This Season with David Powell and PJ Nardy
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.[a]
Proverbs 3:5-6
David Powell: So my life verse is Proverbs 3:5-6. I trust the Lord with all your heart and understanding in all your ways, knowledge, and we will make your path straight. And that I felt like that life verse was given to me in college and God just continued to show it to me, so I kind of held on to that. And the big thing there is trusting in him. This is fairly recent, but I read a book by Mark Batterson "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" and just confronting the challenges and confronting my fears and uncertainty. And it just brought me back to that burst of trust in him because nobody knows what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's around the corner. But ultimately, if I submit to the Lord and let Him lead and guide, then it's going to work out. And it's not up to me, right? It's up to him. So I think I've just I've just found a lot of peace, a lot of peace in that.
PJ Nardy: You know, God's at work as you're saying it, because I'm looking at some things that I just jotted down, put my thoughts toward them, and right here says "trust him". And it's not just about trusting him with everything but submitting to him, you know, David and I are in a unique position as the business scales because we weren't mine workers. We're hiring subject matter experts that know more about the trade than we do. So it's a matter of stewardship now and trusting him and seeking his wisdom to keep your path and make your path straight. For me, it's kind of a parable that I've looked at a hundred times, but my eyes were open to it just this year. And it's the parable of the mustard seed that we've seen in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jesus talks about if you have the face of a mustard seed, how small it is, we always focus on you and say to this mountain, you know, move from here to there. You can accomplish these things. And the uncertainty that we've seen with the pandemic this year and just your own personal life. You know, my marriage submitting to him and having faith and trusting him and that and trusting in God's provision for my boys and just me as a leader, both at home, here, kept looking at that faith of a mustard seed. And it was only this year that I realized that. You know, we look at how little faith we need to please God, and in actuality, the mustard seed is the fastest-growing of all the seeds. So if you put your faith in him, instantly, you'll see that return. And that was one of the most eye-opening things for me this year. You know, you don't have to just put your faith in him in a way, but he makes that promise that your faith can do great things. But his promise is even quicker than we ask. So I really say that again, trusting him, like David said, and the fact that the moment we put our faith in him, he's taking care of the details and he's at work.
David Powell: One of the things that I want to leave everybody with is P.J. and I both, number one: We're running a business built as a team. I mean, we have to rely on our team to make this work. And so, you know, there's a lot of trust and there's a lot of faith that comes for us running a business that's not necessarily our background. Number two is both of us have a daily habit of closing our door, spending time in the Words being time and prayer. Every day we come into the office and we have it marked off on our calendars and our staff knows what we're doing. And we've shared with them that we're praying for you guys, we're praying for students for this company. We're praying for our hearts in our direction and where we're going. And I think we've made that just a routine. It's the standard. So I think just showing our team and our staff and it just reminds us of how much we do need God.