780 » Why I Ask God For Wisdom All The Time » REI In Your Car

Hey everybody, what’s going on? Joe McCall, REI In Your Car and I’m going to talk about something interesting, different today on this podcast. I want to talk about asking God for wisdom. You ready?

So, it’s a beautiful evening right now. It’s weird, like in July, it’s mid-eighties in St Louis. I’ve been sitting outside working outside a lot. And, um, I’m driving right now to pick up my boys from youth group at church. So, you know, a lot of you guys know I’m a Christian, right? And I talk about my faith in God. Not all the time. I try not to shove it down people’s throats, but, um, it does mean a lot to me and I really do owe any success I have to God, right. And His grace to me, I don’t deserve it. Definitely don’t deserve it. And, uh, I’m a schmuck a lot of times. I make a lot of stupid mistakes and, um, I’m just really glad God puts up with me and you know, isn’t that nice? God still loves us even though we make so many god-awful mistakes, like just horrible. Why would we do stupid things like that.

But anyway, so here’s what I wanted… I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and that’s part of why I like this part because I just tell you about things I’m thinking about, right? Well, this has been something that I’ve been thinking about where I’m facing certain situations like, and I’m starting to think about this more, frequently I’m facing situations where I have no idea what to do, right? Especially as my kids get older. Okay. And this all relates to business and I’ll explain why in a minute. But like my business has really been growing like crazy. I’m seeing on average, you know, 20%-25% growth every month for the last six months, which is kind of insane. It’s awesome. But makes me a little nervous too, right?

But so, I’ve been facing these decisions of things I gotta do. And you know, to grow your business, whether you’re doing deals or publishing and podcasting and coaching like I am, you need to think about, all right, well I’m making this money now. Obviously, you’ve got to save for taxes. And, but I need to reinvest into marketing, more marketing, right? Well, what’s, what’s, how much, how much should you invest in marketing and what is too much? And you gotta be careful with that and you gotta hire more people to grow because you’re getting a lot more customers. You’re doing a lot more deals. You need to hire people to help you.

And so, you’re facing, the bigger your business gets, the more you grow, the more decisions you have to make. And for me it can be, it’s easy to get intimidated by that, right? And God only gives us what we can handle. I believe that. Right? But there’s something about asking God for wisdom, something about asking Him for help. Um, you know what? I can’t remember the verse. I can’t quote it exactly, but there’s this verse in James, like you ask God for wisdom and he’ll give it to you generously. Like as a father. Can you imagine? Like, if a kid came up to you, man, I would be so honored to have one of my boys, my teenagers say, Hey dad, I need some wisdom, I’m facing this decision… What do you think I should do? You know, wouldn’t it be cool? As a dad, that makes you feel really cool.

Well, how do you think God feels when we come to him and say, Hey, I need some wisdom. I need some help with this thing. What should I do? And He always answers that prayer. I mean, that’s one of those prayers I think that God really loves to answer. Um, because He likes it when we like Solomon ask for wisdom instead of riches and, um, you know, a huge kingdom. Solomon asked for wisdom and God, what did God do, then He blessed him with riches and, and, and, and a huge kingdom and all of that stuff. But wisdom was the primary thing.

And I think of another verse about how the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, right? Reverence and respect for God is the beginning of wisdom. That’s where it all starts. But He’s the God of wisdom and so if we want to have wisdom in our personal lives and in our business, it comes from God, okay?

I’ve never done a podcast talking about God this much. I hope you don’t mind. If you do mind… Well, you know, just turn it off. That’s fine. You’re not gonna offend me at all. But anyway, so God loves to give wisdom. And I was, this really struck home to me couple days ago. And one example, I’ll give a business example and then I’ll give a personal example. First, a personal example.

So, my daughter hurt her toe really bad. We’re at gymnastics, her team’s out there practicing and she, you know how little girls are, man. I mean, she’s just like bawling and crying. She doesn’t want to go out there, but she doesn’t want to leave. And then she wants to leave and then she doesn’t. And then like I, Hey, I drove her 20 minutes out there and I don’t want to, or I don’t want to let her quit. You know, even though she, she, she… So, she hurt her toe and she has this boot, she wears this boot around her foot and there’s still things that she can practice with the team.

She’s part of the team, right? It’s a, you know, level three gymnastics. She’s eight years old and you can’t just leave your team because you hurt your little toe. Like, um, you need to, you can’t just quit and leave like that when you’re hurt a little bit. Cause there’s things you can do. And so anyway, I was trying to encourage her but not be overbearing. I just wanted to encourage her to do the right thing and I could’ve stomped my foot down, stamped my foot down or whatever. And I could have said, you have to go out on that floor right now, right? But that would’ve done zero good at all. And she would’ve just gotten, she would’ve had a melt down and you know, so.

I was like, ok, what do I do? Do I go ahead and leave with her or do I stay here? Do I just let her sit, watch from the bleachers? Do I make her go out there, I don’t know what to do? I don’t know what to do. And I needed to make a decision because she’s crying in the corner and all of her team is out there practicing and stuff, warmups. So, I just stopped right there and I said, God, please help me. What should I do? Give me some wisdom please.

And all of a sudden this thought came into my head, just let her sit out on the floor for 10 minutes and tell her that. And so, I said, okay, Jewel, let’s go. You can go sit out on the floor. Let’s just watch for 10 minutes. And if you don’t want to go out and participate, that’s fine. Let’s just go out there and sit and watch. And then, we can go if you don’t, if you don’t, if you want to, after 10 minutes. You just go sit out there.

And she says, okay. It’s just like that. All right. And she goes out there and sits on the, on the floor and just kind of watches the team, you know, practice and stretch. And all of a sudden, I go upstairs and I told her, I said, I’m going to be upstairs in the bleachers just watching. And then I go upstairs and like not kidding, two, three minutes later she goes out there and start stretching with her team and participates with their team and, and uh, she just, she still couldn’t do all of the things that they were doing because she had this boot on. But um, yeah, just like that. And I, I was like, so in awe of how God answered my prayer in a little simple thing like that.

Like, what do I do? Oh God, please give me wisdom. And He did. And it actually worked out really, really well. I’ve been seeing this happen more and more in my personal life with my family and in business. It’s just astonishing. When I’m facing a decision, I’ll just stop really quickly in my mind. I don’t, you know, and you don’t have to close your eyes and put your hands together and point them to the sky and kneel at your bedside and pray. You can pray this like right wherever you are. Just like in your head, kind of pull away and say, okay, God, can you help me please? Can you give me some wisdom about this thing? What should I do? And then just sit and listen. Be patient, you know, He’s not gonna… Maybe He could, but like, he’s probably not going to speak to you with a loud audible voice from heaven.

The thunderous clouds are not going to clap and you’re not going to see emblazoned across the sky in bright orange letters what you should do. But you might all of a sudden get this thought or this memory or something like that. You know what? I should do this. Or I should call this person and ask them, see what they think. Or, um, you know what? Maybe I should not do anything and just wait.

So, you, you will, if you ask in faith, you will, God will give you wisdom. Oh, the other part of that verse is you’ve got to ask in faith, right? So, you gotta ask, expecting God to answer you and He will. It’s just crazy. It blows me away. And even just recently, I’ve made some big decisions in my business on some people to hire. And I’ve asked for wisdom, like, God, you know, should I hire them? Should I not, should I just wait, please help me, show me what to do.

And again, it’s not like I hear this loud audible voice that tells me from the sky what I need to do, but I feel like I should go this direction, right? And I say, okay, I think you know, this is the wisest thing to do. Or sometimes I’ll call, you know, like Todd Toback or Tom Kroll are two of my friends that I call, you know, and ask them, Hey, what do you think about this? And, and, uh, just listen to other people’s advice and stuff. And, um, man, every time, every time I stop and ask God for wisdom, it always works out, you know, unless He tells me something that I don’t want to deal with, then I do the opposite. Right? But like it’s just crazy. And I wanted to just share that in a podcast for some of you guys because, uh, for you all, because some of you might think, ah, that’s a great idea.

I haven’t thought about that before, or I forgot that I could ask God for wisdom and he’ll give it to me. So if you don’t believe in God, well, you know what, I’m going to ask God to give you wisdom, but, uh, you know, I’m not trying to, you know, again, preach God and Jesus down your throat, like, um, so, but I’m telling you there is a God and He cares about all of us. You know what? Jesus really does love you… but then again, He loves everybody, right? So, what’s the big deal? Just kidding. I saw a tee shirt that says Jesus loves you, but then again, He loves everybody.

So, anyway, ask God for wisdom and you got to ask it in faith, right? You gotta ask him believing that he’s going to give it to you and He will. Okay, cool. That’s all I got. This is, it’s been a fun, interesting podcast. Hope you’re all are doing well and I will see you later. Bye.