Missing the Boat

Every business owner I know would like to receive the fruit of wisdom, the fruit of intuition, the fruit of knowledge and the fruit of understanding from God’s point of view. Think about it. If we receive it from Him it will truly be the best. As I discussed in a previous post, we also see that staying connected to Him is the method He wants us to use to give us that wisdom. From this standpoint, we shortchange ourselves if we try to get an answer and don’t go through this process of staying connected and trusting Him.

What does this look like on a practical level? Here’s an example. Think of when you have to make a critical employee hire and it seems like the candidate checks all the boxes. She might have the right pedigree of education, or he might have the right skill base. The candidate might have exceptionally high gifts of empathy and connection. Does this mean that you should automatically hire this person to fill the need you have? It makes sense according to our natural reasoning and logic to say, “Let’s get this offer drafted and get this person onboarded right away!” And this, it seems, is where the wheels come off the bus.

Because everything seems to make sense thus far and it looks like God didn’t intervene to stop the hiring process, most will conclude this is a ‘go’. However, this is where the bulk of our problems begin because we’ve presumed a ‘go’ without checking in with our Heavenly Father to see what His perspective is on the matter of hiring this candidate. In general, we have a tendency to leapfrog the process to get to the ‘yes’ because, frankly, no one likes delays, interruptions or, worse, a complete change to our plans. They haven’t yet checked in on what God has to say because they feel there isn’t a need.

For this reason, the practical side of staying connected involves going to our Heavenly Father and not asking, “Should I make this hire?” (see the post on The Dangers of Binary Questions) but “What do you have to say about this hire, Father?” Here’s why the latter question is so important for us: Is it possible that God could supernaturally reveal insights about the candidate that you, former employers, employees, or character references might miss? Is it possible you might have missed the boat because you were distracted by your logic and/or process? How can we avoid making such an error? I will reflect on this in a later post.