As another year is coming to a close, many of you are planning for next year. What goals will you pursue in your business? What are you hoping to achieve and accomplish in the coming year with your team? Our Round Tables are processing this together in the month of December and are setting goals for 2023. As Christian business leaders, we challenge our members to set goals that go beyond what they can achieve.
What are you pursuing that can only happen through God? We can accomplish things with the gifts God has given us, and He’s involved in all of that. But there are things that only God can do; you can’t take any credit for the achieved outcome. Are you setting goals that fit that criterion?
Biblical business leadership depends on God for outcomes. It recognizes that if you are doing business in a way that glorifies God, then you must trust that He will bring the outcome, not you. And, in the end, God gets the credit.
“Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.” – Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker
This is countercultural in the marketplace where success is measured by the things you achieve and bring to fruition. But, as a Christian executive, you have a bigger, eternal perspective. You know that God holds all things together and brings about everything according to His will. You also know that business is about more than power and profits.
Business is about using God-given gifts and passions to worship and glorify God and leverage your influence to love and serve others. When you have this perspective, it changes the goals that you set. As a result, it also leads to more dependence on God to be involved in these goals coming to fruition.
First, you need to commune with God and ask how He wants to use you and your business. God-sized goals start with direction from Him, so pray and ask God to help you discern what His desire is. Then you can trust that no matter how impossible the goal seems, it’s completely attainable for God. Scripture says that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work with us” (Ephesians 3:20). Have faith that God can and will do more than all you ask or imagine!
Moses had a God-sized goal to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus). God told him it was what He wanted him to do, but Moses had some questions. This seemed like a big undertaking, and Moses doubted himself. But God reminded Moses who He was – I AM – and that He would be with him. Even though this seemed like an impossible task to Moses in the beginning, God did exactly what He said He would do through Moses and freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Moses’ goal was God-sized, and he depended on God for the results he could not have produced on his own.
What do God-sized goals look like for you as a Christian business leader who cares about biblical business leadership? Do you have a dream or goal for your business that, as Mark Batterson says, is “destined to fail without divine intervention?” If not, take some time to be quiet with God to see what He might desire for you and your business in 2023. Then, have faith, pursue the goals He revealed to you, and trust that He will do it.
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