Jeeva Sam

Where there's unity, I will command my blessings, Psalm 133. When you are in unity, there's a strength that comes. It was the best decision we ever made in terms of ventures together, because that little investment in retrospect now has multiplied many, many fold. When I say many fold, we're talking well over a hundred fold. That's the power of unity.

Steve K.

Welcome everybody to Cast Your Nets, another episode. My name is Steve K. We're going to start today by saying don't let relationship stress mess up your success, or in other words, relationship stress can mess up your success. With me today is Pastor Jeeva Sam. Well, he's a friend. He's a pastor. He's a spiritual mentor. He's a leader. But more importantly, he is an expert on marriage mentorship, so much so that him and his wife, Sulojana, have created a book called The Unbreakable Marriage, and they're on a mission, check this out, to save 50,000 marriages from divorce in the next five years. Thank God someone's doing this. I wish you were around back when I got married when I first started 17 years ago, but praise God. So if you're thinking of getting married or you've got stress in your relationship, if you think it's not going to affect your investments, your prosperity, you're crazy, the best thing you could do is click the link below the website and get in contact with them. The guarantee, guarantee breakthrough. In how long? How many sessions?

Jeeva Sam

As little as 10 weeks.

Steve K.

10 weeks. 10 weeks, 10 weeks, and you can save yourself from relationship hell. I'm not kidding. You could save yourself from a plane that is crashing and burning and pull it upright. This is a guarantee. Very few people make guarantees. Pastor Jeeva does. Welcome, Pastor.

Jeeva Sam

Thank you very much, Steve. Great to be here with you today.

Steve K.

I'm so happy to have you here. You've just been a very strong voice in our community, a very strong leader. A lot of people watching are going to know who you are. You're out in Toronto. Don't hold it against him. I know it's all Candas fault, but this man is different. He's not a typical Canadian. Just joking, of course. Here's where I want to start. I remember when I got married, actually before I got married 18 years ago, my pastor Peter Rizelda, Trisha Rizelda from King of Kings in New Jersey, they made me and my fiancé go into marriage counseling. They suggested it, and I took him on that suggestion. Best thing that ever happened. But in hindsight. But in the process, I was shocked to my core because I was 33 years old and I'm finding out I've got to bring my wife in on the decision making of how to manage her money and how to invest. I said, What the heck does she know about investing? What does she know about managing money? I had a very hard time with that. But I'll tell you what, learning how to get my wife and myself on the same page, as difficult as it was, I'll tell you, is a key to my success.

Steve K.

How important is it really if you want to get prosper financially?

Jeeva Sam

Oh, to me it's like an absolute essential. In my years of marriage, if I look back and see what are some decisions that I made on my own without consulting her and how did they turn out financially versus the decisions we made together and how they turned out, it's the difference between night and day.

Steve K.

Okay, hold on. Friends, if you're watching this, let's take a selah moment and acknowledge men. I can tell you I'm in the same boat. I don't want to tell you that. But when I just gone on my own or my wife says, Oh, go ahead. It's no problem. If I sway, it's gone horribly wrong. Why is that? Why is that? Why does that happen in a marriage?

Jeeva Sam

Well, there are a number of spiritual principles that work here. First of all, you're not harnessing the power of unity. Where God says, Where there's unity, I will command my blessings, Psalm 133. When you are in unity, there's a strength that comes. My wife is like that, Sulojana actually does not really even want to understand the details of all the deals that I'm talking to her about. But she needs to know generally what it is because she'll seek the Lord. One of the biggest things that I've got to learn with is to give her the time to process things with the Lord, not within herself, because she really needs to hear clearly from the Lord. As a matter of fact, our whole marriage mentorship, when we launched it, the coaches that I was going to work with at the time were asking for a fairly good size investment, which I didn't have. I know you had to go on a credit card. I told her that and she says, I don't feel right about it right now. Rather than push her into it, I just dropped it. I just said, Okay, whenever the time is ready.

Jeeva Sam

Then one day she said to me, Do you really want to do this, don't you? I said, Yeah. She said, Okay, I feel peace about it. Go for it. It was the best decision we ever made in terms of ventures together, because that little investment in retrospect now has multiplied many, many fold. When I say many fold, we're talking well over 100 fold. That's the power of unity. Now, there's also a second force at work, a spiritual force, and that is the power of agreement with your spouse. Then again, Matthew 18:19, Jesus says, When two of you agree on anything in the earth, it shall be done for you by my Father in heaven. What two is more of a powerful force than a husband and a wife. When you both come to an agreement in prayer together, and by the way, for the longest time in our lives, we never prayed together. We would pray on our own, and Steve, when we started praying together, miracles began to happen. It was such a clear demonstration that when Jesus made this statement, this promise, he was not kidding. This is for real. When you make a decision on your own without involving your spouse, especially guys, a lot of times will make decisions because we're alpha, that's the way we are.

Jeeva Sam

When we do that in this realm, in the kingdom realm, you could be missing out on the greatest advantage that you have, which is your spouse.

Steve K.

I completely agree. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way. Three things I want to recap very quickly. One, there's power and unity. Two, there's power and agreement, and three, there's power and praying together. Now, I want to go back to the power and unity. One of the key nuances you had mentioned was that your wife doesn't want to know all the details, but she does want to know the direction you're going so she could pray into that direction. That is a key, friends... I mean, that's a really powerful key. That's something that I learned the hard way, is my wife doesn't want to know what's my entry position when I'm coming into Bitcoin or other crypto assets. What's my stop loss? What's my leverage? She doesn't want to know that. She wants to know, Oh, you're investing in Bitcoin. You're investing other crypto or DeFi. Are you going to invest in that company, this organization? And then the details I handle, because that's what I do. But she wants to know the direction the ship is heading. And that often enough is enough for your spouse to say, Oh, I feel at peace. I know what's going on.

Steve K.

And there's a real benefit to having them pray. If I'm honest, and friends, I know if I'm feeling this, you are too. So just get brutally honest men or women. But oftentimes if I don't want to say or mention this stuff to my wife where I'm going, because I don't want to hear no. And it takes just, I think, great humility. You have to be humble yourself and say, You know what? Okay, I'm the alpha, I'm the leader, but my wife is my partner. We are together. We are one.

Jeeva Sam

Yes.

Steve K.

What are things that you can do to foster people coming in together as one? How do you get on the same page, like practical steps.

Jeeva Sam

Let me just backtrack one second and just address the negative consequences of not being in unity. When you keep something from your wife or your husband that you're doing on your own, like in the spirit realm, that is a no-no. That the transparency, the honesty, even about something. When I talk to Sulojana about doing something that I know is risky, there's no guarantees, then I need to let her know that. Now, the worst thing that can happen is I don't let her know that, that I take a risk and I lose something, now she'll find out anyway. At that point, hey, how come I didn't know about this?

Steve K.

Oh, you break trust then.

Jeeva Sam

You break trust, you cost a lot of stress. Then the stress level goes even higher. One thing we mentioned was playing together is something that, to me, let me just backtrack just a little bit even and say God made us as spirit beings with a soul in the body. We always have to start with the spirit. Your unity really begins in the spirit realm. To me, I read a shocking statistic, Steve, that it was either 85 or 88% of pastors, men do not pray with their wives regularly. I mentioned that one time and Sulojana said, Well, we were in that category, weren't we?

Steve K.

Okay, why is that? What's that barrier? Is it different praying styles? What is it that's this barrier for couples to get together? What is that thing?

Jeeva Sam

Well, there's a little bit of that where somebody... Well, I don't really like to pray out loud. I just pray of something between me and God, and that's the way I want it. I keep it very private, that type of thing. But you know, Steve, I think the greater issue is that we are not taught or encouraged to pray together as husband and wife.

Steve K.

Why? What is that? It's a cultural thing then.

Jeeva Sam

Well, it's partly because it's… If I'm not doing that, for example, in my pastoring days, when I was not praying together with Sulojana regularly, then I don't teach the couple that comes to me for marriage, Hey, guys, you need to pray together regularly. So if you, as a pastor, are not praying with your spouse regularly, then you're not going to teach it, you're not going to model it. If you were raised up in a family where you never saw your father and your mother praying together, then you didn't learn it. It was not modeled for you.

Steve K.

Exactly. Most people are in that category you just described. There was no models. How did you and Sulojana say, We're going to break this cycle? What did you do? Did you have a regular time you met? Did you put a timer? How did you... And was it difficult in the beginning to get the habit going?

Jeeva Sam

Yeah, we made a decision, first of all, that this is something that we're going to do and we're going to do every day. For us to do it consistently day after day after day, it had to be a set time. For us, the way our schedules work, and both of us, we like to stay up a little bit late. We seldom go to bed before midnight. For us, it was 10:30 to 11:00, somewhere in that time frame is when we would... That was our time to be together. The number of things we started to do, we started reading scriptures together. We take turns, actually. One person would read one day, the other one the next day. If I'm praying today, then Sulojana's reading and vice versa. This evolved. This didn't start out with so structured. Then we also started to take communion together. We basically end the day with scripture, with praying together, with communion. Over the few weeks, months that we started implementing this, we got into some structure. The structure was, for example, Sunday night, we pray for all our mentees and the calendar for the coming week. Monday, we pray for married couples, Tuesday, singles, et cetera.

Jeeva Sam

We came up with the pattern. Wednesday, we pray for people who have their own ministries. That's why we pray for you.

Steve K.

I was just going to say, can I get on that list? Can I get on that list?

Jeeva Sam

You're on that list. Every Wednesday, we pray for you.

Steve K.

Hallelujah. Wow. There was a period you said you were pastoring and you weren't coming together with your wife to pray together, and now you are. Can you give me a before what life was like, maybe in your relationship or around you, and how it is now?

Jeeva Sam

I think part of it is—and maybe I don't know if it's just being a pastor or being male. A lot of times we are encouraged and maybe even taught, to keep our stresses or problems to ourselves. Usually the reasoning given is very sound. It's like, Well, you don't want to put that on your wife, do you? Why burden her with something that she doesn't have to carry? What happens then is you end up carrying all of it. Sometimes when you carry burdens, you make decisions, you make choices that are not the wisest. But now where we are right now, first of all, we communicate a lot more now than we ever did before. As I shared with her some of the things that are going on or even something maybe that God is nudging me to pursue, when I share with her, I have a sense of relief because it is not my decision to make alone. Sulojana's in on it. I know that when... This is just from experience I've learned, when God says yes to my wife, it's like, Yes. It's a done deal. It's a no-brainer. Then I have a piece about it, rather than second-guessing myself, especially when something goes a little bit south, it's like, Oh, did I make the right choice?

Jeeva Sam

Now if something goes south, I say, Sulojana, that choice that we made, that is not really panning out all that well right now. She said, That's okay, let's pray into it. Let's see what God has to say. Do we pull out? Do we keep going? And so now I have a trusted advisor right in my home, in addition to the Holy Spirit. Again, the criteria is it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us in that order. When we both know that this is good to the Holy Spirit, and then we both have a piece about it, then there's nothing that can pull us apart. By the way, that's what the enemy wants to do. The enemy wants to pull you apart. The enemy wants you to take offense at each other because he knows you have just pulled yourself out of that covering, out of the place where you can receive the blessings of unity, out of the place where prayer can be answered because of agreement. He's having a field day laughing. One of the things that we always tell our couples is, Guys, never look at each other as the enemy.

Jeeva Sam

You have a common enemy, and when you start going at each other, fighting in the flesh, he's there clapping his hands in glee because that's exactly what he wanted to do. If you want him to keep on winning, go ahead, keep on fighting each other and duking it out. But remember, your spouse is not your enemy. But instead, if you join hands together, you all of a sudden, really you activate heaven to work on your behalf.

Steve K.

I love it. This is great. I boiled it down to three things that you just said before and after. One is the carrying of the burden, like a weight is lifted off of you by sharing with your wife decision making. I find that also. I find just giving my wife a 30,000 foot of... Not getting into the nuances and the details of what I'm doing, it unburdened me. It's not burdening her. She just wants to know what's going on, right? Two, the decisions you make are more sound, and that takes off a burden as well and brings great joy. Number three is that even if you make a mistake, it's not as grave as not telling your spouse what you were doing and then that's a mess. You lose trust. Basically, the weight is lifted off of you and you're walking in it together and you can deal with the consequences, both good and bad, of your decisions together. That's unbelievable. What do you say to a couple that wants to get married? When should they start talking about money? How should they talk about this? What should they do?

Jeeva Sam

Really, money to me, follows under the broad category of transparency. I'm still shocked how many couples come to us and say, Well, once I got married, I found out about all this debt and all these other deals and so on. I'm like, You guys didn't talk about this before you got married? No, everything was looking good. We had the car, we had the house, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes this is one of the problems with romantic love. It puts a haze in front of you. You don't always to look for what could be ugly. One of the things that we recommend, which that's one area where I actually at least did it, maybe not always well, is actually help the couples go through a deep assessment. We use something called the prepare and rich inventory. Some others use symbols. They're both really good inventories, which actually highlight your strengths and your growth areas. You can try and do this on your own, but I would advise you not to do it. I would advise you to work with somebody, whether it's a pastor, a marriage mentor, whoever has some specialized training in that area, to help you have those conversations about anything and everything.

Jeeva Sam

Because this is the biggest mistake we find people make, is they tend to overlook what should be looked over and look over what needs to be overlooked.

Steve K.

Yeah, sounds like that cloud in love phase. But the truth is at some point your spouse is going to find out. I remember before I got married, I wanted to double-check with my wife. I said, Look, I just want to make sure you know about me and what's going on. And I listed all my debt and all the... That I had. And she's like, Yeah, what's the problem? Carrying that as a secret is a burden you don't want to take, Frank. You do not want to do that. And I'll tell you there is... You bring things to the light and God's in there.

Steve K.

Keep it hidden. Satan gets to traffic in the darkness. You end up doing stupid things and trust. Trust, I think, is the most valuable thing in all this.

Jeeva Sam

For example, Steve, with finances, one of the things that we highly recommend is joint accounts that everything should be transparent. Now, some people still want to have separate accounts, but if that's something that suits your style, that's fine. But your spouse needs to have total access to every account, to every credit card. You know what? It's funny because for the longest time, Sulojana didn't have much interest in that. Then she said to me, You know what? I think I'd like to be able to access the accounts, and so on. Do you know how many times she has checked the accounts on her own? Probably three times in the last year since she has access to everything. It's not that she was suspecting that I was doing something shady or anything like that, but it's a principle we teach. We said, You know what? We need to follow this and make sure that everything is out the open. She doesn't do a lot of spending on her own. But oh, yeah, the other thing that we agreed also is the spending limit that we can do on our own without having to check with each other.

Jeeva Sam

That way, you never get in the situations where you bought what? How much did that cost? A lot of it has to do with communications and you really need to get your financial house in order in the sense of having a game plan of how are you going to handle money, how are you going to handle debts if you have some, what are you going to say? In most marriages, one person is a saver, the other one's a spender. We need to say, How are we going to handle these things? Now, you're not going to get everything figured out before you get married, but if you don't get a framework in place before you're married and you try and figure, Well, love will help us overcome.

Jeeva Sam

In financial matters, you will discover that love is not enough. You really need to have a game plan.

Steve K.

I agree. I'm teaching my children how to trade. And the first thing I tell them is you need to have a game plan. You need to have agreement. And that prevents a lot of arguments. That prevents a lot of fights and a lot of stress. And again, it goes back to your transparency and honesty. It has been such a privilege and honor speaking to you, Pastor Jeeva. Remember, folks, he's the author of The Unbreakable Marriage. Click the link below and check out the website, sams.ca. And he guarantees, him and Sulojana and his wife guarantee success breakthrough within 10 weeks. I don't know of any other ministry that does that. It's that good. Friends, don't let relationship stress mess up your success. Click the link below. Counseling has some weird stigma to it. It's bad. I think it's great. Are you kidding me? I love talking to someone like you. All this experience, knowledge, it's amazing. Friends, click the link. Don't hold it against him that he's from Toronto. Thank you so much, Pastor. Remember, power and unity, power and agreement and pray together and transparency and honesty is under all of that. Thank you so much.

Steve K.

God bless you.

Jeeva Sam

You're very welcome, Steve. Really enjoyed myself.