Recently, I was having a cup of coffee with a friend of mine. He has a successful business, loves Jesus and was lamenting the fact that it can be really tough to be a Christian in business today. It’s filled with people whose primary focus is making the next dollar, and often at the expense of moral and ethical principles, or even just common, decent business dealings.
Competition is tough, and while he appreciates the perspective of loving and honoring all people, my friend was pretty frustrated with how this played out in his work world. He was just glad to hang out with me; a listening ear and compassionate friend who could help him recharge to make it through another tough week in the trenches. Have you ever been there? I sure have. I was sympathizing with his frustration when all of sudden something in my spirit said, “Hold on a second.” I realized that we had fallen into the trap of settling for living in survival mode, and being shaped by the environment around us, instead of partnering with a loving Father and allowing Him to shape the environment through us. We had temporarily forgotten what we do, who we are and whose we are.
There is a story in the Bible of a man who was so overwhelmed by the apparent “truth” of what he was seeing around him that he was ready to give up.
It can be found in 2 Kings, chapter 6. The King of Syria brings a large army to capture the prophet Elisha, and surrounds the town where he is staying. A whole army is positioned to capture just one man. Elisha’s servant looks out and sees this vast army, and assumes that all is lost. Elisha knows the truth, and asks God to open his servant’s eyes so he can see what is going on from heaven’s perspective. Suddenly, the servant sees the mountain around them full of horses and chariots of God. Elisha and his servant have available resources that were not apparent, ready to come to their aid. Needless to say, Elisha and his servant were not captured.
There are two coexisting realities; what he saw in front of him on earth, and what had been unseen, but was equally as real. The point here is that Elisha’s servant saw the one and not the other, and as a result was superimposing earth’s perspective on heaven rather than the other way around. That does not work so well.
I would say that Elisha’s servant was in survival mode. Like my friend, he needed a different perspective. While business challenges typically don’t involve being captured by an enemy army, it sure can feel overwhelming from time to time. But there is a different reality. We can choose to superimpose the reality of heaven on top of our situations here on earth.
What this looks like today in the marketplace is a fearless group of Kingdom revivalists, taking ground through love rather than giving it up by battling, believing that we are bringing righteousness, peace and joy to the workplace and being fully engaged in seeing God’s glory cover the earth – no longer just surviving our work week, but seeing our work world being transformed into the Kingdom of our God. As we step into our identity – who we are created to be as daughters and sons of the King – our dreams, desires, skills and experience will be anointed from heaven and we will be equipped to bring healing and change to our world. We transition from surviving to thriving.
Join me in stepping into our true vocation.