When I get honest about ambition, I start with one question: whose light am I shining?
Jesus said to let your light shine before men, so they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). If I'm turning the light on so people can see me, that's selfish ambition. If I'm turning it on so somebody standing in the dark can see Jesus and find Him — that's for His glory. Same light. Sometimes the same company, the same growth, the same win. Completely different master.
But I'll admit that test alone doesn't settle everything, because it's a common thing among business owners to simply want as much as we can get. More revenue, more market, more. The assumption underneath it is that more is always the goal.
And we're good at justifying it. The more I build, the brighter I can shine. The more influence I'll have. The more people I can show Jesus to. It sounds good. It isn't always true.
Here's what I've come to believe instead. Every one of us has been allotted an area to steward. When God divided up the nations, He didn't just hand out land — He set boundaries, and He set the reach of their rule (Acts 17:26). Even Israel had them. There was a God-ordained size to their rulership and influence. You can push past the boundary you've been given. People do it all the time, and sometimes they get away with it. But it isn't sanctioned, and it tends to end in conflict and loss.
So one of the things I ask business owners is a question almost nobody has asked them: have you asked God where your boundaries are?
What's the size of the company you're supposed to build? What's the right revenue? The right headcount? Which markets did God actually envision for this thing? That company — the one inside the boundary — is the one that's ordained and blessed. It's the one He's actively working with you to grow. And it's the one least likely to leave you having gained the whole world and forfeited your soul.
So how do you find it?
I think it starts in Habakkuk 2. Most people know the passage even if they don't know the address — write the vision, make it plain, so the one who reads it can run with it. Everybody loves that part. The part that gets skipped is what comes right before it: Habakkuk goes up into the watchtower to see what God will say to him.
He listened first. Then he wrote.
I'm a firm believer that vision is better caught than created. Catch it — for your company, your life, your family — from God, instead of manufacturing something out of your own appetite and imagination. Take that posture and I think you end up with the right desires in the first place. That's why I read "He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4) the way I do — not as God rubber-stamping whatever I came up with, but as God fulfilling the desires that started with Him.
Sometimes I hear the objection: if you're not growing, you're dying. And usually the person saying it means revenue and market share. But what about growing your people? Growing your company's influence? Growing your community through what you give away? Are those not growth too?
I'm not saying don't optimize your profit or your revenue. You should. Just make sure they line up with God's vision for the business rather than your own.
Because He is the provision for His vision. And His is the only one guaranteed to be blessed.
In Christ,
Chad