I told someone today that
Working Together should have been a billion-dollar business
and helping lots of people all over the world by now.
If I had just been able to secure start-up funding, or created enough sales to substitute for the lack of start-up funding, it would have been a different story. When I first conceived Working Together, I knew Christians had to join together into ONE group, so I made it a global membership business. In creating the foundations for Working Together, I had to pray for many years about how to structure the company to protect it for the future...about employees and wages and benefits...about how to care for those in the Body of Christ and those outside of it...and what kinds of things might be needed by Christians in the times leading up to the Antichrist.
I expected GOD to provide for its financial needs because my experiences had been in poverty, I wouldn't be able to raise start-up funds in a traditional way. When grants didn't work out, I thought sales might be GOD's path to funding. It has been 28 years since I sat down for six months and put my ideas on paper and incorporated Working Together in Oregon (USA). GOD still hasn't provided the funds I need, and I'm not sure why. I am way too old to do all the work necessary to start a business now, but even that can be overcome by hiring people to help.
So much has happened in those 28 years, and the 12 before it -- when I was discovering the impacts of poverty on lives and was studying the Bible to find answers for myself and realized the people of GOD would be in really big trouble.
Right after I started writing this post, I decided to check my emails for a response from someone. When I was done with that, I found a story about a huge and expensive property going up for sale. It turned out to be a 20 acre property in the high-end area by Santa Barbara CA, and was being listed for about 30 million dollars. I took a break and went to see the photos. :-) While looking at these photos, I wondered if I would have chosen that direction if GOD had provided enough money to do so.
When I created Working Together I made it a privately-owned corporation and issued the stock to myself as payment for all the years I had put into its creation, but the real reason I chose that format was to keep future people who might hate GOD and want to destroy what it was trying to do from taking over the company. I had lived through Steve Jobs loss of Apple because of its investors and Board of Directors. The End Times will be much worse.
As the only shareholder, I could have become very rich. I had actually already thought through this issue. I was putting my income level in GOD's Hands and going to be able to achieve another goal in the process. The SEC, I had read, requires corporations that are profitable to distribute a minimum of 10% to shareholders. My goal in life was to reach a point where I lived on the 10% tithe and gave the 90% to GOD's work. If it was a large amount, I could use the bulk of it for projects that would not fit into Working Together's formats.
All of this is leading up to the question :: Would I be the same person today, have the same goals I have now, if I had found the start-up funding I was looking for, or won a big lottery prize, and started Working Together like a regular business -- or would I have been tempted to live big and then lost sight of the purpose of Working Together? I like to imagine I would have done what I planned to do, but we don't really know until we actually face a situation.
I guess what I am leading up to is the reality that everything that happens in our lives has a purpose of some kind, we just don't always see it. I look at real estate listings all the time. Large pieces of land are mandatory to accomplish the goals of Working Together, but I don't need a big house just for myself. When I see houses and land like the property I looked at, I wonder how they could be modified to meet the needs of a large group of people.
We go though life and find our directions
in the events we encounter.
For a long time I have disagreed with the way the Bible story about the rich man has been preached. The Bible doesn't tell us that he never did what Jesus told him to do, it just tells us that he went away in sorrow. If someone told you to sell all that you own and give it to the poor, it might take you a little bit of time to work that out in your head and heart and life. We have been taught that the rich young ruler is an example of putting money before GOD, but we don't really know what he did.
This is why it is important to study the Bible for yourself...you might see a different interpretation than what has been accepted in the past, and is taught as though GOD said it directly today.
The popular views of the End Times are hard to fight. They are one reason, I think, that my efforts have been so thwarted, and Working Together is still waiting to be born. Pray that GOD will release Working Together so I can see it begin to help many people, especially Christians.
