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Help us fund the continued work of The Faithful Agent by sending us your Hampton Roads and Richmond, VA buyer and seller referrals! https://faithfulagent.com/referral
What is up, faithful agents? Welcome to another Tuesday short episode. And before I kick this off, genuinely, let me know if these are helpful. If you like the content, if you like the topic, if you like the link, if you hate it, let me know because I'm genuinely doing this because I want to serve you guys, the community of the faithful agent. So shoot me a text, 804 -878 -2200, say. It's great or it's terrible. And that's fantastic because any feedback is helpful. I'm doing this for you, for our community, because I love Christian agents and I want us to win and I want us to think properly. And I want to be super open and honest about what's going on in my own life in hopes and prayer that this will be an encouragement to you all as well. So please hit me up. Let me know. Tuesday Shorts, yes or no? Like them, don't like them. 804 -878 -2200. Thanks so much. I appreciate any feedback, but... Let me kick this episode off with this joke. How do groups of angels greet each other? Hello, hello, hello. I said that kind of wrong, but hello, hello. All right, that's funny. If Tyler were here, he'd roll his eyes. So I don't even need him here because I already know what he's going to do. But here's what I wanted to talk about today. I know I have been less than tactical in the past two Tuesday shorts, and I apologize for that. So again, text me if you want more tactical. Awesome. Maybe you like just some of these ramblings that I've got going on. That's great too. I want to do what's right for you. But we had our local group meeting this morning and I want to say this. If you're not part of a local group, become part of a local group. If you don't know how to do that, go to faithfulagent .com, check out the local group section. If there isn't one, you can schedule a call with us right there to launch your own local group. It's a bunch of Christian agents in the local community gathering together and it has been a huge blessing. for me and my soul and I love my people. For those listening, you guys know who you are. I love that group of people. I love the conversations that we get to have with one another. And we talked about today, and I'm gonna share some of these and just kind of riff off that today. We talked about today, one of the agents in our group who's amazing, her name is Bridget, she shared this, that it's really easy for us to say, oh, I trust in the Lord's provision, but it's really hard to walk that out. Right? When we look at the daily grind that we have, when we look at the busyness of our lives, the reality is the busyness is not something that comes from the Lord. That is something the devil is using to distract us. If we just stay busy and she was being honest to say, sometimes she's so busy that she doesn't even get time to read the word or she doesn't have time to pray or really be present where she's supposed to be present. Well, that's not what the Lord desires of us. we get so busy thinking that uh... and one of the other agents in our group connie said she went to uh... show this house and she saw the front door of the house and had this big hole in it as if someone had punched it or tried to break through it it was it was a of rental property wasn't in great condition obviously but someone to try to punch through this door uh... and she said isn't that true how we work with the lord we say oh the lord's gonna open doors for us but if the repeat it for honest with ourselves We look at the door and say, no, this must be the door that I must walk through, right, Lord? And therefore, even though you're not opening this for me, I'm going to punch through this. I'm going to knock through this door. And that's how we tend to act. We say, I trust you, Lord. I trust you in whatever you're going to provide. But we act like it's all on us, right? I'm convicted just saying that because that is so. true in how we work, we also misunderstand or misdefine the word provision. Because when I say, okay, Lord, I know you're going to provide for me, then instead of stopping there and acting as if the Lord really will provide for me and my family, then I say, well, Lord, I know you're going to provide for me. Let me go ahead and define what provision looks like. Okay. I need this, this, this, and this. I want to be able to go take these vacations. I want to have this freedom in my time. I want you to provide this kind of house or this kind of car or this kind of food or whatever it is, right? Or these kinds of clothes, whatever it is that's going on. I will say, Lord, I trust you to provide, but here's what provision looks like. Go ahead and make that happen for me. I think if we're honest with ourselves, we misrepresent what provision means and we don't live out the trust in the act of, Lord, you really will provide. You promised me that you would. I trust you that you will. And therefore, if I trust that you will provide for me, I'm going to do the things each day that you've called me to. Here's where we have an unfair advantage, if you will, believers, brother and sister in Christ. We've got this unfair advantage. How? We have a God who can work and grow our business whether or not we're working. Now I'm not saying or advocating by any means, by not working and being lazy. That is certainly not Biblically either. That's sinful, right? Scripture is very clear about that. I am certainly advocating. Be excellent in all that you do. But the truth is, in my own life, it's really easy for me to understand and work to be excellent in my work and not work to be excellent at home with my wife, with my kids. Why? Because I can define what excellence looks like in work. There's a scoreboard for me to have. We've talked about the scoreboard all the time. I can look and check the score of how excellent I'm being in my work. I don't have a scoreboard really at home, right? We can create one, go back and listen to all the conversations we've had or the teaching on the common agent scoreboard. But it's really hard for us to really define what that is. And so instead of trusting the Lord and saying, Father, I know what obedience looks like for me as a husband, as a dad. I know what obedience looks like, Lord. Instead of working 60 hours a week as a reaction to, well, you guys have heard me talk about it these past few weeks. My own business is slow. Instead of overreacting to that, I'm not saying there's not seasons for us to work more and work hard and diligently. But instead of overreacting to that as if I'm the one that must bring this about, I say, Lord, I trust you in your provision for me, in my family. You promised you're going to do that. And so because I actually trust you and because I want to walk that out, Lord, I'm not going to go ahead and get busy doing a bunch of stuff. I'm going to do what I believe is right for me to do. And I'm going to do that with as much excellence as I can. Right? That might take me 30 hours, it might take me 60 hours. We have to check our own hearts in that. But I'm going to do that with as much excellence as I can, but I'm not going to then ignore my family. I'm not going to ignore the biblical responsibilities you've given me just because I think I've got to make my business work again. Because why? Lord, when we act in obedience, when we are hanging out with our families. When I took an extra 45 minutes this afternoon to play the card game exploding kittens with my six year old daughter because I love her and those are precious times that I won't get back any other time right in the middle of the day. Why? Because I have a God who says, I will keep working for you. I will provide for you. It frees me up to say, again, not to be lazy, but to say, Lord, what is obedience? look like. For me in that moment, honestly, and I could have been wrong, but I think the Lord was giving me that freedom to say, spend time with your daughter, invest in her heart, invest in that relationship. I've got you. I'm going to take care of you. And it played out for me very well yesterday. And I'll leave you with this as an encouragement. Yesterday we had every two years, because we have a kid every two years, it seems like. Every two years we have one of my buddies who's a videographer. He comes and he follows our family around for a day. and he makes a video a day in the life of our family. And it's such a precious thing that we have that we've had for each kid as they've been born. We can go back and watch videos of what a normal day in the life looks like. And so we had him here from 6 .30 a .m. to 8 p .m. So yes, as I record this, our conference is coming up in like a week and a half. Join us, faithfulagent .com backslashconference. Maybe this will come out after that, but I hope you joined us or you will join us. But that's coming up. My own business is not as productive as I would want it to be. And so there were a lot of pressures, quite honestly, things pulling my mind away. But I just asked the Lord, Lord, please help me be present here today. And I wasn't perfect. But I think in the Lord's kindness, I was able to be present with my family while we were filming that video. I did nothing that day for work. Nothing, right? Nothing productive. What happened that night when our videographer left, I checked my work phone and I had three referrals, three referrals. that had come through of people that wanted to work with me or were connecting me to people that they wanted me to serve. The Lord did that, right? Now I'm not saying that the Lord's good only because He did it. He's good regardless. But I am saying this, we've got this unfair advantage. Trust in the Lord because He can grow our business while we're being obedient to Him and other... ways and other places and other avenues of our life that He's called us to. So brother and sister in Christ, when you say trust in the Lord to provide, I pray that I will, that you will act that out in faith, that we will not be people that look so busy to the world, but people that move forward in faith and confidence and joy and peace and calm. That is a way that we show the world. Hey, there's something different that we believe. I'm going to talk about that in the next Tuesday episode. How do we look different in the world and all the chaos of what's going on? I love you, Christian agent. Genuinely pray for me as I pray for you. I want all of us to be more excellent in our work. I want all of us to walk and move in intention as if we trust a God who will provide. I love you, faithful agent. We'll see you on the episode on Thursday.
