Faith-Based Business

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 (NIV)

I state on my website that I run a faith-based business, but I'm not sure that's a wholly accurate statement. Not because I don't have the best intentions of running a faith-based business, mind you, but rather because I have absoultely no idea what that really looks like from a Biblical perspective. I've never actually sat down and really dug through the Bible and tried to see what His Word tells me I should do as an entrepreneur. So, I'm starting to do just that; I'm looking through this really thorough concordance that Holli and I have over the next several nights - perhaps even weeks - to see what I need to change up.

The other decision I've made is cease my attempts to build the business. If I do something or plan something to build the business and make it happen by my hands, it's going to fail. That's just what the things of man do. So rather than keep flailing away at the wall that I'm trying to tear down to make my business grow, I'm just going to do the job that I've been assigned by now, put my faith in the Lord, and see where He takes FortySixTen Studios.

Quite frankly, He's the reason this business exists in the first place. If He hadn't forced the issue and seen to it that I was fired from Circuit City for being too good at my job, I'd have never gone full time with my previous employer. Had things not gone sour with them in my third year there, I'd have never had the inclination to go out on my own. It wasn't my ambition that brought me to entrepreneurship; it was God slamming doors shut and putting roadblocks up on the path I wanted to take - the easy one - and forcing me down this road by making it the only one avaialble to me. It's only logical, then, that rather than trying to expand my business by my own ambition, I leave it to my Lord's discretion to do it.

At the beginning of this week, I was all fired up to start going back through some books of mine, write up a concrete business plan, and see how I could really push my business beyond the plateau I've come up against. As things stand now, though, it's just time for me to dig in for a while. I have a job that I've been blessed with and that I absolutely love, and I just need to continue to do it to my fullest ability, continue to study what the Word demands of me in my role, and continue to wait for the Lord to do whatever it is that He has in store for my business.

Or maybe it's His business. Maybe that right there is what I've got wrong in this whole thing. Much like I'm just a steward of the money He gives me to tend to in this life, maybe I'm likewise just a steward of FortySixTen Studios. Something to pray about ...