Why God's blessings can be dangerous (so burn the chariots!)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Release Date: 01/02/2026
What We Actually Believe About Tithing (After 15 Years of Avoiding This)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
The first time I ever heard the word tithing, I watched a guest preacher publicly shame two guys at the altar of a small Florida church for not doing it consistently. They walked back to their seats with their heads down. I never forgot it. Linda has a different shame story — quiet, private, ten years long, all over a single tithe she felt led to give to friends going on a mission trip instead of her local church. Two completely different shame stories, same root system. Both deadly to generosity. In this episode, we finally do the conversation we've sidestepped for almost two decades. We...
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We Let a Church Ask Us Anything About Money (Here's What They Actually Wanted to Know)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Mike Tyson made $400 million and ended up $23 million in debt. A janitor named Ronald Reed made minimum wage his whole career and left $8 million to charity. The difference had nothing to do with income — and everything to do with one rule. That's where this conversation starts. Linda and I were guests at a church for their "Money Talks" series and the questions were so good we wanted to bring this to the podcast. We walk through the John Wesley framework we based our whole book on (make all you can, save all you can, give all you can — and enjoy it), the one number that tells you whether...
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Matt Chandler: I Won't Even Let Billionaires Bless Me (Here's Why)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Matt Chandler has been in the room with actual billionaires on multiple occasions — and the way he describes what happens to people who have everything almost everyone else is chasing isn't what most of us would expect. He told us he won't even let some of them bless him. And after 23 years pastoring one of the most affluent suburbs in America, he's seen exactly what the chase actually does to families. In this conversation, we get into a question Matt says nobody has asked him: what he's actually watched wealth do to people up close. We talk about the upgrade cycle most Christian families...
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THIS is how we gave $1 Million
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
We are opening up our Mission Driven Millionaire Cohort to 15 people and we are enrolling now until spots fill up. Get details and apply here: Also, this is an episode you might just want to watch (you know, with your eyeballs lol) for it to make the most sense. And you can . I have coached people pulling in 250,000 a year who are completely broke. No margin, no savings, no clue where any of it went. And I have sat with families bringing in 40,000 who quietly become millionaires. It is not income. It is not pinching pennies. There is one specific thing that decides which side of that line you...
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The 4 Stages of Money (And Why Most People Get Stuck in Stage 2)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
37% of people making $250,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Which means the thing keeping most of us stuck financially has almost nothing to do with how much we make. Linda and I have coached people pulling in $250k who are dead broke. We've watched a $20,000 raise get absorbed by lifestyle inside six months and leave them exactly where they started. The problem isn't income. The problem is that most of us are working hard on the wrong math problem. In this episode we walk through the four stages of money (surviving, stable, secure, and surplus) and the one mistake almost...
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The 17 Investments I Actually Own (Full Portfolio Reveal)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
In this episode I walk through our entire 2026 investment portfolio: every account, every position, and exactly what I'm doing with our money. That includes a full update on gold (which has nearly doubled but I genuinely don't care), where we stand with Bitcoin at $65k, why I moved Linda's Roth IRA into a fixed indexed annuity after spending my whole career skeptical of them, our real estate split between Fundrise and Roots, the Tesla concentration problem in our stock portfolio, and what happened when I ran an app that automatically copies Nancy Pelosi's trades for 8 months — including the...
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He Burned Out as a Pastor (Then Discovered this…) w/Mark Buchanan
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Most of us have quietly convinced ourselves that busy-ness is a badge of honor. Mark Buchanan believed the same thing — until it almost cost him his health, his marriage, and his connection with God. And what he found on the other side of that is something the modern church has almost entirely stopped talking about. In this conversation, Linda and I sit down with Mark Buchanan — author of The Rest of God, God Walk, and his new historical fiction novel What Is Left of the Night — to talk about why busyness kills the heart, what Sabbath really means as more than a day, how walking is a...
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You're Not Broke — You Have a Leak. Here's the Framework That Finds It.
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
You're not careless with money. You try to be intentional. But somehow at the end of the month, there's still less than there should be — and you can't quite figure out where it went. What if the problem isn't discipline — but a type of spending leak that even the most careful budgeters almost never catch? In this episode, I walk through the Cost vs. Frequency Matrix — a simple framework for identifying three invisible drains that quietly bleed most middle-class budgets dry. We talk about value decay (purchases that made total sense once, but quietly stopped serving you), what the...
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Why When You Feel Least Qualified Is When God Does His Best Work
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
The day Jesus fed five thousand people from almost nothing — he was also grieving the violent death of his best friend and cousin. He'd tried to get away to be alone. The crowds followed him anyway. And instead of sending them home, the Bible says "he had compassion on them." Out of his grief. Out of his exhaustion. In this episode, Linda and I walk through Matthew 14 and what was actually happening to Jesus during this wild 24-hour stretch — the grief, the exhaustion, the interrupted attempt at solitude, and the back-to-back miracles that came out of it. We also talk about what Linda...
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How to Hear the Holy Spirit About Your Finances (with Alex Seeley)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
She prayed for seven years for a breakthrough. The more she prayed, the worse things got. And she ended up on the bathroom floor saying she didn’t want to be alive anymore. What the Holy Spirit showed her in that moment — about control, about fear disguised as faith, about the difference between begging and believing — is something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. In this episode, Linda and I sit down with Alex Seeley — author of The Divine Counselor — for one of the most honest conversations we’ve had on this show. Alex shares how a 20-year eating disorder rooted in...
info_outlineIn today’s episode, Bob & Linda explore one of the most overlooked spiritual tests in the Christian life: how to stay dependent on God in the midst of blessings.
Drawing from Joshua 11, they unpack the strange moment where God tells Israel to hamstring the horses and burn the enemy’s chariots—the ancient equivalent of destroying tanks after a battle. Why would God command that? Because victories can be just as spiritually dangerous as trials.
Through personal stories—from unexpected financial provision, to early blogging years, to painful seasons of health challenges—Bob & Linda reflect on how easy it is to place trust in the “chariots” of modern life: savings accounts, credit cards, systems, friendships, therapy, comfort, or even spiritual routines.
This episode is an invitation to ask the Holy Spirit: “What chariot in my life have I started to rely on more than God?”
It’s a vulnerable, practical conversation about dependence, provision, and the subtle ways our security can shift from the Lord to the blessings He provides.
(Scripture from NLT.)
Big Takeaways
- God sometimes blesses us with success—but the real test comes after the victory.
- “Chariots” today can be anything we lean on before we lean on God—money, strategies, credit cards, relationships, even good systems.
- Joshua’s obedience protected Israel’s dependence; Solomon’s disobedience eroded his.
- Trusting God doesn’t mean rejecting tools—it means refusing to let tools replace Him.
- Obedience may feel costly, but it leaves room for God’s provision to be unmistakable.
Key Scriptures (NLT)
- Joshua 11 — God commands Israel to cripple the horses and burn the chariots.
- Psalm 20:7 — “Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God.”
- Deuteronomy 17:16 — Instruction to future kings not to store up horses.
- Matthew 14 (referenced) — Jesus’ exhausting day of grief, ministry, feeding the 5,000, walking on water, and praying through the night.
Highlighted Quotes from the Episode
- “Getting the blessing is one thing—keeping God at the center is another.”
- “Some victories make you feel strong. God wants you to stay dependent.”
- “You can have a blessed life and still miss what God is trying to form in you.”
- “You’re not called to trust the tool—only the One who provides it.”
- “Ask the Holy Spirit: What chariot am I still holding onto?”
Timestamps
00:00 — The surprising test after a breakthrough
02:00 — Why did God tell Joshua to burn chariots?
04:15 — Dependence vs. self-reliance when life is going well
06:30 — Modern “chariots”: money, comfort, systems, relationships
10:00 — A real inheritance story: when provision can become a trap
11:00 — Bob’s personal story: the blog, losing his job, and losing their “income lifeline”
13:30 — How challenges can strengthen faith more than comfort
15:00 — Jesus’ exhausting day: grief, ministry, storm
17:00 — Joshua vs. Solomon: a tale of two responses
20:00 — Is God asking you to lay something down?
25:00 — Guided prayer: “Lord, show me my chariots”
26:30 — Final verse + encouragement
Weekly Action Item
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal ONE “chariot” in your life—a place where you’ve subtly shifted trust from God to a tool, resource, or comfort.
Write it down and pray:
“Lord, show me how to surrender this and depend on You again.”
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