Dream on

Many of my business colleagues have called me visionary. I suppose every entrepreneur is visionary in that they must be able to look into the future and see their ideas come to fruition “in their mind” long before an idea actually becomes reality, or indeed before any actual work even begins on making the idea become a reality. In effect, in order to become an entrepreneur, one must be a dreamer.

It is fun to be a dreamer and I personally love to spend time dreaming up ideas. I have always been an insomniac and since I cannot sleep, I sometimes lay in bed for hours just thinking and dreaming up ideas. Once I come up with a good idea, I then spend untold hours trying to figure out how to make them into reality. After going through this process, I become completely convinced that my idea can and will happen just exactly as I have laid it out in my mind, and when I begin work on it I have total faith that it will soon be reality.

It is very rewarding to look back now at all of the companies that I started in just such a manner. Daily employees are busily going about the task of creating, developing, marketing, and selling the many products that were dreamed up by me on a sleepless night or more often many sleepless nights. As a result of just such an exercise, large numbers of employees are now gainfully employed and providing for their families each and every day. Additionally thousands upon thousands of customers are enjoying the many products that began as ideas one sleepless night. It is way cool!

Sometimes it is very frustrating to try and share my vision with others. I know one executive that is strictly a black and white kind of person. No matter how excited I might have been about one of my ideas, and no matter how hard I tried to explain the concept to him, he just did not get it and he just could not buy into it. With me I can visualize an idea in its final form similar to a farmer visualizing in his mind a harvestor tractor going through a full stand of healthy crops harvesting golden ears of corn long before he even clears the land, or breaks ground, and plants seed. With my buddy, he at least needs to see the field cleared and stumps removed, field harrowed, plowed, seeds planted, and a few sprigs emerging from the soil in neat little rows before he can buy into the idea. As I say it was very frustrating fighting it out with someone like that and trying to convince him of my “brilliant” ideas. (I think all of my ideas are brilliant Ha)

Similarly I get very frustrated in trying to understand how best to explain my faith in God to others who need the black and white version of a spiritual God. The Bible tells us that God was created higher than us with greater intellect and that his ways are not our ways. This all sounds logical to me that our Creator would be far more intelligent than us, the lowly “createes”. The Bible goes on to state that God is Omni-present, meaning He is everywhere at once. It goes on to state that God is a spirit and that we must worship Him in that format. Folks have no problem understanding the concept of television, radio, and microwave signals being everywhere at once; however when it comes to God being everywhere at once they say, “Huh?” The same holds true with the Virgin birth, predicting the future, miracles, the creation, et al. Somehow they have not thought it all of the way through that if God is powerful enough to create the entire universe as we know it, (and who knows what else beyond what we can see), surely He can enable His Son to be born of a virgin, walk on water, heal the sick, feed the masses, and rise from the dead.

I think one difference with me in having such tremendous faith in God is that I spend an enormous amount of time thinking about such things. Similar to my love for dreaming up new ideas, I absolutely love to think about God. I love to try and understand His purpose in creating me, and how I can walk a better walk and accomplish what he would have me accomplish, and understand what He will allow me to understand about His persona. If you are smart and I know you must be or you would not be reading such a great daily devotional, you will dedicate enormous amounts of your time to thinking about God and God’s purpose for YOU in this life and how best to accomplish it. When you think about it, nothing surpasses this in importance. Think about it, pray about it, study the Bible and read about it, and talk to others about it.

If you will do so, when you get to heaven you will be able to look back like I do on all of my former companies and smile at how all of your dedicated efforts have bloomed. There will be many faces in heaven that you helped lead to the Lord and nothing could make Christ happier or be more rewarding to you

John 4:24
God is Spirit, and those who
worship Him must worship in spirit
and truth.