Any entrepreneur who has started a business understands all too well the daily decisions which need to be made which challenge who they are at their core. While some decisions are simple involving little risk, others have significant consequences attached which can trickle down and affect the lives of other people. Being a business owner entails a lot of responsibility and weighs heavy on those who start them. There is a great deal of soul searching which goes on while growing a business. How do we respond to adversity? What choices do we make when faced with situations which conflict with the morals, ethics and values of who we think we are.  These are reality check moments or gut-check times as they say in the sports world.

For many, especially those in the Christian community, what those three components (morals, ethics and values) look like initially comes from outside us.  In other words, we will look to the standards handed down to the Jewish people and the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the bible for personal guidance. A term which gets tossed around a lot in religious circles is “plumb line.” We use these plumb lines from which to order our lives while keeping them straight and true. These principles remain theoretical and someone else’s, until we are faced with hard choices which will cost us something. We end up possessing them when we make them. It is in that moment, when you take ownership of those things at a price, they start to define who you really are. One could say, while He may be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He’s not actually our God until the rubber meets the road and it costs us something.

HE AIN’T HEAVY HE’S MY BROTHER

I found myself in one of those reality check moments in my early 20’s when I was confronted with decisions which would reveal who I really was. Allow me to back up for a moment and put the whole situation into context. Having come up through the ministry track as a young man, one day I found myself at a fork in the road in the decision making process. On the one hand there was the desire to continue down the ministry path and on the other the burden to help a dear friend who could not help himself. It was a more difficult choice than it should have been only because at that point in my life I had a distorted religious paradigm which viewed one path as sacred and the other as secular. I am always amazed at the journeys God takes us on which have profound lessons attached which at the onset we were clueless about. Life is a classroom and God the great instructor.

As I was preparing for ministry, I developed a close friendship with a guy my age who had been severely disabled in a football accident. He was paralyzed from the neck down and incapable of doing anything for himself. It was a humiliating situation for him to be in. I had accepted the challenge of taking care of him in a 24/7 scenario. While it had its challenges, I learned a great deal about myself and what it meant to serve others. During our time together the two of us grew quite close. The conversations we had were at a level of honesty and vulnerability one doesn’t have the opportunity to experience very often. I grew to love him dearly and in the end would have done anything for him.

In time others took over caring for him, I got married and we ended up living in different parts of the same city. One day I received a call from him asking if we could meet. I was looking forward to getting together as we hadn’t seen each other in quite a while. During our conversation he told me that a court case he had been involved in surrounding his accident had not worked out as he had hoped. Instead of receiving enough funds to take care of himself for the rest of his life, he had only been given enough to sustain himself for a few years.  I was both angry and hurt for him as the expenses for his care were substantial. He then explained that, in order to try and multiply the funds, he had purchased a small business. What came next caught me off guard; he asked me if I would take over and run it!

TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

I was conflicted on a number of fronts. First, that would have been a significant departure from the ministry path I was on. I also had no actual experience with running a business and wasn’t sure I had the skills sets to do so. It was the last piece of the puzzle though which ended up being my basis for choosing to help him…I cared deeply about his welfare. Within a week I was running a business operation managing employees while doing at the sales, marketing and bookkeeping. Those initial months I had no clue what I was doing but learning as I went along. It was an eye opening experience, not only business wise but cross culturally. Most of the employees came from the inner city and were from cultures other than my own. I still laugh about the first Thanksgiving when I gave out turkeys to everyone not having any clue that no one there was really into turkey. I learned so much from my employees and remain grateful to this day for the way they accepted me into their world. I had no idea at the time it would prepare me for an international cross-cultural journey which was rooted in those early days.

CALL 911

After a few months on the job, my childlike enthusiasm would crash headfirst into a disaster…a national recession! It was a bad one and the industry I was in was hit extremely hard. Within a few weeks business started drying up and clients quit calling. I found myself having panic attacks and did something unnatural; get very aggressive. I started showing up at my clients’ offices unannounced to find out if there was any way to secure more business. I learned a lot about myself in that season. Making money was not what was driving me, letting my friend and employees down was what weighed heavy on me. People were depending on me and I did not want to disappoint them.

What happened next would test me profoundly as I was confronted with a really difficult decision. In asking my largest client what it would take to secure a greater percentage of his business I was told; girls and booze. I was floored!!! I then learned that my competitors were using these tactics to get his business and it was the reason I was being shut out. The brazenness in which he communicated took me back. His requirements shook me to the core. I was actually so stunned I walked out of his office speechless.

GUT CHECK TIME

I know some of you are asking what was so difficult about the decision? I was confronted with the reality this guy, my largest client, had me by the you know whats. His business could make or break us. His decisions would have a significant impact as to whether we were going to survive and my friend was going to lose all his money. Adding to the pressure was the livelihood of my employees and their need for income to support their families. The pressure in that moment was so intense I thought it was going to crush me. Business owners can all relate to those moments.

I felt panic in my soul and knew the only way I was going to make it through that crisis was to get to a quiet place, try and still the rough waters of my soul and just maybe hear God there. I found that place and heard these words inside me “righteousness is like money in the bank.” It was a curious phrase but I knew exactly what it meant and headed off to see the client. At the meeting I told him that when he conducted business with us, he knew exactly what he was getting; integrity, a business partner he could trust and quality workmanship. Our excellent work was emblematic of who we were and the ethics which drove our business model. It was actually a great speech and the end result was – get this – I lost all his business! He told me to get out and that I was weird.

I DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING

The business continued to slide as revenues decreased and I was having to cut back hours and expenses to keep us afloat for what seemed an inevitably slow death march. Much to my surprise three months later I received a phone call from this very same client requesting a lunch meeting. I thought it was curious he wanted to do this over lunch but figured I had nothing to lose and agreed to meet him. After some small talk he then stunned me when he asked if I would take him back as a customer. I didn’t see that coming! In an effort to appear professional, I kept my poker face and said “Possibly”. Underneath I was freaking out as this guy’s business could have kept us afloat singlehandedly.

I asked him what was driving his request and he informed me the people bribing him turned out to be untrustworthy and it was costing him a great deal of money and profits. When I didn’t initially respond he started offering to pay me more money for our services. I thought to myself maybe I should just keep staring at him to see how high he would go. Later he would confide in me that while I was a little weird, he found himself less stressed by the fact he could trust us and know that we would do exactly as we said we would.

LOOKING GOOD

A similar situation would play itself out in the life of the biblical Joseph when after finding business success with his masters’ holdings he would be confronted with a moral, ethical and values proposition. The biblical record states that Joseph was well-built and handsome. (Genesis 39:6) This was not lost on the wife of his master Potiphar. She saw how good looking and successful he was and it flipped her switch so she tried to seduce him. When you think about it, the fact that 70% of all extra-marital affairs happen through work relationships it is not all that surprising.

Joseph was confronted with a really difficult decision while uncertain with what might happen should he refuse her advances. He was well acquainted with life at the bottom and did not want to return there. I can guarantee it was a decision he wrestled with and one which tested the core of who he was. In the end he decided that integrity and trust were his core values and made a decision accordingly which honored his master. The result was disastrous as it angered Potiphar’s wife and she falsely accused him of the very thing she was trying to do. Sadly, Potiphar believed her and threw him into a prison which most likely was associated with the royal palace as he would meet a number of other political prisoners during his stay there.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Joseph would find himself having a dark night of the soul because like all the rest of us he was raised with a paradigm that good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people. The situation he found himself in was an unexpected outcome which was in direct conflict with his paradigm. He had done all the right things and ended up in the wrong place. How could this have happened? As we too have found ourselves in similar situations, he was really confused. His arrogance and ignorance had got himself in trouble the first time around resulting in his enslavement. In this case though he had done the right thing and acted with integrity. The result seemed to be so unfair. Justice did not reign as he expected. He found himself disoriented and disillusioned but how he would handle the situation would determine what happened next. There were significant unseen events that God had set in motion unbeknownst to him. He needed to know who Joseph really was.

WHO ARE YOU?

All of us at some point in our lives are confronted with a Joseph type scenario where we are required to make difficult choices. I would like to suggest you consider never compromising the good things which make you who you are. These things are the essence of you, the criteria on which others will relate to you and the foundation on which your life will be built. Never trade away:

  • Your Integrity
  • Your Self-Respect
  • Your Soul for Money
  • Your Health and Well-being
  • Your Legacy

We will be confronted by situations throughout life where short term gain is offered but compromise will be required. I can tell you from experience, in the moment it looks really appealing. It reminds me of an old Mickey Gilley country song “Don’t The Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time”. Beware, short term gain by compromise means long term pain. It is selling your soul. Be a Joseph and know who you are. It is those people God can entrust with weighty responsibility because He knows you can handle it.