The Global Business Consumer

“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.” John 4:9 

We teach people to know their customer. Jesus knew lots about the Samaritans. Whereas the disciples may have viewed this woman as an embarrassment or a distraction, Jesus saw her as the keyhole to a community. Sure, it took a word of knowledge and a miracle of revelation, but she was the ticket to the town. She tried to put him off: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.” The disciples had questions about her, but Jesus saw the God picture for Samaria. The results spoke for themselves, and “many more became believers.”

Jesus told us we would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. For me, Samaria is the marketplace. Here we encounter many people with all kinds of thirst. From a religious perspective they are “spiritual but not religious,” yet they don’t know too much about the One God. There are plenty of them. In fact, I call them the Global Business Consumers. They are Global: you encounter them on the Internet, in call centers, on sidewalks and in offices and they come from anywhere. The businessperson in Chennai and the one in San Jose are almost identical. They are Business: they speak Business 2.0; business is their common culture. And they are Consumers: they make business decisions in the same way that they make consumer purchases. We know their patterns, and they are similar to ours. This tribe – the Global Business Consumer – is growing quicker than any other. This is our mission field.

Many have been at work in this field for decades, yet we live at a juncture in history where the words of Jesus ring true.

 “Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

 Given that our life purpose fits into the context of what God is doing in history, consider how this emergence of the marketplace movement ties into your own calling. And given the size of the opportunity, what life response does this evoke?

REFLECTIONS

•  Should your work be your primary place of ministry?

•  If the marketplace is your Samaria, how can you love it more, serve it better?

•  What “drink of water” do you have that the Global Business Consumer needs?
  
  

Business Continuation

“Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting” Leviticus 26:5

 Even business leaders whose companies are doing well wonder whether their current business performance can be sustained. What if Scripture showed a possible way to avoid business downturns? The first thirteen verses of Leviticus 26 hold the conditions and the promises of sustained business performance. Our challenge is that we read it and think it is Old Testament mumbo jumbo and therefore miss the truth.

 The conditions don’t seem that onerous: No idols of any sort, observe the Sabbath, reverence the sanctuary, follow God’s decrees, and obey his commands. What does this look like if we put that into New Testament speak—make that 2012 language?

• Idolatry for ancient Israel meant buying into the world view and religious system that were not from God. In business this means basing our business practices on assumptions that are not Biblical.
• “Observe the Sabbath” means shutting down operations one day a week, not as a law, but as an act of faith, trusting that if you take special time for God, he will look after your work.
• “Reverence the sanctuary” – the physical sanctuary has gone. We are now carriers of God’s presence as his Spirit lives in us. Has your workplace become a sanctuary yet?
• Decrees – laws and Biblical principles for business. Follow them.
• Commands – the things God speaks to you every day, the law of the Spirit written on your heart, the sayings of God that come from daily relationship with him.

 The promised outcome of following God in these ways is amazing.

 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.

 Opposition is normal when you first decide to align your business with God. Business growth is normal when our business is fully aligned with God. Between these two statements lies The University of the Desert. The desert is not God’s ultimate destination for us, however, and he longs that we be in a place where he can bless us and our work from one season to the next. By implication, he also wants our capital base to grow because that is what transpires when last season’s output is still in hand when the next season’s products fill the shelves. Wellbeing and supernatural sustenance is normal in God’s presence. Abiding fruit is the outcome of God’s abiding presence. This is the best business continuation strategy.

REFLECTIONS

•       Have you been seeking sustained business before seeking the sustained, lingering presence of God?
  
  
•       How can your mind be renewed, your faith level raised, your hope sustained to believe for God’s mark of business continuation?

Foundation Fixers

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. Isaiah 58:12

God knows cities. He knows their foundations, good and bad, he knows their history, he understands their character, and he sees their potential. He sees—you could say has planned—that cities usually have economic foundations, sitting on trade routes or parlaying some geographic feature for commercial gain and the sustenance of peoples.

 God also knows that most cities need regeneration. Where foundations were good, they have often been burned by the fires of corruption and greed, power grabbing and discontent. Where foundations are bad, “chains of injustice” and “the cords of the yoke” were and are the order of the day. Business can be for blessing, of course, but carries the inherent danger of amassing wealth, and with it, the power to oppress.

 We live in an era where the twin forces of urbanization and globalization make cities strategic in God’s agenda. The challenges are daunting but God’s word is still true: “Your people will rebuild.”

If you are a believer who works in the marketplace you have a calling to be on God’s repair crew. How do you respond to this call?

• Be equipped for your ministry in the marketplace. Learn how to do business God’s way so that you do not perpetuate the problems of business that is independent of God’s counsel and governance.
  
  
• Understand the foundations of the city where you are ministering. Through inquiry and intercession, learn what stones were laid at its inception.
  
  
• Unite with those, past and present, who, like Nehemiah, have sought the welfare of the city. Build on their work in prayer and pragmatic transformation.
  
  
• Call out businesses to work in an opposite spirit to that which is wicked in their city.
  
  
• Repurpose business through the formulation of business strategies that loosen, undo and destroy the works of the enemy in their city.

 If every business owned or operated by a believer developed strategies that counteracted bad foundations and re-laid righteous stones, our cities would speed towards transformation. This is the hour when God is calling businesspeople to heed the challenge and counteract the self-serving appeal of business as usual. May God indeed rename and repurpose us so that we will take up our role as “Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

Reflections

• ·       How would you describe the condition of your city?
  
  
• ·       How is your business impacted by the state of its foundations, streets and walls?
  
  
• ·       Is there some aspect of your city that your business is positioned to address?