Faith Through Financial Storms | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign.

Hello, everybody. It's Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real, raw, relevant. And we are so glad that you're here today, Ronaldo. You have song in your heart.

I've been singing all morning.

You have? Would you like to share it with our listeners?

Have you ever talked about. Have you ever talked to our podcast audience about your.

About my lyrical geniusness?

I mean, really, you got to admit, it's. You've been, like, amazed at Ryan.

I have not. Because I don't want to expose you like that.

What? Expose me how?

Because some of it is not very Christian, like, lyrics.

Singing to my wife. The marriage bed is undefiled. Still, I'm singing songs to you. You inspire them.

I inspire you.

Okay. Yep.

Awesome.

They're. The content is sensitive.

It's sensitive. It's true.

But.

But, I mean, you were singing a song. You were just singing a song. You said, your forgiveness, Hope's forgiveness. It's. What?

It's like holy water. I just changed the words. Like sweet, sweet honey.

No, that is not what you said.

What'd I say?

Say it.

Hope's forgiveness is very, very hard to get.

That is not true.

Everybody started laughing.

Everybody on this stage started laughing.

Because this is the first time you're in a world of men. I'm usually in a world of women.

That's true. There was about six. Six guys up on the stage.

She's never like that. I'm always in a room with six or eight women, and I'm in a world of women. Everybody overruling me all the time. But anyway. No, no, seriously. You got talk about the times where you're like, run. I can't believe you can come up with that stuff that quick.

You are very quick. You're anointed with words. The Lord has anointed you.

And they rhyme. Yes. And sometimes, baby, they're so crude. But I've had you laughing so long. But it's been. Sometimes I've made you laugh.

But the problem, y', all, who's listening is he takes a worship song, a worship song.

I take a tune.

Yes. The tune to a worship song. Graves in the garden.

And I sing about my wife.

And you sang something so terrible.

No, I sing love songs to my wife.

No, he does not take secular songs. He takes Christian songs, changes the words.

Have secular songs, too now. I, I, I reel some secular tunes in there.

You don't.

Every once in a while.

Anyway, you are. You're a lyrical genius. So I think you need to be in the red. Yes. I think you need to be in the Red Worship writing camps.

I know, but I'm just gonna put my name on.

That's right. You'll give them tunes, you'll give them words, you'll give them lines, and won't.

Your name was in there one day, and they were stumped. I mean, they were. They were. They were just stumped. And Roosevelt's one of the best songwriters that I've ever been around, and they were about eight of them in there. I mean, it was just a stopping point. I just walked in there. I, like, had me a yeti. I was drinking some tea, coffee or something, and he said, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he took his song list. He went and threw it. He just threw it up in there. He, like. And I walked back out. That's like. I'm telling you, but they didn't give.

You credit for it.

I'm a lyric. I'm undiscovered. I'm an undiscovered.

You are a poet and don't know.

It just. I can write tunes. And when. You know, when I see you, like, if you pass by me and I'm in the shower and you pass by and I see you, it just comes out. I start singing natural.

It's the overflow.

It's.

It's in your heart. And so it's.

Have you noticed when I. When I sing songs about you, my vibrato is natural. Natural.

You're by bra.

Yeah. It's not billy goatish. It's natural. Yeah.

We don't like a billy goat.

It's natural. It's natural. By. By. Okay, I want to talk about.

Oh, my word. Y' all see what I have to live with?

How do couples. What do you do?

First of all, wait. Y' all see my fingernail?

It's bad.

Yeah, it's really.

Tell them about how I am about that stuff, too.

Yeah. He don't like you.

And with staff people, he wants my.

Fingernails done at all times. He wants my toes done at all times.

So I had two staff members walk in with no makeup on this morning. What'd I do?

You cracked on them.

I told them. I said, we have minimum standard requirements.

For makeup, and that is lipstick.

You have to have base lipstick and something on your eyes.

Lipstick.

That's minimum standard requirements. We would like more.

Yeah. So we were sitting in the den last night, and I was picking this because I had a hangnail.

You were picking it the night, the day you had it done.

Yeah, because I had a Hangnail. There was something wrong with it. They didn't do it right. And so it just got worse and worse.

And you picked it all last night.

So I got to run, get this done today. Anyway, we want to talk about what.

How couples come together during lean financial times. We get up here, hope all the time and tell people. We tell people stuff we've done that hurt, we've sat up here and cried. We tell them to do stupid things. We do. We've done stupid decisions and we laugh. But whether they're painful ones or some of them, we just have to look back at it and laugh. The transparency here is we've probably told people a whole lot more where we screwed up than where we succeeded. But I'm going to say something here, if I may. I don't think this is boastful before the Lord. I give God praise for this. We've had some very challenging financial times, church wise and personal wise, and a lot of that goes hand in hand. But one thing I was always grateful about you is whatever we needed to do, we put our nose to the grind and we did it together.

We tried.

There are a lot of couples that we know personally have come through and they can't get maybe one spouse motivated to be the breadwinner or they can't. The breadwinner can't get the other spouse to help in times when they need help and been a real source of conflict. That I don't really. I guess I don't really understand that problem because we really. Whatever we needed to do, we just did it. I don't remember a lot of fighting and fallout. I don't remember a lot. I mean, even. I mean, I mean, we're going to tell them some things. We've had some times of financial devastation, but I don't remember. I don't remember it being a place of great discord in our marriage. And we know some people in their marriages because of financial. I mean, they won't even speak. They don't even want to look at each other.

Right. Well, it just. Just the lack of finances in general just causes so much stress and anxiety. Not just on the couple, just on you personally. It just puts you in fear. You go immediately into a fear mode. And fear's not from God. So that's an open door for the enemy to come in and throw fiery darts and to get in the middle of arguments and strife. It's just. It's just not from God. I just don't believe that we were destined to struggle all the time. We were created to be the head all the time.

Yeah.

And not the tail. There is always a starting place. There's a starting point. There will be seasons when things happen. And, you know, I was teaching yesterday on the inner circle and talking about patience and where the Bible says to consider it pure joy. Consider it pure joy.

You endure diverse trials of needles.

There are faced and endured, having to endure and pressures being put in diverse trials and tribulation.

But it is for perseverance.

It produces.

Is it patience or patience?

The word is perseverance. But the original word for perseverance is patience.

Yep. Well.

And patience.

I don't want to go on this character because I could. I could blow my lid on this. And a lot of our rebounding and our blood. Not a lot. Let me rephrase that. No, it's not correct. All of our rebound restoration comebacks, and we've had several. I directly correlate to obedience to God. So if you don't like to hear about giving, if you don't like to hear about the power of a seed, you'll probably never want to be under my tutelage because as I tell people a lot of times, your breakthrough. Pardon me, Here it comes. I've been doing it.

Sneeze.

Pardon me. I did it about 10 times on the way here. A lot of your breakthrough can come through praise. A lot of your breakthrough can come through intercession and prayer. Many ways to get to kick the end out of a thing and come out of it. But. But sometimes your breakthroughs in your seed, you birth a new season with seed. And you and I, we do things that's hard for people to do. When we were in lean times, we didn't look to save. We looked, where can we sow?

Where can we.

So where can we sow? I got to get some seed in the ground because we're clearly.

We don't have harvest coming up.

So, you know, I see a lot of people, a lot of preachers on the Internet, a fair amount, you know, is the prosperity gospel real? Is the prosperity gospel true? Is there. It's not a. There's no such thing as a prosperity gospel. The gospel prospers. You.

Yes.

I want to tell all of. I mean, I'm not a. I'm not a. What do you call it? A theologian, but I'll debate anybody. It is impossible to obey the gospel. The good news.

Yeah, yeah.

And your life not elevated. It is impossible.

Your life should always get better in every area because the kingdom principles are being employed.

If you Hearken to the voice of the Lord. If you observe these things which I've commanded you this day, then all these blessings shall come upon you. I don't know how you unread that. If I listen to him and I do what he said, if I do what he tells me to do.

Yeah, all these things.

Bless shall you be here. Blessed shall you be there. Blessed shall you be over here. I mean, it's just there. And so, you know, guys that just fight that. I don't know if I obey God. It's helium.

That's right.

It's the law of lift. Coming under the wing. Coming over the wings of a plane. It just lifts you up.

That's right.

And so there's so many principles.

So many principles. We're gonna dive. But before we do, we just want to say thank you to Green Chef, which is one of our sponsors. So let's just jump right in. As we step into spring, it's the perfect time to refresh your meal routine with dietitian approved recipes from Green Chef. Perfect for supporting your wellness journey. Enjoy recipes that feature fresh, organic, seasonal produce and 100% responsibly sourced proteins crafted to help you feel your best. Green Chef makes it easy to spend less time in the kitchen, which. Thank you, Lord Jesus. And more time in the fresh spring air and full of pollen. Right. That we have been struggling with with our new heat and eat meals, you can enjoy a delicious, wholesome meal in just three minutes. That's amazing. Plus with 80 plus weekly options, green Chef makes it easy to find meals that fit your lifestyle. Whether you're into Mediterranean flavors, gluten free me, plant based meals, or protein packed dishes, there's something for everybody. Including options for gut and brain, health, calorie, smart choices, and so much more. Whether it's salad ready in just five minutes, protein packed breakfast, or a smoothie to fuel your day, Green Chef has you covered for the busiest days. Our meals are made with real clean ingredients so you can build lasting, healthy habits without the hassle. Plus, with week to week flexibility, you can adjust your plan plan anytime to fit your schedule. Make this spring your most delicious yet. With Green chef. Head to greenchef.com 50ronandhope and use the code 50. That's 5 0ron. And hope to get 50 off your first month. Then 20 off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50roninhope@greenchef.com 50roninhope I like plant based foods. Yeah, you do. And protein packed, plant based. Oh, really?

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And so, anyway, thanks to everybody at Green Shift. I want to get back to what we were talking about, navigating the financial crunch. A lot of people kind of exaggerate, maybe the way they started. I've heard a lot of stories about when we got married, we had to.

Walk school barefooted and all things.

When we got married. And this is a choice we made. We made this choice. That's why we waited almost five years to have kids, because we didn't want to bring any kids into this, because it was a choice we made. We went around, literally, to small country churches while I was a senior in college and you were a junior because we were getting married right after my senior year. You still had a little school left to little churches that my dad had a relationship with. And literally, these churches would agree to give us 50, $75 a month because we told them we had a vision to go start a church and we were asking for their support. This is very uncommon. And asking them to help us. Like a missionary, we wanted to plant a church. So here's the difficulty of our situation. In a perfect month, if everyone who pledged, if it all came in, it was $1,700 a month. Wow.

I remember that.

Seventeen hundred dollars.

I think I blocked that out of my brain.

21,000 a year as our household income. Yes. If everything came in, that was. We never could do it. We never could sustain it. We tried to pay health insurance out of that. I mean, you know, I had one car payment. Yours was paid for, but it was in horrible shape. You know, that was rent, that was utility. That was food. That was everything. That's if everything came in. Anybody who has ever did any mission work knows mission work. Mission work. You have much. 40% of it coming.

Yeah.

So one month there might be 1700. The next month there might be 480.

Yeah.

The next month there might be 815. The next month it might be 1650. Those were tough times.

Yeah, it was rough.

Those were tough times because we believe in paying our bills. We don't believe in being beggars, but I worked too well. That's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. So we got to a place where we saw you were in school, we were borrowing all of that. And so we got to a place where we realized on a best month, it just ain't going to pay.

It's not going to work.

It ain't going to pay it. And so the long and short of it is the first thing you started doing after school was you would come back. This is when we lived in Knoxville and you were a leasing agent at the apartment complex. And I remember that little 150, $200 that you would make here and there. And I remember it wasn't much, but I remember kind of being 100, $200. I mean, it was like blocks of gold.

Yeah. We thought it was so cool to get to go out to eat.

We would. I mean, let's go get some Chinese food tonight. I mean, that was a big. You met a little Chinese restaurant we took on a hill. That was a big deal. So, you know, were we out in a tent, starving on the side? No, but we. We couldn't take no vacations. We couldn't do nothing.

We couldn't sustain health insurance.

We couldn't sustain health insurance. I just had to give up on that. And we had our first kid without any. And it buried us in debt, ruined our credit. But the long and short of it, we made a choice to live that way. I own that. We chose that way, but when it wasn't enough. I don't even remember me and you having a conversation. I remember you saying, I talked to so and so. They'll let me work such and such hours. And, you know, if I do one or two a week, I get this. Yeah. Why don't people just assume like that?

Why don't people just do what it takes?

I didn't have to go have a talk with you. Hope. I know you're tired when you get home from school. I know. Then we never had that.

And then, because you were working nine to five every single day at the office, trying to build.

We were trying to build a church. I mean, and we were doing all the. All the little building that we had. I mean, we did the painting, we did the sheetrock, we did the drop ceiling. I mean, we did everything. I ran the sound. I had the keyboard and the soundboard and the trunk of the car. I mean, you know, that's what we're doing. We didn't Start church like they start churches now. They go out and get these grants and they got 2, 3, $400,000 and start them now. And with social media, they launch with 500 people. That was not the day we were in. It was tough, but so we did. I remember when we started the church in Greenville. I remember we had a tiny, tiny little apartment. $350 a month. 365. $365 a month. And I remember we had the same income. And you started doing voice lessons. You were a trained voice teacher. You had a music degree. You started doing voice lessons. I remember just those $30 lessons or whatever it was. I mean, it was groceries that week. It was a tank of gas. And so we lived dollar to dollar, not paycheck to paycheck. I didn't have a paycheck.

We had envelopes. We would put our. This was our grocery envelope. This was our gas envelope.

This was our ring. And they set them in the top of the closet. And, you know, I would pull from each one of them. I remember one time in that little apartment, your Uncle Mackie, who's a godly man and has always been a blessed man ever since I've known him, he just always had a knack of making money. And I remember they came to visit us in Greenville and they left, and we just, you know, said bye to them. They left and we went back to our bedroom, and he had left a $500 check. I remember me and you sat on the bed and wept. And I thought, what can I do?

We thought we were rich.

I'm like, what can I do with this money? You know, I remember the feeling of I had never had $500 that didn't have somewhere to go. That's crazy, isn't it? The euphoria of this is unbudgeted money.

That we can still come in contact. I mean, I would say there's a great number of people, Ron, who still live. I mean, who live like this. Most people live like this, and I.

Don'T want them to. And we did for a while.

Yes, but what are the ways to get out of this? What are the ways to get out of financial struggle?

Here's the way I believe we got out of it. You can't just talk about giving. You got to get on here and talk about other things.

We were diligent, practical and natural.

We were diligent.

Yes.

We worked.

We didn't go out to eat.

No.

I didn't get fingernails done.

We didn't have credit cards. No, we didn't have credit cards. If we didn't have it, we didn't do it.

I didn't get pedicures. I didn't get my nails done.

We didn't do it. If we didn't have it.

You washed your own car.

And there's a lot of people, oh, that was the biggest day of the week when I got to wash my car. I love doing it, but I know a lot of people, they will keep doing it if the money's not there and put it on credit because it's their standard of living. Where we live on whatever came in. So we never racked up tons of debt. The only debt we had was your schooling, which was significant. And then we had our first kid with no insurance. That was significant. And we paid on that for years.

We did.

We were Diligent to pay 50 bucks, 75 bucks, whatever I could do. And we paid it till we paid it all the way off. Now, let me tell you what I did. I've always had a saying. I've never heard anybody else say it. I think it might be original with me. Favorite finds the faithful. Everybody wants favor. Favor is those undeserved things from God. There's no rationale behind it. It's not connected to a seed or anything. It's just the favor of God. Favor finds the faithful. I believe I can show you that through the life of Jesus, faithful, meaning.

Consistent and doing what you need to do.

We always tithe.

Yeah, always, always tithe. It's never an issue, never a challenge.

I went to college and I worked on the maintenance team. And If I made 70 bucks that month, for the whole month, tithe, $7. We always tithe. Number two, we were always generous.

Number three, whatever we had, we gave away.

Yes, these are spiritual things. Number three, we always believed, okay.

These.

People think we're going to make this up. I remember two distinct times. I don't remember more than that. It may have happened. It seems like it happened more, but there's two that I remember. I remember one time, we didn't have any groceries, and our grocery money envelope was empty. And I remember one time, me and you sitting down, holding hands. Bible says, touch and agree. And what you agree on earth, God shall. Your Father shall do it in heaven. And I remember that day, one bag of groceries. It was a paper bag sitting at our door.

I remember.

I remember that. I remember we just believed God for groceries and groceries. I don't know who did it right. They were just sitting there. I remember another day we believed God on a Sunday because we didn't have any money, that after church would somebody take us out to eat?

And they did.

And I remember the restaurant, it was Ryan's Buffet. And I mean, I probably embarrassed you with how much I ate because I gorged an ungodly amount because it was a buffet. But I remember that never happened. And two people came up and said, we'd like to carry you out to eat today. And it's a simple thing, but just God taught us so much during that time. Now here comes the rise. God blesses, God exalts, we work, but.

We'Re still being diligent. We're still being generous givers.

We're generous. I remember the first time I ever had our one year anniversary. We had probably 70 people in the church, a little warehouse, and I shot for the moon. I got Kelly Nealon Thompson. I think she passed in a plane crash a few years ago. And I wanted her to come. And I mean, it was a charm. Charter bus and I mean, she was at the top of the Southern gospel music. She's at the top of the food chain. And I remember it was $3,000 and this was 1992. Yeah, and $3,000 at my church. That was a month. Yeah, maybe a month.

That was 92.

That was 1992.

And I go places even today that.

Don'T give me that so long and short of it. We started putting back enough money because I believed God wanted that kind of person with that little. I believe they deserved it. I believe I shot high for them. But I also believe God would let me be able to pay people like that and bless them. We've always been generous. I've never had a problem getting somebody back to redemption. No, because we're generous. We're generous. We bless people. So we get to about our mid-30s. Our subdivisions have changed. Our kids are in private school. I've never been wealthy, but we were blessed. The struggle was gone. If we wanted to go out and eat, we could go out and eat. If we wanted to go on a summer vacation, we could go on a summer vacation. Our cars weren't broke down. We lived in a neighborhood where I wasn't worried about nobody getting shot. We're blessed, okay? I'm doing real estate on the side, flipping houses. I got four houses. We do really well with that. We've got some other streams of income. The church has grown, doing really well. And so we're living a blessed life. Then the recession hits, 2008. I got hung with all those Houses. I paid the payments as long as I could because everybody quit paying me because they lost their jobs. They weren't trying to be bad, but I made commitments on these mortgages. I signed my names to contracts, but my money quit coming in. But I kept making payments till all my savings was gone. I went and talked to the banks. I was able to sell three of the houses for a loss. One of the houses I lost and a foreclosure ruined my credit. The IRS came on us with the most ridiculous stuff I've ever heard in my life and strapped us down for about the next eight years. And then we had a class action lawsuit in 08 and 09 and had to fight them and the FBI and everything else. And we were in financial ruin. I mean, ruin. Say, all your smiles gone. You remember? I know.

I feel like cutting myself right now.

I mean, we were. It was devastating. I remember at the church during that recession, we lost 42, 48 or 42% of our operating revenue. I had an altar call one day for how many people need jobs? And the whole building got up. I'm like, well, no wonder we've lost half of our income. What did we do? It was during that time we lowered our standard of living. It was that time we started selling things off. It was that time we made necessary cuts to our life, to our church, to our lifestyle. Here again. We never quit tithing, we never quit giving, and we never quit sowing seed. Because no matter what season you're in, that is not an option.

It's not because it's your way out.

It's your way.

Your seed is your way out.

Well said. That when people, I mean, just in the natural, close the door to you.

You don't plant corn, you're not going to get corn in the natural. You don't plant tomatoes, you're not ever going to get tomatoes. If you don't sow, you're not going to reap, period.

No farmer goes out looking for a harvest in a field he didn't sow in.

Never. Because that's ludicrous.

My whole mom's side of the family's farmer.

That's right. Why would you ever expect to get something you've never planted?

I'm telling you, I'm amazed at how many church people do not understand why they have no harvest in their life and they hadn't planted a thing. I don't know where that mindset comes from. As it is in the natural, so it is in the spirit. And so it was during those Times you say, pastor, what are you telling us to do? You come together. You don't turn on each other. It does get spicy, yes, but stressful.

It is stressful.

It's stressful because your world's falling apart. A world that you built and you put everything into building has fallen apart.

You can't fight each other, but you hold on.

You do what you know to do. You do what God told you to do, and you hold onto the promise of God that he'll restore and keep.

Doing what you know is right.

Exactly right. And then God once again began to restore. Take us to a place of blessing. Then another very difficult financial storm came. I took over a church in a deteriorated situation that was losing a lot of money. And Covid happened.

Yeah, Scary times.

Chopped us right back down. You saw. So what do you do? You come together, put our nose. I gotta be honest with you. Let me be honest. We call it real raw and relevant. Let me tell you something. 30 minutes, we're all right. That's the first time I wondered if I should quit. I remember that I'm not a quitter.

Nope.

I can't stand a quitter. I can't hang around in football and basketball and baseball. In life, I can't stand a quitter. But that's the first time, you know, thoughts will pass through your head. But I mean, meditating on it and think when. When we open back up. This building seats 3,500 people. That's a big building. This building has two balconies.

Yeah.

I think we had, what, 349.

Yeah.

When co. After Covid, we had 349. 349 can't even pay power bill.

We hadn't had 349 people in our church since 95. Right.

30 years.

I'm like, wow. But we just had to take a deep breath.

Well, here's what I did. Here's what I thought. You know, maybe, you know, we had our stuff online during COVID and maybe I just try to need to sell everything and just go online because you're not in a place in the Bay Area of California that is swirling with Christians looking for a new church.

True.

You have to build the church. And when I looked out that morning, I remember. I remember the.

Yeah, can we do this?

Dude, I'm 52 at that time. Can I. Can we do. I mean, just the coldness of the feeling of 300 people in a building to set 3500. Just the feeling of it. The despair and, you know, all our underpinnings were knocked out of us. I must be honest. That meant for the PPP and the stuff that the government did, I probably.

Wouldn'T have made it.

I don't know that we would have made it. And I took it over losing money and Covid happens. I mean, bam, bam, bam. And so people like, why is God. God didn't let me keep giving.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers.

And now we're sitting here several years removed from that. And I can see the cusp. He sustained us. But I see the cusp of great breakthrough and blessing again. So it's not like you just go through it when you're young. No, it will try to.

Different times and different levels.

And so you know, you have $100 and you're spending $100, you're broke. But if you got a million dollars and you're spending a million dollars, you're broke. And so we were broke on different levels. That's right. And so every time I'm.

He's still faithful.

I'm going to promote you. You, you know, you were my helper, Ron. You can do this, Ron. We can do this, Ron. God's going to see us through, Ron. Remember what God did last time. And I'm going to tell you that is the trait of a great woman. When you see your husband sinking and you won't let him fall, you won't let him fall. And you are always a voice in my ear telling me the same God that has turned it around so many other times. And it was just amazing to me.

At the end of the day, Ron, God is faithful to his word.

God is faithful.

He's faithful to his word.

You be faithful.

You be faithful.

God is faithful. He really is. Hopefully we've encouraged somebody we love you guys.

Want to want to tell you about the inner circle. Go to hopesinnercircle.com if you have not joined, I want you to come be a part. I want to help you. I want to lock arms with you. I want to help you in this journey called life, to be the best you that you can be. Go to hopesinnercircle.com we love you. Until next time. Shron and hope. Real, real, raw, relevant.