How to misuse God’s name in your business

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Deuteronomy 5:11

Right now you’re probably thinking, “This should be an easy devotional—I don’t blaspheme…” (except when I say, “Oh my God!” – but he knows I mean that in a nice way – or when I get the bajeebies scared out of me and I say, “Sweet Jesus!”). So I am not misusing God’s name in my work… but I will read on to see what the other people are doing.

We have an increasing number of people who claim to have God in their business. Their mission statements even start with “To glorify God through my business…” Some have Christian literature in their lobbies, crosses in the board rooms and fish on their business cards. Others have company prayer meetings, voluntary of course. Others collect prayer requests from customers and genuinely pray for them. Still others have Bible verses on their products. These things may be good, but it is possible to do them and still misuse God’s name in your business or work. How?

Doing business in God’s name without doing business in his way is misusing his name. God is really into alignment. He does not smile on us when we say we are doing business for Him and our business processes are not based on his principles. He is not pleased when we have Christian symbols on the outside but our core practices are pagan. Further, he makes it clear that we cannot claim he is #1 when we make no time for him, his desires, his dreams, or his plans.

Observe the Sabbath day… so that your maidservant and manservant may rest as you do. Deuteronomy 5:12-14

In God’s kingdom we cannot observe the first three commandments—make God #1, no idols, no misusing his name—if we don’t operate from a place of rest (commandment #4). When we do anything from human effort and striving instead of from a place of rest we are blowing it. Yet most of us are so strung out, so stretched, that we don’t have meaningful time for God. We blame it on work, of course, when the matter is not how much we work but how we work. And what about our leisure time, our Facebooking, our shopping, our gyming, or primping, our Christian meetings, our socializing or our sleeping? Are we a people on the move, or a people at rest? Are we making margin for God? The kingdom of this world is marked by hustle and bustle. The kingdom of God is marked by meaningful work, and rest, and margin for God. If you have the outward trappings without the inward rest and practical alignment at the core of your operations, then there’s a good chance you are unwittingly misusing the name of God in your business or career. If the name says “Kingdom business” and the operations say “strive to arrive”…

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God… Deuteronomy 5:11

Application

• Where does your business look like God on the outside but operate like man on the inside?
• Where has your career succumbed to the pressure of man? 

I Wait

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. Psalm 130:5

Do not let the second part of the verse wipe out the first part of the verse. Many Westerners, or those prone to thought over experience, will treat the first part of this verse as a poetic statement, and quickly jump to the second part of the verse, “in his word I put my hope.” We see the latter as the action part, something we can do. We like the verse that says “love the Lord with all your mind” because we think we know how to think. But engaging our mind in thought before we have put our soul to work waiting can be futile. It is like putting a car in gear without first starting the engine.

Truth be told, we know very little about what it means to have our soul wait on God. We rush into things head first. Yet the psalmist says, “I wait for the Lord…” Somewhere in the depths of our being where our emotions and our will and our core being come together, we are to wait.

Have you ever been in a room waiting for a dignitary to enter? Or perhaps you have been to a concert and waited in anticipation for the artist to appear. In the Old Testament once a year a priest went into the “holy of holies” in the inner temple – that would have involved some anticipation. Imagine what he was thinking as they tied the rope around his ankle so that they could drag him out in case he had sin in his life and he was struck dead. How can we wait with anticipation when this could be the outcome of an up-close-and-personal encounter with God? In the preceding verses the writer says, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits…” He knew that God encounters were for all of us since our sin is forgiven.

We know there are many facets to the glory of God, and one of them is truth. Friends, when we get up in the morning, make our first cup of tea and come before God, let’s wait for the whole package. Let’s not stop short at just putting our hope in his word (which often means just engaging our thinking). Let’s bring all of us to sit expectantly, waiting for our rock star, our redeemer, our hope, to enter the room with his unfailing love, his truth, his forgiveness, his miracle working power, and his energizing of us for a new day. Let’s wait before we do other things. Let’s wait for the Person of God before engaging in the activities of God.

My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130:6

Application

• What are you waiting for, a word from God, or God?
• Are you putting your mind into gear before putting your soul into “wait”?
• How can you blend your soul, your mind, and your hope in waiting for the Lord? 

Oops - I shrunk God

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!  Deuteronomy 5:29

We read this and our mind’s eye moves to the target audience for this verse: proud parents who have a few kids, who attend church regularly, and who want the ideal life for their family. Surely they are the ones to whom these words would easily appeal… “so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” These are the same people who would buy life insurance, plan ahead, seek the best for their children educationally, socially and financially.

There is nothing wrong with these things, but that is not the context of this verse. Too often we take something that God intended for national application and we shrink it to personal proportions. We shrink the teaching about national economics to be personal finance principles. We shrink laws about education and apply them to Sunday School. We shrink national health care principles and make them personal diet fads.

At the root of this is that we take God himself—the dynamic, cannot-be-contained, out of the ordinary, unlimited God—and we put him in a box called Principles, or Rules for Life, or ancient truths, or Religion. ‘Phew!’ you say, ‘I am not religious, thank God. He cannot be talking about me.’ I am. I am suggesting that whenever you shrink your scope of application to be exclusively personal (versus your family as an intentional foundation for something bigger) you have misapplied truth and shrunk God. Said another way, if your secret motto is ‘think personal, act local’ you are on the wrong bus.

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!  Deuteronomy 5:29

This verse is breathed by God in the midst of his instructions on how to build a new nation in the Promised Land. Personal is good—it keeps us real. But personal to the exclusion of national and global could be a case of poor understanding, misunderstood identity, dodged destiny, or the stark truth that we don’t want the face to face with God that a nation-wide scope demands. So we tell our Moses to go and speak to God for us while we go home and ponder the small interior of our little tents.

“Go, tell them to return to their tents. But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.” Deuteronomy 5:30

Application

• What’s it going to be—your tent or your nation, just your kids, or your country?
• Who is going to see God’s face—your pastor (Moses) or you?
• Where are you going to apply truth—just inside your home, or also in your work and nation? 

You choose and bring near

Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts! Psalm 65:4

Last night I had a dream of an earlier time when my kids were young. I remember, in the dream, cuddling with my kids and enjoying them as three and six-year olds. Then today when I woke up and went back to Psalm 65, believing there was another nugget there, I found it: “you choose and bring near.” As a dad I would not have children and then not want to be near them. The older they get the more I simultaneously enjoy them now and I miss their younger days. It is unthinkable that I, an imperfect father, would choose to have children, but also choose to have them far away. Any good parent knows this.

If this is true—and it is—then why on earth do we treat God like some alien? We develop some split-level thinking that says, ‘God has to choose me because that’s his job. But he probably doesn’t want to be near me. I will just be happy with being chosen, and will hang out with the servants in the back yard.’ It sounds ridiculous when one spells it out this way, but I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say, “I don’t feel near to God.”

If the devil cannot stop you being forgiven he will try his best to stop you enjoying God. And sometimes satan doesn’t even need to work very hard at this because our own performance-driven, earning-oriented, ego-and-accomplishment based wiring keeps us from God. Friends, our God is one. He is not some bi-level, half-hearted, half-baked God. There is enough in who he is and what he has done to both choose us, and to draw us near. Anything that is a potential barrier to nearness has been swept away by the blood of Jesus. There is no veil, no dividing wall, no legal case against us… “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” We are chosen to be near, not just to be saved.

You are chosen: get near! Let this truth wash over you until you know it deep in your soul.

You choose and bring near… you choose and bring near… you choose and bring near.

Application

• How often do you say to yourself, “I don’t feel near to God”?
  
  
• Have you believed the lie that says, “God chose me because he chose the whole world, but he doesn’t want to be close to me.”?

• If you accept that you are chosen but don’t feel near, you may still living under the law. Are you, in some way, thinking that nearness comes from what you do rather than the Father’s desire? If so, repent—change your mind, because it is wrong.

• What steps can you take to soak in God’s decision to choose you, and bring you near?

Lean on me

“…this leaning wall, this tottering fence.” Psalm 62:3

Let’s face it, we all have days when we feel like we are about to fall over. There are times when we think we are bound to become just another fallen layer in the archeology of life. King David knew that if he didn’t collapse because of his own frailty, then there were plenty of people who were happy to do help him crumble. “How long will you assault a man? Would you throw him down—this leaning wall, this tottering fence? They fully intend to topple him from his lofty place…”  How did David deal with this opposition? Rather than try to pump himself up, he made sure his frail fence was located in the right place.

5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;

       my hope comes from him.

 6 He alone is my rock and my salvation;

       he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

The question is not whether we are a leaning wall; the question is, What is our wall leaning on? You may argue, ‘I am doing fine—my health is good, my finances are great, my wall is sturdy and I have a bright future.’ That’s good, if your wall is in the right place. If your money is your wall, “though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” (v.10) If your strength is your wall, “men are but a breath” – two puffs and life is over, your strength is gone. If you come from a noble family, remember “the highborn are but a lie.” (v.9) The posture of your wall is less important than the positioning of your wall.

The enemy knows that the real battle is not for the condition of your fence, but for the position of your fence. Satan tried, through his accomplices, to lure Nehemiah outside the city, but Nehemiah stayed in the right place. Samson had a strong fence, but compromised its position. Job stood firm: “even if he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” (Job 13:15)

If you have your fence in the right place, if it is high up on the rocky fortress, if it is set on a rock, then it doesn’t matter too much if it falls over. If your wall falls, he is capable of fixing it. There is no fear on the rock.

Application

• Are you afraid of teetering, falling? Why? Why not?

• What are you leaning into—God himself, or the things around you?

• What does it mean to “set our heart” on riches? (Verse 10)