Taking extreme ownership of your faith
“But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.”
1 John 1:7-9 NIV
Alright, so recently we talked about what extreme ownership is and what it truly means.
My personal definition of extreme ownership is taking ownership of everything in your life, business, family, and especially your mind. Not allowing anyone else to take responsibility for anything that happens in your life.
Does that include your faith?
You bet it does!!
When I finally decided to take extreme ownership of my faith, my entire life turned around.
I realized that everything happens for me, not to me.
In other words, everything in life happens for a reason. God has full control of everything.
That right there brings me massive amounts of comfort.
Let’s bounce back a little and talk about what extreme ownership in your faith looks like.
It should look different to all of us.
For me, it is knowing that God is in control, as long as I have faith in him and his way.
That might seem a little counterintuitive to what we talked about in extreme ownership before. The thing is that by trusting God fully that is taking extreme ownership of your faith.
I also know that for me taking extreme ownership is never denying the fact that God has given me everything that I have and every experience that I have been blessed to encounter.
What are some ways that we might deny God credit?
One way that I can think of is truly in your heart thinking that you were the reason that something happened.
It might look something like this, I’m sure glad that I am super smart when it comes to business because if it was not for my knowledge and ability we would have never made it through that last experience!
When we take extreme ownership in our faith it would sound something more like, Wow, I am sure glad that God is here to help us through these times, because without him and the knowledge he has blessed me with we would have failed years ago!
See the difference?
Now take a few moments and think back. Have you been giving God FULL credit for everything that is happening in your life? Are you taking extreme ownership of your faith?
Another way that we take extreme ownership of our faith is to share it with the world.
When we share something that means that we claim it.
Think about it, the last time you did something spectacular what did you do?
Personally, I shared it with the world! I posted it on social media and I talked about it with everyone.
So why aren’t we doing this with our faith as well?
What is stopping you?
Have you been told by the world that your faith doesn’t belong at work? How about faith and business don’t mix? Or maybe faith in the school system is not the way it’s supposed to be!
How about you don’t want to press your faith on anyone else because they might not want to talk to you any longer? Or I don’t want to be considered a Bible Thumper or a Religious Nut!
When we claim extreme ownership we put on the armor of God daily and go out to fight for our faith.
We don’t hide it in the closet and never bring it out.
HECK NO!!
We put it on and wear it proudly in public.
Here is what I want to encourage you to do right now before we get to the take action section of the devotional.
Share your faith with one person every day!
Take Action
What I want you to do as you read this devotional is to take action. Go back and reread it. This time do what it says to do when it says to do it.
Don’t wait.
Don’t say oh I just read it.
Go back and start from the top. Then when you come to an action item, stop, do it, then keep reading!
On top of that, I want you to share this devotional with 5 people.
I know that’s ambitious, but you can do it.
(Dan’s secret tip! I’ll bet that you have more than 5 friends on social media [Facebook] share it there and you kill 2 birds with one stone!!!)
Prayer
Lord, God, father in heaven, today we come to you to take extreme ownership of our faith. We pray that you would give us the strength to share our faith with the whole world. Help us never hide it again. Help us to live a life where when we die everyone says, wow that guy/gal had great faith.
It’s not for recognition that we share our faith, but to share your word. God you are amazing and we appreciate the fact that you love us more than we could ever imagine. God, you love us so much that you sent your son to take extreme ownership over our sins. He over-delivered in ways that we could have never imagined.
God Thank you for that. Thank you for never giving-up on us. Thank you for every situation and adventure you lead us on.
We ask all these things in your precious son’s name.
Amen
A Little More
When I first started my business I was eager to gain industry approval.
I also wanted to give God full credit for everything.
There were 2 different times when I had to stand strong and stand up for God. And one of those times with a strong Christian.
The first time was when I was working with my tax lady.
We were filing papers with the IRS and I knew that I needed to file as COO instead of CEO. Because we had named God as our CEO.
With every signature, it required a title, and without hesitation, I would put COO. Every time she would look at me and say, You know they are going to reject this form right!
I simply looked back over at her and said, I doubt it, because if God is for it, who can be against it?
Eventually, she stopped fighting it and accepted that I was going to have made my own mistakes.
Get this, the IRS never sent a letter about it. They didn’t care at all!!!
Crazy right? God put it on my heart to do it, Satan tried to stop me from doing it, and I pretty much laughed at Satan and did it anyway.
The next time was when I had someone I respected in the industry look over my website.
You should know that we have a different verse on the bottom of every page. It is one way that I share my faith with the world in a casual way.
Anyways.
As he looked over the website his only advice was, I like it, but you are going to scare off some customers with these bible verses all over your site.
My response was, This is one way that I share my faith, and I know that they need to be there.
He didn’t appreciate that I was not going to go through my whole website and change them. Instead, he said, well you need to take our company name off our site then. It’s either the verses or our company.
I told him that I was sorry to take their name down because we have a great relationship. But I completely understand if you feel that being tied to our website gives you a name that you don’t want.
Complete respect was given both ways.
About 2 months later, he called me and said, Hey Dan, think you would mind putting our company back on your site as a customer?
My response shocked him. You bet, I was hoping that you would be calling me soon! I’ll get it done today!
The thing is that personally, I have gotten more credit from people for having verses throughout our website than I have ever gotten grief over it.
The grief I do get is nothing that I can’t handle.
Here’s to claiming EXTREME OWNERSHIP in our faith!.