Can’t Serve Two Masters

1. Introduction

I believe every one of us is capable of far more than we realize.  We need principles, we need guidelines, and we also need others around us that can encourage us to go a little further. In fact just this week I was with someone and he was asking me to evaluate what was happening in his area of ministry and business. The biggest thing is for you to believe in yourself that you carry giftings in your life that enable you to have a far bigger influence than you realise. Every one of us needs people that can help us and encourage us to go up to another level. At almost every level of life we need those who are our peers that we can run our ideas by, those who can help us come up a little higher, and those that we’re investing into to bring up. Whatever stage we’re at, in business or in our business life when we walk with the Lord, there is always someone you can give a hand up to, you can encourage who would value greatly what you’ve got to give.

“I was in church in Indonesia a little while ago, one of the key businessmen there said I was talking to some businessmen one time and he said pray the pastor gets a big vision for the church, and I said why would you tell them that for, and he said, well if God’s going to give a big vision then it’s going to need a lot of money, He’s going to have to bless the businessmen and the businessmen will have to prosper and earn a lot more money.  That’s smart wisdom, I like that sort of wisdom”.

You hear that in Asia, you don’t hear so much of that in the West.  We separate up our life with God and our life in the business field.

It’s been a great joy to me to hear from you individual testimonies:

· How as you’ve started to connect your life with God

· Your business world

· How you conduct yourself

· That some of you have seen some quite significant leaps practically and you’re making a lot more money than you were before

· At another level your influence and your understanding that God wants to work through you is growing.

· I’m committed to really help us in the business field change our thinking in a lot of ways so that we actually get an understanding of our calling into the business field.

2. Putting God first in your business and making Him your senior partner, which is easier, said than done.

Matthew 6: Jesus had spoken “Where your treasure is, where your money is, where your valuables are, that’s where your heart will be also.”

· Practically speaking, if you’ve got ten dollars invested in some shares and the company goes down you don’t worry at all but if you put all your life savings there it’s another story altogether.

· You’re heart is there, you are very concerned who’s managing it; you pick up the shares every morning and read them, why? It’s because your heart is there, you invested with something valuable to you.

Matthew 6:24  No man can serve two masters for he will hate one and love the other or he will hold one and despise the other.

· ·Everyone of us is included.

· Jesus said you can’t serve God and serve mammon.

· Jesus made it very clear that there are two masters in the world that every one of us, me included, has to choose between.

· Not to choose once but continue to choose.

He says on the one hand, you’re going to serve one or the other but not both.  Sometimes we’ve tended to think we can have a bit of both.  I’ll have a bit of God and I’ll have a bit of the other as well. Jesus is saying in this very clearly you can’t do that, it doesn’t work for you, no man can have two masters, and you will have one or the other. There are two masters, and one of them is God.  God is a Spirit, so you can choose to have God being in charge of your business or you can choose to have money being in charge of your business. By default money will be the god of your business and the god of your life.

a)  It’s a choice that’s needed to consciously allow the Lord to become the centre and the senior partner of your business, not just once as a little prayer but on a day-to-day business.

b)  God isn’t concerned just about blessing you; God is concerned about advancing His kingdom in the world.

c)  He doesn’t need the money He’s got all that, the bible says all the silver all the gold is Mine, He formed it all, heaven is full of gold so you don’t need to bring any there.

d)  He’s not needing the money, the money is needed to get work done in the earth which is the real mission reaching the lives and the hearts of people.

 I’ve just been over in the USA to a Chinese church conference there, part of a stream of churches called the “River of Life”, and they’re church planting all over the world and I was with them there and also some of the church group in Canada, the passion for the Chinese to reach the world is just outstanding. They have inside them a sense of destiny that God’s called them as people to reach the Muslim world, the Buddhists world and the Hindu world in this generation and so through China there is a very, very strong sense of mission that God is raising the Chinese up to do that job. When we see what President Bush is doing, we can see how ill qualified we will be to even go to such places without the risk of losing our life.  So the Chinese have tremendous sense of mission, and with that thinking behind them, businessmen are at the forefront of what God is doing. Everywhere I go where there are Chinese you will find there will be businessmen making things happen and they are quite unashamedly carrying a sense of call and destiny,

- I’m called to be a businessman,

- I’m called to serve God in the business field,

- I’m called to make an impact with my life.

So Jesus made it very clear that you can serve God and He is then the One who leads or directs or guides or influences a whole range of things in your business or you can serve money. And if you serve money then there will be a number of side effects that you will experience.

3.  Let me run a few side effects by you and if you have these side effects maybe there is a need to have a look at what really is motivating or pushing you forward:

i)  If money is driving you, you will find you’re never satisfied.

- The bible says very clearly, it’s never enough.  No matter how much you have there never seems to be enough. I can remember when we had very little it was never enough, and then you get more and that is still not enough.  People basically will live up to exactly what they have.  If you’re getting $500.00 a week coming in then you’ll live to $500.00, if you’ve got a $1000.00 you’ll live to $1000.00, if you’ve got $1,500.00 you’ll live to $1,500.00.

- Learn to be content, whether you’ve got very little or very much, learn to be content with where you are it is a huge gain in life.  So when money is our god, we can’t be content.

- No matter what we’ve got we haven’t got enough, someone’s got more, we’re dissatisfied all the time.

 So if you find continually there’s never enough, crying inside you, you’ve got to really ask yourself, what is really motivating me.  Because to be content and to be Godly is one the greatest gains you can have in life. I’ve met people who were multi-millionaires with no peace in their heart, absolutely tormented and troubled, funnily enough they reckoned they didn’t have enough. You see in the magazines movie stars, you think they’re beautiful looking people and right through you hear the same kind of cry, there’s things about themselves they want to change. The problem is in the heart, the problem is a spiritual one of not being satisfied inside, not fulfilled.

ii)  When money drives people they actually forget God; really it’s all about me and what I’m doing, and look what I’ve built.

- The bible warns us very clearly about that, about forgetting God who blesses us and gives us benefits.

iii) When you become anxious and stressed:

- Mark 6 Jesus said don’t be anxious and up tight.

- You find that when money is ruling your life you become stressed about how it’s going to work out, whether it’s enough, what’s going to happen.

- So stress and pressure are always an indication that something’s coming out of kilter inside and internally because Jesus said He’s offered us peace in the midst of pressure.

- Finally, there’s a tendency as things financially grow, you tend to trust it and you trust in the Lord less and less.

Now that’s what the bible calls the deceitfulness of riches, as money increases and as your wealth increases, after a while your need for God diminishes because you don’t actually have a need. You buy what you need.  So one of the things I’ve noticed with people, I’ve seen many people start off well God prospered them and then they lost their heart for God. When there’s trouble I call on God, but when I’m going well I forget about God.  I don’t know about you, but I’d hate to be in relationship with anyone who related to me in that kind of way.  I’ll call you when I need you but the rest of the time, leave me alone Jack. What kind of relationship is that?  That’s not satisfying to God, to be in a relationship like that with you and me.  He wants to be our partner in life, in every aspect of it. So Jesus spoke very clearly, put first or seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.  In other words make your first priority in life, there are lots of things, but the first one is to seek to advance the interests of God’s kingdom. That means literally to discover what’s in His heart and put it first in your life and seek to live a right life before Him, everything else will come into your life. Everything you need. It’s a real challenge.

Bill give me a fascinating book about a Chinese man living in China and how he lived his life for the Lord, the day he got married he told his wife to be, if you marry me you have to understand that most of my life I’m being pursued by the police. The story tells of the miracles that God did and you see the amazing miracles that God did to deliver him and the many times he escaped.  In fact in their training program for missionary’s they teach them how to escape from a moving car with handcuffs on, isn’t that interesting, how to leap with your hands cuffed behind you how to leap out of a second storey building and run away.

One of the stories was the authorities were so glad they caught him that they beat him so severely they actually broke his legs, and the man who broke his legs said, “now see if your God can help you escape!” He had to be carried everywhere in the prison because his legs were broken, they weren’t tended to at all.  One day God spoke to Him and said, today get ready to leave, you’re going to leave tonight. Someone else came to him and said I believe God’s telling me that you’re going to leave tonight; another came and also said I believe God’s telling me that you’re to leave tonight.  The Lord gave him a vision and showed him in the vision him walking through open doors and out on to the street there were no guards around and a yellow taxi coming which he got in and the Lord showed him where to go.

He said I’ve got to obey God so he said to the guy I can’t walk so will you help me.  The guy helped him to his feet and virtually carried him, he had his arm around his shoulder, walked him until they got to the first door. The doors in the prison were such that the lock was on one side, you could open them from the outside you couldn’t open it from the inside, so anyone could come in but they couldn’t go back out unless they had a key.  He got to the door, and as he got to the door a prisoner came through the other door and he was able to hold it open and walk through the door.  That’s door number one!

Then they came to another door, what he hadn’t realised was as he walked God healed his legs, and as he was doing what God told him to do the power of God came around him but he was focused on getting out, and he didn’t even realise that God had healed his legs, he didn’t realise till after he’d got away that he’d had a miracle healing in his legs.

He gets to the next door and another prisoner is being escorted by a guard who came up to the door, pushed the door open for the prisoner to get through and just as the prisoner walked through the phone rang for the guard and he turned around with his back to the door, walked back into his office to get to the phone and the guy caught the door and when the prisoner came through.  He is through door number two!

He reached the gate, which amazingly were open and there were no guards there and as he walked through the gates and stood out in the street a yellow taxi came up, he hopped in it and told him where to go, when he got there the people said, we’ve been expecting you. God told us you were going to come out tonight.  And of course in the prison there was this consternation that the man who was crippled escaped from a maximum-security prison, they couldn’t work out how it could happen.

The thing that impresses me the most is the tremendous spirit of sacrifice for Christ and His cause.  The contrast between the life in the East, where people are suffering and dying for their faith, and the life in the West, where you’re seduced to death is huge.

Eventually he became so wanted throughout China he had to get out of China and a guy said to him, well I’ll give you my passport and he said, well it doesn’t look like me, and the Lord said take it and go. So he got the ticket, went to the airport.  Now you know you have to show your passport, the Lord spoke to him and said, in the multitude of words there lacks no sin.  So He said don’t speak unless I give you something to say.

When he got to the airport he presented his ticket and the passport.  They looked at the passport and laughed and said this is not you.  He said nothing, he just looked and stared at them and they said you’ll never get into the next country, they’ll just put you on a plane and you’ll have to come back again and they stamped it and let him through.  He went to Germany and was received into Germany, they had heard already about him he was welcomed in there and eventually even got citizenship.

But what he didn’t realise was when he met a guy later on who said what you didn’t know was I was called on to set up a computer system at the airport and there’s a voice recognition system being set up, they have the voices in the computer of people that they know they’re after and when you come in and if you start to talk it immediately goes into the computer and they will match it up against a known voice print. If you had spoken it would have come up on the computer exactly who you were and they would never have let you out because they were still hunting for him, because he had escaped from a maximum security prison.

The book is full of those stories, the book is called The “Heavenly Man”, a great book for you to get.  When he came to the West he thought the West would be open to the Gospel, what he found was people were lukewarm. In the East you knew who you’re enemies were, in the West it was the Christians who criticised and put false rumours around against one another.

He saw the greatest dangers were in the West were people were overwhelmed by a sense of being at ease and had no passion.  All they wanted was to live comfortably.

So I found the book incredibly inspiring about how people today lay their lives down for Jesus Christ and in the West it is a great challenge for us to live above the crowd and to be a man of purpose or a woman of purpose.

To do that we’ve got to decide where Christ will be in our life day after day, when everyone around us is actually pulling the other way and led by another god.  When Jesus said you serve God or mammon, He is saying literally God is a spirit, you either serve the person of Jesus Christ or you will serve the spirit that controls the world by manipulating it’s money systems.  But one way or the other you will serve someone, so it’s better to put our hands in the hand of the Lord and let Him direct us, than it is to allow ourselves by default to come under another spirit that creates huge problems throughout our lives.  So who is it going to be?  So who is in control?

The real issue is the control of your life, Proverbs 16:25 says, there is a way that seem right to a man, it always seems right for me to be in charge.  Because you’re in business, one of the reasons you’re in business apart from making profit and making a lot of money is you actually like to run your own show.  That’s part of the big benefit of being in a business, there’s no boss you’re the boss.  They have a Chinese proverb; it goes something like this, Better to be the head of the chicken than the tail of the ox.  In other words, they would much rather run their own businesses even if it’s small than be a little part of a big business.

In Taiwan they have the greatest number of entrepreneurs per head per capita.  In the Full Gospel Businessmen over there just in Taipei there are about 300.  150 or over are CEO’s of big corporations, everywhere you go Chinese all want to be in business for themselves.  It makes a huge problem when you try to bring them together because they all want to be in charge.

One of the things of course is we enjoy the feeling of being in control part of the fall of man is every one of us fears that if I let go control of my life what will happen to me?  Who could I trust with my life?  And so we conclude I really can’t trust anyone but me, so the only one who is safe to run my life is me and I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do or direct me I don’t even want to consult too much, I want to run my life my way, this is the way that seems right unto me.  The bible says that’s the way of the world, that’s the way people without Christ live their life.  The dilemma is of course is where do you stand when you become a Christian?

In deliverance a person is set free from a demonic power that holds them in bondage, they’d like to be free they can’t be free, they got into that trouble because they do their own thing, sin, and a spirit came into their life.  Inevitably one of the things I have found over a period of time is the only way a person can be free from a demon is actually to turn from what empowered it and to submit to the leadership or lordship of Christ in that part of their life.  That is the only ground to be free, and I can tell you now I’ve heard literally hundreds of demons cry out and say, “I will not go he belongs to me.”  To put it another way, I have a right to be here and control this life.  So of course we learnt over a period of time that there a number of things that give legal right and in order for us to have a person set free from that kind of bondage they must submit or yield to the leadership of Jesus Christ.  So when we talk about the word “Lord”, we’re meaning the one who has the final say, the one who is in charge, the one who’s supreme, He is the authority.

So to be saved, the bible says if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth Jesus is the Lord.  The issue of becoming saved is really acknowledging that Jesus Christ truly is the one who is Lord over everything, that’s what positions you to get saved.  Now to walk with the Lord it requires us to actually let go trying to control our life.  What we want to do is, we don’t mind trusting Jesus to save us, but we’re not so happy about Him having any influence or running the business.

The difficulty is for many Christian businessmen in New Zealand is the separation of their personal life with God and the way they live and conduct their business life.  It’s what’s called dualism, you have two lives, you have a life on Sunday you come to church, pray, read your bible, sing to the Lord, bless God, have fellowship, all that kind of stuff.  Monday through Saturday is a different life and it’s a different life because God actually has nothing but superficial say in anything that’s done in that part of your life.  In other words, church is Sunday that is God, but the rest of my life I’ve got to get on and just do the best I can.  It’s actually not a biblical framework of thinking.  Biblical framework of thinking is Jesus is the Lord of all; He is entitled and capable and able, more able than me, to direct my affairs.  He wants me to walk in a partnership with Him so that every part of my life He has an influence and a say in.

In Uganda 20% of the nation has come to Christ, in New Zealand about 3% are active Christians, that makes us worse off than Uganda in terms of Christian influence in the nation.  We have to see our own nation, it is a secular, unreached nation, and it is not a Christian nation.  It’s not Christian in government, it’s not Christian in education, it’s not Christian in social policy, it is not Christian, and it is secular!

When you marry, the true biblical marriage is a covenant to be partners in life, it’s to share your life to do one another no harm, it’s to be friends, it’s to share life with its ups and its downs, for better or worse, richer or poorer, till death part us.  God’s desire is for a relationship where richer or poorer, better or worse, whatever comes we are bound together. Can you imagine what kind of a marriage you’d have if during the week you lived somewhere else and came home for just one day of the week and you talked a little bit on that one day and the rest of the time your wife had no idea what was going on, she had no involvement, you’d have no marriage.  If you can’t make a marriage work what makes you think we can make our relationship with God work with a one day a week basis.  It’s never intended to be that way, God wants to be a partner with us.

So the crucial part is allowing Him to become the Lord.  Now if you have called Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, in 1 Corinthians 6:20 it says, you are not your own, you are brought with a price, it cost Him to redeem you, therefore glorify God with your body.  If your life is the Lord’s so is your business, it is a part of your life, one of the biggest parts of your life.  If you belong to the Lord then your marriage belongs to Him.  If you belong to the Lord then your children belong to Him and therefore because they belong to Him if you will acknowledge that and work with Him, He will take the greater weight of responsibility and will help you to ensure you don’t carry the same anxiety about your marriage, family, finances and business that the world does.  Everyone out there is “dog eat dog”, but you’re not like that, you have a partner.

If God is in control of your business He can then accomplish His own plans through you.  Have you ever thought that He put you into business, gave you a dream for business so He could accomplish something through you?  Did it ever occur to you that God might have a plan, when he designed you with a desire for business that was a God given desire?

As a businessman you have a greater capacity to have influence and to affect the community and to release resources to the work of God than any other person.  The only question is whether you see that as your mission in life and then begin to align yourself for that to happen.  In Jeremiah 29:11 it says, I know the plans that I have for you, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a hope and a future, something to look forward to.  So in business God has a plan for your business.

God is willing to direct you in all major decisions, so if you have important decisions to make, significant decisions, God wants to direct you.  He says in Psalm 22:8, I will instruct you and I will teach you in the way you should go.  You might say well what does God know about business?  Well Peter thought that way too.  Peter had a whole night without catching any fish and Jesus said, just go out again put the net out the other side, he said we’ve been out all night, nevertheless at Your word we’ll do it, so at the end of the day, in spite of doubts, he actually let the Lord direct him and when he did he got the biggest catch of fish.

They didn’t have tax money, how are they going to pay the tax?  Jesus said okay, drop the line in over there, I know something you don’t know, and they hook up a fish that’s got a gold coin in it. He is able to help us in these areas.  But we have to seek His direction and advice.

Let me ask you this, do you actually submit what your plans are or the things you’re planning to do.  The people you’re considering employing, the contracts, do you actually ever talk to God about these things?  It would be a real help if you had inside information wouldn’t it?  You’ve got to know that God has got the inside information, He can give you the cutting edge but you’ve got to listen to Him.  There is a price to pay for listening to Him, but the benefits are enormous if He gives you a cutting edge insight and you start to produce a product just ahead of when it’s needed.

You start to actually move in a new area in your business just at the leading edge of the market instead of waiting till everyone else is there and you’re just following up the field.  We need to be leading edge people not tailing edge people trying desperately to cope.  We’ve got to actually expect God, You are the God who knows all things to give us the leading edge, and you can show me where I should put my efforts.  But often because of fear we are reluctant to let the Lord help us - there’s a way that seems right to us.  So God will be as involved in your business or uninvolved as you like. 

You choose, it’ll take more than just praying and saying God I give my business to You.  There’s a little more in it than that, most people pray that prayer but then when you look at the way they run their life you can tell their business isn’t in God’s hands at all, they’re just doing their own thing just like they did before they prayed the prayer.  I’ll show you what will happen when your business is in God’s hands.  There will be a number of things that will start to change over a period of time.

God won’t enforce Himself on your business, if you’re willing to put it in His hands and allow Him to lead you then He’ll realign your business.  Every area of your business life which is out of alignment He will start to bring it into alignment, in other words, He’ll change some things that you do so they’re better.  He wants to be a partner with you.  When God gets a hand on your business what will change?  Nothing initially, but as you let Him talk with you and consistently bring your plans to Him and talk them over with Him and pray over what you’re doing, the first thing you’ll notice you’ll find people will become important.  Why?  Because God’s into people, He’s not into money, He doesn’t need your money, what He wants is to touch people so He wants you to value what He values, He values people. So what kind of people?  Number one, you!

I had someone tell me God is a senior partner in my business, I said well, not doing too good a job then is He?  The point was if you’re stressed out, overworked, you’re a workaholic, if you have no time for anything, if you can’t be involved in anything, can’t do anything, you’re nothing but work, work, work I don’t believe that God’s in charge at all, He would never treat you that way.  I was a workaholic at one stage, working seven days a week and still not enough time in the day and I was complaining to God, and then God just spoke to me and said who told you to do all those things?  Who set your diary?  Who set the goals?  He said you never talked it over with Me, you never asked Me to give you a balance in your life, you never did that at all and so you’re stressed out because you set the goals and He said I want to make some changes.

The first one I’ll look after is you, so He said I want you to take a day off, and then He said now I want you to take two days off and one day you’ll invest with your family the other day, because you’ve got ministry obligations, you’ll invest in serving in that kind of area, and then He showed me how to bring balance around what I do.  And do you know what?  My work did not go backwards it went forwards.  I actually went from strength to strength because the fear is, if I’m not getting it all done now then how can I get it all done if I take a little less time, but isn’t that the same way with our finance?  If I can’t make ten tenths go, nine tenths definitely won’t make it.

In the end He showed me I could do a lot more than I thought just by prioritising and saying no to heaps of things and saying yes to what really counted.  And He had to tell me what really counted.  So the first person He’ll deal with is you.  He wants to care for you because He loves you and He doesn’t want you beaten up by your business, He wants you to actually be enjoying what you do in your work.  So He’ll bring some priorities around your life.

The second people He wants to look after is your employees, if you’re a Christian employer the bible’s got heaps of things to say about your employees and how you treat them.  Your employees should actually think, it’s a great thing to work for this man rather than, he’s tight and mean and rips me off.  What kind of a blessing is that?  God wants you to look after your employees. Why?  Because God looks after people who serve Him, He wants you to as well.

The next thing He’ll do is He’ll get you to look after your customers.  Isn’t that amazing?  If you will look after yourself, your workers and your customers wouldn’t go a lot better in business?  I was talking to someone the other day who said, I make heaps of money and don’t advertise whatsoever, I said, I’ve noticed that I got your phone number off someone else.  He then said, well that’s how I do all my business. I actually treat the customers well, I give them a good deal, a fair price, I look after them because I want them back and I want them to tell their friends.

God wants you to guard your name and have a good reputation in your business.  So people are important.  Our principles are become important, there are certain principles you’ll find will be very important to God.  Integrity, that you’re not two-faced.  That when you say you’re going to be there, you’re there.  You keep your word.  Honesty will be very important.

Service, give good service, quality service.  If God’s in charge that’s the kind of business He runs.  People are important.  First you, second the ones you employ, third the ones you serve.  Principles are important.  Integrity, honesty and good service.  Why?  Because that’s how He runs His business, and it’s how He wants us to run it as well.

Here is another thing too, growth becomes important.  Everything that God has His hand on grows.  So growth is natural and normal.  So financial growth is something that I’d expect to happen.  With God’s hand of favour I’d expect you to grow financially.  Why?  Because God increasingly wants to use you as a channel to bless others.  I bless you, that I might bless the nations through you.  And not only in the areas of finance but also your influence.  So God would expect your influence over a period of ten years in business in Hawkes Bay would financially grow and prosper and that your influence would increase.  You’d become well known, well respected and because of the way people see your life, you’re able to talk to them and share with them about Christ, not because you’re Christian but because they see your life is lived differently.  They see you in good times and bad you’re still different.

The good times it is a little harder to keep God in the front, in the bad times everyone was crying out to God and running to Australia but now the good times are here, where’s God and how are you honoring God?  Start to think about those things, those things are very important for you.

Finally God will require that you be obedient to His promptings, so He’ll teach you about the lessons of obedience.  One thing I loved when I read about a Chinese man who God was trying to speak to on two occasions through his wife. In his ministry he’d got burned out and insensitive to God and filled with his own importance.  He didn’t listen to his wife and one day ended up seven months in jail.  He knew immediately before he got thrown into jail that he’d not listened to his wife’s promptings and he’d not listened to the Lord.  As a result he was going to face time in jail. I liked his attitude when he said he accepted the punishment because he deserved it and he just asked God to be merciful on him.  When he went to jail he said, I’ll only be here for as long as God wants me to be here after that I’m out.  I won’t be in a day shorter or a day longer, the day God wants me out I’ll be out.  I’ve got a job to do.

In jail God spoke to him too fast and I’ll tell you when to stop, so he fasted off food and water, now you know you can’t live more than three days without water or you’re in severe trouble, well he fasted 73 days without food or water and God sustained him all through that time.

Now don’t you try that, in 73 minutes you’ll be hungry again.  But he said he had a whole cell full of people and they were abusing him and the guards had tried to bribe the prisoners saying we’ll make it easier for you if you make it hard for him.  So they’re all making it hard for him and after 73 days he said the Holy Ghost came on him even though he was weak he suddenly stood up and he spoke to them straight.  He said, you’re looking at a living miracle, have you ever heard of anyone who lived 73 days with no food or drink?  He said, I command you now in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, get on your knees, repent and come to the Lord, the whole lot including the Muslims got saved.

That’s why we’re here, we’ve got to learn how to listen to God’s promptings  it may just be not to trust a customer, not to enter into a certain deal, it may be to wait a certain period of time, it may be to quickly pay something.  God will speak to you about lots of little things, learn to be obedient rather than say I’ll make up for it later on.  God wants you to do something now not wait for later on.  Just do it now while you’ve got the chance.

So where do we start?  Number one, just evaluate, where am I?  Is money my god really?  Or is God the Lord of my life?  Is Jesus Christ the one who calls the tune?

The second thing is, make a commitment daily, just every day take time to pray and bring your business before the Lord, just like you pray for your family and you pray for your marriage and pray for other things, just consciously bring your business before the Lord, lay your hands on the plans you have, talk over your plans before you enter into them.

I found as a Pastor one of the most frustrating things was when  people come up to me and say, God’s told me to do this what do you think?  Or they say I’ve decided to do this what do you think?  Could you pray your blessing on it?  Well you’ve already decided, you don’t need me, the time for my advice was before you decided, not after you decided.  So you just figure out whether it’s right or wrong by what the fruit of it is.  So lay your plans before the Lord.  The business deals you’re in, the prices to charge.

To get land for religious purposes is really difficult in Singapore; they just don’t have the land.  They use a ballot system, a piece of land would come up for religious purposes and all the churches have to compete with one another for the land by bidding.  It’s a closed bid, you don’t go to an auction and bid, you have an envelope, you put in your amount, so much per square foot and you’ve got to outguess the other bidders.  One church there bid for a certain property and was a million dollars more than the nearest bidder.  Imagine going back to your board and saying we got it but we bid a million more than the next bidder.  They publish all the bids.

If you bid too low you’ve got no land, if you bid too high you end up with this huge gap between what you bid and the next bidder and you feel like I could have put that million into the building if I’d only bid one dollar more.

A pastor in Singapore a friend of mine said, their church prayed what they were seeking to do; they felt God had led them to a certain price.  When he put his bid in he got the land and now they’ve built a multimillion-dollar church and facility.  He said we bid only one dollar per square foot more than the nearest person.  He said they couldn’t believe it, that’s the closest in all the years we’ve ever done it, it’s never been that close before.

I said, how did you do it?  He said, well I knew I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out myself, I prayed and asked the Lord to give me the figure.  I said what happened?  He said, well I sweated over it I put an amount on paper, and sent it in, of course I went through very a difficult time but when it was announced, they’d never got it so close before.  In other words he just paid the minimal edge to get it and the rest of the money could go into the building.  How would you like inside information like that?  When you hear stories that inspire you, it actually begins by listening to God in the little things and if you’re not listening to the little things you probably would miss or you’d freak out over the cost and not do it at all.