Finding My Calling in Business: Part 3 – Called to Create a Business
Updated: Dec 28, 2020
Have you ever told yourself the lie “I’m useless. I don’t have any gifts or talents to offer.”?
I have. More than once. It often comes after a failed project or business venture. Sometimes it’s a client that emphatically reminds that to me. Sometimes it’s my bank account whispering it to me, as if computer screens could talk. Even the computer screen, too?
Many entrepreneurs feel this way. We have lost our sense of dignity and self-worth, blinded from our own inherent creativity and God-given talents because the pressures of entrepreneurship got to our heads.
When we fail to believe in the dignity of ourselves and others, we struggle to answer the call to creativity in our businesses and be all who God has created us to be. Made in the image of God, we have worth, value, and dignity that cannot be taken away from us. When we deny that truth, we deny part of God’s design for his people in the business marketplace.
Genesis 1:26-28 states that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. James 3:9 rebukes those who worship God with their mouths and yet curse someone else made in the likeness of God. We often fail to see the connection between the worthiness of God and cursing his image. Our value as Godpreneurs is inherent in our design, and we each reflect God’s intended purpose through our businesses.
C.S. Lewis maintains in The Weight of Glory that, “There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal.” You – and your employees, vendors, contractors, and clients – possess dignity, worth, and value more than you even presently know.
Humans are the crown glory of God’s creation, distinct from every other creature on earth. Godpreneurs, as image bearers of God, are given a central task to “rule over” creation (Genesis 1). God is the CEO, but we are like the Presidents of his kingdom. He is the founder of the company, but we are franchisees called to this creative task. With our God-given dignity and worth comes a great responsibility to care for God’s business creation.
The kind of leadership and ownership we are to exercise is not to be heavy-handed, as Genesis 2:15 indicates. Mankind was placed in the Garden of Eden to care for and keep it. The mandate is to exercise caring stewardship over the business we create – NOT to use and abuse it as we please.
Creativity plays a central role in developing a beautiful and productive garden, metaphorically speaking, in our own business culture and requires fresh, inspired thinking.
The call to creativity is everywhere around us. Entrepreneurial gifts and creativity are expressed in building increasingly complex houses, buildings, walls, roads, etc. Genesis starts in a garden, but Revelation ends in a city. This is what we Godpreneurs are made to do – use our creativity, our gifts, and our abilities to develop the potential of the created order in the marketplace.
When you figure out what you are made for, how you fit into God’s big picture of restoration, that’s when you truly flourish.
Godpreneurs reflect on our inherent dignity, made in God’s image.