Transcript

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact, so in the end you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done. Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their top line, their bottom line, and their finish line.

And I'm your host Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today is the third episode of the podcast. It's also the first of 12 in a series all about how to grow a Hundredfold Business, all those essentials. A business that honors God as it grows.

During these 12 essentials, you'll be learning about how God's Word informs how you go about growing and running your business. You'll also be challenged in new ways to integrate your faith into how you run your business. And of course, as always, if you need help along the way integrating one of these 12 ways, you can always reach out to me directly at 4thSoilVentures.com. For this first essential, we'll be talking about elevating our mind, or mindset for short.

And in 1st Corinthians, Paul refers to this as having the mind of Christ. And that's what we want. We want to have the mind of Christ as we're going about making our day-to-day decisions in our business, vision, values, mission, strategy, hiring, firing, all the things that we have to do as business owners and entrepreneurs.

We're going to be submitting our will, submitting our minds to the Word of God and having the mind of Christ so that we can glorify Him. As the leader of your business, it is so important that you are confident, that you are bold, that you're resilient as you're leading your team. And what you don't want to do is put on a false show of confidence, bravado, you know, kind of masking the uncertainty and the fear that you have about the future.

Instead, what you want is you want to be confident, bold, because you've consulted with God, you know His Word, you know what decisions you should be making, and you know that you're being led by the Spirit. Let me read a passage that I think will illuminate this. It's Psalm 127.

"...unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep." Now, with this introduction out of the way, let's learn together how to elevate our minds so we don't end up building a Tower of Babel.

What I'm going to be doing is grabbing a section from the Bible. We're going to Romans 12, verse 2. And as I go through this, we're going to dissect it and learn how to apply this passage into growing our business. "...do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." All right, so the first step is, do not be conformed to this world.

So that's the question for you is, are you conformed to the world? Are you conformed in the way you think about business ownership, entrepreneurship, the goals, the motivations, the desires, the objectives? Are you thinking and acting and working in the same way as the rest of the world? Or have you been conformed to the image of Christ? Are you thinking differently and therefore working in the freedom of the gospel? Enjoy serving Christ as King. Now, there's a simple way to find out, which is, do you have godly ambition, which means the primary focus for everything you do, including your business, is the glory of God? Or do you have selfish ambition, which means that the primary motivation or focus is pride or greed or sloth, or really a combination of those three? Now, I think that most people understand the motivation of pride, which is putting ourselves above others and above God, and most people understand the motivation of greed, which is the desire for more and more money and power. But the motivation of sloth, I've actually had a number of clients over the years that this was their motivation.

They were trying to scale their business quickly. They're trying to sell it. They're trying to grow it as quickly as possible and delegate as much as possible so that they could have a life of ease, a life of comfort, a life of not having to work or work very little, if at all.

And that was their motivation for being an entrepreneur. Let me read for you a great parable where Jesus taught about a successful businessman, one who was conformed by the world, and what happened. Give me a minute as I find it.

It's in Luke chapter 12, and it's chapter 12, verse 16. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this.

I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.

But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So let's take a few seconds to analyze the situation.

We have a successful businessman. He was ambitious. He owned a farm, and he produced plentifully.

So much so that he had a ton. I mean, a lot for extra years. So much so he wanted to tear down his barns and just store up what he had and live a life of ease.

Not give anything away, but keep it all for himself, right? And he was even saying, hey, good job, self. Let me pat myself on the back. And you could see throughout the whole parable that the motivation was pride, it was greed, and it was sloth.

He wanted to just sit back and relax. His goal was not to work more in his farm the next year and give out of his abundance. It was just to keep it all for himself.

And so you could say he grew his top line and he grew his bottom line, but ultimately there was no finish line. So to summarize step number one, which is do not be conformed to this world, we all need to, including myself, look in the mirror and turn to God to repent and to confess any times we've put anything, our selfish ambition, above God's glory. Which brings us to step number two, which is be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Now when a mind is transformed by the Word of God, it goes from thinking, this is my business, to this is God's business. And it gets transformed from thinking, I can operate my business however I want to, to I should operate my business, God's business, however He wants me to. And then going to search in His Word to find out how He wants me to run my business.

And then lastly, going from seeking my own glory, my business, to seeking God's glory. I highlight this swapping of thoughts in episode one of the podcast, so you can certainly go back there and watch that if you want to hear more about that. But needless to say, you need to actually put forth some effort to renew your mind.

You need to put something good into your mind, the Scriptures. You need to put God's Word into your mind, and then it's going to be renewed. And this does not come naturally.

This is something that's going to take some effort, and it's gonna take supernatural effort. You're gonna need God's help. You're going to need to pray and ask Him to give you the strength, which He's going to give, to renew your mind.

So that's the question for you. Are you taking the time and effort to renew your mind? In Ephesians chapter 4, verses 20 through 24, this is what it says. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

And to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. So you can see this is not just a theoretical idea or a theological concept to ponder. This is actually something that you're commanded to do, and this is not just in your personal life.

This is in your business life. You're commanded to renew your mind, and you do that by putting off the old and putting on the new. And now we're on to the last step, which is step number three.

The Bible states that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So would you like to know the will of God for your business? Whether you should hire that new employee, or should change your pricing, open a new location. Countless decisions for you as a leader to discern the will of God, and you have the choice whether to faithfully pursue that, or to faithlessly just make decisions without even trying to discern what the will of God is.

So we all know at least one person who did this perfectly, right? It was the God-man, Jesus Christ, who was 100% man, 100% God, and he was able to discern the will of God perfectly, and do all of the work that God had him to do. No more, no less, and do it all perfectly. And up until he was age 30, he was a carpenter.

So he was a worker, and he was running a business, and he did his work perfectly. So we can look to him. Now, how did he do that? How did he perfectly discern the will of the Father, and glorify him and everything? Well, in the same way we do, right? So Jesus, he knew the Scriptures inside and out perfectly.

He prayed, he fasted, he praised God, he worshiped, he worked, he served. All of the spiritual disciplines that we can do, he did. And of course, on top of that, he was the Word incarnate, right? He was living Word, and so he was God.

We don't have that, but we do have the Holy Spirit inside of us, teaching us, and showing us, and revealing truth to us. Now, for Jesus, he had the Word so perfected in him that, of course, he was able to live a perfect life, but you can also see that as he lived this perfect life, he was filled with joy. It says that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

So even doing things that, in our flesh, don't sound like much fun, or hard things to do, he actually found it a joy to do really hard things. So that's part of discerning and following God's will for you and in your business, is not just knowing what to do, but to find joy in doing what God's Word tells us to do. And Jesus, of course, is our perfect model for that.

Remember that in Proverbs chapter 3, verse 6, the Bible states that in all our ways, we are to acknowledge God, acknowledge him, and that he will direct our paths. So there's a promise from God that he will direct our paths. We're not left alone to try to figure it out.

Instead, he just says, come to me, you know, come to God, and then he will direct our paths. So to conclude, let me read the whole verse again, starting from the beginning. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As entrepreneurs and small business owners, we get this unique place of leadership where we get to be a light to our customers, to our employees, to our family, to the community. And it's a great opportunity to be that bright light, but to be the bright light in the workplace, we need to renew our minds. We need to elevate our minds.

We need to have the mind of Christ. And this is when work starts to be exciting. We get to walk in this thrilling path of the narrow road.

The narrow road with Jesus is the exciting road. Now we're going to get on to some applications for today's episode. The first one really being to protect your mind.

So do some inventory. Think about all the things that are coming into your mind, whether it's through media, podcasts, whatever you're listening, watching, whatever you're being exposed to is coming into you. It's influencing you, even relationships.

They're all influencing your mind. And so what you want to do is protect your mind. So take an inventory of all things coming into your mind, and then find out which of those things you need to stop consuming.

The next application is to renew your mind. So think about all those spiritual disciplines we talked about, and then consider which ones are you doing and not doing, and then build a plan on a daily basis, a weekly basis. What are those activities you're going to take part in that are going to elevate your mind, to renew your mind, to give you the mind of Christ, and make sure you schedule those in.

You put forth the effort. Maybe you need to be in a community. Maybe you need an advisor.

Maybe you need someone else to help you with the work of renewing your mind. But don't just think it's going to happen by default. You need to actually put forth some effort to do this.

It's a lot like eating food. You can see the food. You can think about the food.

You can look at the food. But if you're not consuming the food, it's not going to help you. It's not going to give you energy.

It's the same with renewing your mind, which I would say is more important than food. Now we're on to the last application, which is to commit your mind, or commit your mind to the Lord. And we know that in Proverbs it says, if you commit your work to the Lord, your plans will be established.

And so we're taking our newly renewed mind in God's Word, and every decision, small and large, short term or long term, we're going to commit it. We're going to do it following God. We're going to commit our mind to the Lord.

And so the helpful device that I have is this bracelet right here, which says WWJD, which means what would Jesus do, which helps me remember to think or have the mind of Christ, and then commit my decisions, my mind, to the Lord. This is one of the 12 essentials to integrating your faith into your business, you know, walking your faith out in business, and therefore building a business that produces a hundredfold increase. If you're interested in working directly with me as your business coach, helping you elevate your mind, and helping you multiply your top line, your bottom line, and finish line, then make sure to reach out directly to me at 4thsoilventures.com, and you can schedule a call with me there.

I look forward to bringing you essential 2 of 12 about how to grow a hundredfold business next time, all about vision. Finally, if you like this episode, you found it helpful, and encouraging, and equipping you to better live out your faith in the business world, then make sure to like, subscribe, give it a review. All those things are going to help the algorithm push out to new audiences, which is my goal, to bring the gospel into places that it's not often talked about, which is going to be in the marketplace, in the business world.

I appreciate you, brothers. Until next time, grace be with you.