Shoot for the stars? Why Eph 3:20 takes you beyond the stars

Cool car or cool driver?

Work ethic

Before you quit…

Young entreprenuer is cleaning up the soap industry with natural competition

Adriana Gasaway became an entreprenuer by accident.

During the quarantine, she started mixmashing ingredients in search of more natural body butter. Ever since she took medical classes at West Coast College to get her ultrasound degree, she had an aversion for the long list of chemical ingredients with questionable health impact.

Her first creation was mango body butter and her friends loved it. She kept cooking up stuff and now has 3 different scents to her body butters and four soaps: mango, milk and honey, charcoal and coffee. She’s added sea moss to her repertoire which she vetted herself by traveling to Saint Lucia to check out her supplier. It boosts the immune system.

She started hawking bars and butters at events and at Earle’s Restaurant in Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. An entrepreneur was born. The career in ultrasounds got sidelined.

“I like this better, although it’s good to have something under my belt to fall back on,” she says.

With an unrepressible effervescence, Adriana was promoting her products on July 17 at the Amazing Grace arts festival. Customers were drawn by the smile and the sweet voice. They walked away with bars of soap in their bags.

Only 23, she’s young big dreamer. According to her dreams, the future holds financial stability, owning a house, having a family.

“This is what I put all my energy into,” she says. “I really like meeting new people and hearing the feedback on my products. It gives me energy.” Here’s her website A.C.E. Naturals and her Instagram page.

So far, she’s paying her own rent with her business. Tomorrow, she’ll take over the world.

Opportunity

Learn about finance while making money.

Take a break

Sunday gives us the principle of taking a break. But six days a week of work should bring prosperity. Find out more.

Fear not (in business)

Overcome your fears. Make money.

Rebranding yourself

You can become successful. Reach out to me.

The Beauty of Being in Business is…

You can start a side hustle and make money. Let’s talk.

Streams in the desert

God brings streams into the desert. Let’s talk about how God can bless you.

Effort twice as good as talent

I called my YouTube channel Christians get rich because there are good reasons and good ways for this to happen.

MSIs

What are MSIs? Why do you need them?

Hint: Multiple Streams of Income
You need them in case one stream dries up. Or doesn’t produce enough.

Get your own MSIs.

Breaking the cycles of losing

4 daily habits to put your mind onto success

Your story

Your affirmations

Your why

Your vision board

Dare to dream. Let’s talk, set an appointment at this link Christian financial professional in Calif.

Nikki Cannon, building African American wealth in Los Angeles

People told Nikki Cannon’s mom, diagnosed with dyslexia, to be a typist. With bigger ambitions, she, notwithstanding, graduated with a bachelor degree, a master’s and a Phd. She became a university professor and a consultant for the U.S. Congress on social justice.

Triumphing over tough times was always part of Nikki’s life. Today she holds six professional licenses and an MBA and is building a team of financial professionals with World Financial Group. “I definitely did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth,” she told The Pace.

While she was in high school in Hawaii, her mother packed one suitcase and she and Nikki fled a physically abusive husband/step-dad. Mom and daughter landed in LAX, got a hostel room for two weeks and ate at soup kitchens until Mom got a job at Burger King.

Yup, a PhD flipping burgers. “She made it work,” Nikki says. “Honestly, I don’t feel like I came from poverty. I had a great childhood. There was never any obstacle that she was not going to overcome.” Eventually, mom landed a job with Children Protective Services and segued back to academia. For her part, Nikki was a stellar student at Los Angeles High School who, ironically, didn’t plan to go to college.

“Have you heard back from any of the colleges you applied to?” a college counselor called after her one day. No, she responded. She wanted to take time off to help out Mom. He looked at her grades and her SAT. It was too late for the UCs and Cal States, but she could still apply for private schools. At his insistence, she applied to four universities and was accepted into all four. Read the rest: Nikki Cannon financial advisor

Russian Armenian ex-atheist Christian rapper who signs black artists for his label

At age 10, Ruslan became a decided atheist after his father, immigrating from Azerbaijan with the family, dumped his mother and married another woman.

“At the time, my mom was so distraught over this, she stopped going to this Armenian Orthodox church where we found a lot of community,” he says on a video on his YouTube channel. “I was 10, 11 or 12, and I was literally convinced that there was no God. I was saying, ‘I’m an atheist,’ at a very young age.”

But when Ruslan, who today is a top Christian hip hop artist, got to high school, he was torn between girls: one was Christian, the other was Jehovah’s Witness. He decided to settle the dispute of whether Jesus was God by studying. He read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and the encyclopedic New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.

With his wife, Monette, and son, Levi.

The verdict came in.

“I — based on a very intellectual rational experience — came to faith,” he says. “My faith wasn’t hinged upon an experience. It hinged on the evidence that Jesus was God and He resurrected from the death.”

Ruslan Karaoglanov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan to a Russian mother who had been adopted by an Armenian family and an Armenian father. As an infant in the 1980s, he contracted an acute urinary tract infection, and a doctor at a remote clinic on the Caspian Sea performed a circumcision to save his life.

Five years later, Muslim extremists fanned out through the region to massacre Christian men and boys. Toting automatic weapons, rebels fighting the Soviet Army very nearly killed Ruslan, but his mom argued they were Muslims and showed her son’s circumcision as proof (in that region of the world, Christians do not usually circumcise while Muslims do).

“No! No! No!” Marina shouted in Russian, as narrated by Christianity Today. “We’re not Armenians. Look, my son is circumcised!”

The ruse worked.

The reign of terror didn’t abate, and finally the family applied for visas to America on the basis of religious persecution. They settled in San Diego in 1990.

Little Ruslan spoke only Russian and was one of just five a few “white” kids mixed with “black and brown” youngsters at school. His apartment complex and community had roughly the same ratio.

So while he studied English, Ruslan also learned “basketball, break dancing, graffiti and rap,” he wrote to God Reports via Instagram DM. “My experience with the black community is they tend to be very gracious and welcoming of outsiders. Specifically black church folk. I’ve never felt out of place or anything. Always the opposite.”

Ruslan free-styled with his friends from age 10 and performed at open mic night by age 12. He bought as many hip hop CDs as he could and started gravitating towards the gang culture of the hip hop in that era. For attempting to break in to a house, he was arrested and put on probation at age 12.

As part of his probation, he was required to do community service, so he decided to perform it at a church where a lady named Charee, an ex convict who converted radically to Christ, attended. He cleaned the church but also heard the Word. People kept prophesying to him: “You’re going to do things for the Lord.”

Afterwards, his mom still worried and wondered how to help her son escape the bad influences, so she moved to San Marcos, to the immediate north of San Diego. Ruslan got better grades, stayed out of trouble and stayed in the rap game. “Yo, you’re really dope,” friends told him repeatedly.

“I was super into basketball and thought I was going to play for the NBA. In my sophomore year, I got cut from my JV basketball team” at Vista High School, Ruslan says on a video. “Ever since then, I made the mental switch that I was going to take music more seriously. I started entering all the talent shows. I won second place in our high school’s battle of the bands in 2001.” Read the rest: Ruslan Russian Armenian ex atheist Christian immigrant rapper.

Success is everything? Hahaha.

Her drug was success.

April grew up in the small beach town of St. Augustine, Florida, and it was a good life. She and her sister would always have fun together.

Her parents were stable and although they didn’t grow up in the church they still taught her to follow a good moral path.

Throughout high school, April was driven to succeed. She got straight A’s and wanted to please her parents. There was nothing wrong with that — except that it went overboard. Her expectations became unrealistic and she obsessed on over-achieving.

“I never tried drugs or anything like that, but success was my drug.” She was constantly focusing on what she needed to do or how she could improve. And she regretted any little thing that she believed she should have done better.

“It’s not bad to seek success in a sense but it can take over,” she says on a video of the Prescott Potter’s House. “It definitely took over my life.”

A high school friend invited her to a church concert and play where she was introduced to the idea that Jesus wanted to enter her heart, a completely foreign concept to her.

When she heard what they were talking about she was confused.

They play was about two soldiers. One of the soldiers was about to die. As he was passing the other soldier explained to him that he needed to accept Jesus in his heart before it was too late.

“I never knew God wanted a relationship or anything to do with our lives.”

While she was sitting through the play she thought to herself, Wow, these people have something that I don’t have.

She observed the people in the church and noted a big difference. They had peace; she had stress. She was timid about accepting Jesus but inwardly, “I knew I wanted that.”

By the end of the night they had an altar call, and as much as she resisted, arguing with herself that she was already a good person, she found herself making the decision.

“Now I know it was God tugging on my heart,” April says. She wound up at the altar receiving Jesus into her heart. Read more Keys to Success.