God Owns My Businessنموونە

God's Goods

We’re working with God’s goods. We’re the cooks in His kitchen. That’s the honest, humbling truth. Even, and perhaps especially, if you started your own business, you’re creating out of the ingredients God created first. 

We see this in the Garden of Eden, right? Adam didn’t create the Garden. He cultivated it. Instead of owning it, he stewarded it. And that’s what entrepreneurs can do with our businesses as well. But, if we’re being honest, there’s a part of us that wants to push back.

It is my business after all. I came up with the idea, I did the hard work, I raised all the funding, I hired all the people—what does God have to do with what I’ve created? Truthfully, there’s a healthy tension there.  

If your company has grown year after year thanks to your ability to bootstrap and your consistent hard work and effort, it’s hard to surrender ownership of that to anyone. It’s never easy to look at our companies, businesses, and ideas, and say that they’re not ours—that they’re God’s. But if this verse is true, if God is who He says He is, then everything already belongs to Him anyway.

So, will we struggle to possess and hoard that which we’ve been given to protect and cultivate? Or, will we fight the daily battle to submit ourselves to the role of steward and surrender our businesses to the God who already owns it all?

Further Thought

• What lie have you heard from culture that makes it seem as though we are owners rather than stewards of our life and work? 
• What if you started using the word steward instead of own when talking about your business? How would introducing yourself by saying “I steward my business” remind both you and others of truth? 
• Why is it hard to relinquish ownership over something you’ve created? Why is there a part of us that hates to give up control?
• How would your attitude toward work change if you viewed your business as God’s idea instead of your own?