Transcript

Welcome to the hundredfold business podcast where Christian men learn how to grow their top line, their bottom line, and the finish line. And I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures. And in today's episode, we'll be talking about the secret to multiplying growth.

And we'll also be talking about the backstory to my coaching and consulting name, which is 4th Soil Ventures. So today you're going to find out, are you a 4th soil business? And if not, what do you need to do to change, to become one? So you can learn how to grow and multiply the way God intends. Today's message is really important. 

It's a, it's a high level message and it's a heavy message, but it's a really important message for you as you go about your work, both here and now and for eternity. And so I know in future episodes, we'll be talking about specific strategies and specific tactics and how that relates to your sales and your marketing and your HR and how you run your business better. And those things are all gonna be measurable and important, but without this foundational message, none of it will matter.

So today we'll be covering an essential to a biblical worldview of business. And then you can filter your decisions through what we're talking about today. So I'm going to get started by reading a very familiar parable from the book of Luke. 

It's in Luke chapter eight, starting with verse four. This is the parable of the sower. And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed.

And as he sowed some fell among the path and was trampled underfoot and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock. And as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture.

And some fell among thorns and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let them hear. 

Okay. So let me pause here a second. Uh, just for context, this is Jesus teaching a crowd.

He's teaching them about four different types of soil. And of course, the last one, the 4th soil is the one that yielded the hundredfold increase and that's the one we're after, right? We, we'd like to have that kind of increase, live that kind of life and do business that way. Uh, you could also very obviously see this as the backdrop for my company name, 4th Soil Ventures.

Let's continue on and read the rest of this passage, starting from verse number nine. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. But for others, they are in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand. 

Now the parable is this. The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard and the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved.

And the ones in the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root. They believe for a while and in time of testing fall away.

And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Now hear me when I say this is not a parable about how to get rich quick, how to grow your business and scale it a hundred times.

That's not what this parable is about. And hopefully that's obvious. But if you stay till the end of today's episode, you're going to really get the context for why this is so essential in business and life to understand what's being talked about in this parable.

But this parable of course is about the kingdom of God and how it spreads. The seed is the word of God. And again, in the parable, it talks about how does a seed grow and mature into fruit.

The first soil was a hard path and the seed landed on the hard path. It was trampled and Satan devoured it and no fruit was produced. So think about your life, which a big part of it, potentially even a majority of it right now is going towards your business.

There are spiritual forces at play. So we will get more into that on future episodes, but just be aware of that that you are going against spiritual forces. And then the second soil, here's the word believes for a while.

And then in times of testing falls away. So in this soil, the second soil also no fruit is produced. Now let me just say the third soil is the most common soil I've seen among professing Christians in the business world.

So we're going to go a little bit deeper into the third soil, just to make sure this is not you. Let me read. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature. 

No fruit again. And we know that Jesus sternly warns that the tree that produces no fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire. So let's just pause a second and analyze why this third soil didn't produce any fruit because they heard God's word just like we're doing right now.

And then afterwards they went on their way. But some things happen, right? The cares of this life, the riches of this life, the pleasures of his life choked out the seed. So again, no fruit is produced. 

So nothing that they did, none of their work actually was giving God glory. So let's look at the first thorn that's choking out the word and that is cares of this life. It doesn't say that they're evil cares.

It just says that this is when your heart and your mind and your focus is on the here and now, you know, self focused and these cares could be your business. Maybe you need to repair your car, pay for your kid's college. Maybe you're thinking about upcoming vacation, the news, politics, whatever it is, the, the world system has captivated your heart and where your heart is, that's where your treasure is.

And we know that this world is passing away. And so the first thorn is really being wrapped up in the world system and being led by that system and caring about that primarily. And if you care about that first, instead of God's kingdom, that's one of the ways that you're going to be choked out.

The next thorn is riches in this life. Now God knows that you need to make money. Of course, you are a small business owner, you're an entrepreneur.

So part of what you're trying to do is grow your company, serve our people, help our people. And with that comes money and the stewardship of money. But money can't be your master. 

Money can't be your motivator, right? Because God's word says you can't serve God and money. You're going to love the one and hate the other. You're going to be devoted to one and despise the other.

You can't serve both, right? So you have to serve God and serve God with your money. But if you choose to serve money, of course, that's when the fruit gets squashed. And the last thorn is pleasures in this life.

And there's lots of good things to have pleasure in. God made this a very pleasurable world in terms of food, intimacy with your spouse, friends, relationships, being outdoors, a lot of things to enjoy, but making pleasure, this pursuit of pleasure as the top priority as opposed to the pursuit of God. If you do that, then you have it flip-flopped.

And again, the seed is not going to mature into fruit. Now, if this world is all that there is, there's no afterlife, there's no God, there's no heaven, there's no hell, there's no morality, then the third soil perspective makes sense, right? This is the person who's going to potentially hear God's word, hear lots of other philosophies, ideas, strategies, and they're going to try to live their best life. Now they're going to try to handle those cares, those struggles, those worries with whatever the world has to offer.

They're going to try to make as much money as possible to buy whatever they want, whatever they like, whatever they think is gonna make them happy. And then they're going to try to be, have as much pleasure as possible, pursue anything that's going to give them pleasure. It's really a total selfish pursuit, not loving others, not loving God, just what do I want for me to have the most pleasure, have the most fun, to have the best life I can have now.

And if you're a business owner and you have the third soil mindset, you can tend to move that needle further than most people because you can, if you follow the world system, you'll be able to make more money and have more time and really pursue the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life in a pretty extreme way. But of course, we've all watched people pursue the third soil life and even done to the max, right? They've really pursued pleasure. They've really pursued riches.

They've really pursued and focused on the things on a horizontal level and maybe they even achieved some level of success. But beneath that facade, we always see depression, despair, broken relationships, broken marriages and really a ruined life that horizontally didn't deliver. And of course, eternally is not going to deliver.

All you need to do is look at the latest celebrity that's committed suicide and you can see that pursuing this world and not pursuing God is not going to deliver. Here's the problem with the third soil. They're living for the wrong kingdom.

They're serving the wrong king. They are storing up for themselves wrath instead of riches. They just don't know it yet.

They're working hard their whole life and they're actually producing no fruit. And during that time they have no love, no joy, no peace. They're missing out on all the fruits of the spirit because they're stuck in the world's system.

And that's why Jesus said that with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. It's actually easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. 

So brothers, what, what are all these things? Well, all these things are the cares, riches, the pleasures, all those things that you need in this life. God already knows you need them. He just wants you to seek him first, to follow him, to obey him, to trust him and let him lead you.

And he's going to take care of those cares. He's going to provide for you financially what you need and he's going to give you pleasure and joy and peace along the way because he is a good father. Remember in your life, which about half of your waking hours are going to be spent working on your business. 

If you're not seeking God first, you're growing absolutely no fruit, right? You're not being faithful to the one who is faithful. You're being faithless and we know that without faith it's impossible to please God. Now I'm emphasizing this third soil warning to you all because I firsthand see what happens to my clients when they pursue this and I've seen what happens to myself when I pursue this because it's a way to get entrapped, ensnared, enslaved to your business and is very seductive and it can take you down a path where you think I'm going to pursue these things and then I'll give God what's left over of my time, my talent, my resources, just next week, next month, next year. 

But it never works. You never get there. You have to always start first by pursuing God, first pursuing him out of obedience and love and loving others.

And then with that you'll have healthy growth and you'll actually have multiplying fruit. So point number one for this episode is don't be one of the first three soils. So if you are, make sure you watch to the end.

We'll be going through what happens when the gospel enters the heart of the 4th soil and what transformation happens. This is what everyone wants to hear about the 4th soil. How do I get a hundred fold growth or how do I get multiplication or multiplying growth? So let me read it to you again.

As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. So here are the components of the good soil. Number one, you need to hear God's word.

Number two, you need to hold it in an honest and good heart. And number three, you need to bear fruit with patience. So in other words, you need to hear it.

You need to believe it and you need to do it. This is the reason I created this podcast. I want to take God's word and give it to you so you can hear it about sales, marketing, IT, finance, leadership. 

So you can really hear what does God's word say and then you can believe it in an honest and good heart. And then lastly, you can bear fruit with patience. You can actually put in the work, you can do the work God's way, and then you can see the hundred fold increase.

You can see the multiplying increase. And if you need help along the way, you can reach out to me at 4thsoilventures.com and if we work together, I can hold you accountable to making sure that what you hear, what you believe actually gets put into action and that implementation can happen. So now let's go through an example to take this and make this practical.

So here is the scenario you hear in this podcast or you're reading the scriptures and it says you should treat others the way you want to be treated. Very simple. The golden rule.

Next you keep the word in your heart and you think, honestly, do I treat my employees the way I want to be treated? Are my motivations selfish and worldly? Or am I actually working out of motivation of love and care for them? And then you start to think about like employee reviews. You say, you know what I should out of my love for them and out of my care for them and out of the fact that if I was an employee, I wouldn't want someone to review my work and I want to treat them the way I want to be treated. I'm going to review their work.

I'm going to analyze their work. I'm going to give them feedback. I'm going to coach them.

I'm going to mentor them and I'm going to help them and train them to be better at their jobs because their job matters because they're dealing with eternal souls and our work matters and I want them to know that their work matters. Their work matters so much that I'm going to give them feedback and support and help them and help them see that the business matters, their work matters. And so with that motivation, I'm going to do employee reviews.

Now the last part, which is bearing fruit with patients in this case, that means actually putting the work and doing the employee reviews and what's going to come with that is they're going to feel loved and cared for and they're going to likely be more productive. They're likely to be more loyal. The company culture is going to improve their salesperson.

They're likely to increase their sales. If they receive some training, they're likely to be better at their job. There's a lot of things that are going to come from that over time.

And the list goes on and on. If you bear fruit with patients and have your heart in the right place. Now, can that same scenario be played out with the wrong heart? Of course, right.

You could read a business book. It could be talk about how to get more out of your employees. You could say, well, if I do employee reviews, they will likely make more money for my business.

And so therefore with a cold, calculated, manipulative way of managing your company, you can cajole your team into producing more and horizontally, you may get some benefit from that, but vertically between you and God, you're getting nothing right because the heart is on the cares, the riches and the pleasures of this world, not on loving God, not on loving people, not on serving, but instead the cares, the riches and the pleasures. And so the same technique, though, it might have a minute horizontal benefit. It could be so much more.

And again, there's virtually no benefit. There is no benefit vertically between you and God. This is the difference between the third soil and the 4th soil.

Even though it has the same technique, the same principle, the same strategy is guided with the wrong heart. And therefore the results are different horizontally and the results are vertically because God looks at the heart and God cares about our motivation. And ultimately God is a rewarder of those who are seeking him first.

So to repeat myself, God's currency is love and he cares about our motivation. So as we're loving him and obeying him and loving others, he's going to be multiplying the kingdom impact. He's going to be growing and multiplying fruit.

And you can do this, whether you have a real estate portfolio and you're a property manager, or you are designing websites, you're doing tax planning, whatever you're doing your business, you can do it in love. You can do it the 4th soil way. I hope that it's really clear the difference between third soil and 4th soil, and hopefully you can see why I'm so excited to be partnering with 4th soil business owners, those who are desiring to do work God's way for God's kingdom and have multiplying impact in their businesses.

Okay. So now the second point of today's podcast is be the 4th soil. And the way to do that is to hear God's word.

It's to hold it in an honest and good heart. And the third thing is to bear fruit with patience. So now I want to get to the application of today's episode.

I know it was more of a theological high level episode, but it's going to lay the groundwork for everything we do with regards to strategies and tactics and principles applied to your business. If you are following the principles, the strategies, the tactics in this podcast with the wrong heart, you know, the first three soils, you're actually doing it for the wrong team. You've got the wrong Jersey on your scoring points.

You're just scoring points against yourself instead of for yourself. Here is my assignment for you. Pray that God gives you an honest and pure heart.

Pray that he gives you a heart of love for him and those in your lives, and that you can hear and discern his voice clearly ask him for vision, for wisdom, for direction in your business. So you can produce a hundred times more good in this world with your quality products, your quality services, and then you can use your time, your talents, your treasures for the greatest good in his kingdom. If you're interested in working directly with me one-on-one, you can go to forthsoilventures.com and there you can schedule a call.

And lastly, as always, I would appreciate any support you can provide in terms of like shares, comments, reviews, ratings, all that helps and your prayers. So I appreciate you appreciate you brothers for tuning in and until next time, grace be with you.