Sin In Business I Didn't Even Know I Had
Today, I want to give you a way to realize, analyze, and ultimately turn away from involuntary sin in your business.
All of us business owners sin and fall short of the glory of God. However, not all of us realize we're even sinning - there's sin in our business that we only realize after we've done it.
What do you do about the sin you didn't purposefully bring into your business? In His miraculous ways, God gave you and me the ability to realize, analyze, and then away from involuntary sin in business.
This miracle is able to happen because of our intercessor: the Holy Spirit.
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE ENTREPRENEUR'S INTERCESSOR
In my previous two posts, I wrote about the Holy Spirit's power to transform us into the likeness of Christ and help us gain victory over conscious sin.
However, because there is also sin I don't even know I carry, now I need to talk about gaining the ability to recognize the sin that I do not consciously agree.
My branding agency used to make websites for all the major nightclubs in the world. When you visited the portfolio on my site, you could browse a beautiful gallery of top-notch nightlife web designs.
A church network asked me to rebrand their entire company during that same time. I was even invited to speak at a few church seminars to help give ideas on church branding and marketing.
I had already stopped all of my nightclub promoting because it didn't feel right to be going to church on Sundays after partying all night Saturday. However, I didn't feel that doing branding work for nightclubs was sinful in any way - after all, I needed to make a living, right?
Before signing the contract to work with my company, the pastor of this major church network called me with concern. He said that some of the elders of the church were concerned that I had nightclubs as clients on my website portfolio and that they didn't feel comfortable working with my agency.
That day, I felt a conviction I had never felt before about my work in the nightlife industry. I immediately removed all nightclub jobs from my website portfolio and began my complete transition out of that industry.
As entrepreneurs on a mission to grow personally and professionally, there are many moving parts in our lives. We have to be thinking externally and internally almost 24/7. This can be exhausting. With so many moving parts, we're bound to mess up and not see some part of ourselves or our company that still aren't glorifying God.
How can we stay on top of everything going on around us and be "good Christians," when there is sin we didn't even consciously agree to do?
This is where God gives us the Holy Spirit as our intercessor.
The Bible says
Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26 ESV)
In addition to being our power and helper, another task of the Holy Spirit is to intercede for us. (Romans 8:26) He will take what is from Jesus and declare it to us. (John 16:13-15)
Here's the progression of how this works:
You don’t know how to pray for your entrepreneurial journey as you ought, but the Spirit does.
He leads you into many various situations in your daily business life which will cause your flesh to react.
These situations bring to light the sin in your flesh.
You react in different ways, whether by word or action.
As you think about what you've said or done, you get to see that sin was present.
When we're able to take a sober assessment of some of our actions (or inactions), we can see that it wasn’t the virtues that came forth, but our human nature. We get to see that we did what we hated, just as Paul saw in Romans 7:18-25.
These involuntary reactions from the flesh that we get light over are referred to as the “deeds of the body,” and can take the form of thoughts, words, and even actions. There is no condemnation for these because we didn’t consciously agree to sin.
Yet, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can still overcome these deeds of the body after they have come out of our bodies by loving and acknowledging the truth about what happened and consciously choosing to disagree with them and hate them.
Paul, in Romans 8:13, says “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Imagine if all entrepreneurs used the Spirit as our guide and strength in business. If we did, we would continue to walk in the light and can overcome anything in our future business dealings before they happen again.