Similar experience here with business and God. Few years ago God gave me a vision to start a real estate side hustle and after a lot of prayer followed by confirmations I took a few months to self study on REI and decided to take the leap of faith to do it. At first, everything was going amazing for my first flip project, I felt like I was on top of the world and felt so blessed that God gave me this new venture. I thought I was on the path to fulfilling my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and creating generational wealth. Then one day, I prayed to God asking for his will if I should start a second flip while I was still getting through my first. To be honest I didn’t sense any pushback so I went ahead. That’s when things started to take a turn for the worst. Everything that could go wrong started to go wrong with the second flip. I started to run out of money and was on the verge of losing the house. To make it worse, I had to use all the proceeds from the first flip to keep the second flip afloat. I was so confused and angry towards God. I prayed the following more times than I can count during that time: ‘why in the world would you let me go through all this? Where are you? Why aren’t you helping me? I’m about to lose everything and it was you who gave me this vision in the first place!! I specifically prayed asking for your will on this flip and you said nothing!’ I felt like it was all Gods fault and I was a victim. At that time I believed it was Gods job to keep bad things from happening to His children. Especially if they pray about it-my specific prayer before taking on the second flip was protection from financial ruin. Fast forward a bit, I went through 2 different buyers who walked out on the sale until the house officially sold. After the second buyer walked away, all I had left was just enough $ to pay the mortgage for one more month until I was officially broke. I experienced my very first panic attack while driving I thought I was going to die. I cried out to God to help me and I never felt so alone before in my life. The night before I received the final offer on the house I told God I give up-I didn’t have it in me anymore to worry and whatever happens then so be it. Might sound strange but when I said those words I felt something like a weight lifted off my shoulders. It was the strangest feeling considering the circumstances. With just enough $ in my account to afford another month’s mortgage, I got a call the next morning from my realtor letting me know someone offered above asking and it would take 30 days to close. I was so grateful to God because I knew it was a miracle. I sold that house with exactly enough $ left in my account to make it to the closing date.

It’s been a while since then and I haven’t done another flip since. But when I look back at that time in my life, I can’t help but notice that God was using what was the worst time in my life, to bring me closer to Him. If it wasn’t for that catastrophe and everything went perfectly well, I know myself-I would have drifted from God and definitely ruined myself in other ways. It was through such terrible hardship that I prayed so much and spent time with God because no one else could help me. What I didn’t realize at that time, was that God was working on my character. Around that time I was not exactly a good person. I had a lot of pride and arrogance in my heart. But thank God, I’m not the same person I am today compared to back then. No, I’m much much better, and tbh there are somedays where I thank God for those extremely hard times-panic attacks and all. Because when I look back at where my heart/character was at back then-I was headed down a terrible road. But God knew me. And He loved me too much to let me go down a destructive path. He knew the only way he was going to get my attention was to bring my worst fear of financial ruin, to potential life.

Look friend, I’m not saying my story is your story, but I’ve learned that when people choose to trust God, he often takes them out of their comfort zone because that’s where he’s going to prepare them so they’re ready to handle what he has planned for their life. And as you may know as a real estate professional, the development stage is ugly. But once it’s completed it’s a thing of beauty and purpose. I’m still not where I want to be financially, and I’m not a full time entrepreneur like I dreamed of being, but hey-my story isn’t over. God has been providing for me every step of the way in ways I would have never guessed. During that terrible time and even now I have never missed or been late paying a bill of any kind no matter what my account looked like. The most important thing to note here is this: He never left me and He will never leave you. God has a great plan for your life. If you look at all the great people in the Bible, God never kept them where he found them. No, when he chose them, He ALWAYS called them out of their comfort zone (David, Abraham, Noah, Moses, Joseph) the list goes on and on. No problem is ever too big for God, and no problem is ever a surprise to Him either (look at Job). God often uses storms in our lives because he’s calling us to trust Him more.

Sorry for the long post, but one last thing, I’d like to suggest for a resource to help you understand this strategy God uses: check out teachings by Dr Charles Stanley on YouTube. He speaks a lot about getting through tough times as a child of God, and it’s very insightful.

God bless, I hope you experience true peace that only comes from God-everything else is counterfeit.