The following comes from a chapter in my book, Jesus Said Go! Start a Business.

It was 2018. My new business had grown, but I had a problem. The fire marshal had visited. To understand why this was a problem, you have to try to imagine this picture: We were completely out of room in our small warehouse. Every morning, just so we could walk around the room, we had to spend a whole hour piling up boxes in the alley (an alley we were not supposed to be blocking). Then, every night we had to spend another hour bringing it all back in. After we had piled all the boxes back in and stacked them everywhere, we’d have to literally climb the mountain of boxes in order to get to the door. To try to alleviate some of this, we had built a second story out of pallet racking and some plywood. This was definitely not up to fire code. The space was so tight, that not even a rat could have easily maneuvered around all the stuff (maybe a mouse could, but I’d have to see it!). 

When the fire marshal saw this disaster waiting to happen, he cited me on dozens of items and gave me thirty days to find a solution, or he was going to shut me down. Ultimately, the only solution was to find a bigger space. 

Around the same time, an old friend who owned a print shop was looking for someone to buy it. This was the same friend I used to broker print work to when I was just starting out at the age of nineteen and who eventually came to be a business mentor of mine. Despite our relationship, the deal he was offering for his business was simply not good. My parents thought it looked like a foolish move. My brother, who is also successful in business, thought it was a bad move too. In fact, the only one who thought it was a good idea was God, but what does He know about business? 

But there was another problem. Because of my first business failure, I still owed money, and my credit was in the toilet, with my credit score hovering around 450. There was no way I could buy the business even if I wanted to. The only good part of the deal was that buying it would solve the problems I was having with the fire marshal. But even so, the cons outweighed the pros by a long shot. And to top it off, my staff knew the head manager for the other company and refused to work with him, saying he was rude and abusive. They threatened to quit if I kept the manager (I will finish that part of the story in chapter four). 

Still, God thought it was a good idea to buy the business. He kept poking at me about it. I was terrified, but I knew His voice. I knew what it sounded like. And by that time, I also knew the pain of ignoring His voice. 

I had an office administrator and friend who had a good track record of being sensitive to God’s voice. She told me, “God says it’s yours. Take it!” But how? I didn’t know how . . . . All I knew was that if God really wanted me to buy it, He would have to make a way. God was forcing me to grow by buying this business that everyone else said was a losing deal. He told me to get it and assured me I would succeed in turning it around. So, somehow we made a deal for me to buy it. All the money I had at first was just enough to pay the rent on one month of his lease. We worked out a long-term deal for the rest, and I began to move inventory and equipment to the larger building just in time to satisfy the fire marshal’s orders.

To make a long story short, the business worked out and eventually became profitable, all because I chose to listen to God’s voice and not conventional wisdom. This book is less about how to make calculated business decisions and more about how to trust God, even when He calls you to step out and take a risk. The most amazing thing about the story is that when the deal was done and it had worked out, God spoke to me again and said, “I had this for you seven years ago, but you were not ready to take it.”

Did you get that? God was saying He wanted to give me that man’s business seven years prior, but I could not get into a position to accept it. With this in mind, there are three important lessons I want to flesh out in this chapter: 

1. When God speaks, step out and take a risk. 
2. When God speaks, He usually gives us choices, and He is willing to let us choose the lesser choice, but there are always consequences (doing nothing also counts as a choice with its own repercussions). 
3. When it comes to responding to God and obeying Him, better late than never, and better early than late. 

If you want to know how I fleshed these out, you can check out chapter seven in my book, or you can get in course form right here!