Ecommerce Leap of Faith and sharing God's Word

It’s been less than a month since I was laid off from my corporate tech job. It was a good job with good benefits, standing as a blessing to my family for the past four years. It gave us a chance to buy our first home and begin rising out of debt, and I will always be grateful for the experience and opportunity. 

When I look back on how much has changed over the past five years, it becomes plain to see that massive economic changes were inevitable in our lives. For as long as we could, we held onto a childish view of money, always living paycheck to paycheck, scraping together what was needed (often by any means necessary) and squandering the rest. 

God was always working on us, even when we were lost in the mystifying depths of the new age. He finally revealed Himself to me about six years ago, when Carrie and I were living in Crestone, Colorado. For work, I was managing a recreational marijuana dispensary in a nearby small town. At the same time, we were working hard on cryptocurrency projects in our spare time, creating content and generating small amounts of crypto that over time would develop into a sort of savings. These crypto endeavors would ultimately lead to steady jobs for both of us and our ticket out of the remote mountains.

👆Here we are back in 2012, peddling homemade donuts on the corner in Crestone, Colorado. If you go there, ask around about "the donut people" and you'll probably hear about us. 🥰

Carrie and I met in college over two decades ago, where we had an immediate connection, bonding over our creative and free spirits, our marijuana habits and our mutual sense of entrepreneurship. While we were no good at saving money, we were always effectively cooking up some sort of scheme to accumulate it in order to pay the bills. Oftentimes our economic exploits were less than legal, but we always made it work and enjoyed our lives together through most of our twenties and thirties.

While we never would have considered ourselves atheists, we could both be described in those days as “ex-Christians,” born into a religion that we had each decided (for vastly different reasons) wasn’t a good fit for us. My mindset in those days wasn’t against God in any way, but He simply wasn’t part of my awareness. If asked about my religious beliefs, I would respond with something like “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual,” or the classic “I’m agnostic and I try to live a good life.” In the rare instances that required us to think about God, we would assign Him some impersonal name such as “the universe” or “nature” in order to subconsciously avoid His unending love for us. Secretly, I was under the impression that I had let God down by siding with my sin and my addictions over Him.

In the fall of 2023 Jesus cracked the code for me, finally showing me the true meaning of the Gospel in all its beautiful simplicity. Although I’d known it for most of my life, I didn’t truly accept it until Jesus’ power was demonstrated in carrying me from sin. I came to a crossroads where two things were true: First, I hated my addictions and desperately wanted to be free of them, and second, I knew that I was completely powerless to remove them from my life on my own. That’s where Jesus came in. One day, I simply begged Him for forgiveness. In response, He gave me the grace to get through a day without succumbing to my addictions – But it wasn’t just a day. The grace kept coming, the forgiveness stuck, and here I sit some 16 months later, completely free of temptation to fall back into those addictions. Freedom from these habits was day 1 for Jesus, then He really started working on me. And in what I consider one of the most undeserved blessings of all, Carrie was born again around the same time.

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So now my wife and I find ourselves in an interesting new season. We are fresh babies, newly born again believers desperate to learn and walk out God’s will in our lives. Many of our old habits have faded away, but our entrepreneurial drive has remained.

👆 2023 as newly born again followers of Christ, attending the Raised to Deliver conference at Hungry Generation church in Pasco, Washington

We always knew we wanted to work for ourselves. Originally this was because we had difficulty submitting to authority in its many forms. We had trouble holding down jobs and we both jumped around from industry to industry, never finding anything that felt right in the long term. You could say we never knew what we wanted to be when we grew up. Luckily, we have only been “grown up” for a few years now, and God’s vision for us is now beginning to take shape: We want to start small businesses.

Slice of Scripture represents a first leap of faith, an against-the-odds effort to create something that will both bring glory to God and help us make a living. At the same time, Carrie is working toward the launch of a home-based bakery called Genesis Bakery, serving the local area with custom order cakes and confections.

Over the years, we have given a lot of time and energy to money-making ideas with the goals of early retirement, self employment and enhanced freedom. We explored tons of network marketing and direct sales companies, but we never made anything stick because we would always give up when met with difficult obstacles. But the grace of God changes things. We know that “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27), and we are with God now, surrendered to Him and submitted fully to His purpose for us.

One of the more gradual revelations I have received since being born again is about work. I used to think that the purpose of work was to not work. I assumed that the prize for working quickly or cleverly enough over a limited period of time was time free of work. But God calls us to work, not only to make a living for ourselves and our families, but to support and uplift our neighbors.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

–Genesis 2:15

So the more we build and create, the more work we can do – the more work we can do, the greater our impact on the world – the greater our impact on the world, the more glory for God and His kingdom.

The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) comes to mind as a representation of how we’re expected to serve God in this life. It is best summarized in verse 29, in which Jesus says “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” In my life before being born again, I could not have been trusted with abundance and therefore found very little financial success. Now that I know why we work and now that I serve the Lord, the promised abundance may become available to me because I am faithful that I can be trusted with it.

I’m still new as a follower of Jesus Christ, but this allows me to remember with striking clarity what I was saved and delivered from, the mindsets and hindrances that ruled my mind. My priorities and desires have changed as my heart has been opened to the service of the Lord. 

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

– Ezekiel 36:26

Now more than ever before, our desire is to do the business of the Lord, to be fruitful and multiply the gifts we have been given in order to serve Him and His people.

Thank you for reading my first Slice of Scripture blog. Use the coupon code BLOG10 for an additional 10% off your purchase in the Slice of Scripture store. Customize a beautiful piece of wall art with a Bible verse that speaks to you.

Related Verses:

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

–Genesis 1:28

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

–2 Corinthians 9:8

The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.

–Deuteronomy 28:12

The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty.

–Proverbs 21:5

Recommended Reading:

“X: Multiply Your God-Given Potential” by John Bevere