What then, if what you believe to be your calling, feels like a dead end and you may have to close its doors?
I called a friend, she asked how I was doing. I answered, “I felt like it’s the death of me.” I went on and on and on to explain all the things that went wrong that week. She responded, “Maybe it’s death in the parts that need to die anyway.”
Indeed, it is the pruning season. If there is any part of me that lifts its head against the provision of the Lord on what He does in and through my business, that part of me should die.
2020 has been the hardest year for me as an entrepreneur (Entrepreneurship is so over-glorified). There is the reality of limited runway, operations hurdle, and people problems. I never thought how taxing it is emotionally, spiritually, and physically. On days when fear grips and discouragement sets in, the Enemy implants lies and distort fear out of proportion to make me feel incapable.
Has it been that I lost my sight of Jesus? That when I began to drift away from his Presence, the yoke becomes hard and the burden heavy? Was it a mistake to think this is the call God has for me?
Here are the lies the Enemy has planted in my entrepreneurial journey:
My worth is in the output of what I do or I am not the right person to do this.
I was struggling with my faith. It was a calling I believe God gave. yet I wrestled with my worth at the thought of the business struggling I thought, “How could He? Isn’t this His calling for me?”
Social entrepreneurship has become what others know of what I do. And I took pride in it. I had put more premium on it more than my identity as “a sinner saved by the Grace of God”. I had become so close-fisted in the gift God has given.
I had fallen in love with the building, and forgotten the Builder.
Would I be able to say, I’ll be okay apart from the performance of my enterprise? Do I believe I am God’s children first and foremost and the Father’s heart towards me will never change nor falters on my output? This is the truth I need to remember: He has placed me here so others may say, “Look at the amazing thing the Lord has done”.
If there is anything you and I can boast about is that God qualifies the call. Knowing the business is a gift, you can trust in God’s perfect plan that you are where you need to be in the here and now. Yet you can never make it without God, to where He will take you.
2. If I do the right “faith” things, God will give me success in the business
Early in my faith, I was introduced to the preaching of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, now deemed “Prosperity Gospel Preachers”. As I mature in my faith, I started seeing the falsity in the belief: ‘If you do right in your faith, trusting God and praying right, God will “reward” you financially.’
God is not a genie in a bottle. Following Jesus does not make us immune to making business mistakes. He is also not the path to self-improvement—to grow wise as King David did or to learn about servant leadership from Jesus. No, he is not just a teacher. There is no secret formula that when we do right, God will reward us with worldly success.
When we follow God, we too are not immune from mistakes. What he did say is “Honor me and I will honor you.” When we follow the Father’s rule, we will be blessed and will excel, but not always what can be measured monetarily. It may be that because you honor God, God continues to expand your vision, enabling you to reach more people for His sake.
Through entrepreneurship, I deeply enjoy all the creative thinking and fast-paced less-structured work startup allows. However, when I am discouraged, the blame game and wishful thinking start, “Poor me, if only I didn’t have to run a startup but could sit comfortably not having to work, I wouldn’t have to stress so much.”
I asked my friend who is running a startup that acts as a subsidiary to her family business, “If your business fails, do you feel secure knowing you have a safety net with your parents’ business?” She answered, “If my parents have to rely on God as they lead their business, I too have to rely on God more than I do my parents. My parents are not the sandbox. God is the sandbox.”
If I put my hope in my parents, or money or power, those are false securities.
3. The business depends on me and I don’t need God
Working with people who needed intense emotional care most times, I was drained very quickly. When I tried to be strong on my own, work tasted bitter and joyless. Thinking everything depends on me, the way I had carried my lot, ended up crushing me.
Many times, when we have too much to do and the work becomes a little more hectic, we lose sight of our spiritual calling. We need to come again and again to the Lord and beseech Him: “Appear to me again and again and speak to me again and again!” We need the continuous seeing, an eternal seeing; we need to see God’s goal and what God is going.
if we do not live continuously in God’s appearing, it will be easy for us to lose the vision of our calling.
Listen to Jesus’s invitation to draw near and seek HIs wisdom. The Lord speaks to us, again and again, to ensure that we know what He wants to do. Thus we need to appear before God again and again.
I don’t always follow Jesus in my entrepreneurial journey. Thank God for His forgiveness. I take encouragement from our God of second chances from the story of our faith father, Abraham. Was Abraham’s faith great from the beginning? No. Abraham only obeyed partially at first. So God had to call him twice. When God called him to go alone and leave his country. He left his country. But brought his father’s household and Lot. Abraham was also called to go to Canaan yet he stopped halfway at Haran and dwelt there. He did not understand why he had to pay such a great price.
This may also be true of us. Because we do not know God’s mind and think we have to pay such a high price, we ask, “Why does God treat me this way? Why doesn’t he treat me like that person?”
God starts from reality. Not what was. or what isn't. We must not say, “Other can do this and that. Why can’t I do the same? We have to remember that God trains every person in a special way because He wants to use that person in a special way. It is most foolish to resist God’s hand or to ask why God does this or that. We do not know how God may use us. God wants to make us a vessel of honor; there will be the purifying and the sanctification. We have to remember that with an expensive vessel, comes an expensive price.
If you are discouraged, like Abraham, never stop walking. Keep walking with the eyes of faith, going where God leads.
“It’s not my business. What am I worried about?” said Paul Saber, owner of multiple McDonalds and Panera restaurants. There is no need to use fleshly methods to hold on to God’s promised land of Canaan.
Our vindication comes from the Lord; it doesn’t come from us holding on to fleshly means. We have to come to trust God and bear the cross. May the Lord be merciful to us and deliver us from our own hands and our own ways.
Dear God,
Whether you give or take away, blessed be Your name. Give me the eyes of faith to hope again. To hope in a person, the Risen Jesus. To hope that You know best. I’ll wait for Your rescue alone—as you always have been in the past, today, and the same tomorrow. And even if what others may seem like a waste of time and energy in this laboring, I trust this will serve the purpose for what this season holds.
X,
Tamara
