small change
small change
Starting your own small business can be a daunting task, especially if it is your first authentic entrepreneurial experience. For the last five years my own work has revolved around small business and I have discovered such ventures to be remarkably exciting, rewarding, and fulfilling. There is an un-describable feeling of achievement and beauty that can be found in the simple, hand-sown creation of personal products and services that I truly wish everyone could experience.
From my earliest childhood memories I can recall a perpetual desire to create, invent, and produce. It really did not matter what type of production occurred, whether it was a hickory-limb spear, a crawfish farm, a bull-frog-snatching device, or a hand-crafted widget made from the finest wood scrap left lying around my father's shop. Fulfillment was found through dirty fingernails, Band Aids, and different hats. Yet, the fruit of my labors was always another amazing bit of creation.
Just six months ago I owned a small aviation-based company in the Midwest. The business was rather dichotomous in several ways. One aspect of the business involved the provision of products and services to both personal and corporate clients and customers. Another aspect of the business involved a government contract. The business was very burdensome with high regulation, high expense, and high debt ratios. The more I tried to succeed in growing the business through profits, the more I failed, and there was much missing. The effect was a constant struggle to live life through a Reformed perspective. A desire to primarily earn profit turned into a deceptive trap of big business and compartmentalized life. The fulfillment of my work I felt from my childhood was missing. I needed to shift my focus from profit to eternity.
If we are to seek first the kingdom of God, then we ought to ask ourselves how we are to do that. And if we are called to fill the earth, subdue it and to be fruitful and multiply, then our daily work and labor is a fundamental part of that mandate. The devil is deceitful in his attempts to dissuade the thoughts and actions of Christians away from the work of dominion and toward a pursuit of self-elevation. "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). Our lives will either be lived as citizens in the city of God or the city of man, it has to be one or the other.
Deuteronomy chapter six commands us to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. Keeping this great command is rather toilsome for the modern in that our modern culture is infatuated with the self. Just as we are all born into sin originally we are all in bondage to sin continually. We mustn't forget that we are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of Christ. Taking up your cross daily demands that we must first die to the self—daily. Too many Christians today still have a modern worldview, looking inward to the self rather than a Christian worldview looking to God and His glory. Our culture is also security oriented. Christians generally equate obedience to God in His callings with a notion of self-security. When the modern fails to think with a Christian worldview, he loses the comfort of faith in Christ to a substitutionary alternative such as comfort in wealth. Mammon, however, is deceitful in delivering false comfort through riches, resulting only in additional bondage. True freedom, that is spiritual freedom, comes through obedience to Christ in all that He has commanded—even when obedience costs you or your business. Here are some important tips on starting your own small business:
• Stay small in your business. Base your decisions biblically and you will experience fulfillment and freedom in your work that cannot be found elsewhere. Use God's law as the standard for your business decision-making and act accordingly with humbleness, and you will be blessed.
• Be a good steward. Stewardship is an important aspect of the Christian life with roots originating in Eden. Our father Adam was given work as a blessing in his dominion over the creation. We should think of it in a similar way. Work hard, work efficiently and be responsible with all the Lord has blessed you with, for stewardship brings accountability. Use your capital wisely, for investing unwisely is not immediately reversible.
• Keep debt to a minimum. Borrowing money should always be kept to a minimum and should be used only when necessary. Borrowing money is not always unscriptural but it is a form of bondage. "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender's slave" (Proverbs 22:7). Such bondage may cause unnecessary pressures and limitations on your business decisions. Buy your tools of production on a needed basis only.
• Keep the government out of your business. The government claims to be many things, but one thing it is not is a business partner. Today the government plays a third party in business transactions creating havoc on profits and decision-making. The government's school system has succeeded in forming a modern society that cries for qualification. If you don't need a license for your small business, then don't ask for permission to do your work. The legal definition of a license after all is permission to do that which would otherwise be illegal.
The small carpentry business that I pursue now is just that—small and simple. When I shifted the focus of my labors from profit motivation to a more adequate attempt at fulfilling the dominion mandate, I began to see the Lord bless my efforts. It is work that my father and his father did, and it is work that I love to do as well. I pray that the Lord will continue to bless my efforts to a thousand generations.