Session 2 - God Owns My Business
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome back to the faith-driven entrepreneur stewardship of a paycheck can feel much different than something that you've created after all you had the vision right you took the risk but everything we've been given is a gift to be stored and as we lean into that reality we're going to be free to create and do great business and to lead our people and also know god more fully we're going to talk about that more here we're working with god's goods we're the cooks in his kitchen that's the honest humbling truth even and perhaps especially if you started your own business you're creating out of the ingredients god created first we see this in the garden of eden right adam didn't create the garden he cultivated it instead of owning it he stored it and that's what entrepreneurs can do with our businesses as well but if we're being honest there's a part of us that wants to push back it's my business after all i came up with the idea i did the hard work i raised all the funding i hired all the people what does god have to do with what i've created truthfully there's a great healthy tension here if your company is growing year after year thanks to your ability to bootstrap in your consistent hard work and effort it's hard to surrender ownership of that to anyone it's never easy to look at our companies businesses and ideas and say that they're not ours that they're gods but if god is who he says he is then everything already belongs to him anyway so will we struggle to possess and hoard that which we've been given to protect and cultivate or will we fight the daily battle to submit ourselves to the role of steward and surrender our businesses to the god who already owns it all let's start exploring this topic by watching this powerful story talking about stewardship and ownership about how god worked in this life i went to work during 2013 trying to create a place for god to be a shielder in our business [Music] but it's very difficult to put god almighty on the share register and you know the government register office will ask questions but my intention was to give shares to him how crazy is that [Music] my name is bertie lawrence i'm the ceo of waste plan [Music] so the waste industry in south africa is used to just collect and dump sending everything to landfill that's the modus operandi but if i look at how we as men pollute the earth i don't think our father is happy with it it also costs you money to dump it and that cost increases every year [Music] so our job is to help the client put a separation system in place we come and say we can make a change and we can decrease the number of bins that you send to landfill [Music] i'm stephen canelo i'm a senior contract manager for waste plan we separate the organics from everything else all the rest which is really packaging is all your typical recyclables that all have an economic value and for all the ways that we get from you there is everybody that you can get with a goal of achieving zero waste to landfill most clients that have no programs in place will have 80 to landfall and then we'll do the basic things the low-hanging fruit and quickly get someone to 50 but zero ways to land for is an absolute focus for us and some of our clients have taken this serious and they are on five six seven percent to land for right now to give you an idea of volumes we employ a thousand six hundred spread over 400 locations in seven different cities and we manage about 150 000 tons of waste a year and the value of recyclables have increased over time we help the client unlock the value of this appreciating asset and as we unlock that we earn more money and we also pay a rebate to the client so over time as us and the client in partnership do well with diverting waste away from landfill so these costs come down and we make profits i had a very intentional desire to build a business that gives glory to god through the way that i execute my decisions but at some stage more or less in 2011 i started making bad decisions and one big decision just caused the company to still lose a lot of money all of a sudden and the company didn't have enough money to last six months you know to sustain those losses and more or less 12 months later we were still losing money so i found myself in a place before god where i realized that i was i was making bad decisions i didn't quite know what drove those bad decisions but i realized that i wasn't as great as i thought i am and i found myself in a moment of surrendering to god well i said to him i'm not willing to attempt business anymore without him very shortly after that i felt god just gently whisper in my spirit that he now wants control and i confessed that to my friend john and i said god wants me to give him control of the company and john just kept on holding me accountable to that so we had to create a locally recognized legal entity and this non-profit company's name is nico the zulu word for gift my name is jon jones i'm the chairman of nico capital in the last couple of years we've seen a number of companies transfer a portion of their shareholding in the company the equity into a non-profit structure and through a dividend flow the non-profit is capitalized to do the program stated in its missional output and in the founding documents of this company we particularly wrote that this company exists to finance the kingdom of jesus and to be a legal platform to represent god almighty as a shareholder nico capital owns 51 of the business my family trusts 49 percent the penny really dropped at that point that now ownership is legally handed over to another structure to stew it all purpose for the missional uh focus of nico and that is to alleviate poverty through education the lord has called us to make a difference as nico capital in the hearts and minds of of children who don't have the same resources and the same benefits that we have had through generations of being more fortunate than than some of these children [Music] in south africa we have a legacy of apartheid so many black people have no education if they have an education it's a poor education [Music] education is one of the most important weapons in a country and the extent that to which black education is neglected is something very difficult to put in words [Music] the small children are the future of this country so it's very important that we give those children the right path from the early age kids that experience trauma in the developing years develop an inability to learn so by the time they get to grade one they're already behind and every grade they fall further and further behind we did a bit of research to find out where the children of our own staff go we elected two or three preschools and we trained teachers to help kids develop emotionally a year later we interviewed the parents and we found that the kids were more in tune with learning how to read and write and get ready for great one now we would like to roll it out into all the regions where we work nico capitals also participating in five schools through an adopted school project we have a teacher development program and then also a mentorship program so it's all very real standing with the one foot in in the business as a capitalist but on the other side being very very much socially involved [Music] we need to keep on praying that this company grows because we are giving back to the black communities [Music] and you know it makes you feel grateful you know waste plan has played a huge role in my life [Music] when i was 16 life was difficult for me [Music] but the lord that we pray works in mysterious ways whispering employed me had faith in me and i fell in love with sorting and then i was given an opportunity to one of the biggest clients and after three months i made a huge difference on that site we only sent two persons to the landfill that's how i was recognized it's actually possible to come from a soda and even become a director that is essentially a pathway out of poverty [Music] i applied for senior contract managers and i'm still a senior contract manager and i'm still enjoying what i'm doing the lord wants to bring reconciliation he wants to bring this healing to the land and we're trying to make generational impact as a contributor to black empowerment what i did was an act of obedience god asked for she is in the business i gave him cheese and now the owner of this business is god and he wants to help people out of poverty and correct the wrongs of the post [Music] and it starts with faith [Music] i will stand up i'm never giving them i will run [Applause] [Music] last session we started in the garden so let's stay there for a moment because there's something that we got to recognize before we before we move on adam didn't create the garden remember he cultivated it that means instead of owning the garden he stewarded it you say well what's the difference in those well an owner says it belongs to me an owner says i earned this i bought it it was my resources that got it it was my strength so i can do what i want with it a steward by contrast says well no it belongs to god i mean sure i i'm working at it and i get to enjoy some of the fruits of my labor but my gifts and my talents and my time and my resources they're given to me by god for a purpose that he has so i want to know what god wants me to do with those things you know there's lots of dimensions of spiritual maturity that that occur gradually but this change the change between being an owner and being a steward is something that happens all at once you suddenly realize that you're not an owner of anything that you have your time your talent your treasures all of that ultimately is is given to you by god when you make this shift you're going to stop asking questions like well how much of this do i have to to give to to god to stay on his good side and you're going to start asking questions like well why did god give me any of this why did he give me this enterprise why did he give me this skill why did he give me this idea it's all his what does he want with it he owns a hundred percent of it not just a fraction of it many christians think think like owners they think that that their religious obligation is is to pay god his basically his tax off of their lives and their earnings so that looks like well let's give god ten percent of my money and and ninety percent of it is it belongs to me that's that's thinking in terms of an owner who has to pay a tax or maybe you're thinking i gotta go to church once a week and i gotta be engaged in religion in that way that's a tax on your time you see a steward thinks differently a steward says all of it a hundred percent of it is yours the breadth of my body is yours um the talents are yours how do you want me to use these talents for you so you gotta ask yourself if you're gonna think like a steward why did god bless me as he did why what is the reason that i can discern he gave me this talents i'd say many of us understand this but but we try to resist it in fact it reminds me of the of the preacher who was speaking to a farmer in his community a farmer who had just produced this beautiful field of crops and and the preacher says to the farmer hey god gave you this beautiful field and you should give him the glory for it to which the farmer replies well you should have seen that this place when it only belonged to god as in i did all this and all these crops i get the credit for we we might not be that brazen in response to god but we do think it's my business i came up with the idea i did the hard work i raised all the funding i hired all the people so what does god have to do with what i have created and yeah if your company has grown year after year thanks to a lot of hard work and late nights by you and and some effort and some ingenuity yeah it's hard to surrender ownership of that to anybody it's never easy to look at our company or our business or an idea and say that it's not mine really that that it's god's but but here's the thing if god really is who he says he is then everything already belongs to him anyway the skills the health the opportunity it's all from god in deuteronomy 10 moses um said to the children of israel to the lord your god belongs to the heavens even the highest heavens the earth and everything in it paul would agree in the book of colossians he would say that all things including our the breath and our bodies and the talents in our brains they're all from jesus they're given for his purposes and ultimately it's his strength that sustains them all even as we use them and they exist for his purposes and see if god owns it all that means that we are stewards and the most important question we have to ask is what he wants from the things that he has given us he tells us in second corinthians that when he gives us financial success for example that part of the reason that he does that is to increase our potential for impact in his kingdom in second corinthians 9 paul says to the corinthian believers god will enrich you in every way to increase your seed for sowing why does god increase us and give us success it is to increase our seed for sowing hey what that means is that god has a lot more to give but who's he going to give it to right is he going to give it to the farmer who hoards it or is he going to give it to the farmer who who increases the amount of his sowing god wants to multiply and bless his people you will find that from cover to cover in the bible but he does so under the assumption that his people will use the increase that he gives them to sow more into his kingdom not just build more of their own kingdoms god multiplies our resources to increase our standard of giving not just our standard of living when you understand this you will see in fact that when you don't use your time and your treasure and your talents for god's purposes you're actually stealing you're embezzling god's resources and his money and his opportunity think about how upset you would be if you made a huge donation to to feed the children for example and then found out that 90 of your donation went to the ceo um so that he could upgrade his house or buy some new cars and the money that you gave didn't go to feeding the children you would rightly be outraged because that guy was stealing what wasn't meant for him but was actually given for a different purpose in the same way when we don't use our talents and our opportunities and our resources for the purposes god gave them to us for them we're stealing from god listen our enterprises your enterprise may not all be non-profits in fact we need a lot more for-profit businesses but all of us should have that posture that that what we have built is really what god has built through us it's from god and a hundred percent of it ultimately needs to be for god god has made a donation to our business and he expects us to steward it the way that he intends he wants you to use his donations for his purposes if you sit on them or you use them for your own luxuries it's like in his mind you're embezzling money you're stealing from it we are stewards of god's resources we are not owners of our own i want to end this session by talking about one other scriptural principle that impacts this idea and that is a principle of abundance you see god did not create a world of scarcity he created a world of potential abundance this is a bedrock principle of entrepreneurship there's not a limited amount of of resources out there to fight over there's new money there's increased wealth there's new ideas to come up with and new money to be made you see there are two ways to look at the world if we live in a world of scarcity then we think we have to hang on to and hoard what we have the other way of looking at the world is is to live in a world of abundance where through the blessing of god there is is is literally more than enough for everybody the whole bible screams abundance just think for a moment about the garden of eden if you think about the dimensions of the garden of eden if you just go through genesis and track out you know how big it tells you it is it was more like yellowstone national park for two people and that is abundance that is so much that is there for them when israel wandered in the wilderness every morning god covered the ground with so much manna like little ritz crackers dropped down from heaven so much that everybody had as much as they wanted he said literally to them eat all you want and don't worry about tomorrow tomorrow i'll just cover the ground again with with more that's abundance god created the world with abundance he intends to us to think in abundant ways when we uh when we engage in in business and ideas sinful man in his fear always thinks in terms of scarcity there's not going to be enough so i better hoard so in the story of the manna for example israel tried in fear to stockpile the manna well god gave us all this abundance today but there's no telling what's going to happen tomorrow i better hoard and hang on to everything when they did that the manna went bad from start to finish in the bible god instructs his people to look at the world to the lens of abundance he created a world with the potential for plenty to go around and there's always more to create when we look at our possessions and our talents that way holding them with an open and a generous hand the world flourishes economists will tell you that the scarcity mentality in a country leads to poverty but when we realize that we serve a god of abundance and we open up our hands well that gives god a chance to multiply and produce a society of abundance where there's more than enough for everyone so sow what you have your talents your resources in faith invest widely take strategic risks for the kingdom of god and give a lot away and watch god multiply it you know in the new testament jesus consistently praises the stewards who give it away who invest it widely creating more value for everybody and the end result is that there's much more for everyone so let me end this session with a question to you how do you see your business your talents and your dreams do you see these things as being owned by you or being owned by god of which you were just the steward and if so have you asked god why he gave you this success why he gave you that idea and have you begun to serve his purposes in it i hope you find it refreshing to understand that financial success provides us opportunities to do things for god but yet also realize that a god who used five loaves and two fish actually doesn't need our money or our influence unless we boast he wants our heart and too often money has a hold on our hearts so giving it or feeling an undue anxiety that he needs us and our success can lead to a lot of disappointment we look forward to joining you next time in the meantime please do check out faith driven entrepreneur where we've got a daily blog and a weekly podcast and a monthly newsletter and we'd love to interact with you we'd love to hear more about what you're struggling with on your entrepreneurial journey how can we equip and empower and encourage you as you get out there and create and wrestle with things like money we look forward to seeing you next time thanks for joining us you
2022-04-08 06:59
