Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. –Proverbs 13:20 (ESV)
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. –Proverbs 18:24 (ESV)
Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” –1 Corinthians 15:33 (ESV)
–Adam Clarke, Christian Theology, pp. 474-475
DISCLAIMER
I am not a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Nothing in this video, should be taken as legally binding investment advice, in the same way that SEC licensed stockbrokers can advise their clients. I am not “selling” any stocks or OTC penny stocks as a broker in this video. The purpose of this video, is only to offer guidance to those who are interested in educating themselves, about self-directed investing and Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI).
The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity: in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground. –Deuteronomy 28:11
Here’s the Find A Grave article on my rags-to-riches ancestor.
UPDATE: 12/3/24 – The best marketing methods I know of, to book your calendar with interviews for projects, are these two:
1. GMass Campaigns with the Contabo VPS L version (now its Cloud VPS 3 at 24 GB RAM) as the SMTP server. You can usually find a freelancer from Bangladesh on Fiverr to sync Contabo to your GMass. If you get your emails from D7 Lead Finder and put them into an Excel file, then you can safely send 1,000 cold emails a day from this for a month or so. Then the “spam abuse” alert will happen and you will have to restart a new cold email campaign: with a new GMass, G-Suite, and Contabo.
2. Dripify “Advanced” Campaigns on LinkedIn. This will automate LinkedIn messages to prospects, but will prevent overuse with a feature called “activity control.” This will prevent your LinkedIn profile from getting flagged and put into LinkedIn jail.
In both cases, whether you are campaigning for opportunities through GMass or Dripify, appointments can easily be set onto your Google Calendar by providing the interested prospect with a Calendly link.
All toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. –Ecclesiastes 4:4
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. —Philippians 2:3-4
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. —James 3:13-18
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. —James 4:1-10
John Haughey, the Catholic theologian, pointed out that giving to the poor and needy of the Church, from the heart, and not to make a show of one’s generosity to attract the attention and respect of others, is the Biblical cure for competitive greed and self-centeredness. But he implied that this kind of heartfelt, compassionate desire to love your brothers and sisters, and to help them, without a smudge of religious vanity, is a rare thing and can only come from the Holy Spirit (Matt. 6:2; 2 Cor. 8:8; 9:8). Then he points out that for the majority of others, the capitalistic values of self-interest and competition get in the way of this happening:
The enemy of this mode of obedience is a culture that teaches all of us to look out for ourselves and “our own,” to take care of ourselves, to value ourselves in isolation from one another, and to define our individuality in terms of our economic and financial conditions instead of others, their needs, and our faith. Our economic culture foments competition and self-interest. Competition and self-interest are not in themselves inimical (harmful) to human needs or to faith. They are hallowed ways of generating and regulating an economy. They can and usually do, however, go beyond their economic functions and affect the area of personal values and interpersonal relations. When this occurs, a faith that proclaims a solidarity with neighbor or a member relationship to others in the Body of Christ is up against a consciousness already predisposed to the opposite. This opposite is a competitiveness toward one another and looking out for one’s own interests despite of or with a disregard for others. —The Holy Use of Money, p. 149
1. ANTI-SUPERNATURAL ATTITUDE. 13 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
2. BAD ATTITUDES, BUT THEY GO ON FOREIGN MISSION TRIPS. 15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
3. MATERIALISTIC: MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GOD. 16 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ 17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18 You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ 19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22 And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
4. BAD ATTITUDES, BUT THEY DO CHURCH RITUALS. 23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
5. OUTWARDLY CLEAN, BUT INWARDLY GREEDY. 25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
6. OUTWARDLY HANDSOME, BUT INWARDLY EVIL LIARS. 27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
7. PERSECUTE PROPHETS, BUT HONOR THEM AFTER THEY DIE. 29 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started! 33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to Hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. 37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity…and there is nothing new under the sun. –Ecclesiastes 1:2, 9 (NKJV)
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. –Romans 12:2
THOMAS A KEMPIS, ED. WILLIAM GRIFFIN, THE IMITATION OF CHRIST (HARPERCOLLINS, 2000), P. 37
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According to Google Trends, the things that people are the most interested in are the following; and this is internationally. In America, you’re probably looking at ESPN, Fox News, and SNL being the source of most people’s interests.
1. FOOTBALL (90%). (soccer and other sports occasionally)
2. GOVERNMENT. (politics and crime)
3. ACTORS. (movie and TV celebrities)
4. MUSICIANS.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. —Proverbs 1:7
He said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” —Luke 12:15-21
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. —Philippians 2:3-4
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. —James 3:13-18
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. —James 4:1-10
John Haughey, the Catholic theologian, pointed out that giving to the poor and needy of the Church, from the heart, and not to make a show of one’s generosity to attract the attention and respect of others, is the Biblical cure for competitive greed and self-centeredness. But he implied that this kind of heartfelt, compassionate desire to love your brothers and sisters, and to help them, without a smudge of religious vanity, is a rare thing and can only come from the Holy Spirit (Matt. 6:2; 2 Cor. 8:8; 9:8). Then he points out that for the majority of others, the capitalistic values of self-interest and competition get in the way of this happening:
The enemy of this mode of obedience is a culture that teaches all of us to look out for ourselves and “our own,” to take care of ourselves, to value ourselves in isolation from one another, and to define our individuality in terms of our economic and financial conditions instead of others, their needs, and our faith. Our economic culture foments competition and self-interest. Competition and self-interest are not in themselves inimical (harmful) to human needs or to faith. They are hallowed ways of generating and regulating an economy. They can and usually do, however, go beyond their economic functions and affect the area of personal values and interpersonal relations. When this occurs, a faith that proclaims a solidarity with neighbor or a member relationship to others in the Body of Christ is up against a consciousness already predisposed to the opposite. This opposite is a competitiveness toward one another and looking out for one’s own interests despite of or with a disregard for others. —The Holy Use of Money, p. 149
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Healing the Mind Through the Power of Story, p.
Hideo Hatakeda, From the Well to the Sea, p. 11.
WesleyGospel Ministries 