Well over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what it means to run the race and win the prize. We’re all running in some race. But so often, the race that really matters, the race of life, well it gets hard and we want to pull over and give up. And part of that is because things don’t always come together the way we want them to. So you look at this mess called your own live and you think, ‘God just doesn’t know what He’s up to here. How could He let this happen or that happen?’

Well this week on the program we’ve got something special in store. We’re going to hear one man’s story, one man’s tale if you like. And it’s a tale with more twists and turns in it than, well, no, no, I’ll let him tell you the story rather than me.

Now this mans name is Tim. He’s a businessman with a heart to follow after God. And my hunch is that as we just kind of tune into his story, we’re going to discover more than a few things that will encourage us and strengthen us along our journey.

Berni: Tim, welcome to the program.

Tim: Thanks Berni.

Berni: Now listen, I said you were a man with a heart after God but it wasn’t always that way was it?

Time: Well I’ve grown up in a Christian home. I guess I always had a fundamental belief. But I had a faith that had never been tested. Having a professional background and a young family, one day I just realised that I wasn’t testing my faith. I didn’t really know what it meant to truly trust God. I guess He, in some fairly fun ways, decided to look at ways in which I can be stretched and start learning about the real God and how He works in very practical ways.

Berni: So what was your faith like before this testing began?

Tim: It was very, very traditional. I believed in God, I believed in Jesus and all the things and whistles and bells that go with that.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: But I was never pushed out of my comfort zone.

Berni: So what was the tipping point between the sort of faith that’s well, easy going, you know, I’ll just go and do my thing and I believe in Jesus out there somewhere, to a faith that became a whole bunch more real because you were going through some interesting things?

Tim: I was praying one day, with someone, and we had a bit of a word from the Lord and felt that the Lord really said to me that my ways were not His ways. That was, to be honest, was a fairly shocking thing to receive as a young Christian man. So from that, I received that and I had a good look at myself and I realised that was pretty true. I then was reading Hebrews one day. I was thinking about the great men of faith, looking at Hebrews 11, the hall of fame and people who trusted God. And I was looking at Abraham particularly and it said later in chapter 11, it talks about the fact that he didn’t receive the things that were promised and his vision was elsewhere. And at that point I felt God say to me, ‘Tim, do you have the courage to ask for a faith where the things of the earth don’t matter?’

Berni: No thanks God.

Tim: Well yeah, my head said yes and of course me heart pretty quickly said, ‘hang on, don’t make decisions for all of us’. And to be really honest, it took me 6 weeks of a lot of contemplation to answer that question truthfully. Where I could say, ‘yeah, I’m happy to explore a journey.’ I guess I had a fear of God that was healthy enough for me to know that that may mean something fairly serious and it’s certainly changed my outlook and changed my scenery from that day.

Berni: So you made that decision. Presumably you went back to God, said, ‘Alright God, I’m signed up. I’ll go for this.’ Was that kind of what happened?

Tim: Yeah, a little bit. At the time we were just starting the business and it went something along the lines of, ‘Hey God, I’m signed up. I’ve got a great deal for you. How about you bless me and I’ll be really generous.’

Berni: Sounds good doesn’t it?

Tim: God says, ‘yeah, something like that’.

Berni: So what changed? I mean you made that decision. It’s probably a turning point in your life isn’t it? You kind of made that decision. How did you start living differently? You’d started a business. You’d got a wife, did you have a young family then?

Tim: Yeah, I’ve got four young kids.

Berni: Yeah and so what changed?

Tim: That’s a good question. I mean on a day to day basis, nothing much. But, I guess, I started to explore the concept of God speaking and a more personal relationship with God. We looked at making God head of our company. We did some crazy things like ask Him to be our managing director. He did a really poor job for several years and…

Berni: We’ll talk about that later in the week.

Tim: Yeah. Giving Him ownership of the company and allowing Him, as it were, really trusting Him with the business and our decision making. There’s a lag time often before you see changes but they were the sorts of decisions we felt to make.

Berni: And He didn’t do what you expected Him to do?

Tim: No, not at all. Look at the time we looked at setting ourselves up as a charity thinking that might be the way to go. Those avenues were blocked and eventually, it was actually the same day, about six months after we started, Daniel and I, well I was praying and Daniel, my business partner was obviously also having some time with the Lord.

It was a Saturday and I felt the Lord said, ‘I want you in full time ministry but you’re not to leave your company.’ And I thought that was quite specific, quite interesting. I didn’t know what it meant. I rang Daniel and said, look this is what I thinks happening. And he said, ‘It’s amazing, I really felt the same thing had just been asked of me and equally felt that it was not outside of the business but rather to remain in it. So that ushered in quite a confused 12 months but one where we certainly did a lot of praying, really sought the Lord and I think our hearts were being made fairly pure and certainly they were genuine.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: We still needed a lot of refining though, I can assure you.

Berni: You don’t expect confusion do you? Like when you step out and do stuff for God. When you go and run this race for God, you think, ‘right, I’m going to run this for God, I’m going to go and do this. We’re going to set up our business, we’re going to do it for God and we’re going to live for God and just live in faith’, confusion is the last thing you expect isn’t it?

Tim: Oh, absolutely and I think I came into it really hoping God would have given me some sort of crystal ball or an ability to see the future.

Berni: A voice from heaven would have been good.

Tim: Absolutely, angelic angels, rainbows, all of that and that didn’t happen.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: In fact the opposite was happening. We had probably less comfort as to what lay ahead and He was really teaching us that, ‘I just want you to know the very next step not even the one after it’.

Berni: How do you look back on it? Its a few years ago now, how do you look back on those times now? You’ve been through a lot and over the course of this week we’re going to explore some incredible downers as well as the ups that you have been through. When you look back on those early days and you think about the confusion and the uncertainty and ‘ah, am I doing the right thing?’ How do you see that now?

Tim: It was very much Gods love. We were very physically focused, very proud. I don’t think we understood anything of where God wanted us and certainly what lay ahead which is why He didn’t reveal it all because we probably wouldn’t have gone there but I realise now that where we’ve been located was far better. It was really important that we didn’t know where we were going and we didn’t know what God exactly wanted from us because I think we would have been kicking and screaming a lot more than we perhaps were.

Berni: Interesting how we often quote that scripture, “We walk by faith and not by sight.” But when we haven’t got the sight we actually want it back don’t we? ‘Show me God, show me, tell me’ and yet the uncertain times are the times that really change us.

Tim: We like to have logic in the physical and we certainly were that and particularly in business, that’s important and I think, for us, God was teaching us to see perhaps, with spiritual eyes, if I can use that phrase and see really what He’s doing perhaps behind the scenes.

Berni: If you had one piece of wisdom, one insight, for those early days, what would it be?

Tim: Well firstly, be careful. Giving everything to the Lord, He will take it. There are costs to that but they are great fun once you get used to it. And there’s no way you’d go back. I think that’s the encouraging thing. Yeah, it’s like seeing the world through different eyes, new colours, fresh fragrances. Everything’s a lot, you’re seeing the same things but it’s a lot more vibrant and lively. So it’s really, really good fun. And I think just acknowledge that God really genuinely does know what He’s doing.

Berni: You never actually doubted that did you?

Tim: Oh, I did. You think you’re safer in your own hands than in Gods but in actual fact, retrospectively we realised that the safest place to be was right in the centre of where He was taking us albeit it felt terrible. So that’s probably, just relax and enjoy it.

Berni: Well we’re going to look at the gap, tomorrow on the program, between what you expected and what actually happened ’cause my hunch is that those gaps can be a little bit difficult. So we’ll catch up again tomorrow.

Tim: Okay.

Over these past few weeks we’ve been taking a look at what it means to run the race of life. To run it in a way that will actually win the prize at the end. The prize of eternal life. That’s what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 9,

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete but only one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may win it.”

And again in Philippians chapter 3, verse 14,

“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

We’ve talked quite a bit over the last three weeks about this and this week, what I thought we’d do is just get one man to share his story. His name is Tim and his story has so many twists and turns, so many things he didn’t expect. He came to believe in Jesus and started off a business because that’s what he felt called to do. Didn’t all go to plan. At least not to his plan. And when I first heard him share his story with me a few weeks ago, I just felt to invite him on the program. Because I know he’ll be as much of an encouragement to you as he has been to me. Tim – welcome.

Tim: Thanks Berni.

Berni: Now listen; you started off this business, right? How does making money and believing in God go together in your head?

Tim: Well initially not very linked at all.

Berni: Right.

Tim: And I certainly don’t consider that God has an expectation that you just make money and I think the currency of the world, largely, is money and I think that Gods currency is probably faith. I don’t think He, in our situation certainly, used that and used perhaps some of our incorrect expectations in relation to money to actually forge a faith in our company which is well seeded and well learned by those in there.

Berni: Easy to see on the way looking back, not so easy to see when you’re in there, right?

Tim: Yeah. That’s exactly right and I think you certainly, traditionally we equate success and the presence of money with some level of Gods blessing or Gods encouragement that you’re on the right track and I think we certainly had those types of lessons somewhat beaten out of us. I’m not saying that they’re not true, they weren’t for me.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: The lesson that I needed to learn revolved around perhaps loosening a control and expectation in relation to money so it became a very personal journey. It’s not one I would expect that everyone needs to go through but it’s certainly probably fairly typical of those in business and I think the difficulty is that business is good fun and you ultimately do it to make money which inherently is not wrong either. I’d say it’s about a balance and really understanding what God wants from you.

Berni: So you, even the business you wanted to start first wasn’t the business you ended up actually starting, is that right?

Tim: That’s correct. It started off in property and quickly realised that we weren’t overly successful. It’s extremely tough, highly competitive and we needed to change direction and look at stuff that also produced an income.

Berni: So what changed? How did the direction of the business change?

Tim: We were introduced to someone who’s, became a director of a company and that was a person who was looking to retire and they had a well established network for over 20 years doing caravan parks actually. And they came on board and the network was opened up to us and we built a team around that and we were able to move, fairly aggressively, into that space within Australia.

Berni: Isn’t it interesting, you start off with a plan, you start off with a good idea, you start off with ‘I’m going to go and make money. I’m going to do it for God. I’m going to do it for my family.’ And then it takes a completely different turn that you wouldn’t have expected.

Tim: Yeah, that’s correct. And in some respects the whole story’s not finished yet. We’re still a work in progress and we continue to be refined and to grow but our expectations were on God. We had a well made plan. We knew exactly where we were going. God had very different strategies and I guess a lot of the early years of the business were really God undoing a lot of our expectations on Him.

Berni: See, you don’t expect that to happen. You expect God to be with your plan, don’t you?

Tim: That’s right.

Berni: How dare God undo your expectations.

Tim: There’s a, I remember reading, you read this story of Jacob wrestling with God and at some point, I think he asks something along the lines of ‘are you for me or against me?’ The man, at that point, or the angel or God says, ‘Well, neither’ and I realised that that question of God has no place to land. God isn’t for us or against us. God’s God and in some respects we start, need to learn to line up with what He’s doing and that was very much the lesson that we were learning.

Berni: So you head in a different direction and then something extraordinary happens. I remember you telling me that you felt as though you were called into full time ministry. So you’ve started a business, you think it’s from God and then you get this sense that there’s some ministry involved. Tell us about that.

Tim: We knew that God had a call on us. At the same time, we had a lot of missional networks open up to us and many people within the company had a real desire to pray for nations and for land, to see the kingdom of God come in a very real, tangible way in lives and communities. So we explored prayer. We explored praying with other people. We started partnering with other kingdom business people. We found opportunities. Real estate agents would ring us, knowing that we were Christians and ask us to pray with them and pray with. In one case, one of their daughters who was having a difficult time. And we saw just very, very small opportunities opening up in a world of business that doesn’t really have a whole lot of open doors to that type of stuff.

Berni: Did you feel a bit whacky to start with? ‘Cause we in the west, we kind of like to put our faith over in this box and our business over in that box and often the two don’t meet.

Tim: Yeah.

Berni: I mean, you have this sense of being called to full time ministry in your business, is I think what you said.

Tim: Yes.

Berni: How did you feel about that?

Tim: It was very tricky and the commitment to time was one of the hardest things and we established a set of values and I won’t go into all of them, but one of our top values is that people matter more, and so we then had certain staff would ring up and say, ‘Look I’m not coming in this morning. There’s a friend of mine having some major difficulties and struggling with life and I’m going to spend the morning there just praying with them and come in at lunch time’ and realising that that’s to be celebrated. That’s a company actually with staff achieving their values and yet it wasn’t productive. They were tricky.

There obviously has to be an appropriate balance to that but it was very, very exciting and we started to see real miracles of the Lord in people’s lives and we certainly saw miracles within business where things were at a dire stage and in a minute we needed an outcome to go well to be sustained, it was there. So I felt like, whilst things weren’t going well, we were never left hung out do dry by God either. And I guess after a few years of seeing those miracles land we realised that God was very much with us but certainly moving us which was scary and exciting all in one.

Berni: If you knew what you know now, starting off, what would you do different? Just one thing.

Time: We would structure the whole business differently in respect to finance. I guess in a sense of our relationship with God, we would certainly involve Him very differently but I guess the reason why I’m struggling to answer it is that the whole reason for our existence, our whole culture and even how we’ve positioned ourselves actually has all come on the back of…

Berni: The experience.

Tim: The experience and the difficult times. So for me to, I mean, whilst I’ve hated just about every minute of it I wouldn’t change it.

Berni: You’re such an encourager.

Tim: Yeah I wouldn’t change anything actually and it’s been, it’s a tricky question because where we’ve landed is so, so reliant on the journey that we’ve had to come.

I’m joined this week on the program by a businessman. His name is Tim and the story of his life has more twists and turns than even he would care to remember, I suspect. And the reason he’s here is, that over these last 3 weeks or so, we’ve been talking about running the race and winning the prize. Living our lives in such a way that we head towards to right end gain. The prize that’s really worth winning. The prize of eternal life.

But that’s not always easy. Not for you. Not for me. And as I first heard Tim’s story shared just a few weeks ago, you know what struck me? Here’s this guy, 39 year old businessman. He’s an ordinary every day kind of person and he’s been through so many of the ups and downs that you and I have been through, yet he’s learned some things. About himself and about his God. And one of the parts of his story that really struck me was when he talked about his long dark nights. Those dark and dangerous times in his life and that’s what I’m going to ask him to share with us today. Tim, welcome again to the program.

Tim: Thank you Berni.

Berni: Now listen, you set off on business, you think you’re doing it for God and all of a sudden you’re going boldly where no mans gone before and it doesn’t quite work out the way you think it did. Tell me what happened. Like what happened to the business when you got rolling.

Tim: Doing property development, those particular projects can take a long time before they go good or bad and so, I guess, a couple of years it was fairly straight forward. Things were looking quite good. I mentioned earlier that we had given the managing director role of the company to the Lord and I said He was doing a decidedly poor job and after several years I think…

Berni: You didn’t think of sacking Him did you?

Tim: Well we tried but He wouldn’t go. No, not at all but we realised that some of the decisions that we’d made, the structures that we’d made, were not overly satisfactory. We had business doors closing like I’ve never seen before. And they were projects that I ‘m very familiar with. Skills that I have used most of my career. Deals that should have been happening easily in a very, very good market and we were managing to botch the whole lot up and achieve nothing and…

Berni: Thank you Jesus.

Tim: That’s right. I can say that now but at the time it was very, very frustrating and you really do ask yourself, Lord why have you forsaken me? We had given the company to the Lord years earlier. We had expectations on what God looked like. On His timing. On His strategies. The outcomes that He would deliver for us.

Berni: So how was your cash flow? Like, money coming in?

Tim: Very small amount. We started up a little architecture company on the side which helped out. But debt was growing, that’s the reality, yeah.

Berni: So you see your business, this business you started off with great intentions. You’re stepping out in faith. You’re in it for God. You see it going down the gurgler. How do you feel?

Tim: You feel let down by God. We felt that we’d made a little bit of a deal with God. You know, He’d bless us and we’d bless others and Him.

Berni: You got it in writing of course.

Tim: Oh look, absolutely. And I think God was really refining our concepts of Him. I got to know a God that I didn’t like.

Berni: Oh, okay. Tell us about that.

Tim: Now that’s not to say I don’t love God and on one of my very, very dark nights of the soul I was pacing around the back yard in the middle of the night. You know, having a bit of a cry, having a bit of a yell and telling God what He was doing wrong and realising that I was at my wits end.

I mean, in a business sense we had just had enough of it. And I think I mentioned that there was almost a perversity to what He was doing. Because He was really playing with our mind and it was very, very tough because I felt that we hadn’t had any encouragement.

We hadn’t heard from Him for a while and that was really tough. And early on there was a lot of encouragement. There was a lot of answers to prayer and just times where God said, ‘I’m with you. I’m not going to leave you’. And I think we’d probably come off, as we’d grown as a company, we came off the back of a year or so where He’d gone very quiet and that can be very discouraging. And He was wanting to, obviously, to stretch our faith and to make sure that we were a lot tougher and resilient than we were.

But I’d discovered that I’d found an aspect to God that I didn’t like and I told Him and He was good, He was very patient and loving. Merciful. But His comment basically was, I didn’t necessarily ask you to like all of Me. I’m a big God and there’s a lot of Me that you don’t know about.

Berni: So what, here you are, you’re a guy, you’re trying to provide for a family, you’re trying to run a business and you have to start living off food parcels. Tell me how that feels?

Tim: We had a reasonably nice house which again, you know, the debt behind those things are never quite obvious. And one day we did get a food parcel on the front porch and the beautiful thing about it was it was needed and with 4 young kids we were struggling with all of that. And it’s beautifully humbling but it’s also really encouraging. It doesn’t take much for God to be able to say, ‘Hey, I am with you and I know where you’re at’. And that was a very lovely thing. I cannot contemplate who it was that wandered up the stairs of a fairly nice house to put it there but they were someone who really heard from the Lord and that was exciting.

Berni: How was your wife coping with all this at the time?

Tim: Oh she’s awesome. And we’d made the decision early on together and we talked a bit, she doesn’t know all the sordid details of the business, probably doesn’t want to and they’re not all sorted either but she’s a woman of tremendous faith and trust. And I think both of us had the view that, over the years, we’ve realised that you know what, it really, you can’t take relationship away and we will always have our family relationship for as long as that’s in place but equally we will have the relationship with God.

Berni: I remember once when we were going through some difficult times and financially and my wife said, ‘You know, we’ve always got each other. It doesn’t matter what happens, we’ve always got each other.’ Boy that’s encouraging. Isn’t it awesome when your wife does that?

Tim: Yeah.

Berni: Okay, we’re going to talk about how you come out of some of these things tomorrow but looking back on those dark nights, what was the biggest thing you learned about God looking back on these long dark nights?

Tim: I learned that He doesn’t submit to our expectations of Him. And I realised that every expectation I place on God actually shrinks Him and doesn’t enlarge Him.

We got to a point, in the company, where we gathered the board together and this, I’m only going back 6 months now. So we’ve been on this journey for over 5 1/2 years at that point. And really felt that the Lord asked to be released from our expectations of Him.

Now that’s a really difficult prayer and particularly as well there are certain promises in the Old Testament that we’ve been able to claim and principles of God that we’ve been able to claim.

And we all know a different aspect of God and we have different relationships so we probably claimed different bits of His personality as being relevant. And to actually release God from that and very much allow Him to cause us to fail or to succeed, that was a very difficult time but it was a very intimate time. And I think the more robust our relationship became with God, the more we could talk bluntly with each other.

But equally, I guess, the more we realised that the expectations we put on Him are very much not representative of what He’s doing. In the world, in our communities and in our families.

Berni: Very quickly, how are you different today to what you were 5 1/2 years ago?

Tim: I have a real faith. My faith 5 1/2 years ago was largely non existent because I was reasonably well trained. I guess I was fairly employable. I was never really going to be struggling to look after a family and many people do struggle with those issues and so I realised that my faith was just non existent. It was a safety net of my own intellect and I had to turn my faith from what was an intellectual faith into a real faith and realising that the intellect actually puts expectations on God. It puts God in a box. It measures short in terms of what He’s doing. And yet a real faith is very random. It’s very bizarre. It’s very scary. It’s extremely good fun. It allows God to do what He needs to do.

Berni: Thanks for that Tim.

You know, when life’s going along pretty well and things are good and then, all of a sudden splat, it turns ugly. You thought you were doing the right thing and then bang, you’re right in a tight spot. And the longer it goes on, the scarier it gets. Until you get to the point of crying out ‘God, what are you doing? Why don’t you fix this?’

We’ve all been there. You have, I have and this weeks guest on the program, Tim, he’s been there too. The thing is though, when I first heard Tim telling his story, he said something that grabbed my attention. He talked about negative miracles and the way he explained it, well a whole bunch of things kind of made sense to me.

Berni: Tim, welcome again today.

Tim: Thanks Berni.

Berni: Now I want you to explain to us what you mean by ‘negative miracle’. Tell us your story about these negative miracles and how it played itself out in your life.

Tim: Thanks Berni. We coined the phrase, in business, when we realised that God was, seemingly, intervening in quite spectacular ways to bring about spectacular failure. So we felt they were miracles because they were the hand of God but they certainly weren’t heading in the direction that we were hoping.

Berni: A different way of looking at things. Give us and example.

Tim: One of the great examples, early on we gave, there was a particular property that we were trying to build for some residential units for people to live in. The council didn’t want to do it and there was an independent arbitration process that enabled the decision to be made and that ended up being quite a lengthy seven month process.

During that, we were still giving our company to the Lord and working out what it means to do mission and business at the same time. And we said to God, ‘Look, we would rather see our architect and our real estate agent have a relationship with Jesus than see this project be successful’.

Now all the advice we were getting was that the project should have been successful, it was a fairly straight forward case. It was very protracted which caused all sorts of dramas, as well, for the project and I remember on a Tuesday, we got the decision that we’d lost the case. It was almost an unlosable case, the legal team, they were devastated and contemplating appeals. And I remembered that several months earlier we had given this project to the Lord.

That was a Tuesday. I remember Thursday morning, about 4.00am, God woke me up very specifically with an audible voice and said, ‘I accept your offering. Unless a seed dies and falls to the ground, it can’t multiply.’ Now I knew He was talking about this project and I didn’t really think much of it. I thought, ‘oh yeah. Whatever.’ And on Thursday morning we got a call from our real estate agent and he said, ‘Look, you guys are Christian fellows. I need you to come and pray with me. I’m getting a sense that Gods knocking at my door.’ And we just thought this is incredible.

And so we went and spent five hours praying with him. We prayed for his daughter and he asked for the courage to come to know Jesus and that’s still a process that he’s on. And it was tremendously exciting and so we were praising the Lord for that and this was a little glimmer of something good coming out of something that was very poor.

On the Friday I was meeting with our architect and he said, ‘hey Tim, I’m just getting a bit of a sense that Gods really close at the moment.’ And I said, ‘well that’s very interesting. Do me a favour. Don’t ignore Him if He knocks loudly’. And he said, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s fine.’

So I spoke with him on the Monday and I said to him. So we’re still within 5 days of that decision being handed down and I said to him, ‘how was your weekend?’ And he said, ‘oh look, it was interesting. I need to have a chat with you.’ I spoke to him and he said on the Sunday he had been pruning trees at his parents place. He was with a harness and a chainsaw, he was 10 metres off the ground, the harness had snapped and he had free fallen, with a chainsaw, 10 metres.

Berni: Wow.

Tim: Now, pretty much the guaranteed fatality rate of a drop is about 8 metres. Quite miraculously, in front of his family, the Lord placed him on the ground and he walked away from it.

Berni: Wow.

Tim: He hit the ground but he was certainly protected and he walked away saved. And he works with us now with a phenomenal view of the Lord. He had come out of a eastern background, had some wonderful concepts of God and community and relationship and he really brings them, has integrated Jesus into those concepts and it’s just a really diverse and exciting relationship.

So with that we realised that what decision we had made earlier, in respect to these fellows, God had actually used.

Berni: Blows you away doesn’t it? It shouldn’t blow us away but it actually blows you away doesn’t it?

Tim: Yeah, it does and I can only promise you that at the time and the months leading up, in the business sense, we saw nothing of the hand of God in it. It was just bad news after bad news. We didn’t see what he was doing in that situation until some twelve months later.

Berni: What strikes me about you is you’re not some super spiritual swami sort of guy. You know some people are really super. You’re a down to earth guy right? You’re doing business. You’re praying. You’re laying down things for God and then God just comes and goes ‘bang’ with these miracles, as you call them negative miracles.

Tim: Yeah. Another great story was at the same time as this and we obviously really needed some refining. We had a house, we had just bought a house and moved our family in to it. And we had another house that we hadn’t yet sold. That process was to happen reasonably quickly and some very excited people looked at it on the first day. The agent thought they were going to buy it. That didn’t eventuate.

We ending up holding that house, or being forced to hold that house, for a couple of years. And that was a very, very messy financial situation, for us personally, on top of a difficult business journey. My business partner and I felt that it was okay for the company to just under pin that for a while. We felt the Lord’s hand was on that. After a while we had an empty house and a friend of mine was going through a separation. I said to him, ‘Well mate, I’ve got a place you can live. There’s no-one in it. If you could mow the lawns occasionally that’d be great.’

So he moved in for a year and during that time the Lord was continuing on in business and I shared with him some of the things He was doing and the connections with mission organisations, that He was making some of the miracles and things we were learning.

His comment was, ‘Oh look, you sound like my Dad. Here’s his mobile number, you better have chat with him.’ So I did that and this particular fellow said, ‘Oh look, you know, I’m happy to mentor you for a while.’

He was a very kingdom minded fellow as well and after about a year he agreed to come on the board of the company and open up his network to us. And that is the fellow that is currently a director. Has a long history in income producing assets which we’re now very much involved in. And I realised that had our house not sold for two years we would never have met this fellow.

Berni: Negative miracle number two, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Berni: Did it sell?

Tim: It was really exciting. About 6 months after that I got a call from a private couple and they said, ‘Look, is this Tim?’ And I said, ‘Yes it is.’ And they said, ‘Is your house still for sale?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s not on the market but yes’, cause secretly I would really love to sell it. And he said, ‘We were the first couple to look at it on the first day. I’m not quite sure why we didn’t buy it. I was caused to go to the US for a year or 2 but we’d really love to buy it. Can we do so?’ So it was the very first couple that look at it, on the first day, that the agent thought would buy it, came back about 2 years later and eventually did buy it.

Berni: I guess when you read Romans 8:28,
“We know that all good things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to His purpose.”

It’s easy to rattle that off, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Berni: Bet you it means something now.

Tim: It certainly does. In that process we were called, we were certainly conformed to the likeness of Christ and that’s a big part of where that verse ultimately leads to. It’s the good we don’t always understand. It was good later. At the time it didn’t feel good but when you look at it in retrospect, we’re really starting to see how God always had His hand on us.

Yeah, very exciting and we’ve had many other deals, the stuff that we’ve looked at where doors closed and we’re now seeing, a year or two later, with all that’s going on in the world that, had they opened, they would be major threats on our company. And so we’re able to, on many, many fronts just realise these negative miracles, that at the time we called them negative but they’re absolutely pivotal in what God’s doing with our business.

Berni: That’s awesome Tim. Thanks for that.

If you’ve been with us on the program this week, you’ll know that I’ve had a special guest with me. A businessman in his late ’30’s. A bloke by the name of Tim. And Tim’s been sharing a bit of his journey with us. He’s had so many ups and downs.

He gives his life to Jesus and he sets out to set up a business that he can use for Gods glory. But then it ends up not being the business that he’d first planned. And then it almost goes broke and he’s living off food parcels. And God takes him through these tortuously long, dark nights. And yet, at the same time, he feels this call to combine business and ministry and make a real difference in this world.

It truly is an amazing story but it’s his journey. Not yours, not mine. Gods going to do things differently on my walk and in yours. But the thing I wanted to do today, since this is the last day that we have the privilege of being joined by Tim, is to ask him to share just two or three things that he’s learned from his journey so far. Just a handful of insights that you and I can take away and let God do something with them in our lives.

Tim, welcome again for the last time this week.

Tim: Thankyou Berni.

Berni: It’s flown by hasn’t it?

Tim: It has.

Berni: Tim, as you look back on your journey, the places that Gods taken you so far, how would you describe it? I mean, what are the adjectives that you would use about the journey He’s had you on?

Tim: Scary. Fun. Exciting. Adventurous.

Berni: It’s not boring though is it?

Tim: It’s certainly not boring.

Berni: I remember the first time I saw a colour television, when I was a kid, in a shop. ‘Cause we had black and white of course in those days. For me it was like going from black and white television to colour television. There’s a sort of richness and something that has a new dimension to life when you throw your life in the hands of God.

Tim: Absolutely.

Berni: So when you sit back and reflect on things, what are the two or three things that you think you’ve learned? The real lessons that Gods taught you through your journey.

Tim: First is probably that it’s not about me. And I think we often approach the world.

Berni: Isn’t it! I’m out! That’s it! I’m out of here! See ya! I’m off!

Tim: Yeah we do, we do tend to approach the world fairly selfishly you know. And I think in some respects as, I even think early on, the most exciting thing about Jesus was that He died for me.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: And I guess through that we’ve learned to really realise that, you know what, it’s pretty exciting that He died for others as well. And realising that there’s much more of a community going on and that Gods building something far bigger than me.

Now they’re not easy lessons to learn because the universe does usually revolve around me. And so that was part of the difficulty over those years, was learning that.

I remember being, I was actually on a plane in the US at one point and there was a period of time where God was speaking to me quite a bit. As the plane started to taxi I was conscious of, you know, the obvious dangers associated with take off and I thought it would interesting if something happened. And I remember just praying to the Lord at that point and the Lord said to me, ‘Would die for everyone on the plane?’ And there was a long pause and I don’t answer questions quickly that God asks anymore.

Berni: Not those ones.

Tim: I think about it. And in the end I answered, ‘Well yes. I would’ and I got in trouble at the pause. I got in trouble at the three second delay where God said, ‘Look if you’re …’, that’s right, it was what I’d thought about during the pause.

I thought about my children and my family. And God said to me quite clearly, He said ‘If you can’t trust me to work the outcomes in your children and your wife, as a result of your death, you’re still not where I need you.’ And, oh gee it was humbling. And again I was just learning to, you know what, my death could be the best thing that could happen to my family.

And that was, obviously my journey was specific to me. I wouldn’t assume it on anyone else but I obviously had an arrogance that the Lord needed to shake out of me and that was part of that process. So that was the first major thing.

I think secondly, it was, I realised that unbroken people are of little use to God. And I was in a process of being broken. And it’s not until you start to go through that process that you realise how little value you were to others and to the Lord. And I’m still going through that. We probably always will.

God was seeding in me and in our company a real culture and a posture of vulnerability and of humility. And I think He likes that and vulnerability and business don’t go well together because it just seems so wrong and you always have to be working to get away from it.

And that’s not to say we’re not doing that and we’re not achieving that now. But the culture that the Lord has seeded is one of humility and vulnerability and that really allows us to be teachable.

It removes pride from decision making. It’s removed optimism. And I think we’ve got a very healthy business now as we move forward, with some new success. But I also think that the character of all the people involved with the business is really lovely.

We’re in relationship with each other. We’re in relationship with the Lord. We acknowledge the Lord daily in decisions and we don’t take anything for granted and that’s lovely. So unbroken people are of little use to God.

Berni: It’s not a lesson you want to learn much, is it?

Tim: No.

Berni: I mean, Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 that,

“We rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces character and character produces endurance and endurance produces hope.”

And you think, ‘Oh man, do I really have to learn that?’

Tim: Yeah. I remember the intellectual knowledge, I probably led Bible studies on those things and I was not equipped to do so.

Berni: Yeah.

Tim: At that time.

Berni: So vulnerability is a really interesting word that you use. Being vulnerable to God.

Tim: It’s like a good dog. It lies over and puts it’s legs up and makes itself vulnerable. It’s very trusting. It’s very open to whatever the master wants to do but it’s not something we do easily or readily.

Berni: All right, what else?

Tim: Probably the third thing is just realising that God is building a community and, I said earlier, that often our religion is about us and about our personal relationship with Jesus and that’s fine but God was really enlarging to us that there is a community that He wants us to be a part of. That there are people that we’re to interact with. You often see Jesus, that what you’ve done to the least of these people you’ve, in fact, done to me.

He’s very much a God of relationship and of loving others and so, I guess, we believe that there’s a call for not just our business but for many in business, world wide, to start partnering with each other in a trusting environment.

And to start partnering with mission in a way that I believe will achieve something quite different in the world. And I think just the character and trust that under pins that will really excite God but I also think that there’s some real tangible outcomes that He wants to deliver as a result of those partnerships.

And that’s something we’re starting to see Him open up for us and it’s something that we’re very committed to. In supporting other people with similar journey’s around the world and I’m sure there’s plenty of them.

Berni: Yeah, it’s interesting you know, when I was involved in business before I became involved in full time ministry. Our companies would partner with one another to make money, right? We would do that routinely, that’s what you do in business.

But somehow, often in the kingdom of God, we won’t partner with one another for God’s glory. And I sort of scratch my head and shake my head at that and think, ‘What’s the matter with us? Why can’t we do that? Companies can do it for money; surely we can do it for the glory of God.’

Tim: Yeah. It’s tricky and I don’t have all the answers but I believe that through sharing each others journey and through walking into a trusting relationship with each other and allowing the Lord to lead, in terms of where we’re going. I think that it’s a really exciting possibility that exists.

Berni: Yep. You see the whole thing about that vulnerability thing is that, when you do let go, you let go of your notions and expectations of success and you say, ‘well God, sometimes you take me through negative things, well things that I see as being negative, and sometimes you take me through positive things and sometimes the best thing you can do, as He did in Paul’s place, was lock him up and have him executed. And yet Paul wrote almost half the New Testament and we’re still reading it today.

So success, in our eyes is different to success in Gods eyes, isn’t it?

Tim: Absolutely.

Berni: Now listen Tim, what I’d like to do is, I’d like to book you for five years time. I want to see the sequel. I want to see what happens in five years time. Is that a deal?

Tim: Absolutely.

Berni: All right. Thanks so much for joining us this week.

Tim: Pleasure. Thanks Berni.