A Journey of Faith and Stewardship with John Bevere

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey friends, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. I'm Kevin.

Speaker 2: 0:04

And I'm Becca, and we're your hosts, here to help you reach your potential and maximize your impact in every area that matters. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 0:12

All right friends. Well, I'm really excited to be interviewing a good friend of mine and one of my absolute top favorite authors, john Bevere. John, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. How are you?

Speaker 3: 0:24

Kevin, I'm great, but it's a great honor and privilege to be on with you and I have a lot of respect for you and Becca, and so we've got mutual bro feelings going on here.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Yeah, no, this is a treat for me. I know that I'm going to show the book that you wrote. That had a huge impact in my life. Relentless I get choked up. I know I wrote you a letter, but that book played a huge role in us adopting our daughter, Evie.

Speaker 3: 0:52

And I remember that letter. It was back in 2017 or 16, I think.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Yeah, it was born in 2017. I think I sent you the letter in 2018. But, good memory, I know you deal with thousands and thousands of people, but it was such an impactful book. The first time I read it, I honestly thought you were a little bit crazy. It stretched my understanding of grace in a way that I'd never heard it explained and I listened to it to the first time. I was like I don't know about this. And then I just I ended up listening to it a second time and God used that book to help me to know how to respond when I picked up Evie on September 20th of 2017. And I clearly heard him not audibly, but clearly heard him say Kevin, this is your daughter, are you going to step up and be her dad? And just the understanding of grace from that book has played a huge role in my life, and I had to write you a letter not expecting you to ever actually read it, but just to say thank you, because you can be mentored by people in person and you have access to virtually every amazing person in the world if you just read their books. So thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 2:03

And today we're going to talk about some questions that I have from this book X, which is multiply your God-given potential. I'm going through this book with a group. I call it my Eagles group. It's a group of high-level Christian business owners. And then I also want to mention this book, the Awe of God, which I know is your newest book. Both books are available for a significant discount on Amazon right now, so I just want to encourage everyone pick up these books. I have a library full of John Pivir books. I love them, and I know you said that the Awe of God is really the foundation for the book X. Is there anything you want to say about the Awe of God? Real quick.

Speaker 3: 2:42

Well, I first of all want to say that I wrote X for entrepreneurs. That's who was in my heart when I wrote that book the Awe of God. The reason it is so important is the healthy. Remember there's legalistic. We're not talking about the legalistic. The healthy fear of the Lord, or the healthy Awe of God, is the beginning. It's the starting place of wisdom. Not only is it the starting place, it is the Bible says very clearly it's a continual flow of wisdom.

Speaker 3: 3:12

Now I want everybody to stop and think about this. You're in your business. You're making decisions every day. How would you like to have God sitting right next to you saying what to do on every single account? This is what the fear of the Lord does. So 95% of the time I'm operating in the wisdom of God. I don't consciously know it, I unconsciously know it, but the fear of the Lord is what keeps me engaged. It keeps the fountain flowing.

Speaker 3: 3:39

So if you look at King Abimelech, abraham deceived him and actually said Sarah is my sister. God came to him and said you're a dead man. He said what he said because the woman is another man's wife. And he said God, I didn't know. And he said I know, that's why I kept you from touching her. So he's not even saved, he doesn't even have a relationship with God, but because he fears God, that fountain kept him from touching her. What does the wisdom of God do for us in our everyday decisions, in entrepreneurship? That's why I say the awe of God book is the foundation of the entrepreneurial book.

Speaker 1: 4:19

X Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to reading it when I'm wrapping up X, where it's taking us a while. I mean, x is a solid book. It's a long book and it's deep and we're taking our time going through it and really digesting it together, so I love the concept. You really spent a lot of time talking about stewardship in X, so could you help us understand what is stewardship?

Speaker 3: 4:43

Yes, it's a word not used very much today, so when you hear the word stewardship, you really don't have a full connection. So I want to make this clear to all your partners here on the podcast. A steward is somebody who manages what belongs to somebody else. Okay, let me give you an example of a modern day steward. I have a guy in California that does all my retirement funds. He invests them. He does all these decisions Without me knowing about it. Now he's managing what I own, but I'm not micromanaging him. In other words, I'm not calling this guy every other day saying what are you investing in? He has to run me down once a year to find Because legally, has to tell me what he's doing right, because I really trust him.

Speaker 3: 5:37

Another example of a steward in the Bible would be Joseph. Joseph was a slave in Potiphar's house in Egypt, but then he became steward of his own household, his entire household, and the Bible says Potiphar didn't even know what was going on his household except for the food that was at his table. He wasn't micromanaging Joseph. Now, when you look at stewardship, god has made us stewards. Paul makes this very clear. We are stewards. What do we stewards up? Well, we're stewards of this temple. Okay, this body.

Speaker 3: 6:09

When I gave my life to the Lordship of Jesus, it's not my body anymore, it's actually His. So now I'm stirring what belongs to Him. Now you and I both eat really healthy. We exercise. Why do we do that? I was just telling my staff this morning how they just said to Dennis a couple days ago your teeth are in perfect condition. Well, I said, guys, I have flossed, I have used the ultrasonic care, the ultrasound, to keep my teeth. Why? Because I'm preserving what is not mine. This body belongs to God, so I'm taking care of it. I don't ever like if I borrowed your let's say your Ferrari, kevin and I'm putting dirty.

Speaker 3: 6:48

If I put dirty gas and recycled oil in your car, I got to answer to you on why I shortened life of your car and why I didn't make it perform as well as it could. I don't want to answer to God and say, hey, I slowed this body down. I'm 64 and I feel like I'm 35. Why did I put dirty gas and recycled oil in this body? So the same thing comes with our gifts. Now this is where this book is all about. God gives every human being supernatural abilities. It's called grace, it's called actually, more specifically, charisma, that is, god's ability that he puts in our life to be able to do what he's created us to do. Now, what I didn't even know as a young man is that God had called me to write books and my worst subject in high school was English and creative writing. Now I'm in prayer in 1991 and God says, son, I want you to write and I'm like you got the wrong boy. I mean, I scored 370 on the SAT, kevin, I've only met two human beings scored lower than me on the English on the SAT. Okay, I mean my English teachers. It would take me on. It would take me four hours to write a one page paper. I just couldn't write. So when God said that to me, I laughed and did nothing for 10 months. Well, 10 months later, two women came to me from two different states within two weeks of each other, and they said the exact same words. They said, john, if you don't write what God's giving you to write, he's going to give the message to somebody else and one day you're going to stand in judgment for it. And I was like whoa, what? When the second woman said it from the state of Texas, after the first one with Florida, the fear of God hit me and I actually wrote a contract. I got a Sharpie and put contract at the top of the page, because this is 91, okay. And I said, god, I can't write. I mean, that's been proven. So I need your grace. And I mean, even no grace empowers me to do what I can't do in my own ability. And I signed the contract. Well, kevin, today the books are in the tens of millions, they're in 129 languages all over the world and I've been an international bestseller for years now. Well, listen, I can't brag about that. I know how bad I was without God, without His grace, without the gift that I steward. So that gift is His ability to write, and now millions of people all over the world are getting benefited because I stewarded God's ability properly. Now, god gives these gifts to every human being and if you look at the gifts, there's probably thousands of them. I mean, here's little Akeana. She's eight years old, her parents are atheists and yet she paints the portrait of Jesus, called the Prince of Peace, in such a way now that that original is worth over a million dollars. She did when she was eight years old. Well, how did she do it? She did it through the grace of God on her life, the charisma of God that's on her life, the gifting that's on her life.

Speaker 3: 9:48

Kevin, you've got a gifting You're a leader. You motivate people. That's why you're doing this podcast. You're stewarding your gift of leadership and you're improving people's lives. Because you're doing this, you're giving up time. Now, that's another thing we manage. We steward. It's time. Another thing we steward is energy. A lot of people don't understand this. Energy has to be stewarded, time has to be stewarded, but because why? We want to maximize the gifts that God's put on our life to help other people. I hope I answered that question. That's great.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I mean that was a good podcast right there Real quick. You kind of touched on it, but obviously I am passionate about helping people get healthy physically and I do believe that we are to. You know, our body is called the temple of the Holy Spirit. I've noticed, though, in I was raised in a Christian home, I've been going to church my whole life is that it seems like obesity is the acceptable sin in Christianity. And I'm not saying obesity is a sin, I don't mean to say that. But I guess what I don't see addressed is pastors and Christians will talk about stewarding money especially. I feel like we all know we're supposed to steward our money. Maybe some understand time, maybe some understand talents, but when it comes to stewarding our physical health, it doesn't really get talked about. Are we required, is that an expectation, for us to steward physical health, the way we steward our money and our children and our time?

Speaker 3: 11:24

The Bible- says that if we destroy the temple of God, we're going to have to answer for it. It's very clear about that. So this is the temple of God. There is the corporate temple of God, which is the church. So if we destroy the church, we're hurting his people. We're going to have to answer to it. If we destroy this body, we're going to have to answer to it. So, yes, it is something that is extremely important.

Speaker 3: 11:47

Now I'm going to tell you why the Bible doesn't talk about this more explicitly. They didn't have genetically modified foods, they didn't have processed foods, they didn't have all this junk. Now God did tell his people how to eat, right? He said there are certain foods you should avoid, and science has proven that those certain foods aren't healthy for the human body. They're just not.

Speaker 3: 12:10

And I remember I was the biggest junk food junkie on the planet. I mean, if you put a Big Mac in fries in front of me and a piece of fish in a wild mixed field green salad, Big Mac and fries was my favorite meal. I would have jumped on that and ignored the other. I walked into my fraternity at 22 years of age never having heard anyone like you not a health food coach, not a person that said I needed exercise or anything. I heard the Holy Spirit say your body's my temple, Take care of it. And that's when I had the thought of what I just shared with you about the dirty gas and recycled oil. And I remember I started making this shift and it was a gradual shift, because sometimes you don't turn a barge on a dime. But this is what happened is I started eating that fish and wild mixed field green and I didn't like it at all. But what I didn't understand is what you feed on is what you will eventually hunger for. So the more I eat healthy food, the more I hunger for healthy food. Now I have had people look at me saying, oh, you really want this piece of cake right now. And I go, I'm not lying, I have no desire for it because my appetite changed.

Speaker 3: 13:21

Now, something I learned in the process and this is interesting because you bring up obesity and I realized that there are some medical cases and this is like very rare that people fight obesity because there's an imbalance in their hormones. I get that, but 99% of the people they're obese because they have not addressed the sin of overeating or eating what's wrong and bad for you. One of the things that I learned and I had to train my body say this body is trainable. This is what people have to understand your body is trainable, your flesh. God makes that so clear in the New Testament.

Speaker 3: 14:02

Well, I found out something I used to eat because of taste. My whole mindset changed and now the number one priority of eating for me is nutrition. The number two, which is the benefit, is taste. So, in other words, I don't care what. I just had a shake this morning that tastes disgusting. If it was all about taste, I wouldn't have had that shake with all my greens and all my collagen and all that stuff. I wouldn't have had it. I would have had something that tastes good. But because I know the number one reason for eating is nutrition, I'm going to eat what doesn't taste good. Now, when I am eating a piece of King Salmon, it tastes amazing. Right, I get the benefit. Number two does not supersede number one. If people would just get that, they would change the way they eat, If they would renew their mind and train their body that the number one reason I eat is nutrition.

Speaker 2: 15:06

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Speaker 1: 15:21

That's awesome. I know that you share in some of your books just how you connected the dot between how stewarding your health allows you to be more effective in stewarding the ministry that you do and I think that's what I'm passionate about is I know that everyone is a better person. They're a better Christian, they're a better husband, they're better father, wife If they are. There's nothing that we do that is not enhanced by being our best physical shape.

Speaker 3: 15:49

Yes, and that's. There is no doubt about it. My staff is okay, I'm gonna tell you I'm 64 years old, right, and I feel like I'm 35. My staff will tell you I have the energy of a 35 year old my staff. I will sometimes wear them out because I have so much energy. Okay, that didn't come by accident. That came by praying, keeping my mental health right by reading and then eating and exercising. So I'm a guy. I'll be in the gym this afternoon. I'm a guy who believes in physical exercise. Why? Because it maintains your body and they actually proved.

Speaker 3: 16:26

There was a guy that wrote a book I can't remember the name of the book, but he's not even a Christian but he said that at the age of about 49, your cells start reproducing in a way that they've aged and they won't function as well. But he said you can trick your cells by doing hard 30 minute exercises I can't remember how many times a week and by the way you think, because the way I think and the way I speak is connected or I should say the way I speak is connected to my central nervous system. I will not allow anybody in my family to use the name John Bavir and old in the same sentence because I don't want to say something that my cells, my central nervous system, will release it to the cells. I mean, james talked about this here. We just proved in the last 30 years that the central nervous system and our speech place in the brain are connected.

Speaker 3: 17:25

But here's James, 2000 years ago, who says there's a little rudder on a ship that steers that whole ship. And James is talking about the tongue. So tongue is a rudder and my tongue is going to determine the direction of my body. And if people are walking around saying I just can't lose weight, I just feel tired all the time, I am just so nervous, I am just getting old. If they're saying all those things, their body guess what their central nervous system is releasing that into their body. That's the way God designed us. So that's why death and life are in the power of the tongue. God is the one who said it. They're proving it in science in the last 30 years.

Speaker 1: 18:04

But God said it all these years ago. Oh, that's great. That's great. Can you talk about investing from a biblical perspective? So we talked about stewardship, but let's move on and dial it in a little bit closer and talk about specifically investing.

Speaker 3: 18:22

Yep, so you're talking about investing finances, investing time, energy. What are we? Where do you think?

Speaker 1: 18:27

Yeah, I think all three of those. But what does investing look like?

Speaker 3: 18:31

Investing is when you give yourself into something that you know will bring a return, a good return. Okay, the reason I am investing time, energy into building the kingdom, specifically with preaching and writing, is because that's where my gift is Okay and I want to maximize building the kingdom of God with my gift. So let's just put this in terms that everybody can understand this. If I have a tractor okay, and I love the Indianapolis 500 so much that I bring my tractor to that race field, whatever you call it track yeah, am I going to be able to go around that track? Yeah, but I'm not going to win anything. I'm not going to impress or change any lives or anything like that, right. But if I take that tractor and I go to a field and I put a column behind it, I can harvest. If I put a plow behind it, I can plant. I can get the ground ready for planting Now if I've got a race car.

Speaker 3: 19:32

Okay, if I've got a Formula 1 race car and I bring it to that field, I'm not going to be able to do nothing. It's going to get stuck. If I put it on that racetrack, I can win that race. Paul says run in such a way that you're going to win. And what does he mean by that? I'm not competing against you, Kevin. He's talking about winning in life, winning in the fact that I have maximized, I have invested in the right place in order to bring the maximum return. So here I am. I'm anointed to write, I'm anointed to speak, right, so I am not going out and doing a direct marketing company. I'm not going out and working on Wall Street. Now, do you know? I've got a real business mind. I do, and I believe every minister should, because you're actually stewarding God's business. I could probably do pretty good on Wall Street. I could probably do pretty good in corporate sales or corporate management. Okay, but I won't maximize because that's not where I'm called. I'm going to invest my time and energy into what I'm called to do. Okay Now, Kevin, if you try to do what I do, if you're out there preaching the gospel and you're saying, oh yeah, I'll travel to Singapore and I'm going to speak to those people. Yeah, you're going to touch some lives, Kevin, but not near like I would, because I've got the equipment to do that. You've got that. Just as if I'd sit there and said I'm going to run my own direct marketing company, I wouldn't do near as good as you, I wouldn't be as effective as you. So investing is about giving your time into that which will bring the greatest return. Now, when it comes to finances, you can choose and it's a choice God gives us. If we want to invest our finances in just getting more and more houses and cars and this we're not going to grow like we could.

Speaker 3: 21:23

You know, I'm watching my son right now and I'm so proud of him. He knows he's called to the business world and he just left our ministry, I think two years ago or three years ago, and he probably wasn't worth more than probably $30,000 when he left. Today he's almost worth a million and it's because he has invested his gift into all these different streams of businesses that he has started and he is starting to see a return on it, and I could see when he was working for us. I actually told him. I said look, I don't believe you're called to work for us. I know you're working for us because you love your mother and dad, but if you don't resign, I am actually going to fire you.

Speaker 3: 22:06

You know I said that joking. I'd never find my own son, but I was just trying to say, hey, you need to be out in the business world. I see that on your life. And now here, after a couple of three years, he is. So he is doing so well because he's invested into the field and use the equipment that God gave him in that field. So your fields got to be right and your equipment's got to be right. Your equipment is your giftings, your finances, whatever the field is what you're called to Right. So I'm going to give you another example. God has called us to resource pastors and leaders all over the world. We've given away over 60 million resources to pastors and leaders all over the world, right.

Speaker 3: 22:52

Okay let's say I took all that energy and I started a church here in Tennessee, in Nashville. I wouldn't impact near as many people, it wouldn't be as successful as a couple pastors I know in this city who are really impacting this city. Because it's not my field Me being a pastor number one. I'm called to be a teacher, teaching and discipling the nations of the world, and now I'm in the wrong field. I'm trying to build a local church in Nashville. See, it's always about your right gifts and your right equipment and your right field. That's how we invest.

Speaker 1: 23:26

That's great. The last question I want to ask you, john, has to do with breakthrough. Obviously, it's been a challenging time economically in the US, you know, and it's easy for us to just focus Christianity especially as American Christians, all we think about is the United States, and US isn't even mentioned in the Bible but it has been a challenging time for many people financially and it is very tempting to stop investing. And at the end of I think it's chapter nine in the book X, you talk specifically about breakthrough. Can you just expound on that a little bit more, because I think I know that actually my word for 2023 was breakthrough is breakthrough and I haven't seen it happen yet, and I know that there's many other people that we interact with that are praying for it as well. But can you just share about, I guess, the inevitability of breakthrough, if you're?

Speaker 3: 24:20

faithful David made this statement in First Chronicles that God, you are the God of the breakthrough. Okay, so God is the one that gives breakthrough when we are determined not to quit and we continue to do what God says. Those are the two elements that gave David the breakthrough. He continued to do what God said and he didn't quit, and he did it with all of his heart and energy and strength. So really three. Then God gave him the breakthrough.

Speaker 3: 24:46

It'd be the principle of in the New Testament, Paul said I planted a, Paulus, water watered, but God gave the increase. God is the God of the breakthrough and our responsibility is doing what he tells us to do, not quitting. You're going to have so many opportunities to quit. And then, number three doing it diligently, giving all your strength, your energy, your efforts, doing what he tells you to do, he will give the breakthrough. In other words, the results depend on him. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? We give the energy, we use our talents. The results come from him. God gives the increase and that's why God said the power of my hand and my might did not get this. Well, God is the one that gave it to me so that he might establish his covenant. So that's the keys here. The keys are investing your energies, your equipment and in the right place, and then continuing to do it, even when you feel like quitting, and then, eventually, God gives you the breakthrough, which is the harvest, or the growth that we're all believing for.

Speaker 3: 25:58

Excellent excellent questions. These are excellent questions, Kevin.

Speaker 1: 26:03

Well, John, I want to be sensitive to your time. You're a super busy man. I'm super honored to have you on. I know the ministry that you run is Messenger International. How can people learn more about you and support what you and Lisa do?

Speaker 3: 26:17

JohnBavircom will bring you right to Messenger or to me, to books. So it's J-O-H-N-B, like boy E, like Edward V, like Victor E, like Edward R, like Randy E, like Edwardcom. That'll get them everything they need to know and if they don't want to push all the buttons, just get those books you mentioned from Amazon. It's so much easier. Everybody's prime members probably that are listening to us it's just one player, yeah, and they're doing a better sale than we are right now, so we can't even offer you those books that low, so that's good.

Speaker 1: 26:48

And John, you're on tour pretty much. I mean people can find you pretty much all over the country and throughout the year. Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 26:55

Yeah, I'm in Orlando tomorrow, I'm in Atlanta on Sunday, on and on and on. So, yes, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 27:03

I know I occasionally see advertisements for events including you and or Lisa, so I just want to invite our audience. Anytime you see something advertised with either John or Lisa, I highly recommend you attend. You won't be disappointed. John, again, thank you so much. I'm so grateful for you following God's leading in your life to become an author and just letting him work through you. You had a huge impact on my life and I know you're impacting lots of people and I'm super grateful for you, your leadership and your friendship. So thank you so much, john.

Speaker 3: 27:31

Love you, kevin, god bless you, buddy, back at you.

Speaker 1: 27:34

Thanks for listening to the Uncommon Freedom Show. We believe freedom isn't man's invention. It was created by God. If you are enjoying this show, please give us a five star review on the platform you're listening to us on, then subscribe and share with friends and family that you think will enjoy the show. You can connect with us at beckandkevcom for more resources to learn biblical principles, essential disciplines and the winning habits that help, once average people lead the life they want instead of accepting the life they were given.