Todd Chrisley admitted that he previously "fell short" of God’s expectations and had become a "slave" to money and trying to succeed financially.
"God has literally taken me to a place where I have so much peace with no longer worrying about trying to please – or trying to meet the expectation of someone else," the "Chrisley Knows Best" reality star said on the most recent episode of his podcast "Chrisley Confessions" with his wife Julie last Friday. "The expectation I long to meet is of God. God expects me to be a good, decent, honorable human being. He expects me to honor his word, he expects me to be the leader of my household, he expects me to set an example for my wife, my children, to lead by example."
He said he had always tried to do that, "but where I fell short in doing that is that I really didn’t give glory to God in all of the things we were accomplishing because I felt like I was the one doing the work. I was the one getting up every day, I was the one staying up late at night not thinking that God was the one giving me the energy to be able to do that."
He said he has now "surrendered" all of that to God after he "got lost" when he couldn’t "tell the difference between my self-worth and my net worth. And the bigger my net worth became the less I focused on my self-worth. Because everything was being built around that net worth."
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Todd and Julie Chrisley were convicted in June of bank fraud and tax evasion and could face prison time. They will be sentenced in October.
"When the stuff starts owning you versus you owning it," he said, "you know you have all these cars that you’ve got to maintain and all these houses that you have to maintain and these trips that you have to do in order to keep up with everyone that’s around you that’s in your social network, you know you become a slave to the things that you thought were going to bring you peace."
He said he no longer feels like he has to be better than everyone else because he finally realized he wasn’t competing with everyone else, "I was competing with me."
TODD AND JULIE CHRISLEY TOLD THEIR SON GRAYSON, 16, TO GUARD HIS 'TENDER HEART’ AMID LEGAL TROUBLES
He said that he and his wife have a "lot of heartache in our life but we also have a lot of light. We have a lot of promise." Along with their legal woes, he said his mother and Julie’s parents are having serious health issues.
Chrisley added that it’s important to "never give up hope. When you lose hope that’s when you’ve got to really know you’ve hit bottom. Because without hope, where do you go?"
Julie Chrisley said that what gives her hope is knowing the "storm that we’re going through right now eventually it’s going to end … exactly the way that God intends for it."
Both agreed their struggles have made their marriage stronger. "I feel like that my marriage, for me personally, internally, is the strongest that it's ever been," Todd said. "I feel like for the first time in my life and my marriage, I feel like my marriage is feeding a part of me that I didn't even know was starving."
"You and I have been a team since day one," Julie agreed. "I think for both of us, this situation, our season of life right now has shown us it's not about what our plan is, it's about what God's plan is."
