? Like that's money flowing into your system. Then like you have money for things like your military, like all these, like, I mean, the budget, I mean, I don't know, man, it's hard to start unpacking some of this stuff and keeping it at a high level without going down a rabbit hole.
I'm trying to keep it high level. My point is this, when you understand how the world actually works, then you start understanding that I need to be a contributor, not just a consumer. And so look, I'm not mad at anyone who was able to leverage things like the stimulus check or whether it's your unemployment, whatever you got to do, what do I mean by leverage? Meaning you took that to get ahead in some kind of way.
So you invested it, you did something, you took care of some bill, you would not again, I know this really ranges because people would be like, well, I couldn't afford to do that. I had to get I had to get food all that. Like I'm with you, I'm rocking with you. I'm not talking about people who couldn't do better or have extreme situations or circumstances.
I'm talking about most people, the average people, average people could have leveraged some of the things that were available last year. But what some people did is just took it as an opportunity to abuse it or like not get ahead. What do I mean? Ultimately, if you think it's always going to be like that, like you could just not work and the country's going to print you money.
The country isn't going to have money. Like things like social security, these things are at risk of systems being broken. Things that we have depended on and been taught to be dependent on may not be there in the future. And I don't know if the everyday ordinary Joe is understanding this, understanding the impact of you getting a lot of free money and the country taking on that debt.
I'll give you one example. That's where inflation comes from. It just means you're going to pay more now for a bag of chips or a pack of chicken in a grocery store or whatever. Like we're going to see in the next couple years that, oh, that's just reallocated to higher prices.
You're going to pay more for gas and things like that. You're also now your dollar is weakened because as things are more expensive, one dollar goes not as far as it used to. Oh, I used to take a dollar. Listen to my grandma talk.
I take a dollar to the store and I bought 700 pieces of candy, two pops and some chips. Well, you can't do that anymore because of inflation. The dollar isn't as strong as it used to be, which means that economically we become weaker. All right, I'm going to get off this soapbox.
But my point here is as believers, be careful not to take on a lazy mentality or an entitled mentality or a dependent mentality because the problem with the dependent mentality is when you give over your dependency to someone, you also give over your freedom. And that's why people can come out and force things and say, hey, you know, if you don't do this, near this, it's like, oh, man, well, I got to eat. So I got to do this because that's a level of control and slavery that happens when you make people dependent on you. So we have to be free.
We have to be independent if we can be. There are opportunities for you to rise above your circumstances. But if you stay in the cycle and you keep doing what's always been done, you're going to always get what's always been gotten. All right.
Now let's get to the Bible. Second Thessalonians chapter three verse six. And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, right? So this is coming in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Stay away from all believers who live idol lives and don't follow the tradition they receive from us. Verse seven, for you know that you want to imitate us. We were not idle when we were with you. American Idol.
That would have been an adult title for this American Idol, like American ID, L E versus idol. I American Idol. I don't know. I'm like, is that the title?
Is it the title? American Idol dropping jewels. Okay, that might be the title. Y'all might have just heard this is this is how it happens, right?
Um, let's credit the Bible for that. I just saw that where I don't like stay away from all believers who live idol lives and don't follow the tradition they receive from us. For you know that you ought to imitate us. When we were with you, we we were not idle when we were with you.
Verse eight, we never accepted fool from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard day and night so we would not be a burden to any of you. Verse nine, we certainly had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow an example to follow y'all. Verse 10 says this, even while we were with you, we gave you this command.
This is the command. Those unwilling to work will not get to eat. Whoo, American idols. Those who are not willing to work are not going to eat.
This is something. Now notice, like I want you, I want to do something. I want to free you because this is what happens when we talk about things like this. Let me breathe.
Let me free you from how the enemy wants to get people charged up negatively. People instantly go to extreme examples when you talk about things like this. Oh, well, my uncle only got one army. He can't, what we're not talking about show.
What about the kids over in this country that we're not talking about them? They represent point zero one point, whatever, and probably didn't even receive a stimulus check. My point is this is very dangerous to go to these extreme measures of examples when you want to dispute a point because you just want to be comfortable doing what you've always done. Know thyself.
What do I mean? Step back and think, man, the Bible is literally saying, I should not be idle. IDLE. I should not be sitting around collecting and doing nothing.
That's Bible. That's not me talking. I need to be a contributor. They say it when we were with you, we weren't idle.
It even going on, went on to say we had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to be an example. Listen, y'all, all I'm saying is this. I'm not judging anybody's situation. And again, keep in mind, receive this in context.
If you leverage something, I'm not mad at that. What do I mean by leverage again? Means you had a plan and you strategically were able to take advantage of something in a positive way to allow you to do something else that was purposeful. So I have no problem with that.
That's a plan. That's a strategy. But idle means to do nothing. There's a saying that says the idle time is the devil's playground.
So when you allow yourself to be idle, you got to see the connection. God doesn't want us doing nothing. But the devil does because the more idle the more I can get y'all, the more I can get y'all brainwashed by this TV station, brainwashed by this TV station, brainwashed by that political party, brainwashed by this political party. I can sit you down and have you on social media all day.
Now social media is your doctrine. Now social media is the word. Now the memes are preaching to you. I've changed your philosophy because your idol, God doesn't want us idle.
A lot of us just want to be American idols. Like we just want to be, hey, man, I just hit me with a stimmy. I'll sit back, watch TV all day. Never thinking to change my situation.
I want you to ask yourself something. Has God given me the ability to change my situation? I'm not saying you, like I have the power that is all because of me that I change my situation. No, what I'm saying is are you recognizing the gift and the ability that God gave you?
If you were drowning in a lower sense of ship to save you, you would be a fool to try to keep swimming. Just kidding the ship. God has gifted us so many times with the abilities to overcome our situation. But because we are idle, we are not in the process to understand how to sharpen our toolkit.
Look, man, I've been telling my wife lately. I just thank God that I'm in the game. So that's the thing for me. There were times when I was like bad credit wasting money on all type of stuff, the opportunities would come and I couldn't take advantage of it.
I wasn't in the game. Some of us wonder why do opportunities keep passing me? It's because you're trying to time the opportunity perfectly, but you need to prepare for the opportunity in advance. You not go time and opportunity purposely, perfectly.
I can talk. So let me pause right there and give, I'm going to just give a little bit of this is not financial advice, but just some financial opinion and some of my personal philosophies. These are things that I learned, not things that I always had, things that I had to change. So let's just take something like $1,000.
I remember when I was younger, you give me $1,000. First thing I would think about is, well, what are all the things I want that I could spend my $1,000 on? You know, the time of money burning a hole in your pocket, right? You got all these things you want.
So what I used to do, I used to go out and just buy everything I want. I worshiped my wants. We talked about that on the previous episode. Worship my wants, right?
And I noticed something about me. I always want something. It ain't never a time. I want stuff right now.
It's never a time that I don't want anything ever. Never been the time that you put some money on my pocket or whatever. And I didn't want something, right? But I used to worship my wants, but I realized the pattern in my life, like as I'm worshiping my wants, and this could also apply to ourself spiritually, right?
And this is where I love talking about finances because if you really listen to the principles, they're biblical principles. There's a time I'm living and seeing I worship my wants. Let's do what I want to do, right? I want to do it.
I feel like doing it. I do it. That drives me further and further away from Christ, right? So in that same way, at some point, I have to stop and know myself, know my own weaknesses, my problems and repent and turn away.
So when I think about finances, this is something that I got from Joseph, right? Because in Genesis, when the story of Joseph, when God gave him the dream on how to save during the famine, he taught him how to prepare during the good times for the times that might not be so will, right? And so one of the things, just a simple thing that I do, anytime I get a lump sum of money and a lump sum of money, I don't like to talk numbers with money because it just complicates thing and people have different opinions about what's allowed to money versus a little. It depends on your personal situation.
So just think of whatever a lump sum of money is to you. Let's for this example use $2,000. Okay. If I got $2,000 today, I would automatically save or invest 50% of that money.
No questions asked, no way around it automatically investing or saving 50%. That is how I prepare. That's how I ensure and limit my wants, right? Because I know the wants are going to be there.
And what happens is when the one is the first thing that you're allowing the kicking in, now your wants are taking away from your needs. And sometimes needs are not immediate. I know we think of needs as things like the bills, the what see some of us, it's so much I want to say. It's just we just drop it.
Jules, man. Like it's so much I want to say because what ends up happening is we only view the immediate and we are our lives are controlled about the about and I can talk about about the anyway. Our lives are controlled by our immediate lives. We don't have the discipline yet, but we're working on it, right?
We got it. This is why you in this process, right? You're getting strengthened. You have to develop the ability and the discipline to see life beyond the moment.
The moment represents the micro. You need to step back and look at the macro and say, all right, I know in the moment, my needs are lights, bills, food, whatever. That's automatic. But have I been able to look at what my long term needs are?
I'm going to tell you what the importance of this is from a financial standpoint. If I only focus on the immediate needs, I live in the illusion that once the immediate needs are taken care of, any other money I have is extra and free for me to do what I want to do. This is why right off top, I take 50% up and then what I tell my wife is this. This right here is for the future, Jermaine and Tiffany.
They are going to thank us one day because if I ignore them, right? If I don't prepare for them, like the most powerful part of right now isn't right now. It's the ability to impact the future. Can I rewind that?
It was a jewel that just dropped. Did you catch it? The most powerful thing about right now isn't right now. It's about how right now impacts the future.
Some of us, and let me just say this to you, I don't care how young you are because what happens is the devil uses you to make you think you have forever. I don't care how old you are because what the devil does with age is make you think you have no time or it's too late. Let's get that out of your head. Let's stop trying to do it all today.
Let's just start the process. Get in the game. You are in the game when you get your next check and you do the right thing. When you get a next bonus and you do the right thing.
Listen, it don't take much to be in the game, y'all. If I give you $300 right now, it's time for you to get in the game and do the right thing with $150. But look, you don't even have to, this ain't about you following it. I'll just give you one example.
I got a million things on this stuff. You don't have to do what I do. That's what I did. I'm not forcing you.
I don't want to, I'm not putting my way on you. What I'm saying is you need to develop a strategy. I developed my strategy first by week reading the Word of God and then reading and learning financial books and self development and over years and years of practice. That's where the strategy came from.
This is not just a feeling. It's not just something I made up. It's something that I've seen work. And so again, the toughest part and I'm just being real, just like statements like when I say, talk about the economy or now hiring the things, you know what the most challenging thing for me is, is that I can always tell when somebody is responding to me and they don't know what they're talking about, meaning they haven't studied it.
And that's the toughest thing is when you're trying to help people, like you trying to be Mr. Miyadi, but then you'll think you got it all figured out. Here's my thing. I'm not saying I know it all, but if I practice karate and you ain't never done karate a day in your life, why would you try to teach me karate?