How do you know if Gods got a plan for your business if you don’t put God in your plan?

For most of my career, I approached leadership the way many business owners and executives do.

Build the strategy.
Create the plan.
Execute relentlessly.
Outwork uncertainty.

And for a long time, that approach worked.

Then cancer interrupted everything.

Over the last several years, I’ve gone through major surgeries, chemotherapy, setbacks, uncertainty, and long stretches where ambition and productivity were replaced by survival, perspective, and reevaluation.

One of the things suffering has a way of exposing is how much of our identity quietly becomes attached to our ability to produce results, control outcomes, and keep moving forward no matter what.

When those things are stripped away, deeper questions begin to surface.

What actually guides us when our plans fall apart?
Where do we anchor our identity when success becomes uncertain?
What does leadership look like when control is no longer an illusion we can maintain?

Somewhere in that process, my faith stopped being something adjacent to leadership and became something foundational to it.

Not just spiritually.
Practically.

Because the truth is, many of us build businesses, careers, and leadership structures that leave very little room for God once the planning starts.

We ask God to bless the vision after the strategy is already written.

But how do we know what God’s plan is for our business if we never truly put God into the process?

Not as branding.
Not as performative messaging.
Not as something reserved for Sundays or occasional conversations.

But into the uncertainty.
Into the relationships.
Into the leadership decisions.
Into the setbacks.
Into the rebuilding.

Lately, I’ve also found myself thinking differently about business communities and leadership ecosystems as a whole.

Over the years, I’ve watched many organizations become increasingly sophisticated at marketing themselves while simultaneously becoming more disconnected from the actual needs, struggles, and stories of the people around them.

Recently I came across the concept of “city exegesis” — the idea that before attempting to lead, influence, or transform a community, you first take the time to deeply listen to it.

Learn its history.
Understand its people.
Know its struggles.
Know its strengths.
Know what people are carrying.

Honestly, that idea hit me hard because in many ways cancer forced the same posture in my own life.

Less striving.
More listening.

Less image management.
More honesty.

Less obsession with scale and control.
More focus on people, relationships, and meaningful impact.

One of the greatest weaknesses in modern leadership is that many leaders are trying to carry impossible weight in isolation while projecting certainty to everyone around them.

And I’m no exception to that.

But I’ve become increasingly convinced that leadership was never meant to function that way.

Healthy leadership requires community.
Healthy businesses require trust.
Healthy cities require collaboration.
And healthy people require purpose beyond performance.

That’s part of why conversations around Christian business communities and chambers of commerce have become increasingly meaningful to me recently.

Not because the world needs another networking organization.

But because I believe many leaders are starving for spaces where faith, leadership, business, service, humility, and community don’t have to exist in separate compartments.

Places where leaders can build businesses while also helping strengthen families, cities, relationships, and the people around them.

And maybe most importantly — places where Christianity is represented less by outrage and division and more by the things Jesus consistently modeled:

Love.
Humility.
Service.
Grace.
Compassion.
Truth lived out relationally.

Cancer forced me to slow down enough to reevaluate what success actually means.

Ironically, some of the most meaningful opportunities now emerging in my life weren’t built during seasons where I felt strongest.

They emerged during seasons where I learned surrender, dependence, perspective, humility, and the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people.

I’m still rebuilding.
Still learning.
Still healing in many ways.

But I’m also more convinced than ever that leadership without purpose eventually burns people out — and success without alignment eventually feels empty.

Maybe the better question isn’t:

“Does God have a plan for my business?”

Maybe the better question is:

“Have I made room for Him in mine?”

#Leadership #FaithAndBusiness #ChristianLeadership #Entrepreneurship #BusinessLeadership #HITSLeadership #PurposeDrivenLeadership