By removing the lines we win both in business and in ministry.

I have found as a businessman, I often have trouble approaching my work with the passion and purpose of a calling especially because I am called to share the good news of the gospel. While at the same time as a Minister I have all the passion and purpose I can handle and often what I lack are the resources to move forward.

Can any one else relate or am I the only one? As a child of God you have this incredible vision or dream, you want to accomplish, this great thing you want to do in the Kingdom of God but you are so strapped by financial constraints that you can't move. So you wait for a miracle and never move and never move and never move and wonder why God doesn't make it happen.

Or perhaps you know you know what it's like to get up in the morning to go to work fighting off feelings of emptiness because your focus is on making money when as a believer you know that there are far more important things to do than simply make money. You throw out scripture to attempt to appease the empty feeling: "if I don't support my family I am as good as a sinner" or "cursed is the ground and with much labor will you eat of it".

For most of us the tension is not this extreme because most of us have already discovered how to remove the lines or at least blur them a bit. Your giving gives purpose to your earning. And many of you have found a way through the relationships at work to show people through your life and your words the power of the gospel. Your work provides you with a place or a context for ministry.

My challenge to you today is this don't loose heart for by removing the lines we win in life and in ministry.

Our culture, our church structure, even our wealth have all contributed to a very high wall between the work we do to grow the kingdom and the work we do to profit financially. The phrase "separation of church and state" has made it politically correct to assume that there is a separation between faith and business and government. Entrepreneurial pursuits are difficult for a church to engage in for concern of losing nonprofit and tax exempt status. Because of God's great financial blessing on our country we have been able to keep our churches alive on as little as 2-3 percent rather than a whole tithe or even further holding all things in common as they did in the early church, and still the church limps along surviving but not really thriving. Never before have believers had so much and give so little.

My challenge to you today is this, don't loose heart for by removing the lines we win in life and in ministry.

We win in life because our passion and purpose in Christ is infused into our every activity at work. When all the work we do is for the sole purpose of building the Kingdom of God and every dollar we earn is already God's for him to use as he wishes that makes our work exciting and full of passion and purpose because now we are living and working for someone bigger than our selves, our company/business or even our family.

We can see how Paul wins in his ministry and in life when he removed the lines between work and ministry.

Acts 18:1-4 1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. 4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

We see here how Paul worked with Priscilla and Aquila to make tents. Paul was strategic in his business pursuits and ministry partnerships. He kept the purpose in focus and the tent making business was successful enough to provide for a ministry team of at least five people. We know this because later Silas and Timothy come from Macedonia.

Acts 18:5 When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.

I have wondered in my study and I think it is likely that Paul actually trained Timothy and Silas in the making of tents so they could work in the shop freeing him to devote himself "exclusively to preaching."

At the same time ministry had to have been happening in the shop of Priscilla and Aquila at the very least ministry training because we later see that Paul entrusts them with the foundational work with the church at Ephesus.

Acts 18:18  Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila...19 They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila.

They were so effective in their work that when Paul gets to Ephesus there is already a seed of belief sown by these two and another they encounter named Apollos.

Think for a minute of what you could do in business if you worked with the motivation and faith that what you were doing was really to build His kingdom not corporate interests. Think also of what you could do in ministry and in building the kingdom of God if you had a business driving the majority of the economic realities of the ministry.

Pastor, rather than concerning yourself with the possibility of losing the tax benefits and giving records you could be concerning your self with the ministry of the church. You could one day boast with the apostle Paul that I gave without asking anything in return.

1 Corinthians 9:17-18

The Message (MSG)

Still, I want it made clear that I've never gotten anything out of this for myself, and that I'm not writing now to get something. I'd rather die than give anyone ammunition to discredit me or impugn my motives. If I proclaim the Message, it's not to get something out of it for myself. I'm compelled to do it, and doomed if I don't! If this was my own idea of just another way to make a living, I'd expect some pay. But since it's not my idea but something solemnly entrusted to me, why would I expect to get paid? So am I getting anything out of it? Yes, as a matter of fact: the pleasure of proclaiming the Message at no cost to you. You don't even have to pay my expenses!

How many people could we love? How many lives would be changed as they encounter the love of God poured out for them? What could we accomplish for the kingdom?

How would God bless us in business if our sole purpose was building his kingdom and we looked for ways to leverage the business to do so?

What are some ways we might further blur or remove the lines between our work for money and our work for ministry?