Episode 276 - Working from Inside Out with Jeff Haanen
Entrepreneurs build things. We create. Innovate.
We follow in God’s footsteps by forming new things.
But, how often do we think about our own formation? How our habits and our work are shaping us into becoming certain kinds of people?
This week on the show, Rusty talks with Jeff Haanen, the founder and former executive director of the Denver Institute of Faith and Work and the author of the recently released book: “Working From the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World.”
As a veteran of the movement, Jeff understands the unique place entrepreneurs fit within it. While most Christians struggle to find meaning and purpose in their work, entrepreneurs face the opposite problem. We often put too much emphasis on what we do and root our whole identity in it.
So what would it look like for us to be formed by something larger than our businesses? How can our identity in Christ empower us to better live out our call to create?
We unpack these questions in more in this episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast.
Get the book: https://www.ivpress.com/working-from-the-inside-out
Learn more about Faith Driven Entrepreneur: https://www.faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/
Podcast episode #64: https://www.faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/podcast-inventory/2019/7/9/god-of-the-second-shift-jeff-haanen
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Joseph Honescko: Entrepreneurs are builders. We create. We innovate. We follow in God's footsteps by forming new things. But how often do we think about our own formation? How our habits and our work are shaping us into certain kinds of people? This week on the show, Rusty talks with Jeff Haanen, the founder and former CEO of the Denver Institute of Faith and Work and the author of the recently released book Working from the Inside Out A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World. As a veteran of the faith and work movement. Jeff understands the unique place entrepreneurs fit within it. While most Christians struggle to find meaning and purpose in their work, entrepreneurs face the opposite problem. We often put too much emphasis on what we do and root our whole identity in it. For him, there was something in the way he thought about work that changed who he became.
Jeff Haanen: I realized that I wasn't just forming my work. Work was forming me. And so I had to ask the question of who am I become in that context?
Joseph Honescko: So what would it look like for us to be formed by something larger than our businesses? How can our identity and Christ empower us to better live out our call to create? We unpack these questions and more in this episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's get into it.
Rusty Rueff: So it's rusty. And I'm here by myself today. My two wonderful amigos, both Henry and William are off. And we are very lucky because we have Jeff with us. He was here a long time ago, Episode 64, in fact. So if you want the Prelude today's podcast, you can go back to episode 64. But today we welcome Jeff back in. And Jeff, thank you for being here. We appreciate your time.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah, thanks for having me, Rusty. Looking forward to it.
Rusty Rueff: So way back when, when we talked, you were at the Denver Institute of Faith and Work. You'd been writing a lot of different things. You wrote one of my favorite articles that showed up in Christianity today called God of the Second Show. But now you're you're off doing other things and you're continuing on in this mission of working in the integration of faith at work. And so talk to us about what you're doing right now. And and you've got a new book that's out, which I'm really excited about called Working From the Inside Out. But bring us up to date with what you're doing and then feel very free to give us a little summary of your new book.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, So I stepped down from my role last year, this time as the director at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work. And there's much more competent leadership in that organization, and they're doing great. So we could do another podcast about thinking about transitions, because at some point, all of us are going to lay down our leadership. We have to think about what does it look like to be in a season of taking up and laying down? And I was in a season of lying down and God was in that process. So that was last year. This time was my last day at Denver Institute, took a little bit of sabbatical rest, finished this book, which I'll come back to. And since then I'm actually it's really hard to describe what I do other than maybe you could say an entrepreneur for hire. So I am building a fun project at my church and training future Anglican ministers. I'm doing some small business operations with my friend Bob Larkin at Treatment Technology, which is a chemical distribution company. I'm also working with a guy named Brett Smith at the Life Center at Miami University on Faith in Entrepreneurship in Higher Education. So we're doing some work on the higher ed piece of faith and entrepreneurship. So I'm doing a handful of things right now. The short of it is I'm just a building stuff. I love ideas, I love people, and I love entrepreneurship. I love building things. And so I'm doing that in a few different fronts right now. And then to your second part of your question about the book. So the book is called Working from the Inside Out. I finished it actually after I finished Denver Institute, but it's on some of the things that I've learned the process and as the title might suggest, it really is not only about does our work matter? Yes, I think we've heard that. Can our work have a positive impact in the world? Absolutely. But the question I really the last five years have been asking more is not only what impact am I having, but who am I becoming? So that was the question that I wanted to address. Working from the inside out is what is transformation look like from the inside out, from our into your life to our exterior life, to our civic life.
Rusty Rueff: This idea of what you're being or who you're being while you're doing is something I think we all, you know, struggle with and we all try to pursue in some form, either through invitation or situation. And we're invited all the time, you know, to be doing that introspection and examining ourselves and trying to figure it out. That is our being and our doing. Integris And the same and I want to get more into the book because there's a lot of meat there that people can really dive into and get a lot of wisdom from. So we're dedicated entrepreneurs. We talk about a lot the unique challenges they face and compared to other Christian workers and how entrepreneurship might have different pressures. And one of the things you talk about in the book is how most churchgoers are looking for meaning in their work. But for the entrepreneurs we serve, the struggle actually can sometimes be that they place too much meaning in their work.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah.
Rusty Rueff: Right. That it becomes the all be it. And I certainly see a lot of times work almost becomes an idol.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah. And maybe I'll just respond to that will share a little bit of my own story if it's okay. Rusty.
Rusty Rueff: Sure, Absolutely.
Jeff Haanen: My own entrepreneurial story. So I was working at a Christian school, but I came home evenings for really months, almost up to a year, imagining an organization that would apply the gospel to the world's industries. And so, I mean, one night I remember coming home from a Christian school that I was working at, and my wife had rearranged our garage. She had put a desk in a computer in a space heater and pegboard up, and she's got a little note and said, I believe in what you're doing. You can do this. And that is exactly just the affirmation I needed. And so I launched into my own entrepreneurial venture, wanted to move something forward. So I started the organization and did branding and logos and figured out what's going to work. We did our first event on faith and technology and one of America's most secular cities, Boulder, Colorado, and, you know, had several wins and got some donors and events and all these good things. But it was, I would say, about five years into my journey and maybe not even that, maybe it was only like four years into my own journey, I started to notice several things about myself. I started to notice that I would come home tired, like exhausted, sometimes fall asleep an hour or two before my wife did, and not have a chance to connect with her. Sometimes I would just respond with to just very short temper with my kids and I would just have to apologize right away. And also in my work, I realized. I was changing a little bit. I when we had the big wins, we landed the donor. Or for a lot of listeners on this podcast, you land, the investor, the land, the big client, the big customer. I just felt this elation, like I was bigger than life, right? However, when things went wrong or something failed or a product failed or I was slighted. I hate being slighted. It's just one of those things like somebody didn't respond to me or ghosted me. I felt sometimes anger or frustration, sometimes even felt despair and sadness. And when I started to pay attention to some of these things within me as I was doing my work, I realized that I wasn't just for me in my work, and it wasn't just like I was making impact on the world. Work was forming me. And so I had to ask the question of who am I becoming in that context? And that is when I started the parallel journey of yes, I'm leading. Yes, I'm building, yes I'm growing. But the exterior self, the sort of the LinkedIn virtues. Right. Those were all growing. But I was concerned that I'd become somewhat thin in my interior world. And as I thought, who do I want to become when I'm old, man? I want to be filled with life and wholeness and peace. What does it look like to become that? So to loop back around to your question, Rusty, entrepreneurs have a very intense form of work. A lot of other people in different kinds of industries, they'll think about their work as much. They don't care about it, and their identity is not as closely affixed to their works.
Rusty Rueff: That's right
Jeff Haanen: For entrepreneurs, it's very, very close. But for other industries, I should say for most other industries, it's not like that. And so the question there I think, is questions around not only who am I really becoming and growing in self-awareness and what's sort of happening inside of me? But the question would be, how do I root my identity in something that doesn't change? And when that's tested, when everything goes wrong, when you shut down the startup and, you know, only six months in or whatever it might be, and you feel foolish because you thought this was going to be the great idea, it was going to change the world. And now only six months in and all falls apart, then how do you feel then? Where's Christ? Right? I actually think those are the key moments for the faith driven entrepreneur to experience the life of God within. And so it is Maybe we'll talk about that a little later, too. It's in these pain points and the times of suffering that I think God opens the doors for his spirit to move inside of us.
Rusty Rueff: Yes. So you left us with and I wrote these down what you went through like some symptoms that maybe, you know, we're not working this work thing correctly. You know, when we fall over the finish line day in and day out, so tired that we can't pay attention to the other things and the other people in our lives that are so important when we start to get a little on the short tempered side, when the fuze is getting really, really short and we know that and we're going to lash out. Interestingly, and I so agree with you that these high highs, these almost dopamine hits. Right. You know, that happened from you got the email back from the investor that, hey, we want to have the next call with you, you know, or you land the deal or the customer, you know, comes through that you didn't think it was going to come through. And you get this, you know, you're so elated that you're walking off the ground. That may be a good thing, but it might be a bad sign. Actually. Might be a bad sign. And then the this the low lows and the anger that could come. I mean, these are all symptoms that we should be watching for.
Jeff Haanen: And let me also say on that, this is one reason why faith is so incredibly important for entrepreneurs everywhere. So my colleague Brett Smith at Miami University, he put together a paper on entrepreneurial identity. And he said one of the cool things about being a faith motivated entrepreneurs that way, and you're in those high highs, we can hear God's voice and he humbles us and says, You know, you're not.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah.
Jeff Haanen: Heaven and earth wasn't built around your thing, right? And yet when we're at the lowest and we feel like we're dirt and we're nothing because everything failed, he says, You are my son and you are my daughter.
Rusty Rueff: That's right.
Jeff Haanen: Now our identity is lifted up. And so if you think about it like a graph, the up and global high graph, the faith aspect actually stabilizes that graph. For those that don't have that faith journey, they don't have that same sort of a resource. And there's some science, there's some empirical evidence that that's actually the case. I do think that's important to recognize.
Rusty Rueff: And that's really good. So in working from the inside out, you have these five guiding principles that should help all of us as we live out our faith at work. Dive into those for us and spend as much time as you want.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah. So I mean, starting with my story again, this idea of, yes, our work is going to have an impact. Yes, I want it to have an impact not only on the business but on the broader culture and have a social and cultural impact. But for me, I just had to pause and think, what's the interior world as well? So the five principles, the first two are about the interior life. So the first is seek deep spiritual health. And the second is think theologically. And the idea behind these first two is rather than thinking about the exterior world, God is first working inside us. And this is a chance to open ourselves to awareness to the transforming power of grace, to look at some of our pain. And to really just rest on what God has done for us. And I can get more into that. The second is our habits of thought. And I think we underestimate how very secular our culture is. But we are called to see everything in light of the biblical story. And so when we think we think about everything from venture capital to M&A, everything fitting inside the biblical story is incredibly important. And God invites us to see everything, including our work and our culture endeavors inside the biblical story. So on the interior world, our emotional life, our spiritual life, as well as our intellectual life, I think those is where God does his interior, his first work. Second, the second movement. But the third principle is embrace relationships. You know that first step outwards, even when we're little babies, as we see a parent, we have a family relationship. And frankly, in the workplace, relationships are everything for an entrepreneur. They're everything for a healthy business. Relationships are the crux of culture. So God himself is relationship. And I write a little bit in the book about what does it look like for us to do conflict healing restorative relationships, build healthy culture, set good boundaries and limits differentiation, some of these things. The next part of our outerior life is the work itself. Create good work. That's the fourth principle. And by that, that's probably a message that your listeners have heard. But God himself worked for six days and rested for one, and we are made in the image of a worker. And so the work that we do, why we do it, I think really matters. And so how we steward our gifts and talents and even our pain matters, right? Building things in light of a world that will be new and light in the resurrection. All of these, I think, are incredibly important. So create good work. And then the last principle is serve others sacrificially. And this is how I talk about engaging culture rather than I don't use a lot of language of cultural renewal, though I very much appreciative of the thinkers that have led in that area. I think the core perspective as we think about our engagement with society is sacrificial service, and that's something that whether you are working as a trucker and you're staying out late and you are going to make sure to get that load done and you're going to support your family and do the job right, or whether you're working at a foundation and you're working on the big poverty problems in a great American city. Either one of those this idea of dying to self so that others might live, I think is really important. And those are sometimes big things and sometimes those are very small things. But the main idea of the book is working from the inside out that God is at first working on the exterior, thinks he's actually first. I believe working in into Your life. That then translates to our exterior life and then finally does move into our civic life or our communal life.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that's great. And I'm so glad the, the fourth one that you tackle around creating good work that you actually talk about that openly because you know, whether it happens in Sunday school, I don't know where it happens, but you know, we're taught pretty early that, you know, work was the curse. You know, that's what Adam got, you know, for not being obedient. So he now has to toil the soil. And that's a curse. In fact, you know, Adam was working before that, right? He had plenty of things to do. I mean, he had a pretty big to do list that God gave him, you know, name all these things. Do all this, right, You know? Yes. And work was a blessing. Work was a gift. And anybody who, you know, walks around saying, you know, I feel like I'm cursed because my work and this I try to remind them, you know, just go downtown, walk around town and tell people that, you know, oh, I wish I didn't work. And you'll run into somebody who says, What are you talking about? I'd give anything for a job today.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah, right.
Rusty Rueff: So, yeah.
Jeff Haanen: That is a good word. Telling both sides of the biblical story. Genesis one and two. And then the fall. Right. And work is filled with thorns and thistles. There's one guy I interviewed years ago for that article you mentioned, Jim Mullins. He's a pastor in Arizona, and he really challenged me on even that part of what we tell him, the theology of work story. He says that oftentimes in professional communities and entrepreneurial communities, we emphasize Genesis one and the goodness of work and the people who don't like their work or many working class communities are oftentimes more drawn to Genesis three. A work is painful. Toil is difficult right now. What Jim actually challenged me on is to say that transformation really happens when you reverse the emphasis with those groups. He says that when professionals hear that work is broken and they work towards systemic healing of those, that's where transformation happens. And for working class communities to say your work is good, that there's an opportunity to serve others in your community, in your family through your work, that's the message that they oftentimes are not hearing, though there may be more common on this podcast, but they're not hearing as much. And so I do think there's a real opportunity for the faith driven entrepreneur to think about the message that they hear about work for themselves and what they commit to, as well as the type of message about work that's in their companies.
Rusty Rueff: So one section in the book that particularly stood out was the text and chapters on change. And I'm always fascinated by change because I think, you know, as human beings, we're resistant to change. But. Yes. And you point out that, you know, lots of people read books, then they get it, but then they go on with their life and life is normal. But they won't do the hard work for change because change is difficult. And you pose this working theory that I think is worth quoting at length. So let me do so. Formation begins when an individual self identifies a problem, need or point of suffering, and then joins a high commitment community. And there's a lot there. Take it apart for us. What do you mean with that?
Jeff Haanen: Yeah. So one day I remember getting out of the shower and seeing this gray hair pop out of my side of. I don't know if that's happened to you yet, Rusty, but. Oh, yeah, I know that. I'm 41. I was looking and some bags under my skin changed a little bit and I just had a hard week. And the question that I was asking is, how do we really change? Because, you know, we've all read books, maybe even listen to podcasts. Do we change? Maybe. But I've read so many darn books and I've become so adept at not changing or putting something in my brain and then having it fall right out the other side. I'm like the book of James. Right that says I look at that and I immediately forget what I was looking at. So I think change is a hard topic. I think it's a really hard topic. I think we all want to think about how do we be transformed. But the reality is stuck habits, sin just challenges in our life. They just stick around and it can be really frustrating. And I actually think my view a lot of people either leave the church individually or see others that aren't changed and they don't come into the church because people aren't like Christ. And I think rather than thinking about others that aren't like Christ, I think, am I like, how do I change? So in the book I sort of I don't have a full answer for how we change, but I have a working theory of three major parts. And the first part is what you mentioned. So I think change really begins with pain and suffering. And it it's not like going and finding it. I think actually, if we're willing to look at it, I think all of us have some of that pain and suffering. But so much of our life is something that we're uncomfortable, we're suffering. What do we do? We self-medicate, we do other things. We sort of seek pleasures, right? We go another direction. But rather than sort of looking away from it, looking at your pain and say, God, it is in the difficulty, the pain and the failure or whatever it might be, He is actually here with me right now rather than me try to change it. I sort of present it to him. And then I think the converse of that is not only looking at your pain, but doing so with a high commitment community that's emotionally and relationally vulnerable. So I'll take each of those step by step a little bit. So the high commitment community, what I don't mean is something that you pop in and out of, right? Like one high commitment community that I'm a part of is my marriage. It's it's a very high commitment. Right. Right. The most high commitments we make are the most transformative. Talk to somebody in the Marine Corps. Ask them if they were changed by being in the Marine Corps. Right. High commitment communities definitely transform us. But we're very reticent to make really, really high commitments. Like for years we tried to get well and we still are. Some are brave and do a nine month fellowship at [....] institute called a 50 to 80 Fellowship. But a lot say I don't want to make that commitment. I have the time, I can do it. But it is the core commitments that we make and the people that we spend our time around that transform us. And then the converse of that is it has to be actually vulnerable. We have to choose to open up. And I think because of things like and my buddy David Bailey at [....] one would say there's the big four emotional things are going on on the inside of all of us that we're really reticent to open up about. Grief, fear, anger and shame are the Big four, like all of us have some of those that we've done something that we say not only guilty that say I did something bad. Shame is I am bad now, right? I'm afraid of something. I'm anger. Somebody did something to me. I have that core wound right there. I mention that because when you start to get into that and you have a community of people that I'm committed to, they're not going anywhere. No matter what I tell you, they're not going anywhere. You can be vulnerable and you choose to look at your pain. I think if I had my druthers, that's the black soil of where God plants his great plants where things actually grow is in the weakness. His power is made perfect in weakness.
Rusty Rueff: So. Give us some advice, because here in the faith driven entrepreneur community, which, you know, we say come here for the content, stay for the community. And we have our faith driven entrepreneur groups that meet all over the world. But can large scale communities be high commitment communities? Or are we talking about, as you said, your marriage or a small group or the people that you could say anything to them and they can say anything to you without any high stakes of they're going to lose something or gain something from you, They're just there for you. Can it be done at scale?
Jeff Haanen: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I would say two tests for this of whether you're in a high commitment community or not. First test would be what happens when somebody really ticks you off in that group or somebody does something that you don't like or really offends you. Do you drop them like a bad habit or do you stick with them? Mm hmm. It's worth thinking about because oftentimes that's the difference between my real friends and those that are somehow useful to me. And that's actually the second one, is at some point in your high commitment community, there should be people that can't get you ahead. And that's one of the, I think, challenges the Faith at Work movement is that we network where customers and investors and that's actually fine, right? But some of those that's one of the beauties, just in my view of having that high commitment community be there in the church or close to the church is there's people with different sorts of lives and they can't get you ahead. They're just your brothers and sisters of faith with a different story. Right. I do think that's an important one. And it's a sort of a keep my honest check as well in terms of am I here to get something out of it or am I really here for interior growth, right, to really become whole and human? Right. So I do think, yeah, these groups can be that. Right. But most I don't think are I think most people and this is thinking mostly about the American context. If you are in Africa and other places, I think that they get friendship better than we do. But there's a lot of lonely people that are just working and trying to be successful and at the end of the day, feel incredibly alone. And entrepreneurs, I think, generally feel that because they're working so hard, the sort of sheer time it takes. I mean, one person said it well is one of the key things need to do to build a good friendship is to waste time together. That's one thing entrepreneurs have a really hard time doing is wasting time. I was hustling and building and moving things forward, right? So find some people that you can waste time together that can't benefit you. And when they tick you off and they're say something or they're rude to you, you just stick with them and you keep building a friendship.
Rusty Rueff: That's good. That's just such good advice and why we all just don't, you know, pick up that advice and just take it and run with it because, you know, you're not the first one who said it and won't be the last, but you're articulating it in a way that says, listen, if you don't do this, you're missing out. Right? If you don't do this, you know, you're not going to grow through, you know, some of these areas that you laid out with your grief and your fear, your angers and your shame, you know, you're not going to be able to grow through it on your own. And, you know, that's one of the beautiful things about our faith, right? It's not meant to be alone. It was never meant to be alone.
Jeff Haanen: That's right. And you need physical representations when you're vulnerable and you feel like nothing is to say, here's your new identity. This is who you are. We are together. We are one people now in Christ. Out of two, he made one one new man as it is said in Ephesians. And I just we need people to actually say that for us to believe it. Otherwise, we're on a never ending performance track, which I think myself include a lot of entrepreneurs can get stuck on is I am my success or my value of my thing, and it's just not true.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. So couple more questions and we've got to come to a close. But you know, you use a word disintegration in the book.
Jeff Haanen: Yes.
Rusty Rueff: You want to talk about disintegration because that's not a word that we use every day in our vocabulary.
Jeff Haanen: Yeah, well, oftentimes we talk about integrating faith in work. And I actually want to explore a little bit of the idea of disintegration. And I think that happens on a cultural level as well as in individual level. But the image I gave him was a glass. If you have a glass on the table and you knock it over and you break it, you could say that the glass has been disintegrated. The parts are disconnected from the purpose of the whole boy. And I think one of the things that we're all longing for is not only integration, which we hear about that in the faith work, but I'll just say something maybe like wholeness, is that my interior life, my relationships, my work, my involvement in community come from a single source and a single story, Right? And I think we live very disintegrated lives are sort of our faith life, maybe our church life, our work life, the persona we have when I'm a dad of driving kids to soccer, I just think that is a real journey for us to get more and more comfortable with who we are and our drawbacks and growing in self-awareness and who God thinks we are and actually start to believe it too. So I think we kind start disintegrated because of the fall. And I think moving to wholeness is just a part of the discipleship journey.
Rusty Rueff: So then how can entrepreneurs We can't make it easy for them, but how can we make it? Easier. Yes. For their employees to begin to think about this, working from the inside out to find this disintegration.
Jeff Haanen: Well, yeah. And let me speak directly to the entrepreneurs that are listening right now. Being an entrepreneur, just making the business work is incredibly hard. And so there's a lot of folks in the movement saying, you should do this and this and this too. Yeah, you should. However, just making the business work and the business model function is incredibly hard. So thank you for what you're doing. Just thanks for trying to do something hard to really meet a need that you saw in your community and try to build something sustainable growing around that. So I should just first say that I would say one of the core things, if you're listening to this podcast and your faith motivated entrepreneurs, take a second look at your employees and sort of who they are as whole people, their interior lives, their emotional lives, their spiritual lives, their intellectual lives. Right. Their physical lives, their work life. Of course, the relationships that are happening in the organization, connecting them to needs in the community. So they're doing everything from volunteer days to doing, you know, company benevolence funds. There's a ton of ideas out there. But I actually just think I write about this in the book. There are some essential questions that you can ask around. Am I investing in people's spiritual, emotional health am I investing in their intellectual health and understanding themselves in a holistic way in terms of the biblical story? Am I investing in healthy culture in this place? Am I investing in their ability to do good work and simple things like training and really coming alongside them so that they can feel good at the end of the day that they're going to work? And are they connected to their community? And we're giving them the bandwidth to do good work for their community as well. So that is, I think, a lot for a company to ask. And yet all companies have one commonality, at least, is that they're filled with people. And I think people have all of those elements that one way or another, if we don't attend to some of these wholeness or these health issues, it does end up hurting the company. And so that's kind of the other side. So I would say just take one step toward that inside out journey, both for yourself as well as others, and just create spaces for others to do the same.
Rusty Rueff: Last question we always ask. It's the William Norvell's question. If he was here, he gets to ask it. It's the William Norvell trademarked question. What is God teaching you through His word recently? And you can define recently any way you want to. It could be this morning, it be this season, it could be this year. But what's God teaching you in his word?
Jeff Haanen: Yeah. Right now for me, it's John one in him was life in that life was the light of all mankind. And the theme of life has been really prescient. I find that as entrepreneurs, we're always kind of searching and yearning and building. But I think what we really want is the [...]. And I found that more and more is that sometimes when I have some sort of an unhealthy motive, what I'm really after is a sense of fullness and joy and overflowing life that God offers to each of us. So what God's teaching me is not only to pursue life, but even maybe give one more practical thing. Life can be a decision making framework. There is a Jesuit prayer, not a prayer, but called the principle and the foundation and the end of it, at least a contemporary version that I pray regularly says I want and I choose to choose whatever leads to the deepening of God's life within me. And I think as we're making decisions in our family and as I work and what we were going to build and why we're going to do it, the decision making framework for any of us can be which of these paths leads to the deepening of God's life within me. And that doesn't only mean up unto the right. It may be a hard decision, too, but I think that's the goal, is to live with God forever.
Joseph Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at faith driven entrepreneur.org.
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