Identity

Our personal identity is many times tided to our job, work, or business ownership. But real success comes with being identified with God and His Plan from our life. By Gary Shotton #000180

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Identity

By Gary Shotton

By Gary Shotton

Today we’re going to talk about “Identity”, and if you watch these videos from time to time we all know that we don’t sneak up on you when we talk about biblical perspective, and this will be filed in the biblical perspective part of our sort file but once again we don’t preach to you we’re talking about business we’re talking about how God wants us to operate in business and how to be successful in God’s eyes. And we’re going to talk about the subject of identity, and where we should make sure that we have an identity and where that identity should be in some risk, that we have when we over identify ourselves with our business with our company with our job you don’t have to be the owner of a company to be a little bit overly identified, now you know from almost time began if you read any history books at all, you’ll find that there’s a family of carpenters and there’s a family of shepherds and there’s a family of farmers, in  olden times and so right off the bat since many years back, hundreds of years back we’ve had the identity of who we are based on what we do in our job, what we do in our business, what our business is and you know that’s not all bad but there’s a risk that we have. and I’m going to talk about that risk and I’m going to talk about how we need to be careful to be sure we are identifying with the right source, with the right power God himself, and so we can just talk about myself just a little bit I’m graduated from; well I’m a farm boy so I came from a farm and ranch and in that environment if you’re from that environment where most peoples are farmers, then you were identified with how big your farm was that’s pretty important but outside that arena I don’t know that foreign farmers from the city life are held at high esteem I went to university and in engineering school. I graduated work 10 years, and then my first real identity crisis came when I moved to my new town where I live now, now I had this nice degree with 10 years’ experience and i was proud of that and then I happened to by necessity started a moving and storage company, well that’s where you move furniture, when you move from one household to another you would hire me, to begin with and my helper and over time I had about 75 workers moving furniture and a truck driver, and typically being a truck driver or being an owner of a Moving & Storage Company is not very high on the identity mark and I had to swallow my pride from time to time and recognize what I’m talking about here. I had to be able to identify myself with what God had me to do and not be embarrassed about, that now as time went on I got that. We grew and we a more substantial and you know I would make sure that I was working and very proud of this business even though it wasn’t the highest class business and pretty soon I had to be careful that I wasn’t defensive of what I’m doing and somebody would may be sneer at that. I went to a Bible College in a Bible School and so I would go back to maybe a class reunion and I still even got this recently after some 35 years that oh you never left town you’re still not in the ministry, well I’m in the ministry I’m in the marketplace ministry, and I’m proud of it but there’s a risk that we have because we can’t be overly defensive about who we are and be so over identified if  we’re taking, that just a step too far we also could need to be careful that we don’t always compare ourselves no matter what we do. You know, I’ve determined a long time ago there’s a few people that are the wealthiest people in the world and I’m not going to be in that class. I’m not worried about that I don’t want to be the wealthiest person in the world, I want to do what God has me to do I want to be a part of missions and a part of people’s lives and help like we’re doing with this video, I want to help people be successful in business, all around the world and so you know that whole idea of compare and we’ve all felt it. We look at somebody and we asked Wow how did that person get ahead that far especially financially, Wow let’s go back to another reunion of somebody we haven’t seen for a while a lot of times the conversation will eventually get around to hey how well are you doing. And we’re thinking about we’re all guilty of that I’m guilty of that just a bit don’t mean to but we kind of compare.

I’m ahead of that person that’s ridiculous God has a plan for each one of us, and if we’re walking in that plan and we’re working and we’re providing good viable. sustainable income that’s healthy for people that’s giving assistance for the poor for others we can be, we pleased with it, we can be happy with it, now we have to be careful also that we don’t have burnout, when we get so identified with being successful then we have a risk of burning out that we don’t take vacation, we don’t take time off, I know a bunch of people in that category, you know that there’s okay, something’s wrong, something’s out of order. if owner cannot take any time off, I heard it reported that some people go on vacation and they checked in once an hour while they’re on vacation where their job making sure everything’s okay, you know I think you need to give it a break last year I went to Europe the Balkan country, so I was gone 16 days and I called in one time, well I feel good about that I’m not bragging, but I knew I had people I could trust, I knew if they had anything they needed they can get,a hold of me I’m going to be gone 21 days to Africa in the next couple months, I believe that we can have our businesses and not be so attached to it so identified with it that we cannot leave it and feel comfortable, yeah you have to have systems you can’t just walk away and hope everything  we’re going to work right, you need to be building systems and processes and so it’s predictable what’s going to happen and you need to go away for a day or two, and then go away for four or five days and then go away for six or seven days, and I just didn’t drop out of a blue be tight over micromanaging, and then be gone for 16 days you’re asking for trouble, now over time though you should be able to get away and enjoy your identity is what I think seems to be the problem, and your identity – whether you’re successful or not. I’ve watched older people, now I say older people, I’m an older people, I’m getting older and I have to ask myself is my identity so tied to this business, or someone else so tied to the business that they keep it and keep it and keep it, when they should have got out it long before, well I know many people in this category in my age bracket, once they sell their business they’ve also lost their identity, well what’s the key, the key is to recognize that your identity is in Christ, your identity he identifies you in your relationship to him, you need to view that and see that it says in Colossians 3:23, whatever you do work heartily as unto the Lord or for the Lord and not for men the Lord is the one that’s going to reward you. You know at the end of life at the end of our whole existence on this earth, we’re going to look at it and say you know how much did this guy leave, how much money did he leave, I want to know how much did they leave when they died, well the cool and cute little answer is they left all of it 100% all of it you can’t take it with us so I hope our identity is more and more lined up with the Word of God, the plan that God has for I’m wrapped up. I’m excited I work more hours on these videos and on this inspiring better business mission, then I work at my regular job. I love it, I see the identity that I can be identified with what Christ has called me to do at the same time I’m not trying to be the only speaker on these, I’m not trying to be the we call it the head Fred the main the main man on all of these lessons, maybe you look at him you know there’s quite a few of me now, but the goal is to shift this into many speakers like some of you so that you can share the wisdom that God has given you to help inspire better business. Well I hope this helps we’re excited be a part of your life and we hope to identify with Christ with you in this mission of marketplace ministry business’s missions, there’s a lot of cliché words now that go with what we’re doing Inspiring Better Business please share these if you would please. Thank you!!

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