Insights for Kingdom Business People

One key benefit of the abiding presence of the Spirit of God is that He gives us above-natural, or supernatural, insight. The Spirit of God is available to anyone who asks. We know this to be true because Jesus, the Son of God, taught this in the gospel of Luke 11:1-13. The Holy Spirit with us is a powerful truth that, if understood, activated, and mobilized around us, enables us to experience levels of effectiveness and success above our natural ability. The dictionaries tell us that insight is “the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person, thing, or situation.” This kind of understanding brings robust strategies, operational effectiveness, and problem solving ideas to our life and business. We all have many great relationships and partners in our lives and in our business world.  Partnering with God in life and business is the most rewarding relationship of all. Insight by the Spirit of God is just one facet of partnering with God in business.

Insight from the Spirit of God comes to us as we contemplate each part of our businesses interests. I remember an assignment I had to benchmark an emerging super-competitor in manufacturing with the latest methods in quality and supply base management. I was sent with a team to investigate and transfer their best practices into the part of our company that I was leading at the time. I was riding on a bullet train in the middle of the night and the Spirit of the Lord came upon me saying, “Their business model is not sustainable because it exploits their suppliers and does not allow them to survive long term.” This insight saved me a lot of “watt-less energy” of pursuing the thing that looked good, was reported as good, seemed effective but was not good. Not too many years later this competitor faded in to mediocracy.  I am glad I did not copy them without sorting out by the Spirit what was good and what was not good. By the way, the product quality work they were doing was excellent and I took that. If God is in what someone is doing and He tells you to take it in, then go for it. Jesus said, “Follow me,” not “copy them.” When looking at the various aspects of our business God’s Spirit is wanting to help us decipher the deeper meaning of what is going on and guide us to success. Our success in business is directly linked to His plan to build strong and godly families, local churches, and His Kingdom in all the cultural mountains around us. He knows we will distribute our gain from our business dealing wisely and for good purposes. He will give us insight to succeed.

Insight from the Spirit of God operates in our past, our present , and our future. He gives me “hindsight,” “insight,” and “foresight.” This gives me “capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person, thing, or situation” in my past (hindsight), the present (insight) and the future (foresight). Imagine what it would be like to understand all your prior successes and failures in the light of God’s understanding and bring all that forward into application for today and tomorrow. What would it be like to have supernatural insight into the past? This allows us to unpack the lessons learned and concisely take them into today and tomorrow. It allows us to see every success or failure as a learning experience and part of our education for the future. We can then celebrate that, declare victory, and move ahead without our past having any negative effect on our future! Hindsight from the Spirit of God make sense out of everything in the past that we need to be concerned about and frees us to leave the rest behind. Hindsight frees me from my past and equips me for today and tomorrow. God wants to give you and me a different and living way to think about our past. Remember he gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask.

We also need insight for today as we move into our goals, unforeseen problems and distractions of today’s business.  As businesses people we always have a lot going on that we are generating and driving. We also have many problems and distractions. How do we get the insight we need to focus, allocate resources, attract new resources and effectively drive forward? We can either do this naturally; and some of us are pretty good at it. (Others are approaching burnout.) Or we can learn to rely more on the Spirit of God; mixing our natural God given talent with His. His Spirit in us and upon us acts like a power amplifier to increase our ability to clarify, organize, resource, adjudicate, mandate, and everything else we need to do to build the kingdom of God into our life and business. Am I making you hungry to hear the voice of God? King David said in Psalms 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.” Think about living in a relationship with God where we know that we are being lead by His voice on a path to having our wants satisfied. Do we want to be God’s kings in the earth? Do we want to rule and reign with Him in our life and business? Will we begin to seek to hear the voice of the One who is able to lead us effectively for His purposes in us in the earth? When I found out He was more interested in my success that I was it thrilled me to learn to hear His voice and ask Him for insight for everything.

Lastly, let’s think about “foresight”; the Holy Spirit’s insight into the future. I am still learning a lot about this one. Because God has given man a lot of authority and free will in the earth there are an infinite number of possible actions and reactions that may develop around us. However, none of them surprises God like they do us. Our businesses, particularly large businesses are very complex by their very nature. This complexity is further exacerbated by the infinite number of choices each person has who is in our sphere of influence. That is why strong teams, clear communications, effective measures and the like are needed to succeed. So how does God’s insight about the future work? How does the “foresight” of God help us? He knows what is developing and changing around us and what will affect our business. Of all the financial information and analysis coming in, He knows what is true and important and what is not. Of all the customer experience and trends information being gathered, He knows what we need to pay attention to and what not to allow into our decision making processes. Of all the opportunities before us, He knows what ones we should pursue and when to say no. Contemplating the future with God is the most enjoyable part of business leadership. In John 16:13-15, Jesus says, the Holy Spirit will come and take of mine and show it unto you. He will show you things to come. He will guide you into all Truth. One day I was praying with a young man that had been let go from a fairly high level job at a local financial institution. As we prayed the Lord said, “Ask him what he has and what he knows how to do?” He replied that he knew how to refinish decks and had some equipment to do that. I thought, “No suit and tie in that!” He and his wife started that business out of his garage and it soon grew to support his family and became known in our region as the premier refinishing company. He created jobs for many people.  Then an amazing thing happened. A major business leader who owned a large home where the deck was being done asked “How is it that this business came to you?” He told him his story and the man was so impressed he hired him into a major company and eventually he now is in charge of global business strategy and sales of a major sector of that business. He also is exploring new opportunities outside the company’s normal business which looks like it will lead to a major expansion. Oh, by the way, he looks good in the tie now. God is a reformation God. He is working today to bring you and me to new levels of influence in the Kingdom through supernatural hindsight, insight, and foresight.

So how do we connect to the Spirit of God for this kind of living and business; the God kind of life? Remember Luke 13:13; Jesus said that Father God will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask. Jesus said in John 8:12, “I am the Light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The greek words in the original text for the light (Phos) and life (Zoe), literally mean the illumination of the God kind of Life: His supernatural insight!. The “God kind of Life,” life in His kingdom, is where His voice rules and reigns. Where His voice sets our direction and creates the future as it should be; on earth as it is in heaven by our declaration. The divine order of God by His word gives us insight; past, present and future. I decree over you that the Spirit of the Living God now begins to operate at a new level of insight and illumination; that limitations are now taken off of your business by hindsight, insight, and foresight; that the powers of heaven are your portion of your inheritance with the saints in light. Rejoice, the good news of the government of God has come to you!