The 4 cornerstones
Doing business God’s way includes four cornerstones that will help you move into the light of universal laws, which must happen before we begin the entrepreneurial work of creating a business or expanding an established business.
1. Use the Bible as a learning tool
The first cornerstone is the utilization of the Bible as the learning tool for God’s principles to create, expand and maintain any business on this Earth. With the Bible, we acquire the natural power within us to develop the bright light God gives us into success, prosperity and love.
As God reveals in detail His principles to you, a traditional business plan must follow to maintain the business idea.
Remember, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” With this phrase, God empowers and allows you to comply with the forces of traditional business methods, using His principles to control the success of your destiny and the overall success of the Kingdom.
2. It is all about him, and for him
The second cornerstone recognizes and accepts that it is all about Him, and for Him.
To state it simply, our mundane ways of doing business do not work for us. During the application of the second cornerstone, you will be rewarded with power from God.
The ideas created by our ego and extenuated business plans that we make on our own will not lead us to the place of blessing, where we will have an abundant life in glory. God never intended for us to be able to “handle” life on our own, but designed it in such a way that we must depend on Him.
Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts shall be established. The Lord has made all for Himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.
(Proverbs 16:3-4 NKJV)
Doing business for Him is the most open yet hidden secret on the Earth of doing business God’s way. God’s blessings are a supernatural empowerment of His goodness and love for you. He wants to take you to another level of grace, love, abundance and success.
When we do any business for Him, He will outdo himself every time, as He is revealing the ideas, and giving us the tools, talents, abilities and resources needed to receive abundance from Heaven.
Our Creator is amazing. He wants us to live in the fullness of the blessing. He anointed our head with the holy oil and made our cup run over to bless others.
As you receive a direct connection with God, He will move you forward from barely making it in business to having more than enough. He will present and open doors in a supernatural way. He will position your name with the right people, in the right places and at the right time.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21 NKJV)
The power that works in us is our desire to connect with Him, do business for Him and with Him.
3. God does not play games
The third cornerstone recognizes that God does not play games.
He never wants to deal with false promises, sin or misplaced priorities. He knows you from the end to the beginning.
God does not allow for negotiating. When we follow His ways, we live an abundant, successful and blessed life.
To apply this in practical business terms, look into your heart and recall the deeper business dream. Think of all we would expect to do upon opening a business. There are hundreds of logistic details that need to be decided on before the doors open.
It is always wise to get advice from the Creator of all, a God who has experience and fulfills promises. In this third cornerstone, you will have acquired power from your environment.
4. Your trust in him
To complete the equation for success in business, the last cornerstone is your trust in Him.
Your trust requires you to believe in Him and follow Him. As you believe in His promises, you will be able to follow his business practices, and your soul will create a bond of trust.
Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited.
(Jeremiah 17:5-6 NKJV)
Sadly, as problems arise, more trust is placed in society’s systems and technologies rather than God, and that leads to disappointment and loss of finance, family, friends and even the business itself. Trust means to believe in and rely on, regardless of the situations that arise—business-wise or personally.
We cannot say we believe in God, yet refuse to accept and embrace his principles that will bring change and reformation.
The Bible says, “Is there anything too hard for the Lord?” There is no limit to what God can and will do if you dare to believe in Him.
Give God your unconditional trust and faith to work with Him.
The 3 principles
As we focus on all the cornerstones of doing business God’s way, and bring them together, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 1:27.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.
(1 Corinthians 1:27 NKJV)
This means the way God does things will sound totally foreign to all of us because His ways are opposite to our earthly approaches. Since most of us grew up in the worldly business system, His approach sounds different from what we have been taught and observed.
There are three basic principles of doing business God’s way.
1. No debt required
The first principle is that no debt is needed to develop and run your business—if you use God’s way.
When He reveals the dream of a business adventure to you, He will put the tools and resources in your hands to make it happen. No doubt about it.
The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall NOT borrow.
(Deuteronomy 28:12 NKJV)
When we take a business loan without any personal guarantee, we are not operating in the blessing of God, according to Deuteronomy 28:12. In fact, there are no scriptures within the Bible in which God commands someone to take a loan based on His direction.
2. We must not neglect family for business
The second principle tells us we must not neglect family for business.
With this principle we need to define the word “family.” According to Dictionary.com, (2014) “the family is a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family.”
In today’s modern society, the family has undergone significant transformations in its structure. The family is a social unit and can be described as “nuclear” if residing in the same household.
God wants to impart on us a clear understanding of His authority and His plan for us. He chose to reveal Himself and the clear purpose of His will in our soul.
Having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself.
(Ephesians 1:9, NKJV)
Through Jesus, the Word made flesh; we have access to the Father and can share in the divine nature of the Holy Spirit. Through this revelation, therefore, God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (John 15:14-15) and lives among them, so He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.
By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Jesus, who both are the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.
The traditional structure of a family is crucial to other universal laws, human cornerstone principles, and teachings in the Bible. It is also important to understand what God wants from us to glorify Him, and not the family.
As you glorify Him and offer Him everything you do, He will pour blessings to you to overflow and pass into your family and future generations.
This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behaviour, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence.
(1 Timothy 3:1-4 NKJV)
1 Timothy 3:1-4 applies directly to Christian entrepreneurs who want to do business God’s way, because we are overseers of God’s works in business on this Earth.
If God has given you the vision to start or expand a business, the business you start is His work, and you are the overseer, or as we call it in the business world, the Chief Executive Officer.
If you neglect your family in time, space, and support, your life will not be successful.
3. Remember not to labour to be rich
The third and last principle in doing business God’s way is remembering not to labour to be rich in business.
Then, how do we make it?
Do not overwork to be rich; Because of your own understanding, cease!
(Proverbs 23:4 NKJV)
How, as a new business owner, can you become successful without working hard? Well, let’s first look at the definition of working.
It is defined as the physical, mental and spiritual work causing you extreme fatigue and frustration.
What I want you to focus on is fatigue and frustration. When you are working according to this definition (and the usage of this word in the Proverbs 23:4), the production of that work comes at the price of fatigue and frustration. It makes us feel devastated, as if we’ll never see the light at the end of the tunnel.
While working in our new business to be successful, according to Proverbs 23:4, we are leaning on our free will and ego instead of on God’s wisdom.
However, if you are connected with God, the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you will direct and guide you to focus and see success and prosperity with purpose.
As you trust God more and more each day to guide you in your business, declare boldly His word, meditate on His promises, listen to Him, expect natural and supernatural events in your life, and put Him first because your business should be done by His will.
In your prayer, be bold for God and confess with your mouth, soul and mind that you know with Him all things are possible. Tell Him every day you choose to stand solid in faith, that you trust Him, and you choose to receive every blessing He has for you.
Blessed be it! In the name of His son Jesus, you are asking, you are expecting, and thanking Him because you are receiving. Amen!
Santiago Rivera is an innovative leader who helps professionals with the entrepreneurial spirit push themselves beyond their limits, through his mentoring program and workshops. He believes that all people on Earth have a divine purpose and that they need only stop and listen to God’s directions to fulfill it. Through his personal business ministry, Santiago empowers each person to have a deeper, co-creative relationship with God. From Doing Business God’s Way, © Copyright 2014 by Santiago Rivera. Reprinted with permission from WillPower Press, Inc.
image 1: Group of business people via Shutterstock; image 2: Father working hard via Shutterstock
