God is an Entrepreneur!
You are probably thinking, “Brian, are you serious?”
What does God care about business? How could you say that “God is an Entrepreneur?” Well, not only did I say it, but I believe it without a shadow of a doubt.
Hang with me…
I know this may be a stretch for some, but I think you will see where I am coming from and how this affects your life. First, we have to understand what Entrepreneurship is…
What is Entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneur Definitions
Dictionary.com – a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
Miriam-Webster – a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money.
Wiki-pedia – Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business or other organization. The entrepreneur develops a business model, acquires the human and other required resources, and is fully responsible for its success or failure. Entrepreneurship operates within an entrepreneurship ecosystem.
In recent years, “entrepreneurship” has been extended from its origins in business to include social and political activity. Entrepreneurship within an existing firm or large organization has been referred to as intrapreneurship and may include corporate ventures where large entities spin off subsidiary organizations.
Entrepreneurs are leaders willing to take risk and exercise initiative, taking advantage of market opportunities by planning, organizing, and employing resources, often by innovating new or improving existing products. More recently, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to include a specific mindset resulting in entrepreneurial initiatives, e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge entrepreneurship.
Based on these definitions, here is my summary definition. Entrepreneurship is innovation with risk and initiative… this could also be described as the act of “creating.”
[Tweet “Entrepreneurship is Creating and Creating is Entrepreneurship”]
Our God is “the creator,” and something in His nature expresses itself in the creative endeavor. Therefore, He is an Entrepreneur. Creation was the greatest Entrepreneurial endeavor of all time. The Earth was “formless and void” and out of that emptiness God took initiative to create the world, with the risk of giving us the freedom, to choose whether we follow Him or not.
In that creative process we were made in His image. Therefore, there is a part of us that is “born to create.”
[Tweet “We were born to be creative!”]
However, This original creation was corrupted by “the fall” The result of the curse is “toil of the ground.” rather than the abundance of life.
We often think that our struggle of “working to make a living” doing work that we don’t really enjoy is “just the way it is.” Let me point something out… It may be “just the way it is,” but it is not the way it was intended to be!
We were not created to struggle with the toil of the ground. We were created to enjoy the abundance of life and fulfill our God given destiny. Work is not a “bad” thing. It existed before “the fall.” It was sin that corrupted work and made it a struggle. (The above references Genesis 1-3)
Jesus came to break the curse of sin and give us new life (Romans 5:17-18). Therefore, in him we are free to find fulfillment in our life’s work and become the creative individuals that we were designed to be. If we believe that the good news of Jesus Christ transforms everything, then we have to believe that it can transform our work.
Now, you may not be a person of faith like me and you may not completely agree with everything I just said, but think about it for a minute…
How do you feel when you are creating something? A DIY project, a business, a new friendship, a song, a letter, an organization, a piece of art, an event, a party, a meal…. some of our most fulfilling experiences in life are creative in nature.
What can we learn about Entrepreneurship from God’s actions in creation?
- There was an order and plan to the process.
- Attention was paid to beauty, and aesthetic along with form and function.
- The Creation would increase over time
- The Creation had a purpose
- There was satisfaction in the work
As we allow the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us to become more like Christ, and as we engage with the word of God to transform the way we live, we can experience freedom from the curse of sin in our work.
I hope that I have challenged you today to believe that your work can be so much more then just something you must do to earn a living. I believe that you can do work that is creative, makes you come alive and fulfills your destiny. When you do that kind of work, you become a person of value and a person of value will be compensated!
– Brian
PS. I teach Biblical Entrepreneurship through the life of Solomon. Learn more here.
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