In this enriching episode of The Good News, Angie Austin and Grace Fox explore the profound significance of guarding one’s mind amidst life’s challenges. Delve into uplifting ideas inspired by Grace’s book, ‘Finding Hope in Crisis,’ and learn the importance of nurturing positivity and spiritual armor to face daily struggles. The episode concludes with actionable insights on maintaining mental peace, avoiding repetitive negativity, and fostering resilience through faith and mindfulness.
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SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Jim Stovall with The Good News. We’re talking about his Winner’s Wisdom column as we do weekly. And this week, it’s financial offense and defense. Hey, Jim.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, it is always great to be with you.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, this particular website you’re going to talk about, I did check it out for my mom, and I did find that she had some money a while back. So this is pretty cool. Tell everybody about this.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I believe, as Ben Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny earned. And in our modern-day world of money, you know, insurance policies and rent deposits and utilities and all these things, there’s money that goes around and it’s missing. And, you know, everyone listening to us right now should go to missingmoney.com and you can type in your info and it will tell you if you have money missing. And you know, since this column came out this week, I’ve heard from a number of people and, uh, many thousands of dollars have been discovered that, that, you know, we’re just laying out there and you didn’t know they were there. And we, we found some in our family and, uh, friends and, you know, and it’s just, uh, it’s a cool thing. And, uh, you know, the easiest money to, to, to, to come by is the money that you’re, you know, you’re leaving laying on the table. And, uh, A recent study showed that 40% of Americans today have an extra job or a side hustle, and they average earning about $800 a month. But some of them earn as little as $200 or $300 a month, and they give up one or two evenings a week. And, you know, I was inspired. I talked to a woman who said, well, you know, I’m giving up. you know, a night with my kids and our church activities. But, you know, I’m making this extra money. I said, well, how much are you making? She said, about $300 extra a month. And I said, let’s just look at your bank account and your credit cards. Because after you take that $300 a month you’re earning and you pay taxes on that money, and then you look at the time you spend commuting and the wardrobe and the parking and all the things you go through and daycare and everything else, you’re probably not making $300. You’re probably making $150 a month. And we looked at that, and then we went through. And in her credit card and in her bank account stuff, we found there were three or four subscriptions that she was paying for. She didn’t really want any more. And here’s some money getting away all of a sudden. And we found more money that was just falling off the table that she didn’t even know where it was going that she was earning at this deal. And, you know, the money’s not that big a deal, but getting a couple nights a week back with your kids and being able to do, you know, the Sunday, the church, and the family activities with your family.
SPEAKER 07 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that is priceless. That’s a big deal. So, you know, I always tell people that, you know, the easiest way to fill up your tank is stop it from leaking. And, you know, there’s all of us have those things. And, you know, periodically, it’s good to check in and just say, where’s all this money going? And do I really want my money going there? Or do I want my money working a little harder for me or a little more focused in some areas? And there’s no right or wrong decision, Angie. Money buys choices. That’s all it does. It buys choices. And whatever your choices are, that’s fine. But let’s just make sure it’s working for you.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, the whole subscriptions deal, there are some apps that help you like find them all and stop the ones you want. And there are some places where you generally would pay for them. I mean, obviously, looking at your credit card statement is going to show you some of those, but they’re not always marked in a manner that you can fully understand what they are. But for Apple, at least if you have like an iPhone, you can go into your, you know, where you pay off of Apple and you can see if you’ve got, you know, subscriptions there. But some of these new apps really can like locate everything for you. It’s pretty crazy. So when I just pulled up my mom’s name again, and I don’t, I don’t know, my mom’s very, you know, I don’t want to be she’s not responsible with money when it comes to keeping track of it. She always worked in a factory. She had a 10th grade education. She got her GED like through the mail because my dad was in law school when they got married. She was 17. And so I think he was 25. So she really wasn’t a breadwinner, but because he was a drinker, she always worked in a factory, so we’d be able to have food and things like that that he wasn’t responsible about himself. So my point being, she always made enough money to keep us right over the poverty line. We didn’t quite qualify for food stamps, but we’d qualify for low-income housing, and we wouldn’t have quite enough to get the car fixed. But when it came to like paying the phone bill, like my friends would call on the phone to be cut off or she just wasn’t responsible about like retirement accounts or keeping track of things like I just to get my dad’s to get her social security from my dad passing away a while back. I had to get her divorce decree, her birth certificate, like all these things she didn’t have. And I’m like, well, where are they? I don’t know. So that’s what I mean by irresponsible, just kind of not keeping track of life. So I just pulled up her name, and I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Oh, my. It just keeps going. And they’re all where she used to live and for a company she used to work for. She worked for this company, Storage Technology, for many years. It was a factory job. And it’s her bank that’s listed as well. And so she’s in here so many times, I can’t believe it. So she might have more money owed to her, Jim. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yeah, and there could be quite a bit of money there. And I’ve talked to a number of people that have read the column, and they went to missingmoney.com, and there it is. And even with my father, my late great dad, who was about as careful as you can be, there was $70 of missing money. And $70 won’t change your life, but any time $70 doesn’t matter to you, you make that check out to Jim Stovall because… You know, money is all a formula of what do you got to give up to get it and what does it get you that you want. You know, just the easiest money is the money that’s just sitting there and we don’t even know it or pay attention to it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my goodness. Okay, so what do you want us to take away this week?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I think everybody ought to go to missingmoney.com, and when you have a loved one that passed away or a friend, there are a couple of websites that will scour all of the insurance companies out there to just make sure, because with so many of the retirement funds and annuities and various, and even the health insurance policies, a lot of them have a small death benefit, and if you don’t know it, you can miss it. It can be laying out there forever, or just people that had military service years ago, or whatever the case may be. It’s just good to go through and double-check those. I really believe it is of great benefit on a regular basis. Maybe you take twice a year. Crystal and I have a tendency to try to look at it over the Fourth of July weekend and in between Christmas and New Year. Let’s just go through and see what all this stuff is we’re paying for here. And are we happy with that or not? And if we are, it’s great. But, wow, here’s a subscription. We haven’t accessed that programming in two years. I mean, do we really want this? And those kind of things. Because otherwise, so much of e-commerce is about getting you signed up and then you forget it. It’s like the old health club memberships. I mean, if everybody showed up on one day, you couldn’t get within a mile of the health club. But people don’t. And, you know, they depend on the fact that you sign up in a moment of inspiration and just forget about it. And, you know, they’re billing you for months and years.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s crazy. I just, yeah, I’m going to send my brother the web. He’s my mom staying with him now. Speaking of parents, I wanted to ask you, we talked just briefly last week. I know like a month ago, you and I talked about how you made time for people you care about. And we’ve talked about that pretty extensively in the last year and that you called your dad every morning and he had dinner every Sunday night, if I recall correctly. And then you and I talked about like what special thing you’re going to plug in there.
SPEAKER 02 :
since you yeah we have a list of people friends and you know and you know she’s crystal’s got a trip coming up this this next week to New York and one of our semi-annual trips to help stimulate the economy up there and she focuses in the retail sector so retail sector down there around Fifth Avenue she does a great job for us I told all my Wall Street buddies, just hang on. The boss is coming, and everything’s going to be fine. And a big bump in the economy coming for everybody. But no, you know, and then we’re kind of wrapping up some of my father’s things. And so we decided, you know, one of the things we’ll do at our year end where we kind of have our summit meeting between she and I that – deals with every area of our life is, you know, let’s look at our Christmas card list. Let’s look at the, you know, the various people that are in our lives. And, you know, and some of these people we don’t see that often. And let’s take the Sunday night and kind of dedicate it to, you know, getting together with some of those people a little more regularly. So, yeah, I think that’s going to become a, you know, kind of a standard, you know, this is when we do our thing. And I’m really looking forward to it. I think it’ll be fun.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love that. You know, with the kids, with all their sports, as you know, we’ve got a lot of that going on. And they just had their second homecoming this weekend, and they’re doing the third homecoming. My daughter’s going to the—her boyfriend goes to a private Christian school, so they have a homecoming. It’s interesting, too, because each one has, like, a different feel, you know. And I just saw the local Catholic high school. I saw their homecoming pictures. And the girls’ dresses definitely look different than some of the dresses they wear for the public high schools. My friend, Michael Pelka, who you know well, just sent me a really funny photo, meme, whatever they call them these days. And it was women in like the 40s and 50s in those swimming suits that were like little swim dresses. And he said little… Little did women in the 40s know that by 2023 their dresses would become homecoming. Their swimsuits would become homecoming dresses because that’s how tiny the homecoming dresses are. They’re like a long tube top. So I thought that was pretty funny because it definitely is a 1940s swimsuit.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yeah, that can be, you know. I remember taking young Miss Jessica, who I was her guardian, and she and I are going out to pick out her prom dress, and the lady comes out to help us. I said, ma’am, you can help us here with our debate. We’re stuck somewhere between… concealment and display, and that’s where we are right now on this. I’m looking for more of a pup tent, and she’s looking for something you would wear to get a physical exam. I’m hoping we can come up with something that will… appease both parties to a certain extent.
SPEAKER 05 :
And they usually have something in between, definitely. Oh, wait, I was saying that I was trying to get together with more friends, but we have all these sports, so I’ve worked out something kind of interesting, kind of creative. I know you like sports a lot. My friend, for instance, Beatrice, she’s coming over for dinner tonight, and she likes basketball. So at 6.30 and 7.30, we have basketball games, and we live basically half a mile from the high school. So she’s coming over to have dinner and then coming over to watch basketball with us. So it’s a creative way to still be able to, you know, attend all our kids’ games, which we do attend them all, and then see my friends as well. I don’t know if my friends appreciate it, but she did accept the invitation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wow, that is great. No, you know, I think it’s good. And I mean, you know, And the things that matter are the things that we count and we write down. And those are the things that matter to us. And it fits with today’s column and the Sunday night thing you brought up. If somebody tells me what matters in their life, I can confirm that or deny it based on, let me see your calendar and let me see your bank statement. And how you spend your time and your money is what matters to you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. All right, so you’re working on the next book, the next movie. What’s going on with the movie? We’ve got about a minute left.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, working on the Will to Win movie. trying to work around a little of this strike remnant that’s still going on, but we hope to work on that. And then Beth, who works here in my office, who trains and rehabs dogs and has been doing this for many years. She’s rehabbed over 100 dogs, and she’s learned so much from it when we talk about it. And I thought, this is like training people. So she and I are collaborating on a book called Think Like a Dog.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, I love that. I know how into animals she is. I love that idea. All right, if you want to find Jim and everything he’s up to, you can go to jimstovall.com, jimstovall.com. Thank you, friends. It’s always a blessing. Be well.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
Evergreen is tuned to the mighty 670 KLT Denver. Angie Austin and Grace Fox here with the good news. We’re talking about Grace’s book, Finding Hope in Crisis, Devotions for Calm in Chaos. Welcome, Grace.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Angie. It’s good to be back with you again.
SPEAKER 05 :
Great to be with you. I chose this particular devotion because with all the teens, last night, for instance, I had, oh gosh, maybe… 10 kids at the house. And then next weekend, we’re having a little pool birthday party for two of my girls. We call it the sister’s birthday where we just… It’s the lazy mom combination party where I just wait and do one belated birthday party for both of them because they’re friends with each other’s friends. They’re at the same high school and they’re a junior and a freshman. So they have a lot of the same friends. So anyway, I’ll be around about 15 or 20 teens next weekend. So One thing I’ve noticed is that some kids are much better than others of guarding their mind and making sure that only the good stuff stays in there or that they focus on the positive things. And we’ve all had that friend. I had one that all she could do in her worried times was obsess about a negative situation or obsess over what potentially this person could be doing or what this person could mean or what their intentions were. And I’m not a person that can spend hours guessing about someone else’s intentions or what they meant by something they said. It’s just not in my wheelhouse. But I’ve noticed one of my children is a lot more concerned about others’ opinions. And then two of them, one definitely lets it go. So that reminds me of what you’re trying to teach us here to guard your mind. So explain how this all came about.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, our mind is definitely a gift from God. And we do need to guard it because as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. He becomes that. And so this particular devotion came about because I’d had a difficult conversation with a family member a month earlier, and it kept coming back into my mind. And I don’t know if you’ve done this, Angie, but sometimes if I’ve had a difficult conversation where it’s so hard, I’m kind of blown away at the time, and I don’t even say much in response. But later, as I think about it, the thought comes into my head, well, if I’d been more on the ball, I would have said such and such back. I could have said such and such, but it’s too late. I’m way down the road on this. And that’s what was happening that day. And so I could just feel these negative emotions start pulling me into a pit. And I realized I better stop entertaining those thoughts or I was going to go down the wrong path.
SPEAKER 05 :
So how do you go about doing that? Because, yes, I think many of us have replayed something. And I’m fairly good at just letting my mind work out a solution or temporary solution or the whole agree to disagree. And then I kind of file it away mentally in the back of my head that it doesn’t really need to be dealt with or it can be forgiven or whatever that may be. But, again, I do know people who obsess over those things. And I think it can be life altering when you let your mind go down that rabbit hole.
SPEAKER 06 :
it totally can because it could take us to the wrong place. We become those bitter people that nobody really wants to be with because, because that’s what we are on the inside. And, and then again, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so when we’re bitter, because we’ve, you know, allowed our minds to stay on the negative, then, then we will speak bitter too. It’s going to come out. I just learned, I just learned recently this fascinating statistic from a counselor who, who spoke at an event where I was at, too, and she said that 80% of our thoughts are negative and 95% are repetitive. I know. When you put those two together, it just shows the power of the ruts that can be dug, literal ruts in our brain that we can dig by ourselves. regurgitating the negative thinking and so we need to learn to retrain our brain by identifying those lies we believe and identifying the negative thoughts and then And then saying, I’m not going there, not going there and replacing our minds with something that is true and right and good and perfect. And that would be word of God. Or lots of times if I feel myself going down that road, I might go for a walk if I can. But just put on praise music, stick the earbuds in and put on praise music and let my mind kind of be washed.
SPEAKER 05 :
Renewed. Yes. Yeah, cleanse it like one of those little scrubby brushes with the bubbles underneath the sink. Get that in the brain.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And I often think, too, of how God has given us everything we need to live the abundant Christian life. And Ephesians talks about the spiritual armor that we’re to put on every day. And just like we… We make a decision what clothes we’re going to put on, and then we put them on. It’s no different with the spiritual armor. We have to decide to put it on and put it on. And one of those things that he’s given us is the helmet of salvation. And to think of it like that, I think, okay, I need to guard my mind from wrong thinking. I just need to because I don’t want to go there. And so… gird my mind with the helmet of salvation, with all the truths that are involved in my salvation. It’s more than just getting me to heaven when I die. It’s about changing me now and helping me walk a victorious life.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love that. You know, you give us scriptures and things to ponder and pray about, and you say, you talk about John 10.10, the thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. I interviewed my daughter Hope on the program about a month ago, and I asked her how it was so easy for her to let go of offenses or to forgive, and she just really is like a duck. It just washes off her back, whereas my son, he worries a little more about what People think and say, and last night she had all these friends over, and next week the girls are going to have like 20. And my son, he hangs out more with adults because he’s ran this business of his since he was 13. He’s a senior now. And I see how yesterday we were at a Broncos party, and I see how he interacts with… and then how uneasy he is with kids his own age. And I tried to explain to him last night. I said, you know how when you’re with adults, you don’t worry about anything. You’re just like a nice guy and you just go into a conversation and you know they’re going to be impressed by you and you talk about your business and maybe you ask if you can buy their old rock t-shirts and you talk about football and there’s no worries or ulterior motives. I said, when you’re with kids, I feel like You’re trying to impress them or you say things that you wouldn’t normally say, thinking that it will be cool or something. And he got really angry with me. And his dad said, all right, just stop, guys. Mom made her point. You don’t agree. Let’s move on. But I do think I got him to think, like, why am I so good with adults and why am I so worried about kids? Because he came into our room and said, you know, would it be okay if I hung out with Hope and her friends? It was guys and girls. And she had expressed she didn’t want her brother hanging out with them. I said, look, I can go and say hi and everything, but she’s expressed that she doesn’t want you to hang out. And he said, I’m just so bored. Like I want to hang out with friends, but I don’t have any.
SPEAKER 06 :
I was like, that’s a hard, Oh yeah. That breaks your heart as a mom too. Right. Cause we don’t want our kids to hurt. And so, well, you know, there, um, as a mom, I’ve had three kids of my own and I know one had a real struggle with making friends and, And it was a hard thing. And so I had to watch where my thoughts went as a mother because they could easily go down that rabbit hole of, oh, where’s she going to end up? And if she doesn’t have any friends, she’s just an outcast. And, you know, I could just carry the pain for her, but I can’t. We can’t do that as moms. We have to be careful. And I would say, you know, when our minds start going down the negative like that and the fearful thoughts about what’s going to happen to our kids, We can use those thoughts as a trigger to take that inner monologue and turn it into prayer. Because that inner monologue is so important. But use them as triggers and say, God, I don’t want to be thinking this about my kids. God, I thank you that you love them. I thank you that you carry them. I thank you that you value them and that you’ve uniquely gifted them. I thank you that you know how they feel. And turn that into prayer on our kids’ behalf.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love that. And, you know, I was more worried when he was younger. I’m not as much now because I see how well he flows with adults, how much adults like him. And now he is 18. So he is entering that world. And yes, he’ll be with college students, but there is a more mature culture. crowd available to him as he enters college and the workforce and everything. So I think this awkward, immature teen stage of nasty comments in the hallway and when he switched from horrible like slurs that they would make you know in the gym when they’d walk by him that they used to associate volleyball like it’s becoming more popular but here in Colorado it was like when I moved from LA I was like from Los Angeles to here it was like I moved into caveman era when it came to certain sports being considered only for girls I’m like well volleyball in Los Angeles is for everyone it’s not just for girls what kind of craziness is this So anyway, just he’s made that, you know, transition. He’s at a different sport. It’s become more popular here. And he’s not made fun of all the time for playing volleyball like he was a couple of years ago. And I just feel like he’s aging out of the kid era. And so we’re leaving that behind. And so I am more where you’re talking about, about guarding my mind, about not letting that bother me. You talk about pondering and you say, oh, Identify a recent thought that’s not truth based. What is the truth? And that’s one thing I go over with my daughter or the youngest when we’re driving to school and she might say something about someone said something about her size on the basketball court and why she shouldn’t be playing at the high level she’s playing because she’s so small. And I’m like, what do people say about us? It’s not our business. And a lot of these aren’t truths. These are opinions and jealousy. So we really don’t care. And as I mentioned, hope is the one that just is so dismissive. I’m like, wow, that girl is so rude to you. And you’re so nice to her. She goes, nah, we’re friends. I just know how she is.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s great to be able to have that kind of a mentality and to be able to let it go and not not harbor the bitterness or harbor the anger. That’s so good.
SPEAKER 05 :
Great. She told me. I, mom, have limited brain cells because of my ADD. A lot of my brain cells are busy doing a lot of things like staring at the fan, watching the dog’s tail. So the brain cells I do have for school and sports, I have to protect them and not waste them. I’m worrying about stupid things.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s so wonderful. And what great advice and wisdom for all the rest of us, too. We all have limited brain cells. Let’s not waste them. Let’s not waste them on thinking about the negatives. Let’s protect them, keep them healthy and strong.
SPEAKER 05 :
I really like your quote in here. I like how you include so many different things. And I know the pretty flowers, you’ve got cherry blossoms here. And this is from Craig Groeschel from Soul Detox, Clean Living in a Contaminated World. And the quote is, most of life’s battles are won or lost in the mind.
SPEAKER 06 :
And isn’t that true? Because we can go back to what I said earlier, that as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So if we want to become more like Jesus, we need to be filling our minds with the thoughts of Jesus and with his words and his teachings. If we don’t, then like our natural human bent is away from the things of God and is towards the negative. So we really do need to be intentional about the thoughts that we allow to camp in our minds. So we all have thoughts that will slip into our mind, the fearful thoughts, the angry thoughts or whatever. They will come. They will. But it’s what we do with them that really matters. And we just don’t want them to set up a tent and to start to dwell there. We just need to have them move on and let the truthful thoughts take up residence.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I have so much renewed respect for quarterbacks and football. I’ve been watching this Netflix series called Quarterback, and they’re following Mahomes, and another one is Kirk Cousins. And I’m so impressed by their—and Marcus Mariota. I’m so impressed by— their minds. And to me, they all appear definitely Kirk Cousins to be a man of faith, but I think they all are. And just what they do to keep their mind on the right things is just fascinating what we’ve been talking all about. All right, GraceFox.com and the book Finding Hope in Crisis. Thanks, Grace. You bet. We’ll talk to you again.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
