The Sunday News
Itai Chipunza
ONE of the most difficult skills to master in this world is how to do business in a Godly manner. By Godly manner I mean doing business using biblical principles. If doing business in a Godly manner is difficult for most, imagine how difficult most ministers find it to teach this to their congregates this art. Yes, its an art. Special grace is required to achieve this. Experience has taught me that it is best to do difficult things during revival because of the nature of the environment during times of revival.
Revival is characterised by supernatural blessing in everything you do. Some may not notice it, but we are currently experiencing revival. As such, this is a good time to begin to save and invest money. Saving is a cornerstone of business. You cannot grow without savings. It is sad that Zimbabwe has become a nation of people that shun saving. It is because of the bad experiences of 2008. In any case failure is no indication for one to stop trying to grow. Unless you save your income, you will never grow.
I have heard people say their money is not enough for them to save. Some insist they will invest when they get a better job. Then they turn around and spend that money on luxuries that have become necessities to them. The day when you suddenly have billions to spare without strategically planning to have this sort of money it is never coming. Basically if you do not plan your life to grow wealthy, it will be planned for you by poverty. Even winning the lotto is planned for. You plan to go and buy the ticket and you plan how you expect your luck to work. You set aside money to buy the ticket, this can be equated to saving. You then buy the ticket, this can be equated to investing, the amount you win is the return on investment. Like any investment one makes, there is a risk factor. It is not always where the higher the risk, the higher the return. As a businessperson you take a calculated risk.
A general rule of thumb is that if you save 20 percent of your income from the age of twenty, you will be a millionaire by the time you turn fifty. This can be significantly reduced if you invest wisely. In the investment stage is where it is wise to take advantage of the currently prevailing revival to advance yourself and your finance. As Christians we have the advantage of being able to enquire on whether to take the leap or not from God. More so during revival the risk factor is greatly reduced because of the grace prevailing. Investing now is a good idea. For example, it is good to use the available grace to minister to people and they have fun in church, but it would be better to plant more churches during revival because our ability is multiplied during revival and we would find it easier to plant churches. Revival is a time when we must push to grow and invest more than any other time.
If any financial director read this, they would tell you that this is not a good time to invest in Zimbabwe. By the human analysis this is very true.
Everything is uncertain, we do not even know how long the money we have will maintain the same value it has. But lets not forget the God factor in all this turmoil. If the anointing and grace present allows us to do so, lets invest as much as we can. God is a spiritual being, money itself is a spiritual thing. So for you to attain wealth you have to be spiritual. I can name 20 people that work harder than myself but poverty is still very much part of them. It’s not because they are silly, they just do not have the spiritual and physical wisdom to invest wisely. In the same light, a lot of people are much wealthier than I am because they know something I don’t spiritually.
You have to understand that the same wisdom that Solomon had is available to you today through Christ. Solomon got this wisdom because of the promise that was made to Abraham coupled with the grace His father David had in his life. We have access to great wisdom because Christ himself is resident within us. We must also take advantage of the grace which the fathers of the house have been gifted by God. Each house has its own grace but as a harvester the gifts present are a pioneering spirit, church planting, open heaven, business knowledge and the spirit of excellence. So you can imagine the unlimited wisdom we are able to attain if your source is Christ coupled with these gifts specific to our house. Let me show you how wisdom of Christ works in a simple way. Let us use an everyday commodity that we buy in our homes.
If you buy a pint of milk you have not invested, you have spent money. However, if you want milk , buy a cow instead, although it seems too far-fetched at the time you forego milk to accumulate money for the cow, once you have the cow, it will produce milk and more cows for years to come. That way you have not spent the money, you have sent it to work for you. The point is, don’t spend money on things that will not add value or wealth to you.
The wealthiest earthly king of all time was Solomon. He had interest in the import and export business, he invested his money in building ships to go and sell products outside Israel. These same ships also bought things from other continents, sold them to people within the kingdom of Solomon, thus he did not lack but increased in wealth. If we think of what ships are used for today, it gives us a perspective of how ahead of his time Solomon was because of taking advantage of the power of God present in his life. Godly wisdom gave him this futuristic mindset. Today ships are used to transport bulky goods such as cars, machines, wines, spices, food, plants and all sorts of things you can think of to places where they are not produced. This sort of disregards weight because ships can carry millions of tonnes over extreme distances with no problem at all. Solomon was able to think of this yet he existed more than two thousand years ago. It is not his mind that gave him this time of idea, it is the power of the living God.
I Kings 10 verse 2
“The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Haram. Once every three years it returned carrying gold, silver, ivory, apes, peacocks and baboons.”
2 Chronicles 1 verse 12
“Wisdom and knowledge will be given to you. I will also give you wealth, possession and honour.”
Solomon attained this amount of wealth by wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgement as to action, sagacity, discernment or insight. This means our wealth as individuals is only limited by how we can manipulate what we know. So it is wise to not only increase the quantity and quality of knowledge we have but we must also ask God to help us take advantage of this knowledge. Each and every decision that you make, even on small things like choice of friends, what to spend your money on, the clothes you buy, it all translates to the total person you are and directly impacts your state of finance. You have to look for knowledge on how to invest and what to invest your time and money into. Don’t just live like a bird, you are a child of the king of kings.
Proverbs 13 verses 11
“Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but who so ever gathers little by little will increase.”
Proverbs 13 verse 22
“A good man lives an inheritance to his children’s children, but a sinners’ wealth is laid up for the righteous.”
It is not right to spend all the money you have earned after paying tithe. Yes, you did right by tithing, but go an extra mile and make sure to save something. A dollar saved every day in a month is 30 dollars, in a year it’s 360 dollars, that’s more than enough to start a vegetable market. Always save something to expand yourself and grow what you already have. God will only drop the manna during revival. You then have to get out of your tent and go and pick it up. He will not spoon feed you. This reminds me of a time when I was talking to a hair dresser after I had a haircut. She was expressing how much she is suffering in Zimbabwe. She said on a bad day she makes ten dollars and on a good day maybe thirty. I told her that is the same as most civil servants, yet they build houses and she did not do so because of the mindset that she was suffering. If she saved ten dollars everyday, this means she would have three hundred in a month and three thousand in ten months. So in a year she can be a taxi owner. That taxi would increase her income and ability to earn from ten dollars a day to twenty. Meaning she can now buy another taxi in half the time it took her to buy the first.
Invest and save. Take advantage of the power you have in Jesus Christ. Stay blessed.
