SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich

Do Christians have to tithe? If you've searched for an answer, you've probably found people yelling at you from both sides: one camp says you're cursed if you don't give 10%, and the other says tithing was Old Testament law and you don't owe anything. I've spent 20 years studying this, and I want to walk you through where I've landed and why.

We get into the day I watched a guest preacher call two men to the altar for not tithing, the guilt Linda carried for ten years over a gift she felt God led her to give...

If God is going to do what He wants anyway, why pray?

My guest today, Matt Smallbone, is a pastor in downtown Nashville, and for most of his thirty years as a Christian that question kept him from praying much at all. He'd read every book on prayer. He'd handed the whole thing back to God and called it theology.

Then he ran an experiment. The Lord's Prayer, all six parts, every day, for a year.

In this conversation we get into what that year taught him about God's sovereignty and unanswered prayer...

Most of us measure our money by how the month feels, and that's a lot like trying to lose 20 pounds by checking how tight your sweatpants are. In this live workshop, Linda and I walk you through the one number that actually tells you whether you're getting ahead, why we stopped calling it net worth, and what Proverbs 27:23 has to do with it.

We get into why so many of us avoid looking at our finances, the two scoreboards that keep people anxious no matter how they're doing, our own first number (-$13,843) and where it was...

"I'll give more when I make more."

Most of us have prayed some version of that. My guest today is a business owner who realized he had been living it.

Colby Jenkins can easily afford to give. And one day he noticed he hadn't heard God prompt him to give in a very long time. What God told him about why almost made him cry.

In this conversation we get into the two money tests almost every Christian faces (the vision test when you have less, and the obedience test when you finally...

You can be totally at peace with God, doing everything right, and still not get the thing you've been praying for.

That one hit me hard.

Annie F. Downs sat down with me and Linda to talk about her new book, Don't Let That Hold You Back.

She's the host of the That Sounds Fun podcast, and she just got engaged after decades of being single.

We talked about the idea that if you just get content enough, God will finally hand you what you want.

She says that's...

Most of us pray about money. Very few of us ask God what to do with it and then sit still long enough to hear an answer.

This is Part 2 of our conversation with our friend Bryan, a business owner and honestly a spiritual mentor in a lot of ways. In Part 1 he showed us how a money idol hides in a phrase you say every day. This time he shows us the other side: what it actually looks like to hear God about a money decision, and what God tends to deal with before He builds...

You can do everything right with money and still not feel free.

Budget in place. Debt gone. Emergency fund full. And underneath it, the same low hum of anxiety and comparison that was there before.

Our friend Bryan built his entire financial life on three words he'd heard a thousand times: cash is king. He's a Dave Ramsey superfan. He did the debt-free scream. Then one day in the shower it hit him. Cash isn't king. Jesus is.

That one shift exposed a money idol he never knew he had, and it changed...

What if you don't need more money to pay off your debt?

What if you just need to see what's already in your house?

That's the pattern hiding inside a story in 2 Kings 4.

A widow. A dead husband. A creditor at the door.

And one small flask of olive oil that God multiplied until her debt was gone.

This episode was recorded live from one of our workshops.

Linda and I walk through the whole story, verse by verse.

Then we pull five simple steps...

When money is tight, a sneaky thought creeps in.

If God was really pleased with me, wouldn't this be easier?

I have wrestled with that question myself more times than I can count.

So in this episode, Linda and I get honest about whether financial struggle means God is displeased with you.

We talk about what blessed actually means, and why comparing your finances to everyone's highlight reel is a trap.

We share seasons where we did everything right and money was still hard.

And we look...

I used to hate everything about our finances.

Then one thing changed and paying bills actually became fun.

That thing is margin.

Margin is the gap between what you earn and what you spend.

It might look small, but that gap is where the freedom lives.

In this session from our Mission Driven Millionaire cohort, Linda and I dig into why building margin might be one of the most spiritual things you ever do with your money.

We look at Joseph in Genesis 41 and how he made...

Three different doctors told her she should be dead.

She is still here, and still hosting live radio.

For over three decades, Susie Larson fought Lyme disease and mold toxicity.

It left seven areas of brain damage.

She lost words on the air and forgot how to spell.

At her lowest, IV bags filled the fridge where the groceries should have been.

Her family had no money for food while their friends bought second homes.

But something grew in the middle of all that pain.<...

Almost nobody actually feels like they have enough.

Not really.

We chase more money, more space, more results, and the finish line keeps moving.

So why does that happen?

And how do you actually fix it?

In this episode Linda and I dig into contentment and the real reasons so many of us feel like we never have enough.

We talk about the secret Paul learned while sitting in prison.

We break down three quiet causes: comparison, focusing on what you don't have, and never...

If your budget keeps falling apart after two weeks, it's probably not your fault.

I used to think I was just bad with money.

Then I realized the budget itself was the problem, not me.

In this episode, Linda and I walk through 10 reasons budgets break and what to do instead.

We cover zero-based budgeting, unrealistic numbers, tracking expenses, and the credit card mistake almost everyone makes.

We also share why building fun into your budget is one of the biggest secrets to actually sticking with it.

...

We just sold the 100,000th copy of a book I almost didn't write.

Back in school, English was my worst subject.

Teachers basically told me writing wasn't for me.

So when I felt God nudging me to write Simple Money, Rich Life, I pushed back hard.

I even hired someone else to write it for me.

But God kept saying, "You need to write this."

What came next was four years of prayer, a COVID curveball, a publisher who scrapped our whole concept, and an editing process...

Most of us have no idea what our retirement money is actually funding.

A few years ago I started wondering if some of mine was supporting things I would never support on purpose.

So in this episode, I answer a question I get all the time.

Should Christians invest in companies that conflict with their faith?

I walk through the two main approaches: biblically responsible investing and buying in to influence a company from the inside.

I share the question I ask before buying any individual stock.

...

Most Christians have heard the money advice about tithing and getting out of debt.

But there are money principles in the Bible almost nobody teaches.

And often times they are the ones that change everything for us!!!

So in this episode Linda and I walk through 7 biblical money principles most Christians never hear.

They come straight out of Scripture, a lot of it from Proverbs.

Just so we are clear, these are not just financial tips.

This is an architecture for a financially strong life that honors...

She paid cash to deliver two of her babies.

She had no insurance and almost no money.

So Lisa Bevere did it using the stock market.

That is just one of the wild stories she told us.

Today, Lisa and her husband John have given away more than 60 million books in over 150 languages.

But they started out broke, praying about whether they could afford a fax machine.

In this episode, Lisa sits down with Linda and me to talk about marriage, money, and faith.

She...

>>> First, grab the guide I told you about in this episode: How to become a millionaire even on an average salary

A few years ago we sold off some Tesla stock to pay off our second house. If you run the math on what that stock would be worth now, the result is honestly brutal. But I felt the Lord tell me clearly to do it. And looking back, I think I see exactly why He said what He said.

In this episode Linda and I walk through five biblical investing secrets most Christians have...

Grab our brand new prayer book here: https://shop.sdti.me/products/30-days-of-prayer-for-your-finances

The first time I prayed a prayer I thought might be selfish, I was 20 years old and brand new in my faith. God said yes. I spent the next seven months refusing to accept the answer because I could not believe He had actually said it. Years later I prayed a different prayer, this one about our mortgage. The answer came back in a way I never would have written. Ten months later the mortgage was gone.

In this episode Linda and...

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 co...

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 ca...

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 ab...

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: https://seedtime.com/cohort

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 do that here if you want.

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...

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...

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 $1,500 I pu...

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 Sabbat...

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 quietl...

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 a...

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...

Have you ever wondered why financial breakthrough feels so close yet so far? Bob and Linda Lotich reveal that God is constantly testing us with money—and most of us don't even realize it's happening. In this eye-opening conversation, they break down the three distinct money tests every believer faces, how to identify which one you're in right now, and what God is trying to teach you through it. What You'll Learn: The Three Tests - The Struggling Test - When you have less than you think you need The Surplus Test - When extra money comes your way The St...

In all of Scripture, there are only a handful of times when God explicitly tells us to "remember" something. Each time, it's attached to something vital—communion, Christ's resurrection, where we've fallen. But there's one verse where God commands us to remember a principle that much of the church seems to have forgotten entirely.   In this episode, Bob and Linda explore 2 Corinthians 9:6: "Remember this—a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop, but the one who plants generously will get a generous crop."       Key Topics Discussed: Why This Verse Matters How God uses the word "remember...

Is our money system actually working against faithful stewardship? In this episode, Bob and Linda tackle a conversation almost no one in the church is having—but one every Christian steward needs to understand. Bob opens with a shocking reality: $100 in 1971 now buys about $12 worth of stuff. Same number. Far less value. So what happened? From there, the conversation zooms out to explore inflation, fiat currency, and why Scripture repeatedly condemns unequal weights and measures. Is our modern money system quietly violating biblical principles—and if so, what should believers do about it? This isn't about fear, conspiracy theories, or pred...

When money is tight, a budget can feel like punishment. Like proof you messed up… or worse, proof your faith is weak.   But what if that's backwards?   In this episode, Bob and Linda flip the script and show why a budget isn't evidence of failure—it's evidence of faith in action. Drawing from Scripture, psychology, and real-life stories, they unpack why budgeting is actually a weapon God gives us in seasons of financial pressure.   If you've ever thought, "If God would just fix this, why do I need a spreadsheet?"—this conversation is for you.     In This Episode, You'll Learn: Why tight m...

Get Your Spirit Back: Breaking Free from the Lies Holding You Back - with Pastor Earl McClellan What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't your circumstances… but the lies you've believed about yourself? In this powerful, deeply honest conversation, Bob & Linda sit down with Pastor Earl McClellan, lead pastor of Shoreline City Church and author of Get Your Spirit Back, to talk about negative self-talk, fear, calling, identity, and what it really looks like to walk by faith when you're scared. This isn't a hype-up, "just believe harder" episode. It's a grounded, biblical, and deeply human conversation about do...

A viral clip claims something shocking: any pastor who gets paid by a church will eventually be corrupted by money.   It's a bold accusation — and honestly, harder to dismiss than you might think.   In this episode, Bob and Linda watch the clip, slow it down, and wrestle with the real tension underneath the claim. Is the modern church system broken? Does money inevitably compromise spiritual leadership? Or is this another example of painting faithful people with too broad a brush?   This conversation isn't defensive or dismissive. It's thoughtful, biblical, and honest — especially for anyone who's experienced church hurt, wrestled with money in...

What if obedience doesn't lead to the breakthrough you expected?   Andy and Serena Ryan did "the right things." They took a biblical money course. They committed to tithing. They tried to steward their finances faithfully. And then everything fell apart.   They lost income. Fell behind on rent. Needed food pantries and church assistance. And eventually—after months of praying for a miracle—they packed up their family and moved into an RV in someone else's backyard.   This episode isn't a prosperity story. It's a surrender story.   In one of the most vulnerable conversations we've ever had on the podcast, Andy and Sere...

Most Christians agree that materialism is bad… but few of us have ever connected the clutter in our garages to the condition of our hearts.   In this episode, Bob sits down with Joshua Becker (author of Uncluttered Faith and founder of BecomingMinimalist.com) to explore a provocative idea: what if consumerism isn't just a money issue—but a spiritual one?   Joshua makes the case that the things we own—and the things we want—may be quietly choking out our fruitfulness, distracting us from God's best, and stealing time, energy, and joy we didn't realize we were losing.   And yes… we even ask th...

Is God Warning Us About AI? The Biblical Case for Preparing Now!

What if wealth isn't about luck, connections, or hustle—but about how you think?   In today's episode, we unpack a fascinating story of a 17-year-old dishwasher who spent a decade working inside a high-end country club alongside ultra-wealthy members. What he learned completely dismantled common assumptions about rich people—and surprisingly, many of his lessons line up directly with Scripture.   Bob and Linda walk through 7 mindset shifts that separate people who grow wealth from those who stay stuck, and why renewing your mind around money may be the most biblical financial move you can make.   This isn't about chasing money—it's about...

In this episode, Bob and Linda unpack spiritual habits found in Scripture that quietly shape financial outcomes—habits that have nothing to do with spreadsheets or hustle culture, but everything to do with becoming the kind of person money can be trusted with.   These aren't the usual "Christian money tips." They're deeper.   And once you see them, you can't unsee them.     🔑 What You'll Learn in This Episode Bob and Linda walk through 7 overlooked spiritual disciplines that directly affect how we earn, spend, save, and steward money: Why fasting trains your "no muscle"—and why self-control matters more than budgeting How integrity i...