And in today's episode, we're continuing on in this series on idols in entrepreneurship, idols in business. And this episode specifically, we are diving into the idol of pride, of leaning on our qualifications, our expertise, our credibility, putting our hope in that instead of in God. And as always, quick recap: an idol is an object or a concept that we give a higher priority than God. It's anything we rely on for blessing, help, or guidance instead of God. Anything that consumes our heart, our imagination, our devotion more than God. It's any good thing that we elevate to a position of more power, more prominence, more influence in our life over God. And the question is: where is our hope? Is our hope in God? Or is our hope in our credibility, our experience, our accomplishments, our qualifications? And once again, this series is not me coming from a place of authority. It is not me coming and teaching. This is the idol, and this is what it looks like, and this is how we fix it. It's more just me sharing my story, which is not pretty. It's me just being like, hey, this has been real for me. This has been a struggle. This is how it's looked. This is how it's shown up. This is the consequences that I've paid in my life. And this is what the wrestling has looked like. Not because we overcome it all the time. Sometimes these are things that can easily be elevated and re-elevated and taken back down and then put back up. And I think that's more often the path that we take. And so this series is more just bringing an awareness to it because I think the more we're aware of it, the more we understand what it looks like, the faster we can get at recognizing it, addressing it, and reshifting our priorities, putting God back at the center because that's where he should be. That's where he deserves to be, that it he is worthy to be there. And this journey of life is this constant competition for these other things to take a more elevated place than God. And I think it's so tempting in business. It is so tempting to elevate these other things. And honestly, for me, this whole series, it's not easy. It's pretty, it's pretty humbling. It's pretty hard to kind of walk through all of my worst moments and to share them publicly to be like, yeah, guess what? Here's where I messed up. Guess what? I didn't do this well. But I do it one in obedience to God because I believe He asked me to do this. And it's not about me. It's it's not about my pride or how I come across. And I think just even in the process of doing this, one, I'm learning, I'm relearning, I'm reprocessing things as I go through stories and the struggles. But two, it's like it's a humbling process. It's something where it's like, okay, who's who is this all for? Right? Is this so I can come across as being like like I have it all figured out? Or is it being willing to be vulnerable and to be transparent and to be authentic to share this is this is the struggle. This is these are the battles that we face behind closed doors. And I feel like every single one of these, I'm like, yeah, this idol specifically has been a big one. Honestly, they're all big ones. They've all specifically wrecked my life in one way or another. And but in the in the process of recognizing them, God chose his grace, God chose his faithfulness in helping me learn, helping me grow, helping me surrender, helping me obey, helping me come to the other side, helping me break free from some of these chains, or at least getting to a place where I recognize the power that it has over my life. And being in a situation where I can address it, I can recognize what's happening, and I can reorganize and re-prioritize things to put God back at the top. Because a lot of these idols, they don't come across as bad. They're actually, they're not necessarily bad things. I mean, I think this one, pride. Pride's not a good thing. That's not a fruit of the spirit. But in the sense that where the where our pride comes from, that's not always necessarily a bad thing. So where does pride come from? Well, pride comes, I mean, in this case for me, pride came from doing things well. Pride came from developing, learning, growing, developing my gifts, becoming good at things, having success in achievements. And I've shared a lot about kind of the the uglier years of my life and years of entrepreneurship, but it wasn't always ugly, and it it it actually is it's gotten better. And I've developed gifts, I've developed my strengths and my abilities. I got really good at telling people's brand stories. I learned a brand new industry. I launched an e-commerce process project successfully. I it made ripples within the industry and within the organization, and other companies came to us asking for advice and asking how we did it and what did we learn along the way. And we got to be an authority in that space. And through this brand clarity process, I got to help completely revamp a whole organization and reputation and culture and processes internally and externally, so that when I left, it was a completely different place than when I first got there. You know, it's like these are all things that I have contributed to. These are all things that I have done and done well and had success with. Sometimes it's just about loving the people where they're at. Not looking at a person or a business or an organization as a project or a problem. But realizing that I don't know their story, I don't know what they've been through, I don't know where their struggles are, and I don't have to fix it. I am, I am not the one who works through things. Like that is God, that is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit changes things, the Holy Spirit moves, this Holy Spirit works on our behalf, like God is in charge. And if he gives me ideas or solutions or revelation, it still comes from him. It does not come from me, it's not me solving the problem or making something better. And so in this process, it's like the more comfortable I became, the more confident I became, the more disconnected I became, the less empathetic I became. My heart became colder and more calloused in the process. And I started judging people quicker and faster. And unfortunately, you know, the pride comes before the fall, and oftentimes it's a fall that follows the pride, and it's a fall that strips us away of those things that we rely on, those things that we go to, that credibility, that success, that reputation. And here I was putting a lot of stake in that. I was putting a lot of emphasis and security in what I had done and what I had accomplished. And it was turning me off from loving people, from showing grace, from forgiving, from just remembering that we all go through hard things and we're all struggling. And I'm not here to make a judgment or an assessment that I first and foremost like my heart should be to listen and to love and to show people the hope that and the the faith that we have in Jesus Christ. And I remember after we moved, because I'd been in the same place, I'd had the same comfortable role for five years. I'd been in the same town, the same church, the same community for 14 years, and I thought pretty highly of myself. Like I thought I just had everything I needed to do what I needed to do, and that it was gonna be easy because I had just I was like, oh well, I've done this and I've done this, and you know, I've been in business for 15 years, and I it's just I have it, I have what it takes. I I know what to do, and I'm gonna do it and it's all gonna work. And we end up moving and uprooting everything, you know, moving to a whole different state, a whole different place, and my reputation, my security, my comfort, all of these things were stripped away, and I felt like I was upside down. I I was really surprised at how hard it was for me. I honestly thought that I was gonna be fine. I honestly thought that some big move, it was gonna be like no big deal, and that I was gonna just handle it just fine because I was a military kid. I grew up moving around and I was like, oh, I've done this before. I'm ready, I'm excited for this new adventure. Like, God's in this, God's got us, and and it's all gonna be good. And while things have worked out for our good, it was not easy, it rocked me so hard, and it I reeled from it for months. I was so emotional, I was so all over the place, and everything I thought I knew, or everything I had put like my security in, I realized I was like, wow, I'm when all those things are taken away from me, I'm really lost, I'm really confused, I'm really struggling. Because apparently I wasn't nearly as grounded and rooted in Christ as I thought I was and then came all the emotions, and there's anger and bitterness and a lot of a lot of emotion bubbling to the surface that started to peel away this wall that I had been building up, this callousness that I had been building up, and this whole process started to soften my heart again and started to like make me feel a lot more for people to be so much more aware of other people and what they might be going through. And this was not the first time in my life that this had happened. There was a another very difficult season where that had also stripped away so much pride. Like I was in a season where I kind of thought I had it all together. I thought I was a pretty well-rounded person, and then through a very difficult season, I realized that I was really a wreck inside, and I had was super judgmental. This is, you know, early becoming early adulthood before I became a parent, thinking I knew everything, had kids. Whoa, that was a wake-up call. Everything I thought I knew about being a parent was just totally challenged. Taught me to have way more empathy for other adults and other parents. And, you know, going through that season of building our business and going through being broke and going through like depression and anxiety. And I used to honestly like look at people's weaknesses and just judge them for it and just think that they just weren't, they weren't strong enough, they didn't have enough faith in God, and it was just all on them. And that season really wrecked me and showed me that I just had no idea what I was doing. And then, you know, years go by, and it's like you go, you hit rock bottom, your whole life falls apart, and you're just like, wow, I I got nothing. Like, who am I? And you, it's very humbling. It's absolutely humbling. And then you, as you kind of crawl out of that season and and things kind of start to like put themselves back together, and you you kind of get to the other side, the further and further away from that that I got, I kind of started to revert back, never, never to what it was before, but it was easy to kind of like be like, oh, well, I have this figured out and I have this figured out and I have this figured out, and this person doesn't, and this person doesn't, and I could help them with that, and you know, but it's like I'm I'm putting this this pride first, you know, it's it's what I've done and what someone else hasn't. And then, you know, once again, here you have this this fall, this completely like humbling season where, you know, the the comfort you had, the security you had, the income you had, the benefits you had that were really, you know, padding this pride and padding this like false sense of security that I had this all figured out, and then that all that gets stripped away. And I'm like, wow, like I who am I and what am I doing? Anyway, but through through these falls, through these really difficult season, like God He softens our heart. There's a verse in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 36, 26, and it says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove you, I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I don't know how many people read that and are convicted by that, but I read that and that wrecks me because I'm like, I have felt like I have had a heart of stone. I have felt that before. I have felt like I am callous and cold and prideful and selfish. And having a heart of flesh is something that only happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is only him at work in me that gives me a heart to love other people, that gives me a heart to care and to and to not be afraid to to show emotion and to be touched by someone's story, to to feel their pain when they share it, to be willing to be willing to experience that emotion. I mean, I there were years of my life where I just I did not want to feel I didn't want to cry, I didn't want to feel sad, I didn't want to feel all of these feelings. But in in fighting that, in guarding my heart and building up those walls, I hurt relationships and I hurt my ability to connect and to be vulnerable and to have like real connection with people. And I I that was a struggle to have to like get to a point where I was like comfortable experiencing emotion again and not being so cold, not being so heart of stone. But it's just God at work through our life and remembering that it's like God can strip all these things away. And in the end, we realize, okay, I was putting, I was putting my hope in what I could do. I was putting my hope in what I had done in my resume, in my credibility, and my past experiences. And that was that was building me up. And pride is one of those things where it's like you can kind of get away with it for a long time. It's kind of one of those things where we can present false humility and we can kind of hide it easier from other people, but it it's there and it's it's destroying things in our life. But because it's not as obvious, it's it works behind the scenes longer. And then that's why sometimes it's like it's that fall that breaks us, and that fall is so big and so hard and so ugly because pride was building quietly for so long, and it was becoming so destructive. And to break that hold, to break that stronghold, sometimes it's a really ugly season that we have to go through. It's a really ugly rock bottom to strip that away and for God to remind us who we are, who we are in Him, and that everything we have, everything we've done is by the grace of God, is through His power at work in us, through the gifts He gives us, through the experiences He provides, through the doors He opens. It's not me. It's not me. And just when I meet people, it's like, you know, God talks about in the Bible, it's like the first will be last and the last will be first. And Jesus washing the disciples' feet and and coming to to serve people and having that heart of not what I can do and what I can fix, but what just serving and loving first and foremost. Like the you know, God says, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And second, love your neighbor as yourself. And that is something that I have not that that is not come naturally, that has not come easily. And it's taken a lot of really hard lessons and really hard seasons to give me that heart of flesh and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in my life and to soften me and to just to continually remind me like we the one of the fruits of the spirit is love, and we only produce fruit in our life when we're connected to the vine, like when we're abiding in him, when we're in his word, when we're seeking him in prayer, when we're allowing him into our heart and inviting him to clean our heart, to purify our heart, to repent, to be active and engaged in that relationship with him. And when we do that, then we're producing the fruit of the spirit. Then we're having love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. If that's all nine, if I missed one, I'm sorry. But that's that's where it comes from. And, you know, pride is the opposite of that. Pride is us not abiding in the spirit, but just abiding in ourselves, like trusting in ourselves because of what we've done, because of what we think we've accomplished, because of the track record, because of the the resume. And to say, because I've done all of these things, I've proven myself. I I can walk in and I can fix this problem and I can you know make this situation better. And that's just that's not leading with love. That's not that's not leading with a sense of just serving and having a heart for people. And so that's something that man, I'm I hate the really hard seasons. I really do. And there's two very prominent seasons in my life that have really just fundamentally shifted my faith and my walk with God, but also me. And I I wish that they hadn't have had to be so difficult or so hard, but you know, that pride is just a sneaky, sneaky thing that it can fester and build oftentimes when we don't even re realize that it's building or that it's happening. I honestly, this last difficult season, I wouldn't have thought, like I didn't think I was being prideful. I I didn't recognize it, I wasn't aware of it. And now I can look back and be like, yep, I was I was being prideful. Yeah, I was. And hopefully, you know, as we as I continue to grow in God and as I continue to just seek him out and and be molded and refined, I hope that just that's something that you know I become less and less, and he becomes more and more. And it's laying laying that down. And that's a hard thing to do, I think, especially as a as an entrepreneur, especially as a leader, because that's not what the world promotes. It's complete opposite. And in business, it's like we we want to lead with our strengths, we want to lead with our capabilities, we want to lead with our case studies and our reviews and our testimonials. But it's just we have to be aware of what that's doing deep down in our heart. And we have to guard our heart, we have to guard our mind and to keep our eyes on Jesus and to keep and to stay connected in the vine. So that is all I have for this episode. As always, you can learn more at Clearauthenticbrands.com. Thanks for joining. See you next time.