By Jonathon Vogel
We need saving. There's only so much we can do to save ourselves. When we are saved from our own folly, we are given a chance and a certain grace to enter into the fullness of becoming more than who we are, taking that second chance more seriously and the opportunity of letting others help us become more closely aligned with the right path. We need help. We can't do it on our own.
What I've realized in my business journey as an entrepreneur is that I can't do everything on my own. I can't sustain myself without the help of other people. I need to be saved as a business owner. I need to be redeemed as a person who desires to help others from an overflowing cup, a position of wealth, generosity, and peace.
The way that I get to that position is by being helped completely and receiving the generosity of others. That's what it is growing up. My parents gave without expectation of return until I could start doing the same. They filled up my cup enough so that I was mature enough and grew up to a place where I could start giving back.
The world strips this to a transactional understanding of work a job, get paid money, and then survive, and then go back to work and get paid more money. That's the mechanics of the operation, but we need to understand the intention and the heart behind the operation more. We need to be saved first. Then, second, we can help other people get saved too. That's the nature of what we miss in our modern day culture. We need to be saved, then we can help save others.
What does this mean in terms of growing a business or your personal life? For the business side, it means that you are saved already so that you are willing to grow a business to help other people. The act of business building is you are already saved, and therefore you can help others. It's not "people need to give you your business and then you can start saving others." That's not how it works. You need to have your personal life taken care of first so that you can be a gift to other people through your business.
Now personally, it's your parents saving you. If you come from a broken childhood, there are usually other figures in your life that God may send your way to influence you and help you receive and be saved. At a certain point though, the world demands that you become useful and demands the mechanics of the transactional relationship of contributing to the world and getting rewarded for it. You grow up into this regardless of whether you're saved or not, and that can have detrimental effects if you haven't been saved and you haven't learned to have your cup overflowing.
That disposition does not matter to the transactional mechanics of the world. You need to fix what is inside you first so that your disposition is operating from a place of being saved rather than simply working the machine.
This is a tough place to be, and many people are in it. The way forward is simple but not easy. You often have to go through a conversion and an encounter with being saved. Once you're saved, your cup can start to overflow and then you can start giving back, and often it's not the exact same thing you were doing transactionally.