The Stone
For much of my life I thought that if I could be financially successful, I would get all the respect I needed, live a comfortable life, and therefore be happy. When I did find a good measure of financial success in a small business I owned during the 1990s for about 10 years, my life centered around the success of that business. My identity was tied up in it. It was everything to me. Funny thing about it though, I found it to be a grind. I worked long hours, and was left feeling unfulfilled. I wanted to grow it even more. Maybe if I could l build it to sell for millions of dollars in profit for myself, I would be happy, and I could retire early and spend my life drinking margaritas on a tropical beach.
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the market for my services shrank significantly very quickly. It shrank so much that to stay in business would cost me close to a million dollars. I didn't have it, and the profitability of the business at this point made it impossible to find somewhere else. So I had to shut it down. It was so expensive, I was lucky that I didn't lose my home and my marriage. That was about all I had left.
It took me awhile, but I finally realized that something a CPA, who happened to be a brother in Christ, told me was key to my recovery. He had advised me that I forgot about the wisdom of Proverbs 22:7. "Poor people are the rich man's slaves. Borrow money and you are the lender's slave." TEV This made me angry, because I could not see how to run a business without debt of some kind. But after going back to the Bible and studying money more thoroughly, and looking at the history of money, I learned how far off base we are today in our society when it comes to managing money. We have built our economy on shifting sand. Our economy is built on debt, our very money supply is built on debt.
This realization caused a personal crisis. It meant that I was investing in the wrong place. It meant everything I'd been taught in business school set me up for a life of slavery. After much personal struggle with this idea, I realized that there is only one thing in this world that I can trust not to leave me hanging, and that was the Lord. His wisdom, if I follow it, will protect me from the storms that will come. Not because I won't suffer, but because I will find joy even when I suffer. I will have something no one can take away.
1 Peter 2:4-8 is an excellent illustration of this. Jesus is a living stone. The stone in this song is a metaphor for Jesus. He is the source for everything and has given me life. It is on this stone I should build my house, not on the wisdom of the world. This is clear to me because I lost millions almost overnight. Money will leave you faster than it came. It promises much and delivers little. So if I re-center my life around serving the Lord, my work won't go up in smoke like it did with my business. If Jesus is the cornerstone in my life, and is the rock upon which I build my home, it will far outlast those who don't do this.
I am now realizing this, as I have corrected my priorities, because now I am building relationships that will serve me far better than a fat bank account. My life has significance like never before. I am finally doing what God made me to do, with the right attitude.
