"Categorizing Your Adversity"| Episode #83 | Builder of All Things | Author’s Cut: Chapter Six w/ Richie Breaux

Welcome to the Builder of All Things Podcast—where we go beyond the pages of the book and explore into the Author’s Cut! 🔥 Join Richie Breaux and Ray Bisnar as they break down each chapter in micro-episodes, giving you the behind-the-scenes insights, deeper wisdom, and real-life applications—just like a Director’s Cut for a book. 

In this episode, “Categorizing Your Adversity,” we enter the turning point — the moment the groundwork meets the real-life application. After laying the foundation of stewardship and ownership, we now step into the heart of the battle: how to discern the adversity you're facing — and respond accordingly.

🌬️ Not all adversity is the same. Some storms are out of your control. Others come wrapped in deception. And some? They’re smoke signals from a fire we started ourselves.

💡 In this conversation, we unpack:
* The three categories of adversity: The Storm, The Snake, and The Smoke
* Why your response to hardship must match the type of adversity you’re in
* How to recognize when you’re dealing with something God-allowed vs. self-inflicted
* What spiritual discernment looks like in business, marriage, leadership, and life
* Why categorizing your adversity brings clarity, strategy, and peace — even in chaos

📖 “God allows storms.” That shift alone changes everything. When we stop resisting what’s out of our hands and start leaning into God's sovereignty, we move from control to trust — and that’s where wisdom flows.

🤍 Whether you're navigating a personal storm, discerning hidden motives, or confronting your own decisions — this episode gives you a framework to face it all with courage and clarity.

👇 Drop a comment: Which category do you feel you’re facing right now — storm, snake, or smoke?

#CategorizingAdversity #TheStorm #Stewardship #ChristianLeadership #FaithInHardship #Discernment #SpiritualGrowth #TrustGod #StormSnakeSmoke #KingdomMindset #PurposeInPain #HeartWork #GodAllowed #FaithOverFear

Chapters

• 0:00 Perspective Shift in Stewardship
• 1:39 Categorizing Different Types of Adversity
• 4:21 The Storm: Uncontrollable Challenges
• 5:47 The Snake and Smoke Introduced
• 7:22 God-Allowed Storms and Our Response

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:18

it's getting really good at this point, um and so, if you want to kind of bring us into the about the storm and what's happening here, yeah, this is, um, really the meat of the book and I say that to say the rest, chapter one, all the way building up to chapter five, when we're in chapter six. Here was basically the perspective shift. Now we're jumping into, if you have the perspective shift and understanding it and shifting your mind to understand what we're talking about in the other chapters, which is that builder of all things is the owner. We operate as stewards and when you capture that stewardship, you start opening the door of your almost like what you, your belief system transfers from yourself to a higher power, right into God himself, and that allows your heart, the soil of your heart, to be more acceptable to what God's trying to do.

Speaker 2: 1:22

It's kind of like becomes your soils, ready for the seed and fruit for God to work in your life. And so we wanted to really establish when I say we just people, I've talked to the experiences I've had, me and my wife, when I was writing the book. I wanted to really establish that first. But in preparation for this part, which I call battling adversity, is really the meat of the book, because people, businesses, pastors, parents that's a lot of Ps we battle adversity every day. You can't ignore them and what I've experienced I've done it, I see people do it we want to categorize our adversity and call it a storm. Naturally, hey man, I'm going through a storm.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Sure.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Yeah, and I've heard that a lot was able to really pinpoint this and then also now paying attention to life is that, depending on what kind of adversity you're in, is based on how you'll respond to it. So you, you can't respond to each adversity the same, and so I wanted to take and really look at a storm. You know through my experiences I shared the book just growing up in the, the Midwest, and the type of storms we would get. Man, we got those Wizard of Oz storms. You know like we get tornadoes. I remember when I left to come here to the islands that you know there's this town called Washington, right outside, I mean 10 minutes from my city, got wiped out with one of the greatest tornadoes in the Midwest in a very long time, very historic. Some of my friends' homes, it was all over the national news and the storms there are just crazy, you know.

Speaker 2: 3:12

But looking at a storm man and I referenced that to like the adversities I go through in business, through life, through marriage, through friendships there's all these different challenges. Like storms, they come a lot of times when you don't expect them and they're typically out of your control. They're not something that's caused by your decisions, by people you don't have. I mean, people are saying that the government's creating these storms, sure, but in reality God is allowing them. It's how the earth operates. They're going to come, they're going to go. You got to be just naturally ready and prepared. And however hits, if it. One of my favorite movies is twister. You know the old twister, the new one was pretty good too. But just uh, you know, they come in all different forms and your job is to survive it. That's right, that's all there is to it. But the battles and adversities we face in life, I don't think it's wise to categorize it always as a storm.

Speaker 2: 4:16

So, in where we're going in this book, the next three chapters are vital on categorizing and discerning what adversity are we in? So I broke those out in three categories, three pillars, which I call the storm, snake and the smoke, and so this chapter, specifically, is those adversities that are out of your control, like a storm. So to set this, you know, podcast up, to set the chapter up, and this, this next three chapters, was being able to discern and categorize it first. So what's good? So you know how to respond to it correctly, right, how to respond to it practically, how to respond to it spiritually, even spiritually. There's a different way to respond to, however, the adversity is right, and so, just to set the stage for this chapter um, that's what this meat we're getting into is like okay, the any adversity you're facing in life or business, this applies, you know, to look at it and say, okay, which category is it which?

Speaker 2: 5:21

Which one is it? Are we talking about something that's out of my control? Um, or you, the snake which I reference as that's, uh, the deceiver, the liar? I mean, we hear the word snake, and that's why I use it is because we think of, like, you know the enemy, the devil, you know the snake in the Bible, and so when you meet somebody who's kind of like a deceiving type, oh, he's snake-ish, you know, he's kind of snake-ish.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Normally it's a people. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:48

Normally it is a person who, when you know you discern we'll talk about that in the next podcast. But you know, when somebody is after attacking your character or coming at you, you know in a snakeish way, we'll call it right now. And then the last one is the smoke is when you it's self-inflicted adversity, when you really can look in the mirror and say did I start this fire? You know, kind of deal. So on the smoke, we'll talk about that. But, very important, I have even in the book I have this kind of like interlude that describes everything I just shared to set the tone for the next three chapters. So when you're going into the storm, I want you to embrace categorizing it like of its own adversity, you to embrace categorizing it like of its own adversity so you understand how to respond it, because you cannot respond, or I would advise you to respond to the snake like you would a storm I wouldn't advise for you to respond to the smoke like you would, a storm and these adversities.

Speaker 2: 6:46

So that's just to set the stage of the interlude, you know, and interlude this podcast, before we start talking about the storm, of where we're headed. This is the challenges of life, these are the tornadoes, these are the, the big rain storms that are trying to take you out, trying to make it so you know the things that are out of your control so you would say that the storm is normally something that's out of your control, out out of your hands, something you can't really control.

Speaker 1: 7:15

I mean, you have no control over this thing.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Yeah, good example. I'm in residential construction. I own a residential construction company. We rely heavily on putting together architectural plans, submitting them to the city and county and getting permit approvals. Permit approval usually three to six months, but when that delay kicks out to like two years, and that's to me a storm being created. There's different levels of the storms that we'll talk about, but to me that's out of my control. There are certain things I could try to help control that, but there's just a point where you're like man, there's nothing I can do to change the situation. And what's unique about the storm is it's God-allowed. God allows storms. That's the foundational part of the approach to a storm is understanding that if God allowed it, that's a great foundation to start. It's in his control and that's the hard part. As a human, we want great foundation to start Like it's in his control and that's the hard part. As a human, we want to control everything. But when it's out of your control, whose control is it in? Bye.