When it comes to talking about successful and influential people, there are a few words that we tend to throw around without fully grasping what they actually mean. ‘Confidence’ is one such word. What is confidence? How do you gain more of it? Are there universal scales and standards by which confidence levels are measured and if so, how does confidence co-relate with success? I would like to invite you on a journey in discovering more with me.

Confidence is a vital part of the successful initiation, pursuit and completion of difficult tasks. Lack of confidence then, could be one of the primary reasons for many good ideas not making it to the implementation stage. If we delve into the etymology of the word ‘confidence,’ we find that the prefix, ‘con,’ is Latin, meaning ‘with’ or ‘together.’ The root, ‘fido,’ translates into ‘trust,’ ‘believe,’ ‘confide in.’ The word was thus intended to convey that other people were an integral part of an individual’s development in the area of trust.

For me, confidence doesn’t mean being so sure of myself that I don’t need to ask for help, but more that asking for help isn’t an issue. So how can we be sure of ourselves despite our shortcomings?

Knowing that you’re perfectly formed by a perfect God for the fulfillment of a perfect purpose within a perfect time frame is a good place to start. You see, God has already equipped you to fulfill His calling for your life, whatever that may be. In order for you to accomplish the tasks He has set out for you, He has given you gifts and talents you know deep down you have. So in essence, it’s your calling that defines which of your gifts you should use and develop, not the other way around. Taking hold of this concept is just the start of a journey to fulfill your particular calling.

Going further, not only does this free you up to apply your craft everyday, it allows you to release others to take their respective places around you. Confidence literally means to trust or believe together with others in an interdependent community.

These thoughts are foundational if you’re leading a team or spearheading a business. You need to be able to recognise your calling, the gifts that you have to meet that calling, and the people that you need to get amongst you to fill in the gaps.

Being a creative individual, I know how hard it can be to “put yourself out there” when you express yourself creatively. We tend to associate ourselves with what we produce – our output. We hang onto every word and criticism about our work, and if our source of identity is derived from our task/output, we come off feeling less than ideal.

My point is not that our output isn’t important – cos it is, but rather that we should be placing more emphasis on our input. God says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, carefully knitted together in our mothers’ wombs. Psalm 139:13-16 is a good indication of how much care our Creator took in putting us together. If He took placed that much importance on designing and crafting us, there is no doubt that we’re meant to fulfill a specific purpose. Now there’s something to have confidence in!

Rohan Adarkar

Business Truism Number One: Planning is mandatory for business success. Business resources are always exclaiming “Fail to plan and you plan to fail!”. We’d all agree that it’s Business 101 to have a vision and a strategic plan, namely, what we see the business becoming and what we understand as being necessary to provide for that.

For those of us for whom business is a calling from God, the difficulty is that while we are often gifted visionaries and/or strategists, God’s specialty class in Faith Building 101 almost inevitably involves a journey down a dark and/or unfamiliar path.

How do we reconcile being strategic people with allowing God to direct our steps into a future as clear as pea soup?

Abraham is known as the father of our faith, because he pioneered this faith development course for the rest of us. I also think he was quite an entrepreneur, as Genesis 13 tells us he was wealthy in livestock, silver and gold… so successful in fact that the land couldn’t handle both his and Lot’s possessions.

By the time we catch up with him in Genesis 22, he’s already uprooted his entire life to go somewhere God hasn’t told him about yet (Genesis 12), he’s believed a vision of infinite descendants despite his best strategic contributions amounting to naught since he and Sarah were ancient (Genesis 15), and he’s about to sacrifice the miraculous provision of Isaac – the only option for realising the vision (not to mention the delight of his life).

Genesis 22v 13-14: Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

Jehovah Jireh literally means the God who sees and is seen. Our word “provide” is from the Latin “to see.”

God sees what we see

Often, as business owners or managers, we carry countless perspectives that only we see. Have you ever found yourself awake at night with a traffic jam of thoughts that, if not driven and parked somewhere safe, will continue to cause havoc in the streets of our minds and businesses? We often feel alone and overwhelmed by the responsibility.

God sees THAT stuff. In his classic sermon on the topic of God’s provision, Charles Spurgeon reminds us that for God to see IS to provide. When He sees a need, He supplies for that need.

Next time you are in that position, include God in the picture. Acknowledge that He sees what you see, and that, for Him to see is to provide. The provision might still involve you, but you’re releasing the responsibility into His hands.

God sees what we don’t see

So back to the dark and unknown paths.

Part of the stress of being responsible for the success of our businesses is anticipating the future and planning responsibly for all possibilities. But when we’re on these paths, we can’t see. There was a lot Abraham didn’t see. In those cases, his strategic plan actually became: “Whatever I don’t see… God will see to it.”
I am a strategic person, but recently went through a protracted season of darkness. God had given me a dream but it was of the incomprehensible variety (the grain sheaves bowing down type – i.e. not really translatable into conversation without getting weird looks and fewer invitations to dinner)… and when I say darkness, I’m talking can’t-see-my-hands dark. People would talk about their plans for the next year, I was struggling to make plans for the next day. Not fun.

But what I learned was that when I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light (Micah 7:8). Sometimes all we can see is Him. And He sees. And again, provides. I have countless of stories of miraculous provision.

Psalm 121 starts off by stating that our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. In the 6 brief remaining verses, the Psalmist declares 5 times that the Lord will watch over you. When God repeats Himself like that, we can be assured that He really wants us to know something. And that something is that He sees. And for God, to see, is to provide.

Jessie Bloore

Choose this day whom you will serve.

This is a conscious daily moment by moment decision.

The level of intensity of the current crisis will continue to insist that we make decisions between faith and fear. The world’s opinion versus God’s prompting. The Kingdom of Darkness versus the Kingdom of Light.

I’m interested that the start of 1 Kings 18 indicates that Jezebel had made it her mission to kill off the prophets. It seems in the current season, the prophetic has all but gone.

The current economic climate is forcing change, those who don’t know Christ will respond out of fear in worldly ways – the wisdom of this world however is not the wisdom of our God.

I’m challenged to respond as a son of God – that my heart remains open before Him, and that like Caleb, I function with a whole heart and a different Spirit (Num 14:24).

Currently, the Holy Spirit is helping me understand that this is a season of refining – that now, for a little while we may have to suffer grief and all kinds of trials for the purpose of proving our faith which is of greater worth than gold which perishes, though refined by fire.

Let’s buy the gold described in Revelation 3:18

I am the man described; wretched, poor, blind and naked. This is our opportunity to respond as God’s people in the market in the only way we should, the way the Israelites did when they saw the fire fall in response to Elijah’s simple prayer – they fell prostrate before God. In recognition that God is God their hearts melted, they fell on their faces. Their response was to worship.

As their heart changed – God moved. The Heavens opened. The drought broke.

Let’s encourage each other to see beyond the obvious – to see and hear with spiritual eyes and ears. To encourage each other to endure the refiners fire if needs be and come out of this as overcomers and demonstrators to an unbelieving world of the fact that His Kingdom can come and that as His will is done by people in the market place like us we will prove to influence an unbelieving world that He lives and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Barry Thom

As the world began to melt down in the middle of last year, I woke up in the early hours of the morning with the Holy Spirit saying to me clearly “there is a cloud as small as a mans hand” (1 Kings 18).

This was the beginning of a journey for me. This word spoke of hope, the small cloud being the first indication of things changing. That had an incredibly stabilising effect on me. Our business circumstances were tight – our market place difficult, but the word completely changed the way I looked at things. I changed my expectations. Subconsciously I began thinking and seeing the future differently. I began speaking hope and expectation - the glass half full - into my situation. This was the Holy Spirit. Things didn’t immediately change for us, but the environment around me changed. As I intentionally spoke faith, God responded, meeting us at the point of our need.

I began to look to the heavens in a new way for signs.

Equally, like Elijah, I spent a lot of time ‘bent to the ground with my face between my knees’ (1 Kings 18:42). God responds to a heart cry. He moves as we move. As an adjunct to this, I was particularly impacted by verse 41 which talks of the sound of a heavy rain. Rain speaks of the anointing. I am moved and expectant that a fresh anointing is over us. A fresh move that will be ushered by a new sound –as those with musical gifting are set free from constraints to usher in the presence of God, they will function with freedom, they will ignite dance, art and other creative expressions and with it the prophetic word will emerge.

I have not been able to shake this passage from that day I first woke to it.

The second part of the revelation was the challenge issued by Elijah to the Israelites. Tired of their double mindedness, he asks in verse 21 “How long will you waiver between two opinions?” The Message translation says, “how long will you sit on the fence?”. If the Lord is God follow Him. If Baal is God follow Him.

For me, this is the essential question of the current economic climate.

In the midst of the Prophets of Baal (otherwise known as the media, and various commentators and talking heads making predictions of who knows what), God is asking His people – what are you listening to? Where does your help come from? Which God do you serve?

I have found this question challenging and at the same time refining.

Our responses are determining our direction and our destiny, not just for our business and families now, but for eternity.

Choose this day whom you will serve.

Barry Thom

I guess the first question is where does a drought come from? Is it man made or is it an act of God? Typically we look to blame, or at the very least ascertain root cause, in order to help us understand what happened or what is happening.

Depending on your world view, each will come to their own conclusions. People who do not have a relationship with God will have a view based on how the media portrays things and a basic opinion formed from their own observation of the rhythms of life. Their response is essentially that of a victim. “Hey, it’s happened – we just have to ride it out, make adjustments and live through the bad until it gets good.” Some decisions will be made on ‘expert’ advice. This is not unreasonable – wisdom, the bible says, comes from the multitude of counsel.

The more pressing question for us who are in God is; if God is the author and the finisher, is it also possible he is the author of this current financial drought? Haggai suggests that drought is a God response to mankind’s obsession with their own wealth and focus on their own house (Haggai 1).

1 Kings 18 also gives us the story of a drought inflicted on a people in order to create in them a change of heart. Makes sense really. How else can God get our attention except through circumstance? A lack of supply is always an attention grabber!

So the question is, what is the right response for a man of God? What is the Kingdom response? What is the Kingdom directive? Our desire and need must surely be to hear what God says. It’s at these times we must find the men and women in the Kingdom, who like the men of Issachar ‘understand the times and the seasons’. If ever there was a need for the prophetic, it is now. The story of the drought in 1 Kings 18 is overlaid with Jezebel’s agenda to kill all the prophets of God. Elijah stood as a lone voice.

I can’t help but wonder if as a body we are not in a similar state today. Facing drought without a prophetic voice of direction, giving clear understanding of the season. After all, the spiritual man is able to judge all things. 1 Cor 2:16 says, we have the mind of Christ.

It has been with this in mind that I have sought the Lord in a new way for His direction since June 2008. I write this post simply to record His faithfulness, and to encourage those of us in the market looking for a lamp for our feet to share what the Holy Spirit is saying, and in so doing, bring a Kingdom response to the market place. It is my hope this response will prove to be a sign and wonder and a testimony that God is God, and that there is a way of life available that is counter culture, called the Kingdom of God.