When God Becomes Your Oxygen

Daniel Gomez on Faith, Healing, Obedience, and the Story God Was Writing All Along

Long before Daniel Gomez built a million-dollar business, before the books, speaking stages, coaching clients, and publishing company, he stood outside a hospital with no idea what to do next.

He was 26 years old.

His father had cancer, and doctors had given him approximately one month to live.

Daniel didn’t have a polished faith testimony. He was angry, overwhelmed, and drinking heavily as he wrestled with a God he wasn’t sure he knew.

Then he walked out of the hospital and made a promise.

“God, I believe in a God. I don’t know You. But if You help my dad, I’ll serve You the rest of my life.”

Daniel remembers waking up the next morning feeling completely different.

“I woke up the next morning sober, like nothing happened. I was saved.”

His father’s diagnosis didn’t disappear. But one month became a year.

That year gave Daniel time to be with his father, watch him change, and see him come to faith before he died.

“It allowed me to understand that God hears my prayers because my dad lived for a whole year instead of just a month.”

It also taught Daniel something he still believes deeply today: people can change.

He rejects the familiar saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Yeah, you can. That’s how my dad changed.”

Years later, Daniel would once again find himself face-to-face with cancer.

This time, the call came from his wife.

When Life Gets Your Attention

It was September 2017, his wife’s birthday month.

Daniel was at work when the phone rang. On the other end, his wife was crying so hard he could barely understand her.

“All I heard was hysterical words, hysterical crying, and I finally said, ‘Slow down.’ And then the two words that really came out were breast cancer.”

She had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

Daniel describes what happened next in a way that initially sounds almost impossible.

“In that moment, our life changed for the better.”

He is quick to clarify that no one would ever ask for a spouse to receive a cancer diagnosis. But looking back, Daniel sees that crisis as the beginning of a transformation neither of them could have predicted.

At the time, Daniel already understood business. He had worked in the automotive industry and had run a Chevrolet store. He knew leadership, sales, responsibility, and performance.

What came next looked nothing like the career he already understood.

As his wife endured three major surgeries, Daniel began looking inward.

“I found personal development. I needed healing.”

Then came the moment that redirected everything.

Daniel was in the bathroom preparing to look for another job. Finding work and restoring income seemed like the obvious next step.

Instead, he started crying.

And he says the Holy Spirit spoke.

“You’re done. I want you to be a motivational speaker and go speak to the world.”

Daniel was 44 years old.

He had no established speaking career, no road map, and no guarantee that any of it would work.

His wife later admitted she thought he had lost his mind.

“She thought, ‘I just had three major surgeries, no one’s working, and you want to be a what? Motivational speaker?’”

Daniel believed the call anyway.

Nine years later, he says that obedience has grown into a million-dollar business. His wife is breast-cancer free, and what began with speaking expanded into coaching, publishing, and developing other speakers.

Success Didn’t End the Inner Work

Daniel soon learned that speakers needed books.

He didn’t particularly want to write one.

He did it anyway.

As he began writing, another battle surfaced.

“I learned what imposter syndrome was because I was going through it.”

By 2019, Daniel was speaking at one of the biggest engagements of his career, sharing a California stage with highly accomplished entrepreneurs and speakers.

From the outside, it looked like arrival.

Inside, self-doubt was getting louder.

Daniel describes that season as the old version of himself beginning to die while another version emerged.

Then COVID arrived.

For many speakers, stages disappeared. For Daniel, that disruption became another unexpected opening. He launched StickerShock Speaking Academy, and publishing followed when a persistent client became convinced Daniel and his team were supposed to help her with her book.

Today, his work includes StickerShock Speaking Academy, DGE Book Publishing, and business coaching.

But somewhere along the way, Daniel discovered that business problems are not always only business problems.

“A lot of times in business, it’s the spiritual aspect that needs healing, and most business owners don’t realize that.”

That truth became increasingly personal.

The Season on the Shelf

Even with visible success, Daniel sensed there were other levels he had not reached.

“I always felt like there’s other levels. Why have I been stuck on this for the last three or four years?”

He compares the season to wine.

The grapes are pressed. The wine is bottled. Then it is placed on a shelf to mature.

Nobody enjoys the shelf.

But Daniel began to believe God wasn’t overlooking him.

God was preparing him.

“God finally answered and said, ‘Now you’re ready.’”

For Daniel, being ready meant more than better strategy.

It meant deeper healing.

He spoke candidly about childhood trauma, and the anger he had carried from it. This past summer became what he describes as a character-building season—one filled with prayer, healing, rest, and confronting things that had remained buried for years.

Something began changing.

Daniel noticed more peace and less striving.

“I feel different. I’m more receiving instead of trying to strive.”

And that change has affected more than his business.

“Becoming a better man has made me, first of all, a better husband, better father, and it’s making me a better leader.”

That may be one of the most important lessons in Daniel’s story.

Sometimes the next level of leadership begins with allowing God to work on the leader.

“God Is Your Oxygen”

Ask Daniel how he lives out his faith daily, and his answer begins with dependence.

“I need God.”

He compares leadership to climbing the Rocky Mountains.

The higher you go, the thinner the air becomes.

“There comes a point where you stop breathing for yourself and you need God to breathe for you, and God is your oxygen.”

For Daniel, time with God looks different from day to day.

Sometimes it is prayer.

Sometimes Scripture.

Sometimes worship.

Sometimes simply sitting still and listening.

Years ago, Daniel told his wife he didn’t hear from God anymore.

Her answer stayed with him.

“Well, how do you expect to hear from God if you don’t spend time with Him?”

Today, when people ask Daniel why he believes he hears from God so often, his answer is simple.

“Because I spend time with Him every day. Because God does speak. People just don’t take time to listen.”

He compares prayer to a conversation. If one person does all the talking, there is no room to hear what the other person has to say.

For Daniel, faith has become less about constantly asking God to do something and more about making space to ask:

God, what do You have to say?

Never Become More Impressed With the Harvest

That relationship also shapes how Daniel handles money and resources.

“I’m a big believer of giving a dime for every dollar you earn.”

Generosity, for him, doesn’t end there. If he believes God is prompting him to help someone or sow into something, he tries to respond.

“Delayed obedience is disobedience.”

Daniel doesn’t believe having nice things is the problem.

“He doesn’t care that you have nice things, just so long as those nice things don’t have you.”

That principle became especially meaningful in the days before our conversation.

Daniel and his wife had been trying to sell their lake house for more than a year.

Then it sold.

They closed on it on their 30th wedding anniversary.

Soon afterward, after an unexpected stop at a Chevrolet dealership, they purchased a new vehicle that dramatically lowered their monthly payment.

Daniel saw the season as one of unexpected blessing.

Then, at 12:05 one morning, he woke up with a warning he couldn’t shake.

“Don’t allow the harvest to get bigger than the One who gave you the harvest.”

Then he said it another way:

“Never become more impressed with the harvest than with the God who provided it.”

For Daniel, that is the danger of success.

The harvest can become more exciting than the Source.

He connects the warning to King Saul and to what happens when a leader begins taking glory that belongs to God.

Daniel has big dreams.

But he wants those dreams to remain beneath something bigger:

God’s glory.

What Christian Business Leaders Need to Remember

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Daniel what he would tell other Christian business leaders.

He didn’t hesitate.

“The spiritual realm trumps your intellect.”

Daniel believes leaders need wisdom, strategy, skills, and sound business decisions.

But he also believes none of those things compensate for a spiritual life that is being ignored.

“You can have all the business wisdom you want. You can have all the business skill set, strategy, the right property. But if the spiritual aspect isn’t right, you’re not gonna be as successful as you should be.”

He offered a simple picture.

Imagine God has a gallon of wisdom and blessing He wants to pour into your life.

But your capacity is only a 20-ounce container—and much of that container is already occupied by anger, shame, guilt, and unforgiveness.

There isn’t room.

Daniel’s challenge is not simply to ask God for more.

It is to allow God to deal with what is already taking up the space.

Because Daniel knows what it is to build while still healing.

He knows what it is to stand on significant stages and still battle insecurity.

He knows what it is to experience success while wondering why another level hasn’t opened.

And he knows what it feels like to finally allow God to work not only on the business, but on Daniel.

Unlock Your Million-Dollar Story

Daniel’s company now uses a simple phrase to describe its mission:

Unlock your million-dollar story.

Through publishing, speaking development, and business coaching, Daniel helps people identify the story they carry and learn how to share it.

“Everybody has a million-dollar story inside of them. They just don’t know how to get it out and how to share it.”

Daniel’s own story makes the point.

A 26-year-old promising a God he barely knew that he would serve Him.

A son watching his father live far beyond the time doctors expected—and come to faith before he died.

A Chevrolet dealership leader whose career would eventually take an unexpected turn.

A husband receiving another devastating cancer call.

A 44-year-old standing in a bathroom crying, preparing to find another job, and instead hearing a call to speak to the world.

A speaker confronting imposter syndrome.

A business owner building something he never originally planned.

And a leader who discovered that sometimes God must heal the person carrying the vision before He expands the vision itself.

Today, after the stages, the books, the business growth, and the battles, Daniel’s message may be simplest when he describes what happens as a leader climbs higher: