All right, I appreciate the work that you have done for this course. I know no one  is forcing you to keep going, and yet you do, and I really appreciate if you've  made it this far in this class. Congratulations. There's a few odds and ends that I want to talk about in this next week. And one of them is probably it could be the  most important thing, the seven connections in enterprise. If you took the  Getting Started class, which you had to do to be able to take this class, then you know something about the seven connections. And I want to apply the seven  connections to enterprise. How does that really how do the how do those things  go together? So if you remember the seven connections, it starts off with the  question, what is your spiritual dream? And I talked about that in other videos  here in this class as well, and we talked about how people tend to answer in a  few different ways. Number one, they talk about their connection to God. They  talk about their connection to people. And in the end, we talked about how  people need a walk with God. Ultimately, every person needs their own talking,  listening, repeated, repeatedly, walk with God, talking, prayer, listening, a lot of  different ways, but the most consistent way is through the word of God. So  people need personal devotional life, then people need a walk with God and  family and friends. That's the those seven connections. So you need a walk with God. You need a walk with your spouse. You need a walk with your kids. You  needed to be you need to be supported in a small group or friends that support  you in this walk. You need to be a part of a church community or a network of  house churches, something that holds you to your walk with God. You need to  be connected with what God is doing all over the world. And finally, you need to  be sharing that walk with others. So help others get a walk with God. That's all  part of this whole seven connections. What is your spiritual dream thing? Well,  another way to ask the thing, or to take that same question, is to ask it about  your your finances, about enterprise, what is your financial dream? Well, you  can almost follow the same metric that we followed when I asked, What is your  spiritual dream? Our spiritual dream is to connect to God, connect to others, and to share that walk with others. So our financial dream is maybe number one.  First of all, to give back to God. That's part of you know, part of my dream is to  give to God what he's given to me out of gratitude. I I want to, I want to use what God has given to me for His glory. So I want to give back to God. Secondly, I  want to provide for my family. So in the spiritual dream, I want to have a walk  with my family. In the financial dream, I want to provide for my family. I want to  give to God. I want my money and what I do with enterprise, to support his  kingdom. But I also want to support my family, the family that God has given me. And third, finally, I want to provide an opportunity for others. That's what  enterprise does. Enterprise. Enterprise provides an opportunity for others to  succeed. In fact, your enterprise will not succeed unless what you do helps  other people. What kills our financial dream? What gets in the way of that  dream? Sin. Remember, sin are those things that cause brokenness between us

and God and us and the people around us. Sin is the thing that disrupts  everything, including our finances, Genesis 3. Then the eyes of both of them  were open. They realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together  made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of  the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they  hid from the LORD God among the trees and the gardens. Two things  happened. When Adam and Eve fell into sin, they hid from each other, and they  hid from God when God came around. So their dream is to connect to God, to  connect to the people around us. Our financial dream is to give back to God, to  help share our finances with those around us and give them opportunity. But sin  destroys both. Sin gets in the way of giving back to God, sin gets in the way of  me helping my family, and I get selfish, and it's all for me, and I get self  absorbed. What kills our financial dream? How does that sin get manifested?  First of all, debt. You go into debt, and debt haunts you like a plague. You know,  you buy something now, but that debt follows you for years and limits you in  terms of opportunities and the challenges in front of you. What kills our financial  dream? No job. Don't have a job. You don't have you get up in the morning,  there's nothing to do. There's no income coming in. What kills our financial  dream, this thought that I have no skills, I don't know what I could do. I'm not  really good at anything, so I feel like I can't do anything, or no education. I don't  know what to do. That's why some of you are taking CLI and and taking these  classes. We've heard testimonies all over. People taking classes at CLI that they end up feeling good about themselves. I'm actually doing something, and I've  discovered I can do it. Number five, no faith. I don't think I, you know, I don't  believe that God is going to use me, someone like me, my past, the things I've  been through. No God doesn't use people like me or no team. I don't have the  right connections. I don't have the right people that I know. Other people seem  to be connected. You know, Bill Gates starts one of the biggest companies in the world, but his mother was on the board of IBM. My mother's not on the board of  IBM. How am I going to do it. What can bring new life to your financial dream?  Okay, your financial dream, maybe is dead or dying. What can bring new life to  it? Grace. Grace is always the answer in our spiritual dream, we're disconnected from each other. We're disconnected from God. We're hiding when God comes  around, we're hiding when people there's brokenness. We need the grace of  God. That's why Jesus died on the cross, to give us the grace so we can come  out of the darkness. We can come out of the hiding from each other and from  God. Philippians 1:4, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy  because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now, Being  confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to  completion until the day of Christ Jesus, has God begun a good work in you. If  he has begun a good work in you, and you sense that he will carry it out to  completion. Connection one God. Connection one is our connection to God, 

talking and listening to him, our devotional life with Him, if we apply this to our  finances and to the enterprise. Matthew 6:33, comes to mind. But seek first his  kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  So if you want to get on board with God, with your enterprise, you have to first  seek His kingdom, not your kingdom. It's not your enterprise. The thing that  you're studying is not yours. It's God's enterprise. You are the steward of it.  Connection two is marriage. How does enterprise and connection two go  together? Genesis 2:22-24 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he  had taken out of man. He brought her to the man. The man said, This is now  bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was  taken out of man. That's why a man leaves his father and mother, and he's  united to his wife, and they become one flesh. They become one, the one flesh  of the man and the woman reflect the mystery of the Trinity, Father, Son and  Holy Spirit, the two in one, reflected, or reflected from the three in one. So how  does this relate to enterprise and finances and so get on the same financial  page. Husband and wife need to be on the same financial I hear often that  husbands and wives are on their own financial page. That when a husband and  wife and they both have separate jobs, often they have separate bank accounts. You know, this is her money. This is his money. Who's going to pay for this?  Who's going to pay for that? I'll pay for this. You pay for this, and it's nothing but  fighting in my household, my money, my wife's money. It's all our money. In fact,  it's not our money. It's the money that God has given us to be stewards of.  That's it, and in the business and the enterprise that we do, all these things are  part of what God has given us. We're stewards together. We have to, if we're  going to be one, we have to be one with our finances and our enterprise as well. Connection three the family, get on the same financial page as a family. Maybe  find something that you Can do together. Why not have an enterprise together  with the family connection? Four is your support group. Acts 2:42-47 they  devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching this is the early church, and to  fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with  awe the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers  were together and had everything in common. They shared. They sold property  and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day, they continued to  meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate  together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all  people and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.  The church grew because they were together. The thing, the phrase in this thing  that I always missed, I mean, I knew this verse, you know, ever since seminary,  you know, all my life, I knew this verse. This is the early church. This is the  closeness of the original church. But there's one word that I never caught till  many years later, and that's the word. Every day they sold property possessions  to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in 

the temple courts. Every day, when I went back in my life, it's the relationships  that I had with people that was every day that counted and mattered. The people I discipled and I connected with them almost every single day. That's what made a difference. Connection four is the support if you're going to start an enterprise,  if you're going to do this thing and start a business, because you want to do  ministry, you want to tent make or whatever it is that your your vision is. You  need the support of people around you. You need everyday kind of relationships in order to succeed. Connection. Five is the church Hebrews 10:24-25 let us  consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not  giving up meaning together as some are in the habit of doing. There's a lot of  people are the habit of not meeting together. Church attendance is one of those  things. People get up on a Sunday morning and they decide that morning  whether they're going to go, you know, this Sunday, I don't know, we feel tired,  or we're going to do something else, and that habit is breaking, must have been  a problem in the early church, too. Paul says, continue to meet. Don't Don't skip. This is your support group. We go to church not just to give praise to God, but  because being a part of that groups encourages and gets us through the next  week. If you're going to start something an enterprise, you need good Christian  people around you to help pull you through connection six is the kingdom. You  know what God is doing everywhere. I Thessalonians. I love this, the beginning  of this letter that Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica. He says, For we  know brothers and sisters loved by God that he has chosen you because our  gospel came to you, not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy  Spirit and a deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake.  You became imitators of us and of the Lord. For you welcomed the message in  the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. So you  became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia, the Lord's  message rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, your faith in God has become known everywhere. See, we're connected to a worldwide  movement. I can go anywhere in the world, and just by that being a part of the  body of Christ, I am welcome. I used to work for the Bible League. We went all  over the world. It didn't matter where I go, I would go there are people that will  give me a place to sleep. There are people that will feed me, that people will  instantly connect to me, because I'm connected to all of that. As you do your  enterprise, you're not just doing this alone. You're part of a vast movement. Stay connected to that vast movement. Finally, connection seven, is the world that  part of the world we're connected to that does not know Christ I Corinthians  9:21-23 to those not having the law, I became like not one not having the law.  Though I am not free from God's law, but I am under Christ's law, so as to win  those not having the law. To the weak. I became the weak to win the weak, I  become all things to all people, so that by all possible means I might save some  I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. So Paul is

his attitude. Is, I'm out there in the world. I'm doing what I'm doing. Remember,  he was a tent maker. He made a living making tents. Sometimes he was  supported by the churches. Sometimes he wasn't. But he was out there making  tents. He was connecting to a world. He was connecting to people who worked.  Maybe one of the secrets of Paul's ability to reach people was he reached them  where they were. I'm a worker too. I have to take care of myself too. And he  witnessed in his tent making when he got thrown in prison in Rome, he  converted the people that were holding him there. So you know, when Paul had  to speak before Agrippa, he's trying to, you know, trying to evangelize the King  who is, you know, cross examining him. He couldn't help it. The world was filled  with all these possibilities. So as you do your enterprise, enterprise is not some  separate thing, like, you know, there's a God thing, there's a ministry thing that's  over here, and then there's the making a living in enterprise and business, it's  over here. No, it's one big world. It's one big mission that God has us on, and  enterprise is a part of it. So I hope, I hope, as we've gone over these seven  connections, you can see on the spiritual side, how these things in the church  and small groups and and devotions and all of that, but it also works with this  thing called Enterprise.



Last modified: Monday, January 13, 2025, 10:45 AM