Craig Hill

We opt out of this demonic cultural deception of debt, and we will no longer participate in it. God, how do we do it? The next practical step was the Lord said this, the 4% people, they never put all their money in one jar and spend first.

Steve K.

Everybody, Steve K. Here from Cast Your Nets. We've got a special guest today. His name is Craig Hill. He's the founder of Family Foundations International. It's a christian ministry dedicated to helping people like yourself, couples, families, to become people of influence. He's interested in helping people build godly heritages for multiple generations by restoring biblical foundations of marriage, hallelujah, family and finance. I know he sounds exactly what we've been talking about. It's my privilege and pleasure to have Craig Hill here. Craig, welcome.

Craig Hill

Well, Steve, it is a great privilege to be with you today. And I'm excited about what you guys are doing in Cast Your Nets and helping people build generational wealth and accomplish the vision and destiny and purpose God has for them.

Steve K.

Amen. Amen. When Ron had introduced me to your ministry, I thought, where has this guy been? Like, how come I didn't hear about you earlier? Life would have been so much easier for me. Instead of being all alone, I would have known about the resources that you have. And you can get a lot of this at craighill.org. Or you can go to the Family Foundation's International website now. I wanted to talk to you. There's so much we could talk to you about because you've written over 15 books, many are bestsellers. You're on tv and doing broadcasts, and you're a very difficult man to get a hold of. We want to get you to this live event that we're doing here in November. But you have another event you're doing. So if you were at that live event, I want to talk about the five keys or the five wealth secrets that 96% of Christians, these are all Christians here, don't know. So there's a group of about 4% who are just living life in abundance and prosperity. And that doesn't mean buying Ferraris and Rolexes. It means that they're fulfilling their vision. They've got no problem putting the money out to fulfill the dreams and the calling that God's given them, and they're blessing other people. So you have a book on the secrets that this small group of people, the 4%, you've narrowed down to five secrets, these character traits that they have, please tell us what they are and more importantly, what we can do in a practical level to start moving that direction.

Craig Hill

Sure. Well, I have the book right here, Steve. It's Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know. And actually, right now, you can get a free copy of that by just going to fivewealthsecrets.com. And honestly, it's not entirely free. We're asking people to pay for shipping. So I think it cost you $5 or something like that for us to ship you the book. But that's the easiest way, because obviously, in this interview, we're not going to be able to cover in detail five wealth secrets. But the reason I named the book that is, if you just statistically look at it, if we gave 100 people $10,000 today, we said, do whatever you want with it. And we said, we're going to come back a year later and see what happened. Statistically, we would find 80 of those people would have zero left. 16 would have 10,500, maybe the amount that you would have if you put the money in the bank at interest. Four of them would have multiplied that money to between 20,000 and $1,000,000, 2 times to 100 times. The question is, what do the 4% know that the 96% don't know? If we put it real simply in arithmetic functions, 80% of the people are real good at subtraction. 16% of the people have learned a little something about addition. Only 4% have learned anything about multiplication.

Craig Hill

And God challenged me many years ago, back in year 2000, actually, with a scripture that I was a little surprised by. It was Genesis, chapter one, verse 28. And that is the first command in the Bible where God gave a generic command to all humanity, said, you're supposed to do three things. You're supposed to be fruitful. You're supposed to multiply, and you're supposed to take dominion over the garden that I've given you and rule and reign over it in my kingdom with my jurisdiction. And the Lord said to me, "son, are you doing those three things?" And I realized, okay, I'm pretty fruitful. I'm bearing fruit. And the Lord said, "okay, in resources, do you know how to multiply?" I said, God, I haven't had too much success at that. I tried to put some money in the stock market, and I bought the wrong things, and I lost and some etfs and I lost money. And the Lord said, "well, son, I want you to learn to multiply." And He gave me that Genesis 128. And I thought, well, God, I thought that was just about children or maybe spiritual children.

Craig Hill

And He said, "no, son, I am a multiplier. I multiply everything I touch, and you are created in my image. I want you to learn to multiply. Would you allow me to teach you?" And I said, yes, God, I don't apparently know how to do that. Please teach me. And we embarked on a journey of learning how to multiply resources that ended up eliminating our mortgage on our home and all financial debt in three years, which was just an amazing thing.

Steve K.

Okay, so this is very interesting because you said, yes, God, teach me how to multiply. So I'm curious, what was that actually like? Was it you sitting down at a desk and Him speaking to you, Him showing you stocks, or did He connect you with certain people? Did He show you where to go learn how to invest? How did that whole process unfold?

Craig Hill

Yeah, I'll tell you the process. The first process was He had to break some cultural deception in my mind. So that was the very first problem that I had. I was at the same time reading Proverbs 22:7, which is familiar to everybody. "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." And so the Lord said to me, "well, which are you, son? Have you chosen to be a master or a slave?" And I thought, what do you mean? Well, it defines it right here. Those who borrow are slaves, those who lend their masters. I said, well, I guess I'm a slave because I have a mortgage on my house. And I always, several times bought cars and financed them. And the Lord said, "well then, son, you're a slave." And here was the first cultural deception that had to be broken in our minds. I thought debt was normal. I thought everybody had debt. I thought you could not buy a house if you didn't go to a bank and borrow money. That's what I thought. And everybody that I knew, Christians, non Christians, all went to the bank, borrowed money for a house.

Craig Hill

And the Lord just confronted me with that and said, "well, then you've chosen to be a slave." So we had to break that cultural deception. And it was a bit of a process. And my wife Jan and I decided, Lord, what do you want us to do? And the very first step, you're asking practical steps. We made a decision. Step number one, we made a decision. We opt out of this demonic cultural deception of debt and we will no longer participate in it. God, how do we do it? We didn't know how to do it. We'd had a mortgage all of our life. It was 250 - 300 thousand dollars, something like that. It's like, how are we going to pay that off. What are we going to do? So we made a decision. We will eliminate our debt no matter what it takes. God, what do you want us to do? And the first thought I had, well, we could just sell the house. You sell anything you have debt on, no more debt. So, God, is that what you want us to. I mean, we're willing to do that. So if this thing of getting out of debt is that important, we will eliminate- we'll just sell anything we have debt on, sell the asset, no more debt.

Craig Hill

God, is that what you want us to do? And we very clearly heard the Lord say, as we were praying, "no, don't sell the house yet. That's not what I want you to do." But I sensed the Lord's pleasure in Him saying, "thank you, son, for being willing to do whatever it takes, because it is that important to break this demonic cultural deception." So I said, okay, what do you want us to do? The second thing the Lord revealed to me, it was actually the very first principle in this book, Five Wealth Secrets. And that was this, I realized this, the 4% who multiply resources think about money and resource entirely differently than everybody else, and they treat money entirely differently than everybody else. And I was in everybody else category at that time. And here's what I found out. Everybody else does. What most people do is they put all their money basically in one account. And the account we had was a joint checking account. And then number one priority, we pay all our bills. And then after we pay all our bills, then we try to tithe, give, save, invest.

Craig Hill

What I discovered is that if you put all your money in one, I call them jars. When our kids were little, we have physical jars. A lot of people taught their kids that way. That was another thing the Lord confronted me on. He said, "you actually teach your kids these principles. How come you don't do them? I mean, you make your kids put the money in jars. You don't put your money in jars." And I realized that's absolutely true. So I had all my money in one account. So the next practical step was the Lord said this, "the 4% people, they never put all their money in one jar and spend first. That's what the 96% do. They put all their money in one account and spend first. Here's what the 4% do. They tithe first." Now, this is a good thing. We did get that principle right. So the day that Jan and I got married, we did open up two accounts. One was our joint checking account, and the second was an account we called the Lord's tithe. And so anytime we got 10%, we put it in a separate account. So that was not hard to give.

Craig Hill

We never saw it in our own account. That was very simple to manage that because it was in a separate checking account. And so then it was easy to write checks out of that account to the storehouse, because we didn't see it in our own money. And I'll just take a slight detour. I'm sorry. I'm talking a lot here, Steve, to answer a simple question you asked.

Steve K.

I don't think it's that simple. If it was that simple, the other 96 would be doing this. We've lost it somehow. I love that you went into debt, because I always grew up being taught that there's a thing called good debt. But when I became a Christian, I realized it wasn't. It clearly says, you shall not borrow, you shall lend. Well, that changed everything for me. That changed everything.

Craig Hill

That's right. I'm in a parenthesis on the first jar, and then I'm going to talk about the other four jars here, and then I'll review. So, to catch everybody up on what I'm expanding here. So I realized what we did. What my wife Jen and I did, is when we got married, we made this agreement with God. You told us that 10% belongs to You, and so, therefore, we're not being generous giving You 10% of our money. We are fiduciaries, like a stockbroker or like a-. I mean, can you imagine an escrow agent that was rejoicing because he brought the full amount of the money to closing? Can you imagine? Some guy advertised, I brought 100% of the money I was responsible for to the closing, the real estate closing. He goes, well, yeah, that's your job. That's your job. And the Lord said, so the tithe is not you being generous giving God 10% of your money. That's just you having an opportunity to manage a small account of money that does not belong to you. He connected that for me to Luke 16:12, which is a scripture that says, and if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

Craig Hill

And so I realized the Lord's tithe is the first opportunity that anybody has to manage a small account of money that does not belong to them and thereby qualify themselves to manage a large account of somebody else's money. Who in their right mind would give you more of their money as a fiduciary if you did not manage faithfully, a small account of money they gave you as a fiduciary. And I realized that's what the Lord's tithe is. So we realized, okay, we're going to put 10% of everything that comes in that doesn't belong to us. We're just fiduciary escrow agents, as it were, delivering that 100% of it to the storehouse where it belongs. What do the 4% do? They tithe first, they give second. And the Lord made a very clear distinction for me between tithe and offering. Tithe is a fiduciary responsibility of managing somebody else's money. Offerings is money that I give out of the rest of the money that I'm dividing that as a steward, figuring out how to manage. So we had another jar for offerings. The third jar was saving, putting some money in a saving account to save up for larger purchases in the future. The fourth jar is multiplication, or investment and then spending.

Craig Hill

So here's what I realized. The 4% do they tithe first, they give second, they save third, they invest fourth, and they spend what's left, what 96% do. They put all their money in one jar, and they spend first, and then they try to tithe, save, give, and invest. Well, if you do it that way, you struggle to tithe, because how much is consumed by your spending? Well, usually a large amount or most of the money. People struggle. And some people say, well, what if I only have a small amount of money? And this is what God told me about multiplication when he first started teaching me about multiplication. He said, "son, how much is in your multiplication jar?" And at that point, I only had two jars, the tithe and my joint checking account. And He said, how much is in your multiplication jar? And I went, I don't have a jar for multiplication. So the answer is zero.

Craig Hill

And the Lord said this to me. He said, "son, what if I would have hit your multiplication jar with 1000 to one supernatural multiplication factor last year?" I said, uh- let's see, 1000 times zero is- I wouldn't have known that you even did that. And the Lord said, "that's right, son, because you have nothing in it. If you would have put $1 in a multiplication jar-" see, I hear people all the time say, well, I just can't afford it. I can't afford to do what you're saying. I couldn't put money aside for multiplication. Well, could you put $1 aside? Because here's the fact of the matter. 100 times zero, 1000 times zero, a million times zero is still zero. And God said to me, "son, I can't multiply what you don't have." The very first thing the Lord said, I'll just review what I'm saying to make it real simple. Number one, I had to break the cultural deception, that debt is normal and that you would have to borrow money to buy a house.

Craig Hill

And I decided that is a cultural deception. I no longer believe that. I renounce that lie in Jesus name. Number two, I'm going to put my money in five jars instead of just in one jar, and I'm going to put something in every jar because a million times zero is still zero. So I got to have something in every jar. And then the third thing that I realized is that I did not know how to multiply, so I needed God's help. I didn't know what to do. And what I kept thinking, Steve, honestly, was this, well, I haven't been good at investing, I know, I've tried these different things and it didn't really work. And I made nominal amounts of money, but certainly not enough to pay off my mortgage or do anything like that. So I don't really know what to do. So as a result of that, I sort of felt paralyzed. And this was the third paradigm shift. Reviewing again, number one, break the cultural deception. Debt is normal. Number two, put your money in five different jars so that you have a chance of multiplying. And then number three was, God said this, "shift your focus, son. You keep focusing on what you don't have and what you can't do." And the Lord said, "you keep telling Me what you can't do." And Lord, I don't have enough money. I can't pay off my mortgage. I can't do this, I can't do that.

Craig Hill

And God said, "I can't work with what you can't do, and I cannot do anything with what you don't have. I can only do something with what you do have and what you can do." And so God said, "here's the principle, son. If you would shift your focus and quit telling me what you can't do and what you don't have and focus on what you can do and what you do have, when you present what you have, I will provide what you do not have. And when you do what you can do, I will do what you cannot do." And so God showed me this principle. When you do the natural, God will do the supernatural. So I had to shift focus. And so we had to break this cultural deception of debt, believing that was normal, and begin to generate some faith. We could break the power of this debt.

Craig Hill

And number two, put our money in jars. Number three, stop focusing on what we don't have and what we can't do and focus on what we do have and what we can do. So those were the sort of the foundational underlying things. Well, we still didn't know what to do. What do we do? And that's what you were getting. That was the root of your question. So the next thing is. So God said, that being the case, please put some money in a multiplication jar. So we created an account for multiplication for investment. What do we do with it? Do you want us to put it in a market, find a financial advisor, put it here, buy precious metals, invest in a business? We don't know what to do, and we didn't hear anything. All we knew at that point was, make the money available. So we made it available. And then, lo and behold, this is what actually happened to us. I don't know. Six or eight weeks went by from the time we made that decision. We took those three steps to break the power of debt, put our money in five jars, and stop focusing on what we don't have and what we can't do.

Craig Hill

So we have some money in the jar. What do we do? Well, Jan saved a piece of third class mail, and we got a lot of junk mail. This was back in year 2000. Everybody gets a lot of junk mail. We got junk mail. She normally throws it away, and I don't ever even see it, but she saved this one piece of junk mail. She said, I think you might be interested in this. I looked at it, and I thought, you know, that there's something in there that does catch my attention. So I looked at it and it was a guy advertising his advising service, and he was offering a cassette tape and a booklet or something in those days for $30. So I spent $30, and I got the guy's cassette tape and booklet, and something that he was offering piqued my interest. And I felt the Holy Spirit say, you need to learn about this. So I began to study that, understand that, to make a long story short, I did end up signing up for that particular investment service, and that ended up being the key of multiplication for us. Again, we just did a natural thing of put some money into that. And it happened that the money that we put into that particular thing had a great windfall toward the end of 2001 that nobody could have possibly predicted. I mean, nobody could have known this was going to happen except God.

Craig Hill

And because we had invested with this particular guy, he didn't know either. I mean, he was just as surprised as everybody. But we ended up putting money in that particular investment at that particular time, had a great windfall because of some circumstances that nobody could have predicted, and it turned out to multiply enough to pay off our entire mortgage in three years. So what everybody says is, what's that investment? What's that service? What is it? I'm not going to tell you. And the reason is, it would be like you trying to, like David trying to put on Saul's armor. It doesn't work. But here's what I can tell you. Listen to me. Listen to me. I tell you, God has a strategy for you that is absolutely unique to you. And here is the most important message. If you don't hear anything else, hear this. Everything about finances is designed to drive you into deeper relationship with God. This is not about retirement. It's not about finances. It's not about multiplication. It is about relationship with the living God by the blood of Jesus, the messiah.

Craig Hill

And so if you have a lot of money and don't know what to do with it, that should drive you into deeper relationship with God. What do you want me to do? If you have lack of money and you're going, man, I don't know if I can ever quit working and even retire. I don't know what to do that should drive you into deeper relationship with God, because as I have shared even that story that I just shared, Steve, I have hundreds of testimonies from around the world of people who have a similar story, and every one of them is absolutely different. Some people, you know, invested in something, one thing, somebody, something else. I'll tell you another story in just a minute from a guy in northern Mexico that was just a powerful example of how this works. I'll give you a chance to comment or say something.

Steve K.

Well, I love everything you're saying. And the revelation. I just got this revelation from what you said, that our relationship with money and finance and wealth is designed to create a deeper relationship with God. And I've said this on my webinars in our community. I said all the times, the struggles I've had and the part breaking through in business, starting and selling companies, that is when I was the closest to God. That was, like, the closest. And I love those fiery times as an entrepreneur, I get to experience them pretty often. And a day trader, so that happens on a daily for me. But what a great revelation that is. The other thing that I notice, and you mentioned this in your book, is you make a very distinct, sharp distinction between someone who's rich and someone who's poor. And what you said, and based on what I read in your book, is it's not how many things you have or how much money you have. It's really a mindset. Whether someone, I'll quote it. It says whether someone is rich or poor depends on how they think and behave, not on what they have in the moment.

Steve K.

And so when you made the decision to get out of this cultural deception of debt is good and you need debt, that was the rich mindset. Boom. Like the mind of Christ popping. So and then the other thing that I noticed is that you have to take action. You can have the revelation, but if you don't have the action, if you don't take the action like you did with your wife Jan, then nothing happens. So, tell me the next story.

Craig Hill

I'll tell you that just to make one more comment on that. Walking on water, one guy got to do that. His name was Peter. Eleven guys sat in a boat and watched. Eleven guys, maybe they were waiting for their legs to move supernaturally. Peter took a natural. He did a natural action. He climbed over the side of the boat and walked. Now, climbing over the side of boat and walking is not supernatural. He'd been doing that every single day as a fisherman. He gets out of the boat and walks every time he comes to shore. The supernatural part was he did it on water, but he had to do the natural part, which was climb over the side of the boat and walk. Jesus didn't move his legs for him. He had to do that. The supernatural part was he was upheld on water. But eleven other guys didn't get the chance to have a miracle because I don't know why they didn't climb over the side of the boat.

Steve K.

I'm so happy you bring that up because that's another cultural deception within Christendom is that God is supernaturally just going to put a million dollars in your bank account somehow. And even though I fully believe he can, I haven't seen it happen. He gives me an idea, he connects me with someone, he gives me an opportunity that he's prepared me for and you got to take that action stepping out of the boat. So I love it.

Craig Hill

A guy named Carlos and his wife came. Carlos was a rancher in northern Mexico, came to one of our finance seminars and heard these principles and he basically said, "you know this probably works fine, you know, people living in cities in United States, but I mean, I live in a rural, poverty stricken area of northern Mexico. I'm an uneducated man. I barely finished high school. I'm a cattle rancher. I got a 40 year mortgage on my ranch, and I could barely make the payments every month on my ranch. I'm not going to invest in some investment service. I don't even get third class mail that comes to my house. I can't relate to what you're talking about. I mean, okay, I relate to. I need to do something, but what would I do? What strategy do you have for me?" I said, I have no idea. I have no strategy for you. My only strategy is you press into God, and I believe God has a strategy for you. So he began to press into the Lord, and he and his wife were praying together, and they heard this. God said, "sell your cows." And he and his wife, especially the husband, he thought, "sell my cows? That is ridiculous. I mean, okay, I could get a small amount of money, but like, 10% of what I need to pay off my mortgage, and then I would have no cash flow, I would have no business, and I would spend the money that I got from selling my herd in a little while and have no money and be completely destitute and lose the ranch. That doesn't sound like a good idea."

Craig Hill

Well, they prayed more, and his wife said- and when husband and wife are in agreement, that's usually a miracle in and of itself. So you can usually tell that that's God. And she said, "no, I really think we're supposed to do that." And so they did. They sold their herd of cattle. Well, it hit the peak of the cattle market, and cattle market descended quite rapidly after that. They got top dollar for their herd of cattle. Now, they had some money, and they said, "God, what do we do now with this money?" And the only thing that they sensed is that they sensed the Lord say, "buy Sheep." They said, "but, God, we don't know anything about Sheep. I've always been in the cattle business. I never even liked the sheep people because they were sort of our competitors."

Craig Hill

So he began to investigate, what's the price of lambs? He found out, "well, with the money I have, I could buy a small herd of lambs, I guess." And then he saw something very interesting. He came across a website that was advertising hunting in Mexico. And he discovered that people from the United States, wealthy hunters, would come down to Mexico to hunt these big horn rams, and they would pay $25,000 ahead for a trophy ram. He said, "God, is that what you want me to do?" And he sensed the Lord said, "yeah, that's what I want you to do." So he began to investigate. Well, what does it cost to buy those rams or buy a ewe, female sheep that would produce those rams? It was like one u was five times the amount of money that he had from the entire sale of his herd.

Craig Hill

And he thought, "why, there's no way I could do that. What do you mean, God?" And he didn't hear anything. Well, about a week and a half later, he went to a fair, just a county fair, to agricultural fair in his area. And he met a man there who was a Christian. And they got to talking, and he says, "what do you do?" And this guy says, "I breed sheep." He said, "God gave me a revelation, an idea of how to take the ordinary sheep. And over a few generations, I can breed them into these big horn trophy rams." And Carlos goes, "you're kidding, really?" And he tells the guy what God had shown him. And so they made a partnership, and they bought these sheep. And over a few generations, this guy showed them how to breed the sheep. And I don't know how many years it was. It was three or four years. And they had these big horn sheep, big horn rams.

Craig Hill

And he began to sell the bighorn rams to the hunters for $25,000. And the ewes were worth, I don't know, some astronomical amount of money, 100,000 or- I don't know what it was. Anyway, I heard the story. About five years later, I met Carlos again. He came to another conference, and I said, "Carlos, how are you? I haven't seen you for five years. What's going on?" He says, "well, you wouldn't believe it." And he tells me this story that I'm telling you now. After five years, he says, "I paid off 100% of my ranch, and I'm completely out of debt, and I have no debt, and I'm beginning to accumulate wealth." I said, "That is just awesome. Would you mind if I share that story with others?" And he said, "no, I'd be happy for you to do that." And there was another piece that God had to change. An inner image on the inside. He had always thought of himself as stupid and uneducated. And he went to another one of our seminars where God changed that on the inside and gave him a revelation of how God saw him, which changed everything in terms of his inner image.

Craig Hill

But I didn't see Carlos for another five, I don't know, six or seven years. I saw him again just, I don't know, four or five years ago. And I hadn't seen him for another seven or eight years. He came to another conference I was doing in Monterey, Mexico, a marriage conference. I said, "how are you? Are you still in the sheep business?" He said, "I am." And he says, "I am fulfilling what God has called me to do. I'm able to channel lots of money into the kingdom of God for my sheep business." And he says, "here's the strangest thing. These unusual things just keep happening to me-" that he says "I can't predict." He says, "about two weeks ago, a natural gas company came and came to my ranch and knocked on my door." And he says, "they apparently want a right of way to put a pipeline across my ranch land, and it doesn't really disrupt my sheep or anything. And they're going to pay me quite a large sum of money, cash up front, to give them a right away for this thing". And he says, "I wasn't seeking them out. Things like this just keep occurring and God just keeps opening doors."

Craig Hill

And he says, "I have become a steward of resources, which is what I always have wanted to do, to channel money into the kingdom of God." He said- I can't remember how many it was, but he says, "we support large number of missionaries around the latin world now from our ranch business." And he started out with a guy that had a 40 year mortgage, couldn't even barely make his payments. And I could tell you another many stories like that from people that got an understanding. Okay, this debt thing, "I couldn't have a ranch unless I had debt. I can never pay it off." That's a cultural deception. We just need to break that and change those things.

Steve K.

That's interesting when you say we got to break that, I completely agree. For some people, it's harder than others. What are some practical ways they could start, I guess, intentionally reconditioning their mind to think in a biblical way about this. What are some things they can do? Is it reading scripture? Is it confessing something? Or is it hanging out with a different group of people?What is this like?

Craig Hill

What I have seen, basically, Steve, is that the problem is we have images on the inside of our hearts that are not correct, that are wrong. Like, I'll tell you, this man I was just talking about, he was one of three brothers. His dad died when he was eleven or twelve, so he had no input from a father in teenage years. And his mother was always working hard to support the family. But what she did is she always told him from the day he was a little kid, "you're stupid. You're the stupid one. Why can't you become like your brother?" Who did- he had one brother who was good at academics, and the other brother who was good at athletics, and he wasn't good at either of them. And his mother was always comparing him. "You're the stupid one, you're the clumsy one. You're going to never amount to anything. Why don't you try harder?" And so all his life, he heard, "I'm the stupid one. I'm the clumsy one. I'm the one that will never amount to anything." And so people get these images on the inside of their life. "You're not valuable. You'll not accomplish anything."

Craig Hill

And those images govern our adult lives. God gave us-. And what our primary ministry actually is about is a weekend experience that God gave us, we call the ticket to freedom, which is dealing with the inner images on the inside of people, identifying the false ones. And the hardest thing, Steve, is that's not a cognitive thing. That's an experiential thing that has to happen in relationship with the Lord. And so I would come back again to the idea we have such a greco roman mindset in North America where we think, well, just give me the book, teach me the principles, tell me the thing, and I will do is. And so we buy courses and books and this, sign up for this and that, and none of that stuff actually changes that thing on the inside.

Steve K.

It's a heart issue, then.

Craig Hill

It's a heart issue. And really it's an inner image issue. I'll just give you one more story I can tell you of another guy I met. He came to me, and I don't know how long you want to go, but I'll share this story with you. A guy came, and he says," I got three problems." He says, "I was recently," he's 38 years old. He said, "I was married two years ago." And he said, "I have all kinds of conflict in my marriage. My wife and I conflict all the time." Said "a second problem that feeds into that is I have a real struggle with anger, emotionally. I mean, there's a lot of things that set me off." And he said, "for example, my wife and I have never been able to actually agree on a budget to manage our own personal finances in the last two years for a very simple reason. Every time we try to talk about money, we get in an argument, and I get so angry I want to punch her." And he said, "I've never done that." But he says, "I have to leave the room and go out and calm down."

Craig Hill

And so he said, "we've never actually finished one of those conversations." And he said, "the third problem is, I know, I'm called to be a manager of finances and channel resources into the kingdom of God as an entrepreneur, that's my calling. That's what I know God has called me to do." But he says, "in my adult life, I've started several businesses, and every one of them has failed. And I don't know why. Even after my wife and I got married, we thought God called us to start a restaurant, which we did, which had a unique flavor to it, and we did. Well, we just closed it. And I owe the IRS a bunch of money and back taxes, payroll taxes," and he said, "it's just a disaster. And so everything I set my hand to doesn't work. My wife and I have all this conflict and I've got all this anger. Can you help me?" I went, oh, my goodness, there isn't any book you're going to read that's going to help you with that. So I said, well, let's just pray. So I'll try to make this story as short as I can. We prayed, and I just prayed a simple prayer: God, where did this come from?

Craig Hill

Well, ultimately, the Lord just brought to his memory an experience he had when he was eight years old. And he even didn't want to share it in the beginning because it was sort of embarrassing. And I said, well, we prayed and asked God to show you anything relevant and this is what came to your mind? So I said, what was that experience? He said, "well, here's what it was." He said, "my parents gave me the opportunity to have my three best friends over to my house for a sleepover on my eighth birthday. And so I looked forward to that. It was exciting. And finally the day came and my three friends came and my mom made my favorite dinner, and we played games and my friends brought these awesome presents, and it was great. And then we did things little kids like to do. We stayed up late and told stories and watched movies and went to bed about two in the morning." And he said, "that was all wonderful, but in the morning, a terrible thing had happened. I discovered I had wet the bed and I had that problem in those days," he said, "and I did not want my friends to find out."

Craig Hill

So he said, "I hid the bedding, but unfortunately my mom found it and she told my dad. And he said, I guess in his frustration, my dad thought that if he would humiliate me and shame me in front of my friends somehow, maybe it would motivate me to quit wedding the bed." And he said, "of course, I, of all people, wanted to quit wetting the bed more than anybody, but I couldn't. It happened while I was asleep at night." And so he said, "what my dad did is he exposed me publicly at the breakfast table, and he told everybody that I had wet the bed. And he began to humiliate me and ridicule me." He says, "you're nothing but a bed wetter. You will never amount to anything. Bedwetters never prosper. You'll never accomplish anything in your life because you're just a bedwetter. He says, even when you're an adult, I bet you your wife will have to buy you a great big diaper even when you're married, because you're going to be a Bedwetter all your life." And then he said, "he spanked me right in front of my three friends." And he said, "I just wanted to sink through the floor and die."

Craig Hill

He says, "I hated my dad." He said, "I would have killed him that day if I would have had a way to do it." But he said, "I was an eight year old little boy. What could I do?" So he said, "I lost those three friends and didn't do well in school and pretty much closed up." But he says, "man, that was 30 years ago. I don't know why I'm thinking about that now. I forgave my dad years ago." I said, well, let's just do this. Could you just speak out of your heart how you felt that day? Do you remember that day? He said, "okay, I could do that."

Craig Hill

So we waited about 90 seconds. He wasn't talking. And I said, well, brother, go ahead. Just speak right out loud to the Lord. He opened his eyes, and they were full of tears, and it was like a dam burst, he said-, and all of a sudden, out came like 30 years of this pain and humiliation and shame and anger and bitterness. And he wept for about ten minutes, uncontrollably. And when he finished, he says, "I had no idea that was in there." I said, I bet you didn't. I said, could we just do one more thing? Would you just close your eyes? I said, what do you look like to yourself in your own mind's eye? A little smile came to his face and he says, "I'm a 38 year old bedwetter. I'm wearing a diaper."

Craig Hill

I said, that's what I thought. And, see, what had happened is that image had got locked on the inside of his heart. From eight years old. "I'm a bedwetter. I'll never prosper. I'll never amount to anything. Nobody's for me. Nobody will help me." Now, intellectually, he didn't believe that. If I would have said, are you intelligent? Yes. Do you have a vision? Yes. Does God love you? Yes. Are you convinced that God has a vision for you? Yes. But inside was an inner image. "Nope. You're a bedwetter. You'll never amount to anything. You'll never prosper, you'll never accomplish anything." So that was life controlling. He didn't even know that was in there because it was so painful. Although the image of who he was was inside the memory was not. He had forgotten the memory.

Craig Hill

So we prayed about that and took him through a process that we now use every time with people in the ticket to freedom event and the Lord removed. I won't take time to explain the process, but the Lord removed the image and replaced it with the truth. And that's what I think Jesus meant when he said in John 8:32, "you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." It's not something you need to learn in your mind. It's not something that you need to change. It's an image on the inside that needs to be removed and replaced with truth. So when that happened for him, he called me up. That happened over a weekend. And he called me up the next, I don't know, Thursday or Friday. And he says, "you wouldn't believe what happened." He said, "the anger is gone." He said, "gone. I don't mean I can control it." He said, "it is gone." He said, "my wife and I had a conversation about finances two nights ago." And he said, "for the first- its the first conversation we finished". And he said, "she said some things that annoyed me, but it was like a mild annoyance that I was able to easily overcome. And anger just wasn't there. And we finished the conversation." He said, "well, what happened after that was-.

Craig Hill

He said," the anger is just gone." He gave me several other instances. And so I talked to him about six months later. I said, hey, what's going on now? He says, "oh, the anger has never come back. It's gone." He said, "I get annoyed, but I mean, nothing like before. It's like the rage isn't there. I have no problem with my wife." He said, "we got a vision for another business. We started a business." I said, how's it going? He said, "you would not believe it. Unbelievably well." He said, "our cash flow projection was that we would break even after two years." He said, "we've broken even after six months." And I said, well, what are you doing different than what you did before? He says, "nothing that I know of."

Craig Hill

And I said, well, that's awesome. I talked to him about, I can't remember, a year and a half later, something like that. Two years later, maybe. I said, how's the anger? He said, "it's gone." How's your relationship with your wife? "Great." How's your business? He said, "unbelievable. We have 100 employees. We're the largest business of its type in our city." And he said, "I am fulfilling the vision God gave me of channeling millions of dollars into the kingdom of God, which is what I knew God had always called me to do." So that's why I say, yes, it's important to read principles like are in this book. Yes, there are five principles in this book. We need to understand them. Knowledge is helpful, but really what we found is life changing is this ministry process of allowing God to expose lies. I call them lies. What they are is they're images that have gotten locked on the inside of things we believe about God, things we believe about ourselves, and things we believe about other people that we don't even know are in there and allow those to be exposed and removed and replaced with the truth.

Craig Hill

And that's what I think John 8:32 actually means. So we do that in an online process for people we call the ticket to freedom. And then we have live events around different places. Actually, we've trained teams of people in 55 different nations to lead people through that process. So that's a long answer to a short question you had to get.

Steve K.

You know what? I love how the Holy Spirit led us here because I can relate to this story. I've seen this happen in my own life. Something traumatic that's happened to me as a child that I had forgotten about. And there was a time that I was also, you know what? Let's just do this. Let's just do this because there's a bunch of people that are going to watch this together. And I would love if we could end it with this. Because maybe if you're listening to this, you found yourself in that story. I know. I'm like, oh yeah, that happened to me too, several times. Maybe there's something. There's an image of yourself. Maybe there's a traumatic experience where someone said something to you and you've got this image of yourself, like this story of a 38 year old, of a bedwetter that you'll never amount to anything. And you may think that has. What does that have to do with me being a successful businessman? Everything. What does that have to do with me having a great marriage? Everything. And I really feel if you could just lead the audience through a short process, just like you just told us on, how they can ask the Holy Spirit to come and reveal to them, have the Lord reveal to them and then have them pray out or what should they do? So if you can do that for us.

Craig Hill

Yeah, I can't really do the whole ministry process, obviously, because it needs to be personal for people. But yeah, we can pray something like that, Steve. And what I would really encourage people to do, get on our website, craighill.org, and we have a ticket to freedom event coming up on the 17th through 19th of August. And I think there's still some spaces in that. So if that's of interest to you, I encourage you to have a look at that. And I think if you go on there, you can find it. Or the other website is familyfoundations.com, and look under events, you can find that. But let me just mention the very simple thing that you can do yourself. But I'll pray that with you in just a moment. But here's what it is. Just ask the Lord whatever the external is, whether it's "I just keep failing financially," or "I just have all this conflict with my wife," or "I'm struggling with depression, I'm struggling with fear, I'm struggling with pornography, I'm struggling with impure thoughts that I just battle and I can't get rid of. I'm struggling with anxiety, I'm struggling with alcohol addiction or television addiction," or all these different kind of things.

Craig Hill

These are just externals that are coming from one of these false images on the inside. So most people try to fix the external, which to me, if you got a fire raging, fixing the external is like a smoke management system. If there's a fire, you don't really want to just suppress the smoke. What you actually want to do is find the fire, and the ultimate solution is you remove the fuel and it doesn't go anymore. And that's what happened to this man I just discovered. He removed the fuel. And, see, all that would happen when he was talking with his wife, it was like she was throwing matches in a bucket of gasoline that was on the inside. Well, as long as the-. And it's producing a bunch of smoke. Well, I mean, people have anger management, which to me is like smoke management. Well, let's not manage smoke. Find out fuel and remove it.

Steve K.

You got to remove every bitter root, as the Bible says. You got to remove that root. So, friends, right now, right where you just maybe close your eyes, but I want you to just to get quiet within yourself.

Craig Hill

Yeah, let's do that. And let's pray.

Steve K.

Yeah. So I'm going to have the Lord come and reveal to them, show them, just like you did with this man. And then Craig is going to pray us through. And it's not the fullness, right? So we're going to have the links below. Ticket to freedom. You want to get that? I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have my PA reach out to see if I can do a ticket to freedom here in the Netherlands. I can't wait to do that here. We need it badly.

Steve K.

So, God, we come before you through the blood of Jesus Christ and we worship You Father. God, we thank You for this man, Craig. We thank You for the revelation You've given him. And Father, we see ourselves in this story. He just said in this testimony. We know that the testimony of Jesus is a spirit of prophecy. And we want this freedom that this man experienced. We want to be unbound. We want to be set free. So would You now, Lord God, in our mind, right where we are, show us. What is that image that we have? What is that thing God wants to reveal to us? And don't be afraid. He's not going to give you something that you can't handle, that's going to terrorize you, but He's going to reveal something to you and you're like, what does this have to do with it? It may be completely off base, just like it was with this man. That's it, friends. So you got that image, Craig, how do we do this next? What happens now?

Craig Hill

Just close your eyes. And as Steve said, just be quiet. Father, would You begin to touch the heart deep on the inside? Whatever-. We give You permission to touch whatever You want to touch. Lord, would You expose lies that are on the inside? Things that we believed about ourselves? Father, maybe some of us remember things that were wounding or hurtful when we were small children. Maybe there was an abandonment, abuse, some kind of a violation, or even just a simple experience of feeling alone. Maybe we had words spoken over us. "You're stupid. You're ugly. You're a mistake. You shouldn't even be here. You don't belong." Father, what was the lie in my heart? What lie got in my heart that You want to touch today? What I want to ask you to do, would you just speak to the Lord? The lie. Just tell him, Lord, this is what I think, God, in my heart, this is what You're showing me.

Craig Hill

"I'm stupid. I'm alone. Nobody will love me. I'm only here to be abused by men." Maybe somebody said, "what's that block of wood sitting on top of your neck?" Lord, what was it? Just speak the lie out to the Lord. And now, would you just ask Him this question. "Father, You were there when I was little. You saw what happened. I didn't run to You. I didn't know how. I didn't let You speak to me. Today I'm asking You, what did You want to tell me? What's the truth? Who am I? How do you seem? What do I look like to You? What do I mean to You? What was supposed to be spoken? What was supposed to happen? Lord, what did You want me to see and hear and experience that day?" Just listen. Just receive from Him. Just receive.

Craig Hill

I hear some words He says to someone, "all your life you've had to fight for yourself. Nobody stood up for you. Nobody fought for you." And I hear the Lord saying, "I love you. Will you let Me be your champion? Will you let Me fight for you? You don't have to fight for yourself anymore. I will fight for you. I love you," Father, I pray that You would impart a feeling of being loved. What does it feel like to be loved just for who you are, not for what you do?

Craig Hill

He says to someone else, "I've never felt about you the way you felt about yourself. I have seen everything you've ever done, everything you've ever thought. I've seen what was done to you. I've never been ashamed of you. I've never turned my back on you. I've always held my arms open to you. I have been waiting to tell you how I really feel about you. I love you. Let me love you." And this is real powerful. I sense from the Holy Spirit. I sense there's several people. And God says this. "You've always felt guilty and ashamed of certain things, and you've asked forgiveness, but you never feel forgiven." And God says, "today is your day to forgive yourself." Because the truth of the matter is you can't pay for what you did. And there's a feeling I need to pay. I wish there was a reset. I wish I could redo that. I wish I hadn't done that. And so the Lord said, "you've asked me to forgive you, and I have."

Craig Hill

Today will you agree with me? Will you forgive you? And if you're identifying with that, would you please just speak these words? "Father, forgive me for reserving the right to hold my own opinion of me. I don't belong to me. I belong to you. I give up my right today to judge myself, to condemn myself. And I agree with you. You have forgiven me because Jesus paid for my sins and mistakes. And today I receive that, and I declare his death and his blood is enough. Because of what he did, I forgive me. I forgive me." And would you ask this question again, "Lord? Who do you say I am?" Just listen.

Craig Hill

One other thing I want to touch. Some of us are in a difficult financial situation because you've been cheated. Somebody stole money from you, somebody lied, somebody betrayed you, somebody abandoned you, somebody divorced you. Somebody did something that impacted you financially and it seems they got away with it, and you're left holding the bag. And you're in a difficult financial situation because of somebody else. And here's what I sense the Lord wants to say, "that person cannot pay for what they did. Even if they gave you the money. The betrayal is still there, the feeling. They sinned, they did wrong. They put me in a horrible situation, and nothing has happened to them." And here's what I want to tell you today, and I believe the Lord wants you to know. That person can't pay for what they did. Jesus did pay. He not only paid for your sin, he paid for the sin of that person who betrayed you, who abandoned you, who lied about you and stole from you. And today, would you allow the death, the flogging, the beating, the ridicule, and the shame that was heaped upon Jesus? Would you allow that to be enough to pay for what that person did to you?

Craig Hill

In other words, it's as if Jesus were walking up to you today and saying, "could I pay the debt that is owed by another person?" And it's a binary choice. You either say, "yes, lord, your money's good with me, your blood is good with me. It's enough." Or you say, "no, Lord, that person needs to pay. I reject your blood and your payment. It wasn't enough." And I'd encourage you not to make the second choice but to just say this. The key to forgiveness is not excusing what somebody else did. What they did was horrible. It was unjust, it was wrong, and somebody does need to pay. And the feeling is they need to pay. But would you allow Jesus to pay for another person today? And if you would, would you just speak these words with me? This may not be for everybody, but I sense there's several people, many people. You're in that situation. You're in a difficult situation because somebody did something that affected your life, and it's been hard for you to forgive them.

Craig Hill

Let's pray this, "Father God. You brought to my mind another person. They sinned against me. That person can't pay for what they did. Jesus, you did pay. You died to pay for that person's sin and injustice. And because of your death and your blood, today I receive your blood as full payment. For the debt owed to me by another person. The spiritual debt, emotional debt and even financial debt. And because of your blood, Jesus, I cancel the debt against-". And you say the name of the person or multiple people. "I forgive-" you say the name of the person or the multiple people, "I release him her them. I will not blame them anymore. And Father, I trust you as my source of provision. I trust that you will restore to me everything that was stolen in Jesus name. Amen."

Steve K.

Wow, that was so powerful. I could still feel the weight of the presence of the Lord here. If you just did that, you may want to sit. Just take it in while his presence is here. Craig, we can't thank you enough. I wanted to talk about five secrets to wealth. And what we got was an encounter with the love of Jesus Christ so above and beyond what we wanted. Thank you so much.

Craig Hill

But we actually only got the two of the secrets. Put your money in jars and learn to multiply. Those were the two we got.

Steve K.

Let me go over the five. It's one is again, put your money into several distinct jars. Five of them. Second one is focus your life on fulfilling your call and your vision, not on the money. Invest your resources only in things that multiply. This one I want to cover. We'll get to maybe another interview. But understanding the economic flows and cycles. Are you anticipating, preparing for each new phase in the cycle? Which is what we've been talking about here for the last year. And last one is prepare to leave an inheritance for your children and your children's children.

Craig Hill

Right.

Steve K.

Please go to fivewealthsecrets.com. Link is below. Thank you. Thank you so much. Check out Ticket to Freedom. I know I'm going to be contacting their office to see if I can bring it to the Netherlands. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for being obedient to the Holy Spirit. We just so love you and greatly appreciate you. God bless you, Craig.

Craig Hill

Thank you, Steve. My pleasure. God bless you. And I look forward to meeting people online or through a book or a future interview or whatever way you connect with us. And God bless you.

Steve K.

I still believe you're going to come speak at one of our events. So I'm looking forward to when we see you in person. Thank you again. God bless you.

Craig Hill

Thanks.