Building by a Different Model

Building by a Different Model by Brittany J. Turner

Scripture: Matthew 16:24-25 

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways. For if you choose self-sacrifice and lose your lives for my glory, you will continually discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will forfeit what you try to keep.

Additional Scriptures: Psalm 37:7, Isaiah 64:8, Matthew 26:39

I have three very young daughters. While I’m still very new at this parenting thing, there is something I’ve learned already the hard way. It can be best summed up with the idea that “way more is caught than is taught.”

What does that mean? It means that for every lesson I sit down to explicitly teach my children, they will learn so much more by how I live and my consistent character than they ever will from my words alone.

Matthew 20:26 in The Passion Translation says that we are to “lead by a completely different model.” What does this mean in the life of a Christian entrepreneur? It means that the character of our business becomes more defined by the first word than the latter one.

Yes, we built, but we build like Jesus. We take a close look at His character and model not just our lives, but our businesses after the life He lived.

This means a couple of things:

We take our mission seriously. We don’t make excuses, but instead, we show up obedient to the call God has placed in us.

We seek to serve others instead of ourselves. We aren’t in it just for us, we are in it because we believe in what we do, and that it is a place where we can use our gifts in service to the kingdom of God.

We follow a different business model. The exact one Christ used to build the church. We don’t sit back and wait for our customers to find us, we instead seek them out knowing that we have a gift imparted by Christ to serve where they are right now.

We trust that the Lord will expand us as we walk both in good quality and good character. The church grew in favor, exposure, and maturity as they continued to lean into Christ. Our business’ expansion and growth are in God’s hands, not our own. This goes against our hustle culture, which teaches us that the harder we work the more successful we will be. Instead, we embrace rhythms and rest, building in sustainable ways, and believe that as 1 For 3:6-9 reminds us, it is God that gives the increase. We believe in faith that God is a rewarder of those who seek and obey Him (Heb 11:6). He will reward our efforts with income and increased kingdom influence.

So today, we pray for our customers, knowing that as we lift up their needs, God will show us how best we can serve. And in turn, we surrender. Trusting that God knows best and will reward us as we walk in humility and obedience.