My dear readers,

Answering Remaining Questions from Calvary Pandan Church Camp 2025 (3)

Question 1: How are we not to be motivated by money when running a business?

Answer 1: Everyone who is born again in Christ is to take the narrow road, and at the end of this road is the narrow gate (i.e. death) that leads to everlasting life. Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount to help all professing believers to evaluate their own salvation. The Sermon on the Mount describes the life and new relationships a born-again believer must have as he lives for Christ on earth.

One of these new relationships is with his possessions. At the point of his salvation, he must hate and stop loving everything he owns. He must love God only. Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” God knows that His child needs more than he has now for his future life. The new instruction he can obey daily is to trust God to provide and care for his physical well-being, and he must focus on his spiritual well-being only. Matthew 6:33-34: “³³But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ³⁴Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” With this new heart of trust and new focus in life, he will learn to stop being motivated by money.

If he has a business, he must see it as God’s business. God is the actual Owner, not him. Therefore, it is a spiritual business, not carnal. The beginning, continuation and end of his business is in God’s hand alone, not man’s. Thus, the focus of his business must no longer be on making lots of money and growing that business. The focus must be for it to be a holy witness for Christ whereby everything in the business is done and managed according to the Holy Scriptures. He should begin every day with prayer, together with all his staff. He can conduct Bible Study and share the gospel whenever he can. He ought to give God all glory and learn to trust God in times of woe or weal. When the heartbeat of the business is Christ-centred, the believer will naturally be motivated by the love of God and not the love of money.

With the love of God in his heart, he can shield himself from the constantly changing wind of the global economy. These man-made and man-centred changes no longer affect him. He knows His Heavenly Father is the God of heaven and earth, and He is in absolute control. No man can diminish or collapse his business unless God permits it. If God wants his business to blossom even in the face of a global recession or economic collapse, his business will still thrive. If God wants his business to collapse in the face of global economic growth, he will continue to trust in his Lord, knowing that his time of witness for Christ is over and a new witness door is waiting to open for him. His life is no longer measured by the abundance of what he possesses, but by a closer walk with his Lord and Saviour Jesus in faith and in trust. His business is the avenue through which spiritual blessings can be gleaned and experienced.

Question 2: How do I answer “what are your career goals in the next 3 years” during a job interview as a Christian? I don’t have any career goals, I will go wherever the Lord leads me.

Answer 2: Answer in this way – “This is a good question. If I have a career goal today that is measured in terms of bonuses, pay and promotion, then my loyalty to the company will be easily compromised. The reason is that when a new company offers me more than I have envisaged three years from now, I will resign and join that new company.

But I am a Christian. As a Christian, I am not motivated by money or promotion. I am motivated by my love for my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who loved me and died on the cross for my sins. He has delivered me from sin, death and hell and rose from the dead for my justification. For me to be motivated by anything or anyone other than the love of Christ will make me the most ungrateful person on earth. Not only that, but I would also be a fool to replace this most excellent motive God gave me with another. No other motive on earth can be better than God’s love.

This motivation of love for Christ is the greatest motivation on earth. As a Christian, I will always give and do my best in everything because I love Christ and do not wish to shame Him by being slothful, or appearing to work hard because man is watching. Jesus always sees everything I do. I will receive the tasks given to me as from Him. I will do them to please Him. I will be diligent, honest, and truthful, keep my word in all that I say, and help everyone in the company improve and give their best, too. I will not steal or cheat as my Lord Jesus Christ sees and knows all that I do and think and my motives. I promise I will be the best employee if you have me.”

Question 3: As believers, we long for and pray for the Lord’s return. However, we also want the Lord to tarry long enough for all our unbelieving loved ones to be saved. This seems to be conflicting. Besides praying that the Lord’s will be done, how should we pray?

Answer 3: There will always be loved ones or friends in our lives who are without Christ. That being the case, we will never want Christ to return. That is why the reasons for our desire for Christ’s return must be biblical. Once they are biblically understood, the apparent conflict in the believer’s heart will evaporate.

We cannot pray or wish for the Lord’s return because our lives on earth are difficult, painful or miserable. Neither should we wish for the Lord to return because we have loved ones who are still not saved. These are sinful reasons that must be repudiated. We need to understand the right biblical reasons for the Lord to return. They include:

• Desire for God’s will to be done on earth – The return of Christ signifies the end of the will of the god of this world, the devil. Then the havoc and evil the devil is causing will end. Goodness, God’s holy and righteous justice and peace will return. The world will no longer be a place of danger filled with natural disasters. This desire is built into the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew 6:9-10: “⁹After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. ¹⁰Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

• Climax of our salvation – The groaning in every believer’s heart is for the glorified body to come so that mortality will be changed to immortality. In the mortal flesh, we continue to struggle against sin. Even as we have a heart and a strong desire not to sin at all, our sins hurt the witness and wound the spirit. We hate it and want this to stop. We want to be holy and perfect within and without. Romans 8:22-23: “²²For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. ²³And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

• Longing to meet the LORD face to face – Every believer has a mysterious
  
  and insatiable desire to meet the Lord. This longing is preceded by a life of devotion and service in the midst of suffering for Christ. 2 Timothy 4:7-8: “⁷I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: ⁸Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

• Returning Home in Glory – Who does not want to return home? Who does not want to return to a perfect home, the grandest of all homes, peaceful, glorious and eternal? Once we arrive, we will never want to leave. To have a home to go back to every day is a taken-for-granted experience until we do not have a home; the shock and trauma will hit us. Was not this the punishment God imposed on Cain for killing Abel, his brother, to be a wanderer all his life? (cf. Gen 4:11-15).

• Be with all the saints – A loving family is always dear to our hearts. They are invaluable and beyond any price. All believers on earth share an invisible common bond that cannot be fully expressed. But when they experience it, they know it is there. They will cherish and protect it at all costs. They know in their hearts that these are the brethren whom they will continue to fellowship with for eternity in heaven and in the presence of God. When it ends at death, the parting is sorrowful, but always with the glorious hope of meeting again very soon. These believers who have tasted such sweet fellowship on earth will long for heaven, and to be with the saints forever, where death can no longer separate.

• Be with our Heavenly Father forever – What kind of child does not want to be with the best, most compassionate, gracious, and merciful father? It has to be a very rebellious child and one who does not understand or has not tasted these spiritual qualities in his life. Thus, he cannot appreciate these blessed qualities in a father. In the Christian context, he is not born again, and sin remains his master, where the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life still grip his sinful heart.

But those who are born again in Christ not only understand and appreciate

these spiritual qualities in their heavenly Father, they also possess them in their lives as their salvation in Christ has restored the image of God that was once marred badly by sin, albeit not yet to perfection. When they return to their heavenly Father, the image of their heavenly Father will be perfectly restored! All believers long for this reality for glory in the presence of God.