7/30/25 - 2105: Abiding, An Unshakeable Lifestyle

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement. We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg.

Martha: Our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: The epitome of his life experiences is being quiet with the Lord. He teaches believers all over the world to abide with the Lord and demonstrates it every day as you see him work and interact with others. So with all this time with our Heavenly Father, shouldn't Brad Hawkins life be perfect? At peace? Trouble free?

Apparently not. But through all the ups and downs of Brad's life, he's learned to live the unshakeable life. He does it with his family and his businesses, and he has had to demonstrate it in the marketplace and at church for years. What is an unshakeable life and what does that have to do with living out our faith in our work?

Brad Hawkins is here to share his story. Brad, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Brad Hawkins: So good to see you guys. I love hanging out with you guys.

Jim: So just because you follow Jesus and do it pretty consistently doesn't mean your business will automatically be a financial success, does it?

Brad Hawkins: No it doesn't, and I don't think we should ever think that it should because there is an enemy. The enemy would rather me not have a perfect life, and that's in reserve for when there is no more enemy.

Martha: That's a good word, good perspective there. So what about in your marriage and in your family?

I think a lot of people have that same kind of framework of thinking certainly at least they're protected, quote unquote, i'm putting up the air quotes here, when you live a life of abiding.

Brad Hawkins: I love the concept and the thought because it is what we want. In Psalms says that he has a plan for us that is dripping with blessings as we walk that plan. But we have to understand, and we have to realize that, when Adam and Eve made their choice of eating of the fruit, not necessarily the apple. We always talk about as an apple, right?

Eating of the fruit, it says, that when we eat of the fruit, we then chose not to walk God's perfect plan. And so because of that, if you back up just a touch further, when God was walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, he gave them dominion over all the earth. He said, this is yours. This is, I'm giving it to you. You manage it, you take care of it. You name the animals, you do the things that you do for the earth, it's yours. You take care of it.

And when Adam and Eve chose to eat of the fruit, they took that responsibility that they had, they took that dominion that they had over the earth, and handed it to the enemy. So as we understand, the enemy has dominion over the earth. And you look at that and say how does that happen? Isn't God sovereign? Absolutely, he is. He can work in every situation, but we have to ask him. We have to bring him into it, and we have to walk the path that he tells us to walk.

That's why he says, we're to walk through this earth with the armor of God on, and if it was in his world, if it was in his perfect world that he was managing and he kept us safe and everything, we wouldn't need the armor of God. Because it's his dominion, his world. But now that the enemy has the dominion, we have to walk with his armor on to protect us the best that we can.

Jim: But all that is so much, and we're just trying to do business together. We're just trying to do our jobs. We're just trying to work for him. How do you keep that perspective, this unshakeable perspective? Because your latest book - Unshakable Life. Okay. Hold up the book for our YouTube watchers.

Okay, you've had some business ups and downs and we shared that on the last recording that we did with you on the last podcast. How did you learn to live an unshakable life?

Brad Hawkins: What a great question. It is a process and in John, God talks about staying connected to the vine. What does that mean?

We're back to fruit again. I'm not a grape that is connected to the vine. How does that really work? But God's analogy is that we have - Jesus is the vine and God is the vine dresser. He's the one orchestrating the whole thing behind the scenes and doing everything he can.

But Jesus is the vine and I'm the branch. And my job as the branch is to stay connected to the vine, to allow the Holy Spirit to flow through me, to allow the sap to go through me. And if I'm staying connected to that vine and I'm paying attention to the vine, or I'm paying attention to Jesus, fruit's growing on me.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. The fruit that God has, that is growing on me, it's growing behind me, but I'm paying attention to the vine. God's the one picking my fruit and handing them out to whoever he needs to hand it out to. If he needs to show love to someone, he can take my fruit of love and give it to somebody if he needs to.

But my job is not to force myself to grow fruit. My job is to stay connected to the vine. So to live an unshakeable life, you stay connected to the vine. And what does that really practically look like? It's being involved with him on a daily basis. It's talking to him. It's and - I know this sounds a little bit of ridiculous, but it's true. I do this. I leave my neighborhood and I drive outta my neighborhood and I oftentimes will just say normal way, you want me to turn right or left? There's always multiple ways to get there, but it's not that that's overly important, it's just a matter of keeping him involved in my day-to-day activity.

And when I'm keeping him involved, it's kinda like with my wife and I, if we go, we're gonna take a little trip to Europe here in the near future, we're going to go and do some abiding in Europe, but as we travel, with my wife I might say do you wanna go there for lunch? What would you like to do? What sounds fun to you? What is enjoyable for you? And she'll say, oh, I don't want to do that. I don't want, that sounds heavy. Where can I get a salad? Or, whatever it is. But we'll have an ongoing conversation.

Jim: Who goes to Europe to have a salad? Nobody goes to Europe to have a salad. (laughter)

Martha: We don't know yet what she's gonna say.

Brad Hawkins: But as you go, you're carrying on this conversation with the Holy Spirit and just enjoying the relationship of being involved with him.

Martha: Wow. I love your perspective and I love that we are having this conversation and as we continue to talk about it, I hope that the listeners just understand that, like how Jim set it up at the beginning.

This says abiding and being in connection with the Lord does not mean it's an easier life, /but it is a more fruitful life, as you said in and being unshakeable. So I'm excited to continue this conversation.

Having others support us on our journey is so valuable when we are living an unshakeable life. Being a part of the US Christian Chamber of Commerce is a valuable way to get the support and the encouragement you need to keep on the right path on your journey.

If you're feeling isolated in your business, you're not alone. The US Christian Chamber of Commerce connects faith-driven leaders through powerful events, relationships, and resources. So join the US Christian Chamber of Commerce where business and faith thrive together. And in 2026, the SWC 2026 Expo will be happening in Orlando in April. And I'll put all of those details in the show notes and you can have code IWORK4HIM for a discount.

Jim: And I highly encourage that you join Martha and I out there. In fact, Brad, SaferNet should be at this, at Spiritual World Expo in 2026. You should be there, for sure.

Alright, so speaking of SaferNet, Brad, which it's in your background, you've been a supporter of iWork4Him for a long time, but it's so much more. This show is about the fact that you started teaching Martha and I a couple years ago about abiding. Just, are you spending time with the Lord? And are you being quiet? Are you sitting still? Are you learning to just see what pops out on the pages and then research why it's popping on the pages, or to grab this patch and see where it links to this patch and another passage across the scriptures.

That's been so powerful for us and provided really a great life experience. SafeNet has also been providing a great experience for iWork4Him. We feel totally protected. In fact, we were talking before we came on the air about a new scam, that people are sending fake invites to iWork4Him and trying to get on our calendars. And we know that if we accidentally clicked on a link, SafeNet would provide us protection.

So SaferNet's been doing this, serving up safe internet experiences for users across the country and around the world, both commercial, personal. Why do you think you haven't cracked the code of an overnight success?

Brad Hawkins: That's a great question, and to be honest with you, it's a question that I ask the Lord all the time. I think, you know what? Every device in the world needs to have SaferNet on it. Why in the world is not everybody knocking on the door saying, I need to protect all my devices? I'm like, I don't want to go and use the internet without using SaferNet. It just seems like not a good idea. That's fundamental in my world.

But I live in that question where I'm like, Lord, what is it that, that I'm missing? And he is just, keep walking. Just keep going. And it's interesting because the relationship that I have with God is always maturing and growing. When I pray for something, I'm like, okay, you give us the power of prayer and you give us what it is that, that we should pray for.

Why is it that I have to keep praying over and over again? And then he brings me to these scriptures of this widow that goes and, pounds on the door of the judge to get justice. And I'm like, okay. I'll do that because I believe in you. I trust you, and I know that is what you want me to do, so that's what I'll do.

So to me, life is about a continual step-by-step process, trusting him and understanding that he loves me more than I could love myself. He loves me more than my wife could love me or my mom. There's no one that could love me more than Jesus himself. And I can trust that. And what is always reminding me is that God has a plan and that plan is the very best plan for me.

It is the very best. I could not design a plan better for me than what God could create for me. And I'm also reminded of this horrible thing that why did the devil get kicked outta heaven? It's because he thought he had a better plan. He was like hey angels, I got a better plan than what God's got and he got booted.

I don't wanna get booted. No, I'm just kidding you. That's not gonna get you booted. But that's to me the importance of understanding what God's plan is versus my own is I don't wanna live my own plan. So yes, my own plan would be that SaferNet explodes into a worldwide phenomenon that is absolutely unbelievable and I will continue to pray for that.

But I will also continue to ask God for my daily steps to say, what do you want me to do at this point? And I will continue to walk those steps until I do see what I believe will be a worldwide phenomenon about SaferNet.

Jim: I think it's also true, good to remember, that all overnight successes took 10 years, and most overnight successes for many were 10 years in the making. I mean they, yeah. And so SaferNet's not even that old yet.

Brad Hawkins: It is very true. Overnight means it is the night that you turn around, oh, it turned into a great exercise. It's kinda you're saying, I lost my keys, but it's always in the last place I look. You know what? If you keep looking after you find your keys, it's really weird. But the intent is that we trust that we're just gonna step out what God tells us to do, and it will become what God wants it to be.

Martha: Yes. And what it is right now for thousands of customers is amazing. How does SaferNet help people, your customers, to live an unshakeable life?

Brad Hawkins: Oh I love that because if you think about this, the enemy, all he wants to do, like we just said, he's been kicked outta heaven, right? He doesn't get to be there. And so all he wants to do is take as many of us with him as he possibly can. He did that with the angels. He convinced a third of the angels to join him in his rebellion. And so he wants to take as many of us with him, away from the peace and the joy and the love that Jesus provides.

And so what is he gonna do? He's gonna tempt us all the time. He doesn't know our brains. He doesn't know exactly what's going on, but he pays really close attention and he's got millions of little followers that are paying attention and reporting back or however that works. But he knows what annoys us. He knows what will trip us up. He knows how to distract us. He knows how to manipulate us.

And if you think about it, the internet is something more involved every single day. We use the internet all the time. Think about your house. What works with the internet and what doesn't work? When the internet goes down at my house, I go somewhere else to work. I can't work anywhere else. Now I can't even do a lot. It's quite amazing. And so my intent is to say, okay, with this tool, which I talk about as probably one of the greatest inventions of all time, minus the industrial revolution, but this in invention of the internet is something that we're using for everything.

SaferNet allows you to control those things. You've got 84 filters that you can turn on and off, for you or your employees or your family or whatever it is. And for example, one of the big ones is pornography. Nobody wants to get sucked into the traffic and the destructive lifestyle that pornography draws, but once you get addicted to that, it just is so destructive. And you can filter that out where you're not getting, you're not getting tempted by it. You're not even stepping into it.

I had a mom came to me one time just crying, saying, she said me, but she meant SaferNet, she said, you saved my daughter's life. And I'm like, I don't even know who your daughter is, but I thought she was a little talking with some over emotions, but she just started crying. I realized she's serious, she's really involved. But basically it was that her daughter was struggling with bulimia and that she was able to turn on the filters that kept her from seeing things that caused her to do more judgment to her. Now, it didn't solve her problem, but it took away that portion of the temptation to give her enough time or bandwidth in her world to start working on those things that needed to be dealt with.

And so it was quite an honor for me to be able to understand how she used SafeNet to keep her family safe. And that's one of those things that you just keep looking at saying, there's 200 internet controls. People cannot come in and steal your data because we're 256 bit encrypted.

We've got virus protection through the access to the internet so that when you go to a website that's bad, you're not gonna bring a virus in. We've got 24/7, always on VPN that, that you're not having to remember to turn on and nobody's gonna sneak in a Trojan virus into your computer because you stop by Starbucks, or whatever it is. We've got so many different pieces of the puzzle to keep you safe as you use this amazing invention called the internet.

Jim: So you and Leticia, you've lived a lot of life together. You've had some extraordinary business challenges. How many years you been married?

Brad Hawkins: 33.

Jim: Okay, so 33 years of life together. You got kids now. Got grandkids, twin grandkids. How has your marriage remained unshakeable?

Brad Hawkins: I love the question. In my mind and we actually just taught a marriage abiding thing at our church. And we drew up this picture, and I forgot where I was taught this. I cannot take credit for this, but I was taught this, is that, you've got the man and the woman and it's constantly a battle staying connected and you're always battling this battle on a regular basis. And sometimes I'm going this way and she's going this way or vice versa.

But it's wonderful when you can live life this way, but it doesn't happen all the time. It's just this constant battle. Somebody told us early on in our marriage, if we end up in a place where we're focusing on, here's Christ up here. If we're both focused to Christ, you automatically grow closer together. You don't separate. You are honoring God in this growth process and so I'm not trying to please my wife. I'm trying to please the Lord.

And when she's also trying to please the Lord, we grow closer together and we end up pleasing each other in that process. And when you're living in an abiding life, staying connected to the Holy Spirit all the time, which I do not do by the way. I'm constantly reconnecting and asking God to forgive me for my stupid way that I disconnect myself. But as you're living that life and you're living closer and closer to Jesus, you're getting closer and closer to your spouse.

But you're still discussing things. You're still talking about things. One of the things that we use the term a lot is neutral. And we used to argue about just the dumbest things. We never argued about tooth paste, but it's the proverbial toothpaste argument of do you squeeze it in the middle or squeeze it in the end? We didn't argue about that. We argued about a lot of other things that are probably even dumber. But when you get to the place where you're communicating with your spouse about something - for example, there was a trip that we were invited to and she wanted to go, and I did not think we should go.

It wasn't that I didn't wanna go, I just didn't feel like God was saying that's what we should do. And she was like, I think we should. What do you do in that situation? What we do is we use this to call Neutral. Why don't we just both go back to neutral? We're not, she doesn't have her opinion anymore, and I don't have my opinion anymore and say, okay, God, what do you want us to do? And then we just sit there and soak in the word and hear what God has to say, see what circumstances are leading us to do what, and we just start over.

And if we have to go back to neutral three or four times, we end up getting back into that spot and we learned something one time. We lived a life of compromise all the time. If God says you should do this, and I believed that's what God's saying, and she doesn't believe that, we often would come up with a good compromise in between the two. That's one sure way to know we're exactly not on God's plan. The compromise is never right, because it's not even what we feel like God's told us to do.

Jim: Isn't it true though, one of you could be right, but both of you can't be right, but you could both be wrong? I mean, it's not always that one of you is right. It could be that you're both wrong.

Brad Hawkins: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's the whole idea of going back to neutral is to say, okay, am I legitimately at neutral or am I just trying to figure out a way to convince her that I'm right? That's never gonna work for me. Because if you remember, if you know that all you really want is God's plan for you, not what I think is the best, if God's plan is the very best, I don't want what I think is best. I want what God thinks is best.

And so when there's unity between the two of us, we feel very confident that is the Holy Spirit saying, Hey, that's you. That's what you want, and go for it. And it's so much better to wait and hesitate and pause as we go through the process to get to the place where we're in the perfect will of God, or at least the closest that we've got to, and realizing we're gonna step by step, we're gonna step out, we're gonna step in.

But if we continue that process, looking for unity, not convincing her my plan is best, but looking for unity, we end up in this place of peace and joy that is very surprising. So to answer your question, how do we live an unshakeable life? We live our best to find unity in our relationship.

Jim: I love that. And it wasn't an easy, simple answer because marriage is complicated and I love that Brad just didn't rip off some convenient little sentence. We'd be remiss if we didn't stop to highlight the amazing work of Brad's company, SaferNet.

We've talked about it a little bit, and we talk about them on every show. And for good reason! Join the mission to stay safe and secure online with SaferNet VPN. Perfect for small to medium sized businesses, their cybersecurity app provides, as Brad said, VPN, internet controls, virus protection. Work and life in harmony with 84 website filters, keeping distractions away. Get secured now. Sign up at safernet.com. That's SaferNet.com and tell 'em that iWork4Him sent you.

Brad, you talk about abiding a lot and really you spent a lot of time teaching our online Bible study about just reminding us what does it mean to abide. Give us a short little snippet of what abiding is all about.

Brad Hawkins: Yeah, abiding is simply staying connected to Jesus. That's it. The Bible talks about in John, you abide in the vine, you stay connected to Jesus. And you live life in relationship with Jesus. You don't do a Sunday morning Jesus time. You don't do every morning Jesus time. You do a life of Jesus.

And yes, you go to church, you study your Bible, you do that kind of stuff. Now, one of the things that I enjoy the most is my spending time in the word. I leave this open on my desk all the time, and the reason is it always reminds me where my priorities are.

But one of the things that I love spending time in the word, what I do is I read the word, I read the word in partnership with my relationship with Jesus, so the Holy Spirit's inside of me, when I'm reading something, something's gonna pop out, and when it pops out, I'm like, oh, that's interesting, that's fascinating.

And I write it down on my journal and yes, I have my journal sitting right here. I do that on a regular basis. And by the way, I didn't put it out just for this, it just lives there. But I write it down in my journal and I underline what I thought jumped out at me, and then I look at that and I think, okay, I wonder what that really means.

So in most Bibles, if you don't have a Bible that has this, go get one. Or there's apps that do the same thing. My favorite is Blue Letter App, BLB. But I don't know if you can see, but you've got these little verses there in the middle there. That's your center references. Or you might have right references, but you go to your references. And okay, this is where God's talking about it in other portions of the Bible. So you go read other portions of the Bible, and you read that and you say, okay, does that jump out? Does that align with what I'm looking for?

And maybe it is. You gotta look for the Holy Spirit inside of you and say, gosh, yeah, that jumps out. That's important. And I write that down. Or if not, I'll go to another reference and write that down. But as I go, I keep looking through and underlining what seems to be important and I go through and read all my underlines and I'm like, wow, God's really showing me that, whatever that is.

And then I might write a little summary of what I see that God's showing me. And I'll tell you, it's so much fun. Going back into all of my journals and look and see the messages that God has shown me. And that's really where the Unshakeable Life came from, is it is a accumulation of years of my journals of where God said, here's something really important for you to realize, and here's how I want you to look at this.

There's a portion that God was showing me, I wanna understand how I can live a life connected to you and that I'm not cripping up on all the things that the world seems to be throwing at me all the time, 'cause I just get mad sometimes and I just give up and I am like, how do I stay in this place that I'm not giving up all the time?

And I wrote this down as a, it's actually almost a full journal of me going through all of this in my abiding time in the Bible. And I was sleeping one night and I had this picture that came to me that I was walking around town just talking to God all the time, but I had a picture of myself walking, somebody else was looking at me, walking, and I had my head in the clouds. And I'm like that's very odd. Why is my head in the clouds? I can't see a thing. How am I walking?

And I just started asking, God, what'd that look like? And he took me through several scriptures of, God talking to me and communicating to me on a regular basis. And what I envisioned there was that my head was in the clouds. I was talking to God all the time, and he was like, oh, walk this way. Don't walk that way. Step over that person. Do this, do that. And he was like guiding every single step that I had. But you didn't know that because my head was in the clouds and I was just walking around town.

And I envision that for my life to say, how do I stay connected? It's just this ongoing conversation. It's this relationship that's a real, alive, meaningful relationship that he's, let me show you how I want you to walk so that you can avoid all the pitfalls that the enemy's trying to throw at you on a regular basis.

Martha: So let's wrap up with that, taking it very streamlined into the workplace and saying how, for our listeners today, how can they try to understand how they can abide in their work life and allow God to transform it? What would that look like?

Brad Hawkins: Really good question. Right now for for SaferNet, you'll hopefully see a new website in the next 30 days, 'cause we're building out a new website that talks a lot about our new AI technology that we've put into the website. And I'm leading that project with our marketing people and I'm just trying to coordinate things, and literally on a daily basis, I'm saying, who should we talk to?

What does, is that what makes sense? And I was driving to do this podcast and the ladies that were working on the words, she sent me a message and so I called her from the car as we were driving and she had just this great idea that really delivered the message that I thought needed to be delivered.

But this morning I didn't even have a thought to call her 'cause it was a part of the website that we had decided was gonna be done. So I sent her a message saying, Hey, can you just look at that one more time? Because in the morning I was spending some time with the Lord and I just didn't feel peace around the header of the website.

And I said, can you just look at that again? And the whole thing changed. Because I didn't feel at peace. And she came in and she goes, oh, I see what you're saying. Let's make some changes. And she gave me some good ideas. So, it's just this step by step, I didn't have an answer, but I felt like I knew who I needed to talk to. She didn't have an answer. I know her. She went and prayed about it and came back and said, I got an idea. And then coming here I was like, that is such a great idea. I love it. And so I was very excited about it, and then I felt great peace inside as we realized, okay, we've completed that portion of it. What else do you got for me, God?

Jim: Practical, tactical, factual and biblical, right here on iWork4Him. Really, the practical side of abiding and how it applies to all of life. Brad Hawkins, if somebody wants to get a copy of Unshakable Life, they can get on Amazon, right?

Brad Hawkins: Go on Amazon. Look under Bradley Hawkins. Right under Bradley Hawkins and you can see it there.

Jim: And you've written other books, the God, the Devil and the Internet, right?

Brad Hawkins: God, the Devil, and the Internet. And that's all about SaferNet and how God has created the internet and did some amazing things. And there's a new book hopefully coming out very soon called The Power of Or.

Jim: Yes. Excellent. We'll look forward to that conversation down the road. Brad Hawkins, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Brad Hawkins: Thank you for having me. You guys are amazing.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.