You Can’t “Buy” God’s Favor
Back in the late nineties a group of Christians wanted to build a dotcom company, exclusively for Christians. They went out all across America and found people who were working in technology and business. They formulated a viable business plan, cast their vision to investors, and began fund raising.
Their financial campaign yielded over 40 million dollars. Needless to say, they had a “hallelujah party!”
They began operations – full speed ahead. They worked hard, hoping to reach financial profitability soon. They did “everything” right; or at least they thought they did. After all, they were a Christian company, right?
Despite all their efforts, the company “bellied-up.” As to what caused their demise, everyone had their opinions. Whatever the case, this was a tragedy for all the people. Disillusioned and disappointed, people scattered to the wind. Other dotcoms came in and scraped up pieces of the company, including their technology.
I recently had a chance to talk with one of the leaders of that failed dotcom. He is an extremely gifted person with great passion for God and his family. Fortunately, he now works for a successful company that provides software for non-profit organizations involved in social services and ministry. He told me that many lessons were learned from his previous dotcom experience.
Just recently we had a chance to learn a "big lesson!" A wealthy investor, known throughout our community, approached us with an attractive offer. He liked what we were doing and wanted to bring in other investors. He offered us 5 million dollars. We all had to take a moment, catch our breath, and think about the possibilities.
When reality hit, we all had “red flags.” First the investor wanted controlling interest in our company. Then he wanted to bring in another person to oversee operations. In further talks we discovered that he did not share our “ministry” aspirations. Making money was his only motivation.
All of the Board of Directors talked and agreed that we did not want to “sell our souls” and sell-out our ministry aspirations for the sake of money. We turned the investor down.
We believe that you cannot “buy” God’s favor with man. We believe God orchestrates personal relationships for divine purposes. We firmly believe that the “tools” (community development, charity tracking, and prayer networking), that we are building, are divinely-inspired. For us, this is our mission in helping the Body of Christ; not just a chance to make lots of money.
We thanked the investor for his interest in our company, but we declined his offer. Some of you reading this might consider us crazy for turning down such an offer. Maybe we are, but one thing is for sure – our hearts are turned toward God and His divine direction for our “marketplace ministry.”
We all share the same resolve. We want the greatest affirmation to our success to be our “testimony” of God’s favor. We believe this will inspire people and give them hope. There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of companies with divinely-inspired ideas, products, and services that the Body of Christ desperately needs. If the favor of God can open doors for us, it can open doors for others as well.
We all believe that God was testing us with that investor. What’s more important, money or ministry?
We chose ministry!
A few days later, something began happening in our midst. Out of the blue we got a phone call from a well-established ministry that shares our mission and is willing to help get our tools into people’s hands all across America.
But that’s not all. We are now in discussions with two major Christian denominations. They are amazed with our tools and want to improve communications with all their thousands of members. We also have big parachurch organizations looking at our services.
The Lord has also opened the door for us in the non-profit sector. Our software is gaining huge momentum in charity organizations and government agencies involved in social services.
All of this is happening because God put together a small group of Christians who were ready to focus all their attention on building tools that would help the Body of Christ, worldwide.
Our success relies solely on God’s favor.
