God and Business
Has God’s plan for us changed from his model of dependency on Him? Have you tried running your business on your own without Him?
Are you like me and others who think we don’t need God in our business or what does God know about running a business.
For those of you like me who have tried to lead your business life depending on Him, you have learned this can be very difficult. There is a temptation to move ahead of God when the circumstances of life seemingly force you into making a decision. Sometimes it is hard to completely follow God because He is leading us down a path that conflicts with our idea of success. Sometimes it seems that He changes the way things are done just so we don’t begin to trust in principles over following Him. Sometimes it seems He just wants us to look foolish or incompetent.
God’s Goal for Our Lives
God’s goal for our lives is not so much for outward success, as much as it is for intimacy with you. (Please don’t read into that statement to understand that God doesn’t want you to be successful. I believe He does. But, more importantly He wants to have a relationship of intimacy with you.) This creates confusion for most Christian business people. We want to glorify God with our work and our lives, and we assume that we will bring Him the most glory by being the best at what we are doing. What we tend to forget is that successful people in this world don’t usually bring God glory. We bring God the most glory when we enjoy Him in whatever circumstance we are experiencing. We bring Glory to God by including Him in all that we do.
There is a tendency as Christian business men and women to spend time in prayer to get answers. The pressures of our work intimidate us to seek God for answers instead of seeking God for the sole purpose of spending time with Him. We treat Him more as our genie instead of our friend. And so, God seems silent because our goals are different than His. Since we find God silent, we don’t get the necessary word from Him and believe His place in business is only in good Christian behavior. We need to ask God to lead and we follow, rather than asking God to make our plans succeed.
One Missing Part of Most Christian Businesses
God wants all of life to be in partnership with Him. Every circumstance in life is an opportunity to experience more of His love and care for us. God wants us to be as one with Him as He is with the rest of the Godhead. He wants us to go about our work with our hearts and our minds connected with Him. He may ask us to do things that we think are crazy. He may ask us to make seemingly the wrong choices. We may appear to fail, but if our ultimate goal is to experience more of Jesus in the process, there is no limit to how successful we can become. How do you define success? God’s definition may be totally different.
