An entrepreneur is someone who assumes the risks of an enterprise. Don’t we all in some way assume the risks of the enterprise of life? An enterprise is simply an undertaking and usually is thought to be a difficult undertaking. This morning I’m going to introduce you to the challenges of being a pretty simple dude who has been pretty aggressive about being entrepreneurial. As I evaluate what God has given me to do in this life, I’m realizing it’s not that impressive or groundbreaking in comparison with anyone else. I’ve actually found a lot of joy in not comparing my life with the lives of others, but instead I seek to simply sit with my Father God every morning and listen to His Word and Spirit ministering to me. Then I hope to get on the same page with my wife and spend some time enjoying my son before getting to the labor of entrepreneurial aspirations in the marketplace in the good pleasure of our God. Everyone’s vocation should somehow be able to be traced to showing GOOD to others and GLORY to God. If you haven’t spent time tracing this, do it by all means necessary. It will be so rewarding and help you to put more passion into your vocation.

For me, my profession is in the insurance and financial services arena. People put their money where their heart is. My object in meeting with my clients is to simply learn about them and help them to better understand who they are and where they want to go in life. I do this by asking good questions. Having a genuine concern for them isn’t something I can manufacture. I believe this has been placed in me by God Himself. When I listen to someone’s struggles or concerns or fears, I seek to make silent prayers for them to the LORD, asking Him to give me insight as to how to follow-up with further questions or how to suggest solutions or ideas worth their consideration. Doesn’t sound very entrepreneurial, I know. I suppose what makes this more and more entrepreneurial is the inclusion of my team/employees. As I seek to motivate and train my team, I learn more and more about myself and them, about our clients and how we can meet their needs as a team, and I learn more and more about how all of us can learn so much about the rest of life by looking at our vocation as our whole life’s calling – not just our work-place activity. Have you considered how your role where you work is part of a greater vocation/calling? We can easily treat our jobs as jobs instead of seeing them as PART of a greater calling: Love God, Love Neighbors, Make Disciples of Jesus Christ.

As we look at our jobs and family life and local church involvement and community involvement and personal devotional life with God in Christ… are we considering that these are all undertakings very worth our while? It is very, very easy to enter into each day with a low-grade depression, thinking about how we will cope with all of the necessary undertakings ahead of us, but I’d like to challenge us to consider how we can carry these responsibilities in light of eternity and the Eternal God Who sovereignly and joyfully sustains and carries us.

In this season of my vocational clarification, God has been reviving my love for my clients, my enjoyment of my team, and my deep adoration for my wife and son. As I labor to grow my agency, I am more and more enjoying my work each day in the context of the broader picture of life under God’s care and sustaining grace. My vocation is not just insurance and financial services. My vocation and calling is to burn out well for the glory and joy of God, to run hard into His grace and lead my friends along with me to know Him and the power of His resurrection. I can do this in the context of office life, community life, home life, friendship life, and even when interacting with supposed enemies. My hope would be for all of us that even those who seem to be largely critical of us in our lives would be viewed as potential eternal friends under the grace of God. What Christ did for us on the cross reveals that like Christ we can undertake this life with love in our eyes even for our enemies, those seeking to dismantle our lives and all that we are seeking to undertake in God’s pleasure.

There are stories I could share that would soften your perspective on your own enemies, stories of friends who choose to love critical spouses, harsh in-laws, critical co-workers, and back-biting peers in the market-place. When love instead of competition is administered, the undertaking of showing God’s grace becomes the best “enterprise” any of us could set out on in this life. This is the best form of entrepreneurship – the enterprise or undertaking of administering grace and love and kindness in every context. This will give us the meekness to engage with life every day with the joy set before us of seeing Christ one day with deep joy in our eyes, elated that He would lead us as He has into eternity with lives lived well here.

Let’s not waste our lives in low-grade depression and jealousy and rivalry. Let’s engage with our God and neighbors, and let’s undertake this life in every area with joyful expectation that God will give us clarity as to how each person in our lives has been placed there for our mutual good and God’s glory.

In His friendship,

– Torrey

P.S. These pictures are from a hike with my good friend Tom Atkins this last Friday. Beautiful taste of Heaven… love these Sierra Nevada mountains. Anyone want to come and visit?