Foreclosure Notice in Hand, I Did This Instead
David Hunihan is the Chief Executive Officer of Lee Wetherington Homes, a state-licensed Florida Residential Contractor, and a Florida Real Estate Broker. Holding a Marketing degree from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, David brings over 35 years of high-level experience in corporate operations, strategic planning, and sales. Throughout his distinguished homebuilding career, he has driven explosive growth across public, private, production, and custom homebuilding sectors—including serving as President and later CEO of Lee Wetherington Homes, skyrocketing unit sales by 300% as Director of Sales for Neal Communities, and managing elite operations for regional powerhouses like Emerald Homes, M/I Homes, and the massive Aqua mixed-use development.
Beyond his extensive professional accolades as a Past President of the Suncoast Builders Association, David is a devoted family man, celebrating 34 years of marriage with his wife, Lauren, and raising three brilliant daughters: Shannon, Samantha, and Ainsley. A radical disciple of Jesus Christ, David balances his executive schedule by actively serving his local church and contributing to the boards of transformational discipling organizations, including CityCommit, Rough Cut Men, The Change Factory, and Tri-County Air.
The Crash Over the Target — Finding Christ in the Rubble of Ruin
Every builder understands the structural devastation when a foundation crumbles. But what happens when the foundation of your lifework collapses beneath you?
In June of 2000, David Hunihan took a radical leap of faith. Fresh off a highly successful tenure where he helped scale Lee Wetherington Homes from $12 million to over $50 million in annual volume, he stepped away to align his life with a profound spiritual conviction: reading the Bible cover to cover. Alongside a brother from his small men's group, David founded Fidelity Homes—a custom building company purposefully named to embody biblical integrity, client honor, and marketplace excellence. It was an enterprise explicitly dedicated to the Lord.
Yet, dedicating a business to God does not provide an exemption from worldly storms. In 2008, the catastrophic hammer of the Great Recession fell. Because Fidelity Homes continually reinvested its capital into land acquisitions and model homes, the sudden freeze in consumer sales wiped out their cash reserves. Within months, the business collapsed under a staggering, suffocating liability of $14 million.
"We were still a small company. Almost all of our profits kept getting reinvested into land purchases and models... when the market turned, we didn’t have the cash reserves to continue without sales... We owed $14 million at one point."
Fourteen million dollars. It is a metric that suffocates the human soul—an absolute mathematical impossibility of escape. David found himself in a paralyzing corporate paradox: he carried too much personal liability to declare standard bankruptcy, yet earned too much current income to seek liquidation. The doors closed. The dream shattered.
If you are standing in the wreckage of your own financial or professional storm today, look closely at the rubble. It was precisely in this abyss of failure that David experienced a terrifying, beautiful reality: Christ was closer than He had ever been before. When the market devalued everything David had built, it illuminated the one asset that could never be deflated. The enemy sought to use the debt to paralyze him, but as David's friend often noted, encountering severe spiritual warfare simply means you are over the target. When you step out for the King, the storm will rage—but the Storm-Giver is sleeping right there in your boat.
The Radical Anatomy of Contentment — Living by the Hand of Jehovah Jireh
What does daily life look like when you owe millions to financial institutions and have signed away your hard-earned corporate assets? It looks like a daily, active surrender to Jehovah Jireh—the Lord Our Provider.
Following a structural statutory liquidation, David and Lauren began a grueling, humbling 12-year climb out of debt. The world screams that your identity is tied to your net worth, your luxury lifestyle, and your pristine balance sheet. But God uses financial famines to reshape our internal architecture.
The Hunihan family embraced a radical shift, learning to discover God’s abundance in places the world mocks. David recalls adjusting from executive dining to buying groceries at the local dollar store, watching his wife elegantly source their daughters’ clothes from consignment shops and Goodwill centers.
"What was amazing through all that is God never left our side. We never missed a meal... our kids never went without clothes... He has satisfied all our needs according to his riches and glory through Christ Jesus."
This is the raw execution of Philippians 4:11-13. David learned the divine art of being entirely content in all circumstances—whether designing multi-million dollar master-planned communities or evaluating a dollar-store grocery receipt. Christ became their literal bread. Through the application of practical, disciplined financial stewardship alongside Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover principles, they faced their debt snowball not with human panic, but with supernatural peace.
Are you waiting for your circumstances to change before you give God praise? True spiritual maturity occurs when you look at a depleted bank account and declare, "My God shall supply all my needs." He does not promise to supply our greed, but He is completely bound by His holy character to sustain His children.
The Jericho Walk — Walking Down Foreclosure and Demanding Miracles
Just as David secured a new role to tread water and begin paying off creditors, the mailbox delivered a terrifying blow: a formal foreclosure notice on their family home. The enemy wanted a total eviction of peace. But David remembered an eternal truth: God gave them that house, and a secular bank did not possess the final authority to steal what God had consecrated.
Instead of surrendering to panic, David initiated a holy war. For 30 consecutive days, he physically marched around the exterior of his home, crying out to heaven like Joshua circling the walls of Jericho. He brought his tithes, his promises, and his anxieties before the altar, reminding God of His covenant faithfulness.
The response was an absolute, undisputed miracle. In 2010, an era where banking institutions were notoriously unyielding and ruthless, the bank extended an impossible proposal: if David made his restructured payments consistently for three years, the bank would entirely forgive all past debt, interest, and penalties.
"That was a God thing. A bank back in 2010 wasn’t doing that... Because we tried to be faithful and live according to His word and His promises, He met us where we were and then did the miraculous."
Exactly 12 years later, that same house—the one slated for foreclosure—was paid off to the penny. David’s three daughters not only witnessed this generational miracle, but all three graduated from Christian universities completely free of student debt. God didn't just help them survive; He restored every single crop the locusts had consumed. When you anchor your hope in Christ, your walls don't crush you; they fall flat by the power of His voice.
The Kingdom Executive — CEO Leadership as a Discipleship Ministry
In June of 2021, David returned to Lee Wetherington Homes as its Chief Executive Officer, completing a beautiful professional circle. Having previously served as President, he returned to executive leadership as a deeply transformed operator. To David, a corporate title is not an instrument of self-glorification; it is a profound pastoral stewardship.
David’s corporate methodology rejects the standard, dogmatic division between the sacred and the secular. Through his alignment with the C12 Group (a prominent network of Christian CEOs and executives), he operates under a foundational blueprint: It is God's business, and it is my ministry.
His leadership style is defined by deep humility and a fierce protection of his team. When his previous business was collapsing, David refused to take an income for two years, prioritizing the employment placement of his team and ensuring every single trade vendor, supplier, and sub-contractor was paid in full.
"I have a theory that all sin is pride. Pride's really the only sin because every other sin is based upon either you put yourself before God or you put yourself before other people."
True kingdom leadership requires laying your ego on the altar daily. David actively pours his life into discipling men through organizations like CityCommit and Rough Cut Men, building "fire teams" of leaders who protect one another's marriages and spirits. He models a lifestyle that honors the Sabbath, understanding that a leader who cannot rest is a leader who does not truly trust God's sovereignty. He builds luxury homes with earthly wood and stone, but he builds his corporate culture for eternity.
Evaporating the Spirit of Fear — The Ultimate Leverage of the Soul
We live in a volatile, debt-driven global economy that breeds systemic anxiety. The news media conditions us to live in a perpetual state of financial panic, whispering that a market crash or an inflationary spike will destroy our lives. But David Hunihan’s 35-year journey has culminated in an extraordinary spiritual inheritance: the total eviction of fear from his mind.
David highlights a profound diagnostic truth: fear is not merely an emotion; it is an active spirit. As 2 Timothy 1:7 declares, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. David recalls a beautiful moment when his youngest daughter was getting married. He desired to build a new pool to bless her rehearsal dinner and support his wife's health, yet the ghost of his past financial trauma flared up, using the "fear of debt" to paralyze his decision-making.
"Fear was stopping me from doing the pool because I knew I would have to borrow money... If you don't do something because of fear, or if you do something because of fear, both are wrong because it's a spirit."
David brought the anxiety directly to Jesus, processed it in alignment with wise stewardship, built the pool, and watched God effortlessly provide the funds to wipe the balance clean within two years.
Your life is meant to be a tree planted by rivers of living water. The hurricanes of this life will come, the financial droughts will set in, and the winds will howl. But do not curse the drought, and do not panic in the wind. God utilizes the storms to drive your spiritual roots deeper into His unshakeable grace. Step out of your comfort zone, refuse to let anxiety dictate your corporate or personal legacy, and anchor your hope immovably in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is faithful to deliver, faithful to provide, and faithful to bring you safely to the other side of the sea..
Author: Jovilyn Abella
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“I have a theory that all sin is pride. Pride’s really the only sin because every other sin is based upon either you put yourself before God or you put yourself before other people.”
