Called to Create

Before his 1924 Olympic race, Eric Liddell was challenged by his sister: wasn't he supposed to be a missionary in China? He had a calling, she reminded him. He agreed, but he also said this: "God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure."

Many entrepreneurs know exactly that feeling. The sense that this – the problem-solving, the building, the risk – is what you were made for!

Scripture supports this idea. Genesis 1:28, sometimes called the Cultural Mandate, is the first instruction God ever gave to human beings: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." Scholar Nancy Pearcey explains it this way: to "be fruitful" means to build the social world, families, schools, cities, and businesses. "Subdue the earth" means harness the natural world, plant crops, build bridges, and design solutions. In other words, it describes what entrepreneurs do every day.

God placed Adam in the garden to work it before sin entered the world (Genesis 2:15). Work was never a punishment. It was paradise. And Ephesians 2:10 takes it further: you are God's handiwork, created to do good works that he prepared in advance for you.

Your entrepreneurial journey is not an accident. The problems you are solving, the value you are creating, the people you are serving, these are acts of worship, because that is what God created you to do.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. If you genuinely believed your work was part of God's original design, not just a means to fund "real" ministry, how would that change how you show up on Monday morning?
2. Where do you most clearly "feel God's pleasure" in your work?

PRAYER

Father, thank you that you are a creator God who made me in your image. Please help me to see my work not as a distraction from faith, but as an expression of it. Please give me the courage to co-create with you, and like Eric Liddell, may I feel your pleasure in the work you designed me to do.

Amen.