I met someone this week for coffee. He is the leader of the Barnabas Group in San Diego, which is an organization of business people who want to use their money and their experience to be a blessing to up and coming non-profits who are impacting the city for God’s Kingdom. It’s a huge contact for me because I believe it would be a great source of potential clients for the coaching business I’m starting.
So it looks like me entering into the meeting knowing that I have personal experience of God and of business and of leadership that can help, but I’m not sure yet how to express it. I really am convinced of this because I’ve seen how God has used me to bless others. So I spend the beginning of our meeting asking this gentleman about his work experience before he retired from Qualcomm and his work experience as the Managing Director of the Barnabas Group.
As he talks about his experience, I realize that in his job at Qualcomm he was an expression of James 1:5. His job was to bring wisdom to people who were technology inventors who didn’t know the factors that would help them determine which of their inventions would make the biggest impact. He himself, in his work, was like the God who gives us wisdom (context, perspective, information we don’t have that all help us make decisions). God gives it to us generously and not frustratedly, and so did he. No one ever talked to him about his work like that.
I had never made that connection between God’s wisdom giving character and certain jobs before. But it was so clear to me when he was talking because I was there committed to want to bless him and help him revolutionize the way he thinks about his work, and about work in general.
So because I went in wanting to stretch and grow and meet God in the conversation, I was able to connect to more of God’s heart for work than I had before.
