Unlocks the Secret to a Winning Life! Revealing the 5 Keys to Success

Hey, this is James Pelton. And today I want to talk with you about the five keys to success. And you might think, yeah, we've heard this before. Discipline, hard work, intelligence, yada, yada, yada. We've heard all that before, but I want you to know that the five I'm going to talk about here today are not the five that you are probably going to expect. There are tons of self-help books out there and I've read most of them. You can see, I used to be a very avid reader. I read everything I can get my hands on. And each of these self-help books would talk about how to be successful. And they all would kind of say different things. I used to read all these books and they'd all say different things. And I'd say, well, who do I trust? How do I know what is actually the keys to success? And that's why I'm so thankful for the Bible. So I believe that the Bible is actually written by God himself who created the heavens and the earth. So I believe that his spirit moved people and they wrote wisdom directly from him. And that's super comforting because the world, there's all this chaos and I look around and I'm like USDC the other day and I'm like, what do I do? I don't know what's going on in this world, but I can always come to God's word and just rest and just say, Hey, I know that this is true. I don't know anything else that's out there, but I know that this is true. It's from God himself. And I understand that not all of you believe in God the way that I do. Some of you are probably like, Oh, you probably turned off the video already. If you're still watching and you don't believe in God, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And for you, you might just hear this as ancient wisdom. Okay. And that's fine, but you can take it as just some ancient wisdom. I do believe your life will be better following these things, even if you don't believe in God. But my hope and prayer is that you see the wisdom here. You see the beauty of the wisdom that we're going to talk about here. And you realize, Hey, this is not from a human. This is from God himself. That's my hope and prayer for you. So I'm taking all five of these from Proverbs chapter 11. I love Proverbs. It's all about wisdom. It's all about how you can live your life in a wise way. And there's 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs. So it makes it really easy for us. Simple minded people to just, okay, I'm going to read one proverb each day. So I'm recording this on the 11th. So I was reading Proverbs 11 and that's where these five keys to success came out. So from Proverbs 11, five keys to success from God himself. So the first one that we see is in verse one of Proverbs chapter 11. It says the Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him. So this first key to success is honesty. So just so you understand how things worked in those days, when you went to the marketplace, which for those of you who don't know, it's like the mall of today. You go to the marketplace and when they were giving you grain, they would weigh out how much grain you're going to get from the marketplace. And what a lot of people would do is they would try to cheat their customers by messing with the scales a little bit. So they think they're buying a pound. They didn't have pounds, but I'm an American. That's what we do. But they think they're buying a pound of wheat, but in reality they're buying seven tenths of a pound or something like that. And it was just a way for the shop owner to cheat people out of their money. So the first key to success from God is that he detests when you cheat people out of their money, he desires honesty in people, accurate weights, find favor with him. There are a lot of situations where there is temptation to lie or be dishonest or you call them white lies or maybe just not be as honest as you could, but I'm telling you a key to success. The way God has designed the universe is you will be most successful when you are as honest as you possibly can. So again, that's one thing I strive for on my channel. I said this in my last video that I am not always the smartest. I don't always make the best calls, but I will always strive to be as honest as I possibly can. I try to never let anything come out of my mouth that I don't actually believe is true. So number one is honesty. Number two comes from verse two convenient. It says when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. So the second key to success is humility, not pride. There's a lot of people in the world. I see this with project founders. I see this with influencers where there's a lot of pride where they think, Hey, I'm better than you are. They try to show off their wealth as much as they can. That is not a key to success. There's another proverb that says pride comes before destruction, and I keep that in mind a lot. When I see project founders where the founder is very prideful, I'm just a little bit nervous about it. You guys might know the story of Nebuchadnezzar, but he was the king of Babylon, so he conquered basically the known world in his day. But one day he was in Babylon, which was a beautiful city, and he went up to the rooftop of his palace. He looked out over his whole city. He had built the hanging gardens for his wife, and he just built this beautiful city. He looked out at all of it, and he said, Wow, look at this city that I built. And God saw that pride, and it says God made his mind like an animal. And for seven years, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, went around on all fours thinking he was a cow, and he ate grass and things like that. And after seven years, he came back to his senses, and the people were like, Whoa, he's back. And the first thing Nebuchadnezzar says, I shouldn't have taken pride in that. It was God who did this, the God who created the heavens and the earth. So watch out for pride. Keep it far from yourself. Be careful dealing with prideful people as well. I believe that it's true that pride comes before destruction. And the opposite of that. So the key to success would be humility. So humility doesn't mean thinking, Oh, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything. But humility is just recognizing the success that I have is from the Lord. I didn't do all this myself. That's the Lord who is blessed. So that's number two. Number three, we go to verse three. It says the integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. But integrity is basically just, you know, it's one thing to do the right thing when people have their eyes on you. Right. And there's a lot of people who do that. They like, OK, people are watching. I'm going to do the right thing. But then when no one's watching behind the scenes, they're doing something completely different. We see this on my AMA is all the time, right? I bring on people and they say this and this. So two people, they're saying one thing, but then behind the scenes, they're doing something completely different. And that's a monologue too much. But this is actually where we get the word hypocrite from is a hypocrite. Back in ancient Greek times was the actors. So they in those days, they didn't hire actors to play every part. So they would wear different masks for different parts. That's where we get the word. They were called the hypocrites. They basically put on a mask. So they were showing themselves to be one thing. But then behind the scenes, they were doing something completely different. And one key to success is integrity. It means always acting, even when no one's watching, acting like someone's watching. And again, I believe that God is always watching and he's the main one that I'm trying to please. Like, obviously, I want you guys to like me to some extent, but it's mainly God that I'm trying to please. He's always watching. So I try my best to act always the same way that I act on camera. That's a goal for my life. Number four, we're skipping down to verse 17. See, so it's not going to be an hour long sermon. Don't worry. Pastor Pelton, that's the name of this series, but it says those who are kind benefit themselves, but the cruel bring ruin on themselves. So the fourth key to success is kindness. Okay. And this might sound lame to you. This might sound like, what are you talking about? How is kindness going to make me successful? But I believe that is how God has set up the universe. I was working with a project and, um, I'm not going to say any names wouldn't be kind, but someone in the project, they were, they were very rude to someone on my team. And so someone asked me, Hey, are you going to get involved with that project? And I said, I don't think so. They were unkind to someone on my team. And some people were confused by that. They said, well, why would you, who cares if they were kind or not? What does that have to do with investing or anything like that? But again, I believe that kindness is a key to success. And I'm just not interested in doing business with people who are not kind, who don't show kindness. If I see cruelty in someone, that's not someone that I'm going to want to attach myself to very closely. So that's number four is kindness. So in the fifth and final key to success from Proverbs 11 is in verse 24 and 25, it says one person gives freely yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. So number five here, if you didn't catch it from the verses is generosity and counterintuitive, because if you were thinking, okay, I want to have, so that means I need to hoard as much as I can. And so giving away would be the opposite of that. It seems like that would go against the goals that you're trying to achieve, giving away to other people. But again, I believe that the way God has set it up is that when you are generous with what you have, God entrusts you with more. And I've seen this time and time again in my own life, where when I'm stingy, when I'm holding onto things saying, no, I can't help, I can't help, just barely hanging on myself, then things don't work out as well for me. But when I'm open-handed, I realized, hey, this isn't mine in the first place. God's given it to me. He's given me the success. And that goes back to our humility, right? But when I refresh others, then I myself am refreshed. And that's been something that I've seen God do time and time again in my life. And we have to be careful sometimes, because sometimes then we think, ooh, okay, well, I'll manipulate God then. I want to be rich, so I'll go give as much as I can so that I'll be rich. I mean, you can't do that. You can't manipulate God in that way. But key to success is being generous. And I would challenge you, especially if you believe in God, you believe that his word is true, I challenge you to test this. Be more generous, give more than you feel like you're able to give. A lot of times what we do, I do this too sometimes, is we kind of budget, okay, how much can I afford to give? And then we give that leftover amount to other people. I would challenge you to try something different and find needs and give even more than you think that you can. I call it irresponsible giving. You remember the story of the widow's mite, where all these people were giving to the temple and there was this one widow who came and she gave two mites, which are like pennies, basically. She gave just a little bit. And Jesus says that woman gave more than everyone else because they gave out of their excess. They gave what didn't really affect them. It wasn't that big of a deal. She gave everything she had to live on. So she gave more than all of them. And I challenge you to test that out. Try that out. So five keys to success from the book of Proverbs, honesty, humility, integrity, kindness, generosity. If you don't believe in God, you can do your best with these things. And I do believe even if you don't believe in God, your life will be significantly better if you do these five things. But I know personally, I've tried to be this kind of person apart from God. I've tried to just on my own. OK, I'm going to have humility and honesty and integrity and kindness and generosity. And it just it hasn't worked for me when I've tried to do it in my own power. As much as I want to be honest and humble and all these things, pride would keep creeping. The temptation to lie would come in. I'd be stingy with my money and I just was not able to be this type of person without God's help. It wasn't until I gave my life to Jesus and I said, I'm going to follow you 100 percent. He sent his spirit and he's begun to work in me to make me these things. And he's still teaching me about these things. I don't know if you guys remember the the yield nodes debacle back in August. I've tried to forget it, but there was a big part of me who I would say to the Lord, I feel like I've been following you. Why is this happening to me? I've put up stock and I put a lot of money into yield nodes. I put a lot of stock into yield nodes. Why is it failing? What are you trying to teach me through this? And it didn't take too long for me to realize that with the success that I had in crypto, the success that I had on YouTube, the success I had in my own business, pride had started to creep into my life. People would praise me. Oh, your YouTube channel is so wonderful. Yada yada. I don't get that as much anymore. But I would feel the pride. Yeah, man, I'm good at YouTube. Look at what I've look how fast my channel's grown and all these things. And then something like yield nodes happen or some of these rug pulls happen. And quickly, God reminds me that, hey, your success is not based on you. You are not that special. You're not that great. You don't have that great of insights. Your success is based on me working is what God has taught me through these things. So I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm moving away a little bit from my normal content, but this is so much on my heart. It was very much on my heart today. I want to share with you guys. If you like this, please hit the like button. Appreciate it very much. Comment down below your experience with any of these five things, whether it be integrity or humility, where you've seen some of these things in your life and how God has used them to bring success. So thank you guys very much. Appreciate you guys watching and hope you all have a great rest of your day. Thanks.