does God want you to be RICH?

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about if God wants you to be rich and does he even care about your business? Before we get today's show, a big thank you. Today's sponsor, which is Gusto, if you haven't already, go to gusto.combootcamp, try out their software completely free, for 3 months, 90 days, where you can do direct deposits, do all of your benefits for your employees, and they can have an app where they see all of their deductions and everything that comes out of every paycheck. Very transparent. I highly recommend it go to gusto.com.

Now. This is a bit of a different episode today. I'm going to be talking about, you know, I'm a big believer. I am a Christian, and so I have more recently been comfortable enough to be able to share that more on social media and things like that. But today I want to talk about kind of the intersection between the two. And that is, can, you know, does God care about your business? And does he want you to be rich? Does he want you to make a lot of money? And so kind of the premise of the conversation comes From Matthew, chapter 6, verse 24 from the Bible, and I'm reading from the King James Version. It says, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon is money. Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. So there's two different things I take out of these two scriptures here. And that is, number one, you can't serve two masters. You can't serve money, and you can't serve God. And when I look at my businesses and went to. I'm a big fan of making money. When the franchisees come here, we talk about the mission and the goal behind Augusta. And the next thing is like, but guess what? We're here to make a lot of money. And I'm not ashamed of that. Because when I look at my businesses, always the thing I kind of ask myself, and I remember my pastor saying this years ago, and it's to this day still what I think. And that is, I want my business to serve me. And I don't wanna serve my business. Cause it's only my master, as it says in Matthew, chapter six. If I serve it. So I can't serve two masters. I can't serve God and mammon. But what I can do is make sure that my business, I don't serve my business, but my business serves me. And that's why it's so important. When I talk about, on the podcast Landscape Business course, I always talk about first, what do you want out of life? How is the business going to serve that? Because if you get really clear about what you want, then you can align the business around serving the needs of that instead of you, your person serving the business. Now, obviously, there's times, year or two, first three years of your business, it feels like, oh, my word, I feel like I'm almost serving this thing. I'm, like, always pouring myself into it. I'm just like, so much time and energy and effort and all of this sacrifice. It can seem like that at times. But then you have to go back to yourself and say, okay, why am I doing this? And that's why it's so important to know what your goal is. What is the mission here? And is my business and making more money going to serve that purpose? The second thing I take out of this scripture is that it says, the scripture says that take no thought for your life what you shall eat, what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. And I don't believe that what it's saying here is that we shouldn't care about what we wear. We shouldn't, like, care about what we should eat. Like, if you have a family, you shouldn't take any thought or plan ahead at all in terms of what you should have for food on your table. I don't believe that's what it's saying, but it's definitely saying that you don't want to be a controlling force. Again, I don't want to serve money, and I don't want to have to serve it. But this is also something else I keep in my mind. Poor people think about money just as much as rich people. Rich people think about money, yes, maybe they're greedy or whatever stereotypes someone wants to put on them, but someone who's poor, they have to constantly think about money because they have to constantly be thinking about how they can take care of themselves and how they're going to clothe themselves and how they're going to get to the next meal. And in reality, it's like, look, you don't need to take any thought for your life. What you shall eat, what you shall drink. Don't worry about Those things, they're not important. They're not the most important things in life. And I truly believe the same thing goes for money. It's not the most important thing, it's just a means to the end. The same way that your food and that your dress and that your body serves what you're trying to accomplish in life and gets you from point A to point B and get you living through a day, your business should serve the objective that you've been placed on this earth for by God. That's my opinion. And so I really am always looking at, does the business serve me or am I serving the business? And when it comes to making money, when it comes to, like, the question, does God want you to be rich? The clickbait title I created for this video.

This is the thing I truly believe that there's people that God uses to take resources and give them the people he knows needs them. All right? So I wanna be a conduit or a vessel or like a glove that God can use and say like, hey, so and so needs money. They're a child of min and they need help. Who can I bless that I know is going to give this money and not just going to use it on frivolous things isn't gonna waste it, isn't gonna flaunt it. And my goal is to remain the glove, the vessel that God can be like, hey, I know he's not gonna waste this. I know he's gonna use it wisely. I know he's not gonna spend it frivolously. I know he's not gonna try to show this off. He's gonna actually put as much as he possibly can into the lives of other people. I wanna be that person. And whether that be for my collective community, I wanna be the person that when God says, oh, there's so and so that needs help. They need encouragement and financially they need some help. I wanna be the person God's like, I know if I can bless him and his business, he will flow that monetary blessing down to the people who need it. I wanna be that person. I don't wanna be the person who's like, hey, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. And you know, people, prosperity gospel, like, oh, like just everything's God blessing me. I'd rather be a conduit. That's how I kinda look at it, like a funnel wherein God's like, hey, I need this to be done. And so needs help that he knows equipping me with a good business and Money is going to allow me the resources to actually carry out those things that he needs done. That's kind of how I look at it. And I kind of look at it like Solomon in the Bible, he said when he became king, he basically said, I'm like a child. I shared this a couple weeks ago on YouTube and Facebook just as a post. And that was, you know, Solomon saying, like, I'm but a babe. Like, I don't know anything. And yet he was the wisest man in the world. And he became the wisest man in the world because the Lord blessed him with such wisdom. When he was humble enough to realize that he had number one, he realized the weight and the gravity of his position as king. Like, I don't. Like there's all this responsibility. And then two, he was humble enough to realize he didn't have all the answers to make sure that he actually carried out that responsibility well. And those are the two things that I'm always so keenly aware of, is, like, I am very, very blessed with my businesses. I don't take them for granted. And I feel like there's a lot of responsibility. A lot of people depend on me as franchisees, and now general managers literally move me across the country to come to territories where we are growing corporately owned stores. Like, I don't take that lightly. That's a lot of responsibility. And I have to come to the place personally myself, I look at as, like, I'm not capable as one human being of knowing all this. I'm young, like, I don't know all. How all. I don't know everything about business. I try my very best. I don't know everything. I don't know all the ins and outs of certain things. There's still questions I have about business things and tax things. Like, I still have questions. And I need wisdom. And I feel like when we come to that point as business owners, it's very, very healthy from a spiritual, personal level as well as a business standpoint. We're just like, look, I need help here. And, like, I realize the gravity of the position I'm put in as a provider, as a business owner, as an employer. But I need help from God. I need help from someone that's stronger, better, more equipped to do what I need to do than I am. And so I really feel like we got to be careful as we get money, as we get quote, unquote, rich, that you got to be careful to not be like Solomon, who forgot where his wisdom came from. Right. So in the latter Years of Solomon's reign, he forgot that he was the humble, meek young man that God could use to complete. Completely changed the whole country. And he began to get proud. He began to lose that mindset of, I am humble, I am nothing, and I need help and guidance from God. And he became so rich. And that's what caused him to forget the humility that led to the wisdom that led to the money. And some people will get the money. They forget about the fact that it was because their wisdom and the wisdom came from their humility and being able to learn from others, being able to depend on God, not to just think that they know everything, that they can just do whatever they want. And that's. That's why there's scandals and all the rest of it in athletes and entertainers and all that. They get the precipice of success and money and wealth and everything is for them. And they forget about the journey of getting there and the fact that other people supported them and that they can't just do whatever they want and get away with it. There's gotta be an absolute and there's gotta be someone that has guided them throughout their whole life. And if they don't have God, in my opinion, they're going to eventually succumb to the things of this life because of riches. And riches do lead to that many, many times, just like Solomon. So it's very important, in my opinion, to remain humble. And in my opinion, people like bringing it from Solomon up to, like, modern day. You look like Travis Kalanick from Uber or like adam Newman from WeWork. And you listen to their stories and just like, the ideology that they had in their mind, that they thought they were so wise and so, like, you know, untouchable and, like, they're better than they could talk down to others. And I think that mindset and being so proud in your abilities as you become rich is what God hates, in my opinion, as even God, even like, like Solomon, he was being blessed by God for what he had prayed and what his desires were for wisdom. He was being blessed for it, right? But in his mind that those riches began to lift him, he became proud. And you know, you see that in business where, you know, incredible person, incredible founder, gets so, so much money and power, and then they just like, go way off to one end and then it leads to demise. Like WeWork just falling apart. Uber, like Travis Kalanick getting ousted by his company and, like, for the toxic environment he had created inside the culture. Like, I always say, do the right thing, but like, more importantly, like, doing the right thing is the right thing all the time. And I truly believe that. Getting rich, a lot of times the reason there's so many negative stereotypes is because people, as they get more and more money, they forget the humility that they started with. And so when it comes to your business, does it bring glory to God? How can your business, you making more money, bring glory to God? There's a few things that I kind of wrote down. Number one is kind of what I mentioned about being a glove in the hand of God, being a conduit that he can move resources to people that need it. Number one, doing good for the community, whether that be your local community, in your church and your family, et cetera. Number two is mentoring others using honesty care and many that have broken homes. And so whether it be mentoring in terms of like, I'm gonna sit, like, not like sitting you down and being your teacher, but like, just sharing, you know, I feel like in some regard, you know, my podcast and the businesses in Augusta and the people that I hire, that's my way of being able to be a not ment as much as just someone that they can look to and be like, that's what works. Being humble, treating other people right, that's what works. And they go on and do something great despite the fact that maybe they didn't have much of a chance growing up, maybe they didn't have a great family structure, maybe they did have underprivileged past that they've come through, but they're able to look at me and be inspired by that. That's a huge driving force of money is obviously going to magnify whatever is in someone's life. And I truly believe that a lot of people who, when they have bad intentions or they have pride or whatever it is, those riches just magnify it and make it very obvious to the rest of us that this person is like, egotistical or like whatever it might be, they use it for bad things in this life in terms of spending their money on foolish and stupid things. Or I truly believe if there's someone has actually a good heart in them and there's money added to their life and they become rich, it just magnifies that they're able to give. They're able to hand that money off to others, they're able to inspire others. Cause when you get money, guess what? People start to listen to you a little bit more. So what's coming out of your mouth? Is it good? Cause if it is, you can probably impact some people's lives. Number three is I truly believe that God does care about your business and it does bring glory to him because it proves that biblical principles work. I truly believe this. Like, if a real Christian read the Bible, believed it, and was honest, and everything that is said in the Bible, those are all principles by which a good business person should operate. It's not long term, it's never fast. You go through proverbs, you go through Ecclesiastes, you know, and you look at David and you look at Solomon, the people that wrote the wisest man in the world, writing down these things, that is going to lead to a good business. And so throughout all the Bible, there is so much to be learned about business, about interacting with people, about leadership. And I truly believe God does care. And for some of you, you listen to those three things, like, that's so simple. Like, like, who cares about my little business? It's only one employee. Maybe I don't even have employees. I'm just small. I truly believe that God hides himself and reveals himself in simplicity. And I truly believe some of the greatest business stories and transformations that people have had is, are in small, tiny little businesses. They're the first employee, they're the second employee. They maybe grew at the company. They were to change the generational poverty that their family might have been in. They would have learned skills, they would travel, do things they would never thought they could have done before. But like, those, it's the small things, it's the little things that are so cool to see them grow. And I hope that Augusta's a company that's like that. Like, that is, you know, seems simple. And it's like, it's just lawn care. It's like, it's not like we're not creating the next Google or Facebook here. Like, it's nothing amazing, it's nothing revolutionary to, like, society. I'm never going to become a billionaire because of Augusta Lawn Care. Like, it seems so small and so insignificant, but I truly believe that God hides himself in simplicity. The closest thing that you could relate that to is the fact that he came as a baby instead of coming as a king. And with like, all of Jerusalem and Israel just, like, recognizing who he was as their messiah, he could have done that, but he came as a baby, humble, small, insignificant. And years went by before he even had a ministry. I truly believe that simplicity, growing a small business. God cares. God cares about what you're doing. And regardless of your business is big, small. If you're just getting started or if you're about to start your business, I truly encourage you to give the glory to God through your business. You might not ever stand behind a pulpit. You might never go to a seminary. You might never get your degree in theology. You may never feel like you're a really strong Christian or have a walk with God that seems supernatural thing or be able to pray on your knees and just like speak things into existence. You know, it might not feel that way, but you can use your business. Starting with your business. Obviously there's so many other areas and facets of your life that once your life is given to the Lord, he just takes over. But when it comes to your business, I truly believe it's absolutely an avenue that we can use as a ministry in our local communities for our employees and for the rest of our competitors. I appreciate everyone for watching supporting the channel. I'm Mike Andes. You're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Until next time I'm be great because nothing else pays.