Faith is believing when there's nothing to see. 

How do you keep going when you can't seem to catch a break? 

I'm going to share with you 5 important areas that I hope will encourage you and inspire you as you keep going on your journey. Stay tuned. 

Welcome to Reinventing Perspectives, the show that's all about wealth creation through a ‘What would Jesus do?’ WWJD lens, If you're an entrepreneur and you love Jesus, then this is the place for you. Are you ready for the power of the kingdom perspective? 

Thank you again for listening in I'm your host, Priscilla Shumba, and today's episode is about faith. Faith is believing when there's nothing to see. There's so many times on the entrepreneurial journey where the only thing that we can hold onto is faith. Every entrepreneur is going to understand this window; that window when you're the only one who believes in what you're doing, because there's nothing much to see in terms of results. But there's a lot happening behind the scenes. That window is training grounds for greatness. That's how we should look at it.

Boot camp is never easy. It’s there to push you to the limits and expand your own idea of who you are and what you think your capable off. I'm going to share with you 5 tips and how to get through those windows. I'll call them the ‘Faith Windows’. Let's call them the Faith Windows.

Tip #1. Get ready, Get ready, Get ready. 

Prepare. Take the faith window as an opportunity to get your house in order. We are believing that God is going to do great things through us, through our businesses to impact the world. We have a mission, a mission that is higher than us and God's going to show up. We have to believe this. So take the time to get your house in order. Prepared to win. Train like a person who knows that they're going to win. So this faith window is a time off training. I recently listened to some interviews of Mike Tyson, the way in which he approaches training. Pretty amazing, Mike Tyson says, “I hated every minute of training, but I said, Don't quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” You know, the self-talk that he gave himself to keep going. The values that he espoused in himself to be excellent and to be a champion are what drove him even before the match. 

For entrepreneurs, the “Faith window” is like the training ground. It's the time when we get ready for what God is going to do in our lives. It’s the time when we're supposed to create our blueprint; our blueprint for our values and our blueprint for our ethics. So that when things do happen, we're ready. When opportunity meets preparation, success is guaranteed, and that's what we're trying to do. 

It's important to carve out your values early in the journey. Think about the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:10 it says, “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel. Oh, Lord, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory. Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain and God granted his request.” It's a powerful prayer of expansion and enlargement. As we prepare, we have to remember that expansion comes with more responsibility, so we have to be ready for what's coming. That's faith. Faith is in the moving. It's in the getting ready. It's in the expectancy and the work to show that you're getting ready to receive.

Whatever happens on this entrepreneurial journey. We don't negotiate who we are, because if we make the fatal mistake of trying to achieve success while losing our values we will be very miserable. That's why they say there are people who are very rich but very unhappy because they traded who they were for success. And that's not our portion. We should never negotiate who we are. Let everyone know that you love Jesus. You're protecting yourself, your mission, your purpose and your identity. 

Psalm 40: 10 says, “I do not hide your righteousness in my heart. I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the Great Assembly.”  When we establish who we are from the get go and we let it be known that this is who we are. We are Christian entrepreneurs. We base our business and the way we run our lives on the teachings of Jesus in the Bible. Not to say that we're perfect, but that's the road map that we're using to run our lives. This will be a shield from a lot of things. And as you expand and God grows your territory, be prepared for more enemies, for more haters. But also be prepared to stand in faith and experience how good and how great God is -- through your life, through your business and through the impact you will make in society. That's faith. 

This window, as trying as it may be, is a time for us to get strong and to get ready and to get our compass on the right way as we prepare for what God is going to do. 

Tip #2 is be self aware. 

They say the most successful entrepreneurs are self aware. Really look at yourself; the way you do things, the general attitude that you have. Are you always up for a challenge? Do you respond with a yes to opportunity, or do you respond with an excuse? Really, be honest with yourself. How many times do you find yourself in your own way? Being self aware and learning yourself is a constant journey. For myself. I had to face the fact that a lot of times I like to do things very fast and get things done; and sometimes to be frank, I can be just lazy. And now I've had to train myself and to keep this in my mind, that I should hate laziness like it's a disease That's part of my self awareness process, because laziness is a stumbling block to any success that anyone could ever have, and it's a self stumbling block. Sometimes we're our own enemy. I love the quote from Denzel Washington, which says “Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship.” Ease is basically laziness. It's comfortable to be lazy. It's comfortable to not push yourself to do the things that you need to do so you can get the results that you want to get. 

Steve Covey says, “In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances to shape our lives by default.” He's basically saying, If we're not self aware, we'll think that we're the ones who are in charge of what we're doing, and yet we're actually following other people's agendas for our lives. Are you running your life, or are you allowing fear off what other people think and thereby allowing other people to be in your drivers seat. Self awareness is a process to make sure that we are controlling what we can control that were in the driver's seat of the vehicle that we have been given by God. There are a lot of things that are not up to us, but the things that are within our control. We should make sure that it truly is us who is in control. 

So it's our responsibility to make sure that we've removed all the stumbling blocks created by upbringing, created by society, created by friends, and  created by education to make sure that we're not being our own enemies. 

Tip # 3 is believe in God's greatness during the faith window. It may look like we've been defeated or it may even feel like we've been defeated, but believe in the fact that God is too great to give you something to do and then not be able to move you and move things to bring that thing to pass. Stand on the promises of God, you know it's not going to be a microwave dinner meal, but it's going to be a good hearty meal. Wait, wait on the Lord in this time. Numbers 23: 19 says, “God is not a man, that he should lie neither the son of man, that he should repent. Has he said it and shall he not do it? Or has he spoken and shall he not make it good?” 

If God has said it, it’s done already, that's all we need to know. We just need to wait on the Lord and waiting on the Lord doesn't mean downing our tools, like putting everything down and sitting and saying, “Oh, I'm waiting on God to do something.” It's actually the opposite. If you look at Isaiah 40 : 31 “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall rise up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. That's what it means to wait on the Lord.” When we look at that, we realized that the waiting is moving, it’s keeping things going, continuing and doing the right things in the preparation. We're going to get the energy that we need to keep going. God's going to give us the strength that we need to keep going. We're going to be like eagles, eagles that don't tire even as we wait in our faith window. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Let's stand on the promises of God.

Entrepreneurship is almost impossible without faith, we have to believe when there's nothing to see. Matthew 17: 26 says “He replied. (This is Jesus) because you have so little faith. Truly, I tell you, if you have faith, as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” There's so much power in faith and I believe it's one of those areas where we gloss over it. Oh, I believe Oh, I have faith. But if that were true, then the power that we have been promised and a small mustard seed grain of faith should be apparent in our lives. 

It's so hard to hold on to our faith because we're constantly bombarded by messages that are contrary to the message of faith. Whatever little faith we have, we have to make sure that we 1.  guard it  and 2. that we grow it. We guard it by creating a faith vault around us. Making sure that negativity doesn't have room in our lives. Negative people, negative thinking, negative messaging, anything that is contrary to the word of God should have no home around us. That's how we guard our faith. And then we grow our faith by going deeper and deeper into the Word. As we face situations, let's run to the word let's run to God, and that's how we fan our faith so that we grow more. Remember, we're believing in things that we're not seeing, and we need that belief in the things that we're not seeing to grow. In that growing is all the power that we need on this journey of life, not just of entrepreneurship. 

When you're just about ready to quit, remember that it's not over. And if you think about it practically, if you quit, you're still going to have to start something else, and you're going to have to start all over again. So you might as well hang in there. Give it all you got. Keep preparing, keep moving. Keep the faith as you believe in the great things that are to come. Thomas Edison says, “When you have exhausted all possibilities. Remember that you haven't .” There's always another possibility, and there's a whole lot that we cannot see. So let's keep going. Every time we're tempted to quit, let's remind ourselves that it's not over. 

Tip # 4, believe in yourself. Self doubt is the number one enemy off success. Can you believe? Mark 9: 23 says, “All things are possible to him who believes?” Don't be afraid to be outrageous in your faith. We should be outrageous in our faith because we serve a God who spoke this world into being. That's not an everyday ordinary thing. So the faith that we have in us should make us pretty outrageous. The Bible tells us that all things, all things are possible if we believe.  We all operate within limitations and the hard work of destroying the self built or society built walls of limitations is our job. Stand on only the truth, and that's the word of God. There's so many voices, you know, speaking limitation into us. You know: I can't do it because I'm a woman. I'm a person of color. I'm an immigrant. I'm not smart enough. I don't know the right people. I don't have the right education. I didn't come up on the right side of the tracks. If only I…. you know you can fill in the blanks. All these things are lies. The deception of the enemy to prevent us from being all that we were designed to be. Go and find one successful person that matches each off the narratives of limitation that you have in your life. Dispel your own myths because if you can find one person who matches that limitation, if I say Oh, I can't do it because I'm a woman. If I can find one woman who has done great successful things, then I can't say I can't do it because I'm a woman. That's a myth. So we have to actually do the work to dispel our own myths so that we put away all the things that limit our lives and we confront them so that we can just believe, stand on the truth and not be swayed. There's a thing that happens among Christians, we’re able to say in the same breath: God is great. God can do all things, and in that same breath say Oh, but I'm just little old me just holding onto life just waiting for my turn to go to heaven. And those two things are in contradiction. If God is great and he can do all things and I am a child of God and he has breathed life into me and made me in his own likeness. Then how can I just be little old me just waiting for heaven? Those two narratives cannot exist together because by thinking of ourselves so small, we're saying something about God. Try to think about it this way: We are the hands and feet of God in this life. Why would anyone. Why would you make a proxy someone who is not capable? I certainly hope you would not do that. We are his ambassadors. Every country has an ambassador that they send out into the world. That person has been vetted to make sure that they are a good representation of the country from which they're coming. So we're Christ ambassadors, believing in ourselves is not just a matter of us feeling good. It's a matter of us honoring the fact that God has entrusted us to be his representatives here on this earth. So believe that you are good and believe in your ability through Christ to do all things.

The last tip. # 5 is honor people. Honor means to regard with great respect, to fulfill on our own obligations. Honor unlocks favor. Check out this article on our website (www.reinventingperspectives.com) titled “Honor unlocks favor”. That would be a really great read if you're interested. God works through people, and when we dishonor people, we block our own blessings. Everything that we need is going to come through people because God is working through those people. We need God's favor. Favor is when God puts you in places where you don't belong. Praise God 🙌🏽 when you experience His favor. There's  a quote that says, “God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies those he calls.”

 When I read this idea that we block our own blessings because we dishonor people, I thought to myself, Well, I can't possibly be a person who dishonors other people and, you know, I was asking the wrong question to myself. The better question was to say, Do I honor people? Am I honorable? And when you look at yourself that way, you're faced with the reality of:  Am I respecting people? Am I trustworthy? Am I diligent? Do people have to call me three times before they get something done? Am I sharpening my skills? Am I teachable? When someone tries to teach me something, can I receive it? All these things are ways in which we block ourselves from going to the next level. This is the work that we should do when we're in our faith window, waiting for God to expand us and to expand our territory. We should position ourselves for favor. Are we hard workers? You know, being hardworking is part of positioning yourself for favor. Thomas Edison says, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like hard work.” So when people say there's no opportunity, a lot of times, all it means is we're not willing to do the work to take advantage of an opportunity. Because nothing is going to come easy. 

And for those times where we're in a faith window, nothing is evident and we really need God's answers. Psalms 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” God has the answer. Seek him and he will direct your parts. So how do you keep going when you can't seem to catch a break? Remember, it's time for preparation. So get ready! Get ready for what's coming. Put your house in order. Practice self awareness. Get rid of all the ‘self things’ that are preventing us from going to the next level. Believe in the greatness of God. Believe that if he said it shall come to pass, believe in yourself that you are capable and God will give you the strength you need to carry on and last of all honor people. God is going to work through people. Favor is our portion. We will find ourselves in places where we don't belong. And we praise God for that! 🙌🏽

I hope that this has encouraged you to keep going on your journey. Keep doing all these things as you wait upon the Lord. Great things are ahead. If you've got any value out of this, please do leave a review or to join the conversation go to www.reinventingperspectives.com

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Thank you again. And until next episode stay safe.