November 20, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode, we’re kicking off a new series on idols in entrepreneurship—not golden calves or carved statues, but the subtle, modern idols that quietly take God’s place in our lives and businesses. If you’ve ever felt your business owning you, your identity hinging on your performance, or your hope quietly shifting from God to “how well things are going,” this series is for you.
I’m sharing from my own story over the last 15+ years of entrepreneurship—where my identity, security, and hope have been wrapped up in my business, my plans, my performance, and even “good things” that slowly became ultimate things. I’m not coming from a place of “having it all figured out.” I’m sharing from my own wrestling—years of realizing how often I’ve put other things before God in my life and in my business.
Episode Highlights
- Why business strategy and frameworks fall short if your heart and priorities aren’t surrendered to God first
- A simple definition of modern-day idols (and why they’re often good things put in the wrong place)
- How our identity gets tangled up in our work—and what it means to root it in Christ instead of our business
- The tension between “God’s way” of building a business vs. the world’s way
- Honest questions to help you see what might be competing with God in your own heart
- How drifting from God usually happens slowly and through distraction, not overnight rebellion
- Fixing our eyes on Jesus in the middle of the storm of business, family, and life
- God’s grace, correction, and invitation to deeper dependence on Him
Scriptures Referenced
- Exodus 20 – “You shall have no other gods before Me… You shall not make for yourself an image…”
- 1 Corinthians 10:14 – “Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.”
- 1 John 5:21 – “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”
- Matthew 14:22–33 – Peter walking on the water and sinking when he looks at the wind and waves
- Mark 12:30 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
- John 10:10 – the enemy’s tactic to steal, kill, and destroy, often through distraction.
Resources & Links
- Learn more at ClearAuthenticBrands.com
And if this episode resonates with you, share it with another faith-driven entrepreneur who’s trying to build a business that honors God—not just in theory, but in the daily decisions, pressures, and storms of real life.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amy Dardis (00:12):
I'm your host, Amy Dardis.
And in today's episode, we'reactually kicking off a new
series, and we're going to bediving into the topic of idols
and what idols look like in ourlife today, especially as
leaders, especially asentrepreneurs.
(00:34):
As much as I love talking aboutthe practical and operational
aspects of business, talkingabout hiring and recruiting and
alignments and frameworks, noneof that really gets us anywhere
if our own heart isn't rightfirst.
Because what we do, how welive, the decisions we make are
(00:57):
all based on what we value andwhat we believe.
The same way we talk about howcore values guide our decision
makings and guide our behaviors.
Well, even deeper than that iswhat we believe as a person, as
an individual, about ouridentity, about our purpose,
(01:18):
what we believe about God in ourlife and his role, whether he's
sovereign and in control, orwhether he is just something
that we believe in, but maybedon't really bring him into the
forefront of how we live or howwe operate our business.
And this series, diving intothis, isn't so much about me
(01:44):
having it all figured outbecause I certainly do not.
This is me sharing my ownjourney and my own story of what
it has been like, the strugglesand the idols that I have
wrestled with as an entrepreneurfor the last 15 years.
And unfortunately, we're a lotlike the Israelites.
(02:08):
I wish we weren't, but but weare, and I certainly am, where I
can have an idol in my life.
I can be wrestling withsomething, I can be putting
something before God.
I can go through a season ofbeing disciplined and being
shaped and being led throughthat.
(02:29):
I can learn the lesson and itcan stick for a while, but it
can also rear its ugly head upagain years later because I kind
of forget.
I kind of get distracted.
I kind of veer off course.
And we see this happen over andover in the Bible, and it's
(02:50):
because it happens over and overin our own lives as people.
It's easy to kind of forgetabout the hard lessons that we
learned.
And I think there's definitelylessons that we learn that
really stick, but so many ofthem are not just like a one and
done.
They're not just like, oh, Ilearned that lesson and now I
(03:12):
will never do it again.
I think God can remind usgently and sometimes not so
gently, like, hey, we have beenhere before.
You have put this before mebefore.
And here I am once again, andwe're gonna we're gonna walk
(03:34):
through this and gonna walk youthrough what it really means to
put me first in your life.
And I think it's easy to justthink about God as just
something that we believe in andthis power that is kind of
(03:54):
disconnected from our everydaylife.
It's very easy to get caught upin the day-to-day of business
and operations and people andmarketing and branding and
Monday through Friday or evenSunday to Sunday, like we are
focusing on what do we need todo for our business?
What do we need to do for ourpeople?
(04:14):
What do we need to do for ourcustomers?
And then, yeah, sure, we go tochurch on Sunday, or yeah, sure,
we're praying at night beforebed, or maybe early in the
morning with coffee.
But how much of that, how muchof God's leading and his will
and his power is reallydetermining our steps in our
(04:37):
day-to-day life and our steps inhow we run our business and the
decisions that we choose tomake.
Because if I have learnedanything, it is that running my
business God's way versusrunning my business the world's
way are two very differentpaths.
(04:58):
And they're always at oddsagainst each other.
And so in every season, I thinkI have been wrestling with
something.
And so when we talk aboutidols, you know, in the Bible,
the the Israelites had a goldencalf, or they would make statues
or sheriff poles, or, you know,there was these physical
(05:18):
objects that in our head it'seasy to be like, well, I don't
have that.
Like I believe in God and I goto church.
But the the definition of anidol is an object or even an
abstract concept that is given ahigher priority than God.
It's something that we rely onfor blessing or help or guidance
(05:44):
instead of God.
It's anything that consumes ourheart, our imagination, or our
devotion more than God.
And it's any good thing that weelevate to a position of being
the main thing.
It's something that we givemore importance, more influence,
(06:07):
more prominence over God in ourlife.
And I will tell you right now,I have had a lot of those.
There, I I mean, I wish Ididn't.
I wish I could sit here andsay, oh no, God has always been
first, but he hasn't.
And therein lies this series ofbreaking down the things that I
(06:29):
have struggled with that to thethat that aren't even
necessarily bad things.
And that's the thing, is an isan idol isn't necessarily
something that is bad.
And the ones I'm gonna talkabout that that I have wrestled
with certainly don't come acrossas being evil or bad, but at
(06:51):
times in my life, they werethings that I gave more
importance, more prominence overGod.
They were things that I reliedon, that I invested into more
heavily than I was relying onGod.
And so those are the things Ikind of want to break down.
(07:12):
And when we talk about some ofthe things that we're gonna kind
of dive into, it can be it'sreally surrounding this
relationship between God's rolein our life, our our role as an
entrepreneur, and then our veryown identity.
(07:33):
And I have found that like oura lot of my identity has been
wrapped up into my business andinto the success and the
frustrations and the obstaclesand the good and the bad along
the way.
And over the years, God hasbeen breaking some of those
(07:57):
things in my life, breaking someof those holes to say, like,
your identity is not based onwhat you do or how you run your
business.
Your identity is based in meand in what you believe about me
in your business.
And this journey, all these upsand downs have brought me face
(08:21):
to face with some very darkmoments, some very tough
decisions, some very likebrutally honest truths of
saying, What do I really believeabout God?
What do I really believe aboutmyself?
And how is this belief, how isthis faith going to dictate the
(08:46):
action that I choose to do next?
How is it going to dictate howI choose to behave or how I
choose to make this decision inmy life, even when it seems to
go against everything else thatthe world is telling me to do?
And where is my hope?
(09:09):
Is my hope in God?
Or is my hope in my business?
Is my hope in my own strength?
Is my hope in my ability tomake things happen?
Is my hope in my plan and myability to control and make
(09:31):
decisions and call the shots?
Is my hope in the approval ofothers or even the the
scorecard, the statistics, thethe profit and loss statement,
the the wins and the losses andthe the sales forecast?
Is my hope in the advice andthe strategies that I am getting
(09:56):
from well-known businessexperts?
Is my hope in trying to be myown hope and in trying to prove,
prove that I'm something, provethat I am worthy, prove that I
have what it takes to do this?
Or is my hope in the comfortand the security that I've built
(10:22):
up in benefits and income andcomfort and thinking that I have
it all figured out and thatnothing can touch me?
Or is my hope in, or or do Inot have hope?
Is my hope non-existent becauseI allow fear and doubt and
(10:44):
stress to rule me instead?
And that in itself is its ownmonster that we face, but also
very, very real.
It's it I think it's very realto not have hope in this world
because we see so much darkness,we see so much devastation and
(11:06):
brokenness and pain.
Or we've been beat down andkicked so many times that it
seems impossible to get out ofthe hole.
It seems impossible to everbreak free.
It seems impossible that wecould really overcome and life
could be different, or ourbusiness could look different
(11:27):
because we feel so stuck and wehave felt stuck for so long.
Been there too.
And and in in that season, wewe actually we stop having any
hope and we definitely stopputting our hope in God.
And so that becomes an idol inand of itself.
And so over the next 10episodes, each episode, we're
(11:53):
gonna break down specific idols.
And these are not, this is notall inclusive at all.
Like this, these are justthings that I personally have
come face to face with and howthey have run my life, affected
my life, the the consequencesthat I have paid for them, but
(12:15):
also God's grace through it alland his faithfulness, like
getting me through and and kindof teaching me his way of doing
business and teaching me aboutlike the role that he plays in
my life and in coming to justthis process of maturing and
(12:37):
growing as as a Christian, as anindividual, as a leader, to
say, wow, like you really areover it all and in it all and
through it all.
Like it really does all existfor your glory.
And outside of you, man, I gotnothing.
(12:57):
Like this is humbled me andshaped me and wrecked me, you
know, beyond anything I couldhave ever imagined.
But at the same time, I lookback and I'm like, wow, this is
this is what it means to to be afollower of Christ, but this is
(13:19):
what it means to live it out.
And I love business, I love theability to develop and use our
God-given gifting and that thatGod has these calls on our life.
But I have been so much moreinterested in what does it
(13:46):
practically look like to liveout our faith as a ministry in
the world of business?
Like, how do we build abusiness that honors God?
But not even just building abusiness, but it's like, how do
we lead our lives asentrepreneurs, as people who
(14:08):
work in the workplace?
And there are so many obstaclesthat we face, so many things
that come into question thatreally challenge what it is that
we believe.
And, you know, we talk aboutidols, and the Bible is very
(14:31):
clear, you know, in Exodus 20,God says, You shall have no
other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourselfan image.
Like that, like there should benothing else more important in
our life than God.
And Corinthians, firstCorinthians he says, like,
(14:51):
therefore, my dear friends, fleefrom idolatry.
In first John, he says, Dearchildren, keep yourselves from
idols.
And it shocks me, honestly, itit shocks me how easy it is to
(15:11):
put an idol up there, how easyit is to drift away from God.
And God really does have to bethe center of it all.
And the enemy's primary tacticof pulling us away from him is
(15:35):
by stealing, killing, anddestroying, and he does it
through distraction, he does itslowly, and so it's easy for us
to drift off.
And I think about Peter in theboat, and Jesus is coming
towards them, and there's thisstorm raging around them, and
(15:57):
you have the wind and you havethe waves, and they have been
stuck in the boat for hours, notgetting anywhere.
And here comes Jesus walkingout on the water, and Jesus
says, or Peter says, like, ifthat's really you, tell me to
come to you.
And he gets out of the boat, sohe has this incredible faith
(16:22):
and he is fixing his gaze, he isfixing his focus on Jesus, and
he's keeping his eyes on him,and while he does that, he walks
on water, which is just, Imean, amazing.
And I think that's the life Godis calling us to live, right?
(16:43):
When we he says, get out of theboat and focus on me.
And all around us, we have thisstorm raging.
All around us, we have demandsand we have threats and we have
opposition and we have peoplehiring problems and labor
shortages, and we have theeconomy and the uncertainty of
(17:04):
that, and we have tariffs, andwe have prices going up, and
then having to mitigate priceincreases to customers, and you
have to look at how do we stayin the black and stay away from
the red, and how do we makepayroll and how do we grow and
how do we beat out ourcompetitor?
And in the middle of all ofrunning that business, like
(17:27):
maybe have a family and you havekids and you have sports, and
you're trying to be a goodparent, and you're trying to be
involved, and this is this isthe storm that rages around us,
and it doesn't ever go away, itvery rarely ever gets calmed.
And here, here God is saying,like, keep your eyes on me, like
(17:52):
love me with all your heart,with all your soul, with all
your mind, with all yourstrength.
Keep your eyes on me.
And when we do, we we wage thethe against the storm, like we
walk on the water, we in themidst of this chaos of life,
(18:15):
we're able to to do somethingincredible beyond what we could
ever ask or imagine.
But then we get distracted, weget distracted by the wind and
the waves and the storm, and weget distracted by our own fear
and our own doubt and our owninability in our own weaknesses,
(18:40):
in our realization that wow, Icannot do this on my own.
And we come face to face withthat, and that's when we start
to sink.
That's when we start to drift.
And this is what is happeningon a daily basis, on a weekly,
monthly, annual basis.
Like this is life.
Life is the storm.
(19:01):
And there are all of thesedemands for our time and our
attention.
And a lot of them are not bad.
Like this idea of, you know,like your business, that's not
bad.
Your your desire to beprofitable in your business so
you can pay your employees andso you can donate to your
community and you can be ablessing to others.
(19:23):
Like that is that's not bad.
Wanting to be successful andwanting to like track your stats
and your metrics and see thatthat it's growing, see that that
your your sales are growing andthat your the your leads are
coming in and being able totrack the leads to the sales,
(19:45):
and none of none of those thingsare bad.
But it's when we forget who'sreally in control.
We forget whose glory this isall for.
We forget that this life hereon earth is so short, and
(20:05):
there's an eternity that comesafterwards.
That's when we get distracted,and that's when we start to
focus.
We put these other things, wegive them more prominence, we
give them more influence, wegive them more power in our life
than they should ever have.
So we're gonna be just divinginto that over the next few
(20:29):
episodes.
And like I said, I'm gonnajust, I'm just gonna share my
own story.
Like these, these are just theidols I have struggled with, how
they've showed up in my life,the struggle that I have had
facing them, like theconsequences of of what it did
to my life in the meantime, whatit how it affected my
relationship with God.
But ultimately over the last15, 20 years of how God has like
(20:54):
been reminding me and how, youknow, when I keep my focus on
him and when he becomes the mostimportant thing in my life,
what what that looks like.
And and again, like I wish I Iwish I could be like, yeah, I I
have this all figured out, but II don't.
But you know, I don't think anyof us are here to one, to be
(21:18):
someone that we're not, or twoto admit that we don't need
Jesus because we absolutely do.
But if anything, I don't thinkI'm the only one, or at least
that's what I tell myself.
But deep down, I think theseare the things, these are the
battles we face behind closeddoors.
(21:40):
These are the things thatultimately destroy us from the
inside out.
And these stories, these thesestruggles, these battles, they
were so real for me.
They were so hard, they were sodefining for me.
(22:00):
And I think too often in thebusiness world, it's very easy
to just slip into this facade oflike, yep, we got it all
figured out.
Yep, like business is good,life is good.
Because admitting defeat oradmitting weakness is just
(22:24):
that's that's not how this worldworks.
That is not something wecelebrate in the world's way of
doing business.
It's like you don't ever, youdon't show your weakness, you
don't show your flaws.
And so if anything, I'm justI'm just gonna do this for you.
I'm just going to share mine inin the hope that you can you
(22:48):
can just listen to it justprivately, just in the in in the
comfort of your own car or yourown home or on a walk, and and
you can hear somebody else tellyou that maybe that maybe
they've struggled with somethingthat is very much in line with
the things you've struggledwith.
Like that you are not in thisalone.
(23:09):
And with anything like thispodcast, I I do not want to shy
away from the the real battles,like the real struggles and just
the the way that God has workedand moved in our life and the
actual all the business stuff,everything I've learned along
(23:33):
the way, it's all stemmed frommy like it's all stems from my
faith.
It all stems from what Ibelieve and how that belief
shapes how I show up and how Imake decisions and how I've
learned to run my business.
(23:54):
And so those are that's theroot of it, right?
Like that is that is where itreally all starts.
And yeah, there's plenty of Ithink business experts out
there.
But this this approach, thispodcast is really more about
this idea of putting God first,understanding our own purpose
(24:22):
and our identity and and what hecalls us to do and what it is
we believe in, how thatrelationship is play is lived
out within our business and thedecisions we make because of
that, and the the way we treatour people, the way we treat our
customers, the way we hire ourpeople, the way that we build
(24:45):
processes, why it matters thatwe have a healthy organization,
those things will only matter toyou if if deep down, like you
are also led by God in hisleading in your life on what
you're really here on earth todo, what you're what you're
(25:07):
really being called to do as anentrepreneur in this life.
So that's we're gonna wrap uptoday's episode.
As always, you can learn moreat ClearAuthenticBrands.com.
That's all for this episode.
I am excited to jump into thenext one.
I'm your host, Amy Dardis.
And in today's episode, we'reactually kicking off a new
series, and we're going to bediving into the topic of idols
and what idols look like in ourlife today, especially as
leaders, especially asentrepreneurs.
(00:34):
As much as I love talking aboutthe practical and operational
aspects of business, talkingabout hiring and recruiting and
alignments and frameworks, noneof that really gets us anywhere
if our own heart isn't rightfirst.
Because what we do, how welive, the decisions we make are
(00:57):
all based on what we value andwhat we believe.
The same way we talk about howcore values guide our decision
makings and guide our behaviors.
Well, even deeper than that iswhat we believe as a person, as
an individual, about ouridentity, about our purpose,
(01:18):
what we believe about God in ourlife and his role, whether he's
sovereign and in control, orwhether he is just something
that we believe in, but maybedon't really bring him into the
forefront of how we live or howwe operate our business.
And this series, diving intothis, isn't so much about me
(01:44):
having it all figured outbecause I certainly do not.
This is me sharing my ownjourney and my own story of what
it has been like, the strugglesand the idols that I have
wrestled with as an entrepreneurfor the last 15 years.
And unfortunately, we're a lotlike the Israelites.
(02:08):
I wish we weren't, but but weare, and I certainly am, where I
can have an idol in my life.
I can be wrestling withsomething, I can be putting
something before God.
I can go through a season ofbeing disciplined and being
shaped and being led throughthat.
(02:29):
I can learn the lesson and itcan stick for a while, but it
can also rear its ugly head upagain years later because I kind
of forget.
I kind of get distracted.
I kind of veer off course.
And we see this happen over andover in the Bible, and it's
(02:50):
because it happens over and overin our own lives as people.
It's easy to kind of forgetabout the hard lessons that we
learned.
And I think there's definitelylessons that we learn that
really stick, but so many ofthem are not just like a one and
done.
They're not just like, oh, Ilearned that lesson and now I
(03:12):
will never do it again.
I think God can remind usgently and sometimes not so
gently, like, hey, we have beenhere before.
You have put this before mebefore.
And here I am once again, andwe're gonna we're gonna walk
(03:34):
through this and gonna walk youthrough what it really means to
put me first in your life.
And I think it's easy to justthink about God as just
something that we believe in andthis power that is kind of
(03:54):
disconnected from our everydaylife.
It's very easy to get caught upin the day-to-day of business
and operations and people andmarketing and branding and
Monday through Friday or evenSunday to Sunday, like we are
focusing on what do we need todo for our business?
What do we need to do for ourpeople?
(04:14):
What do we need to do for ourcustomers?
And then, yeah, sure, we go tochurch on Sunday, or yeah, sure,
we're praying at night beforebed, or maybe early in the
morning with coffee.
But how much of that, how muchof God's leading and his will
and his power is reallydetermining our steps in our
(04:37):
day-to-day life and our steps inhow we run our business and the
decisions that we choose tomake.
Because if I have learnedanything, it is that running my
business God's way versusrunning my business the world's
way are two very differentpaths.
(04:58):
And they're always at oddsagainst each other.
And so in every season, I thinkI have been wrestling with
something.
And so when we talk aboutidols, you know, in the Bible,
the the Israelites had a goldencalf, or they would make statues
or sheriff poles, or, you know,there was these physical
(05:18):
objects that in our head it'seasy to be like, well, I don't
have that.
Like I believe in God and I goto church.
But the the definition of anidol is an object or even an
abstract concept that is given ahigher priority than God.
It's something that we rely onfor blessing or help or guidance
(05:44):
instead of God.
It's anything that consumes ourheart, our imagination, or our
devotion more than God.
And it's any good thing that weelevate to a position of being
the main thing.
It's something that we givemore importance, more influence,
(06:07):
more prominence over God in ourlife.
And I will tell you right now,I have had a lot of those.
There, I I mean, I wish Ididn't.
I wish I could sit here andsay, oh no, God has always been
first, but he hasn't.
And therein lies this series ofbreaking down the things that I
(06:29):
have struggled with that to thethat that aren't even
necessarily bad things.
And that's the thing, is an isan idol isn't necessarily
something that is bad.
And the ones I'm gonna talkabout that that I have wrestled
with certainly don't come acrossas being evil or bad, but at
(06:51):
times in my life, they werethings that I gave more
importance, more prominence overGod.
They were things that I reliedon, that I invested into more
heavily than I was relying onGod.
And so those are the things Ikind of want to break down.
(07:12):
And when we talk about some ofthe things that we're gonna kind
of dive into, it can be it'sreally surrounding this
relationship between God's rolein our life, our our role as an
entrepreneur, and then our veryown identity.
(07:33):
And I have found that like oura lot of my identity has been
wrapped up into my business andinto the success and the
frustrations and the obstaclesand the good and the bad along
the way.
And over the years, God hasbeen breaking some of those
(07:57):
things in my life, breaking someof those holes to say, like,
your identity is not based onwhat you do or how you run your
business.
Your identity is based in meand in what you believe about me
in your business.
And this journey, all these upsand downs have brought me face
(08:21):
to face with some very darkmoments, some very tough
decisions, some very likebrutally honest truths of
saying, What do I really believeabout God?
What do I really believe aboutmyself?
And how is this belief, how isthis faith going to dictate the
(08:46):
action that I choose to do next?
How is it going to dictate howI choose to behave or how I
choose to make this decision inmy life, even when it seems to
go against everything else thatthe world is telling me to do?
And where is my hope?
(09:09):
Is my hope in God?
Or is my hope in my business?
Is my hope in my own strength?
Is my hope in my ability tomake things happen?
Is my hope in my plan and myability to control and make
(09:31):
decisions and call the shots?
Is my hope in the approval ofothers or even the the
scorecard, the statistics, thethe profit and loss statement,
the the wins and the losses andthe the sales forecast?
Is my hope in the advice andthe strategies that I am getting
(09:56):
from well-known businessexperts?
Is my hope in trying to be myown hope and in trying to prove,
prove that I'm something, provethat I am worthy, prove that I
have what it takes to do this?
Or is my hope in the comfortand the security that I've built
(10:22):
up in benefits and income andcomfort and thinking that I have
it all figured out and thatnothing can touch me?
Or is my hope in, or or do Inot have hope?
Is my hope non-existent becauseI allow fear and doubt and
(10:44):
stress to rule me instead?
And that in itself is its ownmonster that we face, but also
very, very real.
It's it I think it's very realto not have hope in this world
because we see so much darkness,we see so much devastation and
(11:06):
brokenness and pain.
Or we've been beat down andkicked so many times that it
seems impossible to get out ofthe hole.
It seems impossible to everbreak free.
It seems impossible that wecould really overcome and life
could be different, or ourbusiness could look different
(11:27):
because we feel so stuck and wehave felt stuck for so long.
Been there too.
And and in in that season, wewe actually we stop having any
hope and we definitely stopputting our hope in God.
And so that becomes an idol inand of itself.
And so over the next 10episodes, each episode, we're
(11:53):
gonna break down specific idols.
And these are not, this is notall inclusive at all.
Like this, these are justthings that I personally have
come face to face with and howthey have run my life, affected
my life, the the consequencesthat I have paid for them, but
(12:15):
also God's grace through it alland his faithfulness, like
getting me through and and kindof teaching me his way of doing
business and teaching me aboutlike the role that he plays in
my life and in coming to justthis process of maturing and
(12:37):
growing as as a Christian, as anindividual, as a leader, to
say, wow, like you really areover it all and in it all and
through it all.
Like it really does all existfor your glory.
And outside of you, man, I gotnothing.
(12:57):
Like this is humbled me andshaped me and wrecked me, you
know, beyond anything I couldhave ever imagined.
But at the same time, I lookback and I'm like, wow, this is
this is what it means to to be afollower of Christ, but this is
(13:19):
what it means to live it out.
And I love business, I love theability to develop and use our
God-given gifting and that thatGod has these calls on our life.
But I have been so much moreinterested in what does it
(13:46):
practically look like to liveout our faith as a ministry in
the world of business?
Like, how do we build abusiness that honors God?
But not even just building abusiness, but it's like, how do
we lead our lives asentrepreneurs, as people who
(14:08):
work in the workplace?
And there are so many obstaclesthat we face, so many things
that come into question thatreally challenge what it is that
we believe.
And, you know, we talk aboutidols, and the Bible is very
(14:31):
clear, you know, in Exodus 20,God says, You shall have no
other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourselfan image.
Like that, like there should benothing else more important in
our life than God.
And Corinthians, firstCorinthians he says, like,
(14:51):
therefore, my dear friends, fleefrom idolatry.
In first John, he says, Dearchildren, keep yourselves from
idols.
And it shocks me, honestly, itit shocks me how easy it is to
(15:11):
put an idol up there, how easyit is to drift away from God.
And God really does have to bethe center of it all.
And the enemy's primary tacticof pulling us away from him is
(15:35):
by stealing, killing, anddestroying, and he does it
through distraction, he does itslowly, and so it's easy for us
to drift off.
And I think about Peter in theboat, and Jesus is coming
towards them, and there's thisstorm raging around them, and
(15:57):
you have the wind and you havethe waves, and they have been
stuck in the boat for hours, notgetting anywhere.
And here comes Jesus walkingout on the water, and Jesus
says, or Peter says, like, ifthat's really you, tell me to
come to you.
And he gets out of the boat, sohe has this incredible faith
(16:22):
and he is fixing his gaze, he isfixing his focus on Jesus, and
he's keeping his eyes on him,and while he does that, he walks
on water, which is just, Imean, amazing.
And I think that's the life Godis calling us to live, right?
(16:43):
When we he says, get out of theboat and focus on me.
And all around us, we have thisstorm raging.
All around us, we have demandsand we have threats and we have
opposition and we have peoplehiring problems and labor
shortages, and we have theeconomy and the uncertainty of
(17:04):
that, and we have tariffs, andwe have prices going up, and
then having to mitigate priceincreases to customers, and you
have to look at how do we stayin the black and stay away from
the red, and how do we makepayroll and how do we grow and
how do we beat out ourcompetitor?
And in the middle of all ofrunning that business, like
(17:27):
maybe have a family and you havekids and you have sports, and
you're trying to be a goodparent, and you're trying to be
involved, and this is this isthe storm that rages around us,
and it doesn't ever go away, itvery rarely ever gets calmed.
And here, here God is saying,like, keep your eyes on me, like
(17:52):
love me with all your heart,with all your soul, with all
your mind, with all yourstrength.
Keep your eyes on me.
And when we do, we we wage thethe against the storm, like we
walk on the water, we in themidst of this chaos of life,
(18:15):
we're able to to do somethingincredible beyond what we could
ever ask or imagine.
But then we get distracted, weget distracted by the wind and
the waves and the storm, and weget distracted by our own fear
and our own doubt and our owninability in our own weaknesses,
(18:40):
in our realization that wow, Icannot do this on my own.
And we come face to face withthat, and that's when we start
to sink.
That's when we start to drift.
And this is what is happeningon a daily basis, on a weekly,
monthly, annual basis.
Like this is life.
Life is the storm.
(19:01):
And there are all of thesedemands for our time and our
attention.
And a lot of them are not bad.
Like this idea of, you know,like your business, that's not
bad.
Your your desire to beprofitable in your business so
you can pay your employees andso you can donate to your
community and you can be ablessing to others.
(19:23):
Like that is that's not bad.
Wanting to be successful andwanting to like track your stats
and your metrics and see thatthat it's growing, see that that
your your sales are growing andthat your the your leads are
coming in and being able totrack the leads to the sales,
(19:45):
and none of none of those thingsare bad.
But it's when we forget who'sreally in control.
We forget whose glory this isall for.
We forget that this life hereon earth is so short, and
(20:05):
there's an eternity that comesafterwards.
That's when we get distracted,and that's when we start to
focus.
We put these other things, wegive them more prominence, we
give them more influence, wegive them more power in our life
than they should ever have.
So we're gonna be just divinginto that over the next few
(20:29):
episodes.
And like I said, I'm gonnajust, I'm just gonna share my
own story.
Like these, these are just theidols I have struggled with, how
they've showed up in my life,the struggle that I have had
facing them, like theconsequences of of what it did
to my life in the meantime, whatit how it affected my
relationship with God.
But ultimately over the last15, 20 years of how God has like
(20:54):
been reminding me and how, youknow, when I keep my focus on
him and when he becomes the mostimportant thing in my life,
what what that looks like.
And and again, like I wish I Iwish I could be like, yeah, I I
have this all figured out, but II don't.
But you know, I don't think anyof us are here to one, to be
(21:18):
someone that we're not, or twoto admit that we don't need
Jesus because we absolutely do.
But if anything, I don't thinkI'm the only one, or at least
that's what I tell myself.
But deep down, I think theseare the things, these are the
battles we face behind closeddoors.
(21:40):
These are the things thatultimately destroy us from the
inside out.
And these stories, these thesestruggles, these battles, they
were so real for me.
They were so hard, they were sodefining for me.
(22:00):
And I think too often in thebusiness world, it's very easy
to just slip into this facade oflike, yep, we got it all
figured out.
Yep, like business is good,life is good.
Because admitting defeat oradmitting weakness is just
(22:24):
that's that's not how this worldworks.
That is not something wecelebrate in the world's way of
doing business.
It's like you don't ever, youdon't show your weakness, you
don't show your flaws.
And so if anything, I'm justI'm just gonna do this for you.
I'm just going to share mine inin the hope that you can you
(22:48):
can just listen to it justprivately, just in the in in the
comfort of your own car or yourown home or on a walk, and and
you can hear somebody else tellyou that maybe that maybe
they've struggled with somethingthat is very much in line with
the things you've struggledwith.
Like that you are not in thisalone.
(23:09):
And with anything like thispodcast, I I do not want to shy
away from the the real battles,like the real struggles and just
the the way that God has workedand moved in our life and the
actual all the business stuff,everything I've learned along
(23:33):
the way, it's all stemmed frommy like it's all stems from my
faith.
It all stems from what Ibelieve and how that belief
shapes how I show up and how Imake decisions and how I've
learned to run my business.
(23:54):
And so those are that's theroot of it, right?
Like that is that is where itreally all starts.
And yeah, there's plenty of Ithink business experts out
there.
But this this approach, thispodcast is really more about
this idea of putting God first,understanding our own purpose
(24:22):
and our identity and and what hecalls us to do and what it is
we believe in, how thatrelationship is play is lived
out within our business and thedecisions we make because of
that, and the the way we treatour people, the way we treat our
customers, the way we hire ourpeople, the way that we build
(24:45):
processes, why it matters thatwe have a healthy organization,
those things will only matter toyou if if deep down, like you
are also led by God in hisleading in your life on what
you're really here on earth todo, what you're what you're
(25:07):
really being called to do as anentrepreneur in this life.
So that's we're gonna wrap uptoday's episode.
As always, you can learn moreat ClearAuthenticBrands.com.
That's all for this episode.
I am excited to jump into thenext one.
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