Growth in business often starts with growth in the heart.

What happens when success fades, and God calls you to rebuild from the inside out?

Today I’m joined by James Barthel, author of Thou Shalt Grow and a business leader who learned that true growth begins with spiritual alignment.

James shares how losing everything helped him see business from God’s perspective and how aligning faith, leadership, and preparation opens the door to lasting success.

We talk about:

• Why growth starts with spiritual maturity
• How alignment brings clarity to leadership
• What it means to build a faith-driven culture
• The power of surrender in business decisions
• How God prepares us for the growth we pray for



Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

By aligning with Him before we pursue growth and trusting that His preparation leads to lasting impact.

One Challenge from Today:

Ask God to show you one area of your business where He’s asking for alignment—and take a step toward it this week.

More About James Barthel

Website: jamesmbarthel.com 

Book Website: thoushallgrow.com 

More About David Schmidt

Sign up for the RBT Weekly Newsletter for weekly inspiration and Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.

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Website: redeemingbusinesstoday.com

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George Mueller, evangelist in the 1800s quoted from 1 Corinthians 15 10, by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in vain, but I worked harder than all them, but not I, but the grace of God. And he basically said, with God, it's not that I do part and God does part, but I do all and God does all. And that's not only true for the spiritual realm, it's also true for business as well. It's not both God works or I work, it's both together.

because we have a temptation sometimes to ignore God and just run with business, or we have a temptation to swing back and say, God's gonna take care of it all and not really do anything in business. So today I've brought on James Bartel, author of the book called, Thou Shalt Grow, how to integrate faith in business and about scaling your business and faith, about the story that God's led him down this path. James, thanks for being on here with us today.

Yeah, what a pleasure to come in and speak with you and your listeners about this exciting topic.

Yeah. James, what is one thing that you have found that we can honor God in our business with?

wow, one thing. Well, I think our time, you know, I think we gotta honor God with our time. That it's a gift every day and we need to glorify Him every chance we get with our time.

You can tell more than one, I just tried to narrow it down.

Okay.

Good deal. I don't know what time. Very good. So give us a little background. How has God led you into business and where you arrived at today? Because you're not today where you were 20 years ago.

Yeah, that's correct, right? Probably none of us are really. Yeah, in my book, Thou Shall Grow, I kind of lay out the journey that I had a corporate career and I started, which is similar to many of us. And that corporate career was growing fast. And I have an engineering degree and an MBA from a major university. So all those things kind of fed into being able to do career growth and

I was involved in helping to close large government contracts on the military side, dealt with lots of zeros, millions and billions of dollars in doing that. But I found myself right around the age of 30, know, quite spiritually broken and with a really hampered personal life. And I found that even though I had been saved as a boy,

I'd really lost my way in those corporate years, even though I had tremendous growth. And through Providence, I guess, of God, I had the opportunity to use my expertise and my knowledge to do a entrepreneurial startup and embrace that. But I really didn't know how to integrate faith into what I was doing, although I had made a firm commitment after that downturn in my personal life that I was going to do everything I could to operate by faith and get back in a right

alignment with God. So I made a five-year deal with him. I said, Lord, that if you would prosper my business in the next five years, I'd be all yours to do whatever you want. Because as I looked around, that's the way it worked, right? As you went into business, you did something, you made lots of money, and then you devoted your life to God. I love how God embraces our immature deals.

Wow.

Hehehehehe

Yep,

he'll meet you where you are at anytime. Yes.

Yeah, right. Right.

Well, of course I had a lot to learn about doing business, but I really didn't have any good mentors or role models. So I dove in the best I could studying the Bible, listening to others. really read as many books as I could and growing the business and just I'll try to hit the highlights is after a few years of success, our business completely dried up. We had no more clients. The phone wasn't ringing. The emails weren't pinging.

And it was a really interesting time because I had dedicated the business to the Lord, probably a year before that. So was like, really? This is what happens when you dedicate your business to the Lord. But obviously there were some things that needed to get addressed. And I think that's what we're going to talk about today is alignment and engagement with God and then how we do that in business. And, you know, I went through a couple of your journey. I had an opportunity to do business in Israel and I got to work on the

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure.

a government project to clean up a biblical river, the Kishon River and the Jezreel Valley, where Jesus would have dipped his toes in as a boy and tremendous biblical significance with Elijah and Mount Carmel. And while there I had a spiritual awakening and I felt, you know, that I could finally realize that this Bible I'd been reading and this Jesus I've been praying to were actually a real person in a real place that had real circumstances.

Hmm, weird.

So jumping forward, I made a commitment, you know, I'd go as far as I could, Lord is following him and I surrendered everything, not just my business, but my life, my leadership and other things. Quickly the business recovered. In fact, he returned, multiplied more than we ever lost. And we went through about a 20 year journey of learning how to integrate faith into this business and through our ups and downs. Eventually we got to the point where,

through the revelations of these biblical roadmaps and a framework of integrating faith into leadership and business, we were able to scale our business, took it from a small local company to a national company and scaled it in a major way. And eventually, the Lord not suggested, but kind of told me maybe it was time to sell the business and go help other Christian business leaders figure out how to integrate faith in the business, which is where I am today.

which is why I wrote my book and which is what I do on a consulting and coaching basis today.

Very neat, very neat. And yeah, he does tempt us and not tempt us but try us and are you still going to follow us to, know, Deuteronomy 8 says, he caused you to hunger so that you could see if you're going to trust him or not. And he fed you, but he led you through that. So when we've integrated faith to our business, we are creating a biblically based culture.

What do you think is the cause of some Christian business owners who really want to have that, but it doesn't seem like they have a good culture? Even though they're good Christians, they don't have a good culture in their business.

Yeah, I think, you know, in the first, I call them horizons, in the first horizon of growth that I write about, we're just trying to be a good Christian in business. And we're just trying to figure out what that means. And a lot of it is a self growth and becoming comfortable with how we express our faith and then how we can align, get others that we work alongside to align with us. And that takes a little bit of time for many business Christians because

You know, we already feel somewhat inferior compared to a pastor or a missionary or somebody else that quote unquote is in the vocational business. But I think that's where, you know, with time and with confidence and, know, what I hope to help Christian business leaders understand is they are specially chosen by God. And that if you don't see yourself as a chosen child of God, number one, but two, especially chosen with your giftings and callings,

you're gonna miss that opportunity to integrate faith in and you'll allow the world to dictate what you do rather than to follow God and allow him to do it.

No, I totally agree with that. It reminds me of David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby. His parents were praying that all his, children would be ministers and he wasn't. And he's all bummed out. like, I'm the only one in my family, not in full-time ministry. And then he realizes like, but I can make money. And he made lots of money. He would give lots of money and took care, made a great culture at Hobby Lobby and just God used him in that realm.

Right.

to reach people that wouldn't go to church. So it's just very interesting God uses all of us, absolutely. So what do you think are some of the sources of good culture versus bad culture in the business? Where does it start?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, what I found and again, what I try to illustrate if we're talking about a Christian business leader who's really getting started or has been in business for a while, but really now wants to get more serious about integrated faith in the business, you got to work on alignment first. You don't jump to engagement. It's kind of like being a sports fan. And no matter where you are, if it's soccer, baseball, football,

First thing we do is we come into alignment with our team and we're rooting them on and maybe we buy the jersey and we show up at the game. But alignment is the first step. We're aligning our heart, we're aligning our allegiance. The second step becomes engagement, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I think what we have to start with is alignment. And I think there's two aspects to that. One is God doesn't expect you as a Christian business leader to be a 20 year seasoned senior pastor.

and how you go about sharing your faith and then how you go about integrating faith. There's a startup, a warmup period that we all go through and it's healthy because the people that we're working with, if we hadn't been doing it to now, if all of a sudden I come in on Monday and say, I've seen the light. This business is now gonna be aligned with Christian values and we're gonna change everything. Most people in the business are gonna be like, whoa, I don't know about this.

So number one. Number two is we ourselves have to be ready to be able to explain our values and the principles we're going to do it in a business setting. And as an example, profit. Profit is not a negative word or an evil word or a bad behavior. Profit is a natural outcome of doing a good job meeting people's needs. So we need to start having a dialogue in our alignment with building our team is what are we going to

How are we going to generate profit and what are we going to do with profit? And let's all begin to understand that profit is one of the measures of outcome, but there are other measures of outcome as well. And ultimately business is about meeting people's needs and we meet all of our stakeholders needs. And this is the initial dialogue that I had with my team, which helped really expand it and built a lot of engagement eventually is that

Not only are we gonna meet our customers' needs, we're gonna define what those needs look like. We're gonna go over and above and we're gonna meet your needs too. Not just financial needs, not just benefits needs, but we're gonna meet your needs for growth and advancement, for ability to contribute and collaborate in something that has meaning, that what truly matters, you're gonna have a chance to participate in. And we all know that when people engage with their heart, as well as their head,

Mm-hmm.

with the fact that their needs are totally gonna be met and they get to go out and do good works and meet other people's needs, alignment and then engagement come a lot easier.

yeah, that's taking the ownership of things. Yeah, the whole spiritual growth of the, integrating your faith reminds me of babies. You know, when the babies are born, they don't do anything. You have to carry them around. You have to feed them. You gotta do everything. But over the years, they learn how to roll over, then sit, then walk, then all that stuff. And it's like the Christian business owner, it's not boom, do everything at one time, but as they go along.

God leads them, grow. And that's why I don't judge you based upon, I do this and you don't do that. We don't judge each other based upon what we do. It's, you following God? Are you doing what God wants you to do at this time in your life? We spur one another on, but we don't judge each other. There's a big difference there. So yeah, do you have any, we talked about personal spiritual growth drives business growth, that you as a leader need to grow spiritually.

Right.

before you can lead your company in a biblical manner. Do you have any examples or stories of that?

Sure, many. think that, you what a tagline I've come up with in the book is that, you know, your leadership journey isn't only about what you're building, it's about who you're becoming. And I really emphasize a lot of that because I think our identity as a business leader, you know, can be challenged when we compare it, as you say, if we're comparing it to others, maybe others have a larger business or others have a...

Bye.

come from a family that had a hundred year old business that the name is well known and their revenues are in the B's and you're barely in the M's. We certainly can't compare where we are. But I think part of, I like your analogy of the baby is really where I began with this is that has like three main growth things that I've discovered. The first is that business is his idea. It's not a manmade thing.

The organization of work, so work is his idea in the garden. The organizational work naturally follows. So that's his idea to give us purpose and to meet people's needs. The second one is that growth is not optional. Growth is mandatory in the garden, we're told, go forth and multiply. And when we look at Jesus' parables, which 60 to 70%, depending on who you listen to, deal with the marketplace, is all about multiplication and growth.

And the third aspect of that is the very first parable that Jesus teaches from is about our spiritual growth that allows us to do, grow our calling, in this case, business. The parable of the sower, some people associate completely with evangelism, but it's only the first one in the hard path that is an evangelistic message that he gets lost. The rest of them accept the message and are now working on the condition of their heart.

And then they go through three levels of spiritual growth with the mature leader, the mature sower, having a good heart aligned with God, engaged with God so that he can do God's work and multiply it. And in my own life, you know, many examples of my own spiritual growth, you know, some baggage I had is coming up as a child. had my parents went bankrupt when I was in high school and kind of had

a thing about money that I needed to earn money in order to meet all my needs, not realizing it was God who was actually providing all of my needs all the way. I mean, there are examples of where we're tested as a Christian business leader. We go through many challenges. We feel isolated. We feel not appreciated. We feel overwhelmed. We're up at 3 a.m. in the middle of the night, worried about these things.

Okay.

We feel things are out of our control as we hire people and we try to get people aligned around what we do. And I think that part of what happens as a Christian business leader, as we try then to integrate faith into our business in a deliberate way, which is how we start, is that God will, as you point out, there'll be opportunities that come forth. And one of the beautiful things about a Christian business leader, you have all kinds of opportunities to apply your faith every day, every hour.

So what's gonna happen, right, is these things are gonna come up and you're gonna be in a weak moment. Maybe you got a bad financial report or something's going on at home or something and somebody comes in and you gotta make a decision. Are we gonna do it God's way or are we gonna do it the world's way? And often I found myself sometimes early on, it's like, well, maybe this one time, we'll just kind of do it God's way or the world's way this one. Yeah, yeah, next time. I'll give you a specific example. We had an opportunity, it was here in Colorado to bid to a.

next time.

municipality and we felt confident in our abilities. So I did the worldly thing. And as you said, we don't criticize others. Well, in my proposal, I kind of criticized the other company that was bidding it, the competition. You do that when you're in the worldly environment. I did in the corporate world. Well, what happened is we submitted our bids. We submitted it via FedEx because I didn't want to drive it there.

The competition, wow, okay.

Guess what? There was a snowstorm in Nashville, or yeah, Memphis, right? And our proposal didn't get there. And it was a rip where they open it and then they give it to the lowest bid. So the company I criticized ended up getting the work. And I needed it, we needed the work at the time. So at that point I said, God, I'm going to do your way. I'm not going to criticize, you know, my competition anymore. I'm going to just take the high road.

Okay. Wow.

Yeah.

Yep, no, that's, I like the story, that's great. Not that that happened to you, but yeah, God does things like that. It's like, okay, let's do that. So yeah, your book, Thou Shall Grow, you have the three levels of success, you just named the two of them. Did you name all three levels?

Now, so the three levels, and it ties to the parable of the sower, is

Okay.

that the sower with the seeds that are sown on hard rock, hard heart, well, that's where, Christian business leaders, we're just surviving. And we find a lot of business leaders overall and Christian business leaders, they're just hanging on, or they're just kind of got to a level of growth and they're just holding on. They really don't have much hope for much more and they're just struggling.

So I call that the first horizon. mean, it's a survival horizon. It also fits, there are five stages of business growth if you study your MBA program like I did. And the first two stages are startup and survival. So all these stages fit completely well with the stage of business development you're into. The second stage is where you go from survival and you grow into consistent success. You can have occasional success, but really the key to success

Mm-hmm.

is being consistent in this success and consistent in how you integrate your faith. So the second horizon is growing into a consistently profitable, successful, growing integrated faith business. And there are plenty of businesses and business leaders that'll get there. Now, the third horizon, which I use a mountain as the illustration because it illustrates our potential, our God-given destiny.

consistent.

and what God has in store for us, but it also represents the glory of God. And almost every major event that happened in the Bible happened on a mountain. But if you think at the top of the mountain, when Jesus was at the top of the mountain, when he was transfigured, if you look at, you know, being crucified on the top of a mountain, Moses going to the top of the mountain, the top of the mountain is about scaling and multiplication. And that's the highest level of a business growth.

is when you go from constant success, consistent success to maturity, to scaling. And who doesn't want to scale these days? I mean, just do a Google search or chat BGT on scaling and everyone wants to be scaling. Well, Jesus's parables teach us how to scale, but we also have business teachings to scale. But if we blend those two together, so some of us, you know, if we're

Sure.

diligent, consistent, and then we're going to add in deliberate, consistent, and there's the last piece, and that's disciplined. In the third horizon, the highest horizon, business leaders who lack discipline and don't put the time in to prepare will never scale. So what I help encourage and write and provide a framework for is that to get to scaling and to grow in all these horizons,

Preparation is the key. Many of us Christians, and I was certainly there as well, as you pointed out in the beginning, we sit there and say, dear Lord, give me more, give me more. I wanna grow, I wanna grow. know, hey, I lost that contract. I really wanted that contract or this client or whatever. I'll give you one of the biggest secrets God showed me and what I experienced in life. The key to your growth is preparation. Because God will only give you what you're prepared to lead.

and master with faith. Why? Because he loves us. Why would he give us things we can't handle? Why would he give us things that implode our business and implode our financial lives? And I lived that. I can talk about a horrible contract experience that I jumped out ahead of God, I wasn't prepared, and it almost completely destroyed us. I felt it was gonna destroy me. So preparation is the key. And as far as then doing it in a...

Mm-hmm.

deliberate and consistent way, what I find most Christian business leaders, they're either on one side of the track or the other. As you alluded to, some of us are so spiritually mature that we rely completely on our spiritual growth and development, maybe hearing God, maybe trusting God, which are all great things. But we haven't developed as a leader. We haven't developed business mastery skills and

acumen that are going allow us to grow either our for-profit or non-profit organization. On the other hand, it could be the opposite. Maybe you're just starting in your spiritual growth and maturity or a ways, but you're really good in business acumen. Most likely we still always need to develop our business mastery and our leadership development because it's leadership development. If you think of that track, I've got the spiritual growth track. I got the business mastery track.

In the middle, what ties those together is leadership development. Leadership of your business, leadership of the faith and how you're integrating that faith and how you're bringing alignment and building engagement with your team.

Okay, that's interesting. So you have your spiritual growth, your business growth, but would you say that was leadership, leadership growth in the middle?

leadership, your leadership is,

yep, leadership is the key to both business growth and spiritual growth. that, yeah. I mean, think about our identity in Christ, right? We start out as a follower, then we, you know, we're a servant, but then as Jesus called out his disciples, he says, you're no longer, you know, a follower, you're a friend, you're a disciple.

to integrate both of them, yeah, okay.

Mm-hmm.

What does a disciple do? He actually does what Jesus tells him to do. He's not just following. But then, after Jesus is resurrected and before he leaves and then after he leaves in glorious fashion, they become leaders. And that's what he wants for us. He doesn't want us stuck at being a follower. If you're called to be a Christian business leader, you have a business, you should be a leader. You shouldn't be a follower. We should grow in our spiritual growth and how we lead our business.

from not just following, you need to be a good manager. And not even as you grow, not just a good manager, you need to be a good business leader. So you can see how the leadership is the key that fuels the growth and makes it a deliberate and consistent action. And that's what we write the book on is these are the three levels. This is how you grow as a leader. This is how you mature spiritually. And then this is the five stages of business growth, which are then also tied to those levels. We grow in our leadership.

grow spiritually and we grow the business together because going back to what we said, God is not only interested in what you're building, he's interested in who you're becoming and who you're helping other people to become.

Absolutely.

No, all very good, I love it. I like what you said as far as being prepared. It's kind of like God will give you what you're prepared for. know, like when you pray for rain, are you preparing for rain? Are you preparing to grow? Or are just sitting back and waiting to grow then get prepared? So yes. James, very good. I like this stuff. We're gonna wrap it up here in a little bit, but before we do, what is one? It could be a couple, but.

That's good. Yeah.

Simple steps we can take to begin to apply some of this information to scale and grow in our business today.

I think the first thing we need to begin to do is to assess where we are. Where am I in my leadership? Am I a manager? Am I a group leader? And again, this applies whether you own the company, work in the company, or you're a team leader. It's all leadership, and all leadership is important to God. So this book and how it gets applied. we need to assess where we are, and then we need to think about where we're going next step.

don't worry about three, four steps from now. I mean, you could be aware of it, but focus on the next step. so I think, you know, assessing where we are and we have a free assessment that, you know, we have, that will be on our website to help you figure it out and then figure out where you're going and then put together, just like in any time you put together a plan. mean, we need a, we need a plan for our spiritual maturity and plan for how we're going to grow the business by integrating faith.

Yes.

And it needs to have, you know, these action items that we're going to follow in on. So once we know where we're at, where we're going, then let's develop three to five steps we can take to grow our spiritual maturity right now. Three to five steps I can take to advance my leadership. Where am I going to go for leadership class? I'm going to get a book like Thou Shall Grow, and I'm going to read it, and I'm going to grow in my leadership. But it's not just reading it. I'm going to actually take notes, which we give you room to take notes, right? And then business mastery.

and put it into practice. Yes, all that stuff.

Where are you in your business or maybe in the business you're working at? Maybe they're 20 million a year and the plan is to take it to 50 million or 100 million a year as the owner speak. How can I participate in that and what steps can we do? And again, we lay that all out. We lay out the whole progression of just starting to going through early stage, middle stage, and then even scaling and later stage. So preparation and have a plan.

We all have a plan. have a retirement plan. I have a health plan. You you go through it. I have a golf plan. I'm not very good, but hey, I have a plan to get better at golf. If I'm going to get better at golf, why can't I get better at spiritual growth?

Absolutely, Yes, we will definitely put all that information in the show notes. James, thank you very much for your time, your encouragement, your expertise. I love it. It's great. We're going to put the links to his book and to his website in the show notes so you guys can get in contact with him later on. And also I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for the weekly inspiration and for a Bible verse for business success for you to read, be inspired by, and apply to your life. Friends, that's all we have for now.

Trust you've been inspired to redeem your business, redeem your time, buy it back and walk worthy of God's great name.