Be Bold to Start, Be Wise to Protect

Do you have a business idea? Great! Let's talk about that for a minute. It's interesting that all businesses start from the same point of an idea. So, an idea is a good thing and potentially a very powerful thing. Let no one despise your idea. Even the Bible says, "Do not despise these small beginnings..." (Zechariah 4:10 NLT). 

However, you need more than an idea to bring the business to life and make it successful. This means you need to put in work... lots of work. That's exactly what Zerrubabel had to do in this verse. It continues to say, "for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin..." God is pleased to see us use our minds to think and He is also pleased to see the work that we have thought about begin. Some great business ideas never came to be because the work never started. 

But we still need more than work. Most startups fail within the first few years despite putting in hard work and smart work. To succeed, you will need an excellent spirit of judgment at every step of the way. The verse says that God is not only pleased to see the work begin, He is also pleased "to see the plumbline in Zerubbabel's (the builder's) hand." The plumbline is one of the tools that the builders use at every step of the construction process to see or judge whether everything is going right. 

The successful entrepreneur will be equipped with more tools than ideas and hard/ smart work. He will carry out thorough research, he will have solid plans and will evaluate and re-evaluate the work to see if it is going to plan. Yes he will be bold enough to take risks but also wise enough to manage those risks. The builders in this Bible text had many enemies. They were not only bold enough to take on the risk of building, they were careful enough to protect what they were building.