BUILDING BUSINESSES THE BIBLICAL WAY
“Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” – Ecclesiastes 11:2 (NIV)
We live in such INCREDIBLE times! In fact, when I look back at the six decades of my life, I just want to break out in songs of GRATITUDE and THANKSGIVING, for the amazing opportunities God has given me throughout my life to experience a range of business ventures and career opportunities.
But of all those decades, in the TIMES we live in now, God has created the most astonishing open doors for all of humankind alive, to use technology to help us in fulfilling our God-given purpose here on Earth.
OUR MANUAL FOR LIFE
However, for me the most astonishing thing of all, is that God has given humankind a “MANUAL FOR LIFE”, full of words of wisdom, knowledge, insight and power – words that were written over a period of about 1500 years, the oldest books being written about 1500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ and the ‘newest’ books were written in the first century, after his birth. And still: the knowledge and wisdom contained in the various books that make up “The Bible” – God’s Word – remains as relevant and helpful to help humans live their lives in relationship to God and according to His Will, as when the first human – Adam – was created… as per the Biblical Timeline using a lunar calendar… around 6000 years ago.
THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF WISDOM
When I was 29 years old, after years of listening to ‘intellectual reasoning’ which resulted in me making some really bad choices in life, by the sheer grace of God, the Holy Spirit convicted me to make the worldview choice to simply accept whatever the Bible is teaching us as TRUTH. How I came to this point is the topic of another day. All I want to say here is that I don’t engage in ‘science-based’ speculations about how many years ago the world appeared and how it came into being: instead, I’ve chosen to adopt a worldview that holds that God is the Creator of both Earth and the whole universe and that – as the only Almighty God – by this definition it makes perfect sense that he could speak Creation into being, starting with Earth and the Universe (Heavens and Earth – Genesis 1:1) and creating day and night in segments of 24 hours, to mark the end of the First Day. Then, to define the division of time into seven weekdays, adding the Seventh Day as a special gift: one day of rest to recover and restore and review the previous week and to prepare for the next six days of work. What is patently obvious – even to the most sceptical scientist – is that God (although scientists may ascribe this to a mysterious ‘force of the universe’ or to a truly remarkable stellar accident…) placed Earth at exactly the right distance from the Sun to sustain life perfectly, and at exactly the right angle, to divide one year – which is marked by one rotation of Earth around the Sun – into four distinguishable seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter…, which, in turn resulted in weeks being grouped in months, months into quarters, quarters into semesters and two semesters combined into one full year… Yes, God – Our Creator – One God in Three Persons – has thought through every little detail to create Earth and the Universe for us humans to live in – quite perfectly! And once you start acknowledging this, you realise that ‘The Bible” is an incredible resource providing guidance and direction for practically every aspect of life – including doing business!
MOTIVATED BY LOVE
The Bible teaches us that God made everything – including the first two humans – absolutely perfectly.
God’s motivation? Sheer LOVE! And so to enable our reciprocity of God’s Love, our ‘perfection’ includes one critical aspect, namely the human characteristic of ‘free will’… Without ‘free will’ to LOVE GOD, we humans simply would never have been ‘perfect’ – but instead, we would just have been like ‘slaves’ – people with zero own choice! This would make our LOVE for God an imperfect love: a ‘love’ based on no choice of one’s own, so – really – no real love at all! This means that, to be able to love God back ‘for REAL’, God created us humans ‘in his image’ – meaning ‘like him’ – each one with our own ‘free will’… to FREELY CHOOSE to LOVE HIM. And that is the one single idea that the Bible actually teaches us: that LOVE (meaning relationship) is the most important thing in life – and once we understand that, it becomes EASY to LOVE GOD ABOVE ALL and to learn to LOVE OUR NEIGHBOUR AS WE LOVE OURSELVES.
If LOVE becomes our motivator, we humans have the ability to work together to find win-win-win solutions in life, in society – and in business!
My apologies for taking you into a “Creation rabbit hole” with me… but every time I think about God, I just fall IN LOVE with Him all over again… and “for of the abundance of [our] heart [our] mouth speaketh“.
BACK TO BUSINESS
My point – in case you started wondering about this – is that God has given us timeless wisdom and knowledge through His Word – The Bible – our Manual For Life, which we can simply learn from and then apply in our own everyday life, including in how to make a living – whether through building a career, working for someone else, or through building businesses.
In fact, what I have learnt is that God teaches us through His Word that we shouldn’t just build ONE way of generating an income, e.g. depend on a salary alone. Instead, each one of us should follow the wise words captured in Ecclesiastes and spoken through a person who was acknowledged as the wisest and wealthiest human alive in his day – King Solomon:
“Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” – Ecclesiastes 11:2 (NIV)
And so that is what I have set out to do in recent years, since I actually paid attention to what EXACTLY God is teaching us through The Bible – and decided to live my life accordingly with the aim to attempt to model what The Bible teaches and then help others to do the same.
THE GOAL OF EIGHT BUSINESSES
Over the past period I have built the foundations for eight businesses.
A couple of them are aimed at sharing the spiritual knowledge that I have learnt to date, and that I am continuing to learn every day, with YOU and anyone else who is curious to know more about how to build your/their own eight businesses, while applying biblical leadership and entrepreneurship principles.
The other businesses are either about supporting business builders like YOU through services using state-of-the-art technology, including AI, to GROW your income, or about building a governance and institutional environment in which people, businesses and the environment can flourish – both globally, as well as with a special focus on Africa.
Within each business there are different kinds of services and products, serving different needs. I have tried to make sure that I can help practically everyone with one service or product or another – so there’s lots of room for growth – and for partnerships!
Yes, I am really looking forward to partnering with you, if you are interested, in any one of my eight businesses. I don’t believe in competition: only in collaboration. I don’t believe in a ‘Winner takes it All’ mentality – instead, I believe that there’s room at the top for all of us, if we apply our creativity towards collaborating, and finding ways to do things in a manner that GROWS each one of our respective businesses at the same time.
I have learnt from The Bible to adopt an “ABUNDANCE” mindset, as opposed to a “SCARCITY” mindset and so I welcome anyone who has a similar approach to business, to partner with me, so that we may GROW TOGETHER.
If you like my approach and you’re interested to partner with me, even if you don’t yet know how, you’re welcome to reach out to me via email to book a quick videocall, so that you can let me know what you’re working on and I can think of ways of how I can help you achieve YOUR goals. Then we can work out together, how we can grow together!
All I can say is that God has given me incredible technology and AI tools and many, many years of business (and life!) experience – and I’m ready to share with you what I have, in a mutualistic manner, whatever you need, that I can assist you with.
Email: manager@reinhildniebuhr.info
NOTE: Just one last point – because of the incredible language tools that exist, my team and I can help you regardless of the language you do business in – as long as “Google Translate” or other language tools are available to enable translations. I personally speak and work in three languages – German, English and Afrikaans – but as long as you can understand English and your own business language, we can work together to help you do business in your own language, wherever you are in the world.
MY EIGHT BUSINESSES
Here are my eight businesses:
REINHILD NIEBUHR 