Your Business As Ministry- Building the wall

Over a year ago "The Big Guy" told me to "start building the wall". By "Big Guy", I mean "the man upstairs", you know...God. I had been praying for years that he would show me my ministry. Every morning when I got up, I would pray and read His word, and in my prayers I would pray for the ministry that He had for me, and pray for His anointing. I had been praying this for so long that I did so almost automatically. So it came as a great surprise to me, one Sunday morning when I was in the shower getting ready for church, that he answered my prayer, just like that. In a blink of an eye he gave me a full view of my future ministry, and it wasn't what I thought it would be. I wouldn't have to sell everything, move to some remote corner of the world, and live in a primitive native hut! Hooray! What a relief. That just wasn't for me. He showed me that a business would be the vehicle for my ministry. Although now that I have been pursuing the mission he planted in my heart, I think that living in a hut might have been easier, and less stressful.

Its a wonder I did not see it beforehand, having been the owner of a business or self-employed for most of my adult life. I had just never viewed a business as being a ministry. My life plan was to run a successful business and save enough money to retire early with enough money to support a ministry for the remainder of my days. I realized that I had been allowing the world to program me into believing that Church and Business were to remain separate. Business was what you did during the week, and Church was what you did on your free time and Sundays. I never thought that I could contribute to the Kingdom as a businessperson other than through tithing. As I examined the mission God planted in my heart and prayed for confirmation, I thought, "if I felt this way how many others were out there that felt the same"? I imagined the impact on the business world, of thousands of business owners sold out for Jesus. As business owners, our "congregations" may be there 5 days/week, 8 hours/day. That's 40 or more hours a week that we can be living models of Christ to our employees. An opportunity any Pastor would be enviable of. How many lives could be touched? Changed? But, preaching the Word at work is not just a walk in the park. It brings its own set of challenges and difficulties.

God had told me "start building the wall". I didn't know what that meant at first. So I asked Him for further guidance, and confirmation. I wanted to make sure this vision was from Him. While praying I clearly heard "Nehemiah". I immediately turned to it in my Bible. I had read Nehemiah a few times but all I remembered was that he had rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem, and he and Ezra were contemporaries. Over the next few days I read Nehemiah and prayed for discernment about the meaning of the passage. Why had I been led to read this? I felt that Nehemiah was to be a blueprint for the start-up of the business. Through prayer, God gave me further confirmation. I received a 3 page insightful explanation, linking Nehemiah's project to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, with my God given mission to start up a Kingdom-minded business for the Lord. Reading over it today, I am amazed by how on-point it has been, and I receive new insight on problems I am just now encountering. God is amazing! The more I nurture the seedling of the idea he planted that morning, the more I realize how much grander his dreams are than mine. I see how he has tailored this mission perfectly to suit me. How perfectly he weaves people, places, and moments in time to fit together like rotating cogs. Perfectly designed machinery, comprised of many pieces working in unison, and in many dimensions, to accomplish his perfect will.

January 25, 2009