God Loves Profit

By Joe Dardano

God Loves Profit contains numerous stories from the Bible that will edify Christians, and this same material will draw non-Christian readers in as Scripture invariably acts as a magnate for people who are searching for truth, meaning, and purpose. In addition, there are numerous real-life stories of teaching and missionary experiences that offer concrete examples of God's abundance and universal love for us.

God Loves Profit follows the tradition of Christian personal development and inner growth. In the nineteenth century, writers in personal development were primarily from the New Thought movement. These works, too numerous to mention, often used the Bible to show believers the power of unlimited potential within us and the reality of a God who provides abundantly. In the 1950s the works of Earl Nightingale and Norman Vincent Peale emerged.

In 2000, The Prayer of Jabez was published. Although personal development and success are intrinsically a Christian-rooted movement, contemporary authors (i.e., Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, etc.) approach the issues for a New Age or secular viewpoint. God Loves Profit is a book for personal success and advancement from a biblical perspective. The book addresses the abundance that God provides and that he wants us to grow in faith.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885407199

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God Loves Profit

Joe Dardano

ISBN 979-8-88540-718-2 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88540-719-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Joe Dardano

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

God Promises Abundance

God Wants Us to Grow

Desires of the Mind and Heart

Gratitude

Sin

The Parable of the Ferrari

God Loves Speed

Jesus Is the Way

Hope

About the Author

Chapter 1

God Promises Abundance

In the fall of 2015, while teaching in an all-boys prep school in Vancouver, Canada, an energetic class of Economics 12 students settles into their desks, preparing for a new lesson. This is The Boys Academy (TBA), a Christian all-boys school. Parents enroll their sons into TBA for its rich tradition and Christian roots and to prepare boys for university life. This class is living in a world that appears infinitely out of reach.

The city of Vancouver, Canada, has been and continues to be one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to buy real estate, and the cost of living continues to rise disproportionately to incomes. Just down the block from the school, a teardown house with a leaky roof, unfit to live in, is sold for four million dollars, and every year following that, the values continue to skyrocket.

Students are asking themselves, How am I to succeed in this terribly expensive city? As the classroom teacher and businessman, my heart longs to offer these fine, young men a sliver of hope so they can courageously tackle the challenges they face. God speaks to me early one morning, asking me to offer them a Christian meme. As it turned out, it was a meme that proved to light a fire in their souls and inspire some to challenge their beliefs and their own self-imposed limitations: God Loves Profit!

Yes, God Loves Profit. The boys repeated this phrase over and over, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, in Christian education class, in math and science classes too. The conditions, stresses, anxieties of the contemporary world are fertile ground for this meme to spread like contagion.

How many young people are out there today, look around them, and feel pessimistic about getting into the right schools, finding employment, and earning enough to start and grow a family in a nice home? I ask this question considering the circumstances for all young people, but most especially for those living in highly concentrated and increasingly expensive urban centers: Singapore, Hong Kong, Geneva, New York, Paris, London, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and so on.

Is the fear of not achieving what older generations like the traditionalists and baby boomers have accomplished forcing young people into a depressive stance toward life and God? Or does fear leave millennials unconcerned about the future and simply to exist to live for the moment, without responsibilities, without hope, without vision?

The meme God Loves Profit challenges that pessimism and presents the Word of God as offering hope, considering the circumstances that youth faces today. Instead of feeling down about rising living costs and housing prices, God Loves Profit encourages us to think bigger and place our faith in a grandiose God who provides abundantly for us if we truly believe.

The belief in a bountiful God who pours out lavishly upon us is evident through the generous promises found in the Bible. The biblical stories I include are enhanced by contemporary missionary teaching experiences over the past twenty-five years: The Boys Academy nine-year teaching position and nine years at the Vancouver Rescue Misson.

These firsthand accounts are retold with altered names to protect the identity of individuals. I have included these anecdotes to illustrate the great heights faith can reach, confirming the rich and magnificent biblical promises.

Faith and Abundance

Biblical promises are stories pushing us to challenge the limits of our faith and believe that God is faithful if we trust in him with our whole minds and hearts. In Matthew 17:20, we find inspiration to consider the immense depth our faith can achieve. Christ's disciples met failure when they could not drive out the demons from a boy suffering from seizures.

The twelve were perplexed in regard to their failed efforts, but Jesus was very forthright and explained why the outcome was not successful: because you have so little faith. So how can we understand this conclusion in practical terms? Perhaps the disciples prayed over the boy mechanically, laying hands on him, but their hearts were not in it. Maybe they saw his condition as an impossible case, believing nothing could be done, and simply prayed to satisfy the anxious father.

These may not have been the causes for the failed prayer, but the reasons were undoubtedly similar in character. Jesus Christ then edifies his disciples to consider possibilities if one adopts an enlarged faith: If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. All we need is faith the size of a mustard seed, known in Israel to be the smallest seed but when planted and nourished grows to