When most people think about work, they typically think about tangible reality. Generally, most view work as something that is performed in the tangible world and must be done in their own strength.

Furthermore, it is a virtue to be considered a self-made person—a person who overcomes adversity and obstacles to define his or her own way of life. There is even more esteem for a person who, with little help, forges a nontraditional path and achieves fame, fortune, or influence. In the song “My Way,” Frank Sinatra extolled this idea with the lyric, “I did it my way.”

Today, for many, if not most, the workplace is about human beings making things happen with little help and interaction from God. This is a deistic worldview.

This thinking is emboldened by the humanistic presupposition of human potency; that is, within human beings is the power, in and of themselves, to do whatever they wish.

So the prevalent worldview of today is both deistic and humanistic. But is this reality?

Granted it is a biblical virtue to work hard, overcome obstacles, and conquer adversity, but how is this really accomplished? Is it up to a person acting in the natural and in his or her own strength? Or is God engaged with this creation?

Acts 3:1–10 records the story of a man who was crippled from birth. Each day he was carried to the temple in Jerusalem to beg. Clearly, he was successful in gaining charity from others. In the Roman culture of the first century, anyone with an illness or handicap was deemed to be under divine judgment. Therefore there was little charity in the culture. So the beggar’s success was remarkable. He was a Roman version of a self-made, self-defined person; a person who overcame adversity and obstacles. He appeared to be successful, but, in truth, he was a man trapped in and limited by physical reality, who simply did it his way until he met Peter and John.

Peter and John saw the beggar’s bondage and knew that his real need was not money but healing. The beggar was content with gaining the requisite resources to just exist in the physical world. Peter and John were unwilling to merely support his handicapped physical existence. So they met his real need—they healed him. This self-made person then realized that he had been in bondage by living disconnected from God. His physical success as a beggar was not real success; it was just an illusion of success—not reality. In reality, his crippled physical condition was a picture of his crippled spiritual condition.

Any person who prides himself on being a self-made person is living in deception. Man does not have the ability to truly succeed in any area of life without divine enablement. Any apparent success, outside a biblically based relationship with God, is like that of the beggar in Acts 3—it is only an illusion of success. True success is living in right relationship with God in every area of life, including the workplace, so that one can do God’s will according to God’s ways.

Here is your business tip. Reject both deism and humanism. Seek to work with those who embrace a biblical worldview and realize that, in and of themselves, they cannot live in reality. Hard work, overcoming obstacles, and conquering adversity, while admirable and necessary, are not sufficient to truly succeed in life. Wise people realize that to live in reality requires divine intervention, divine empowerment, and divine direction in every area of life. Only people who are doing God’s will according to God’s ways can build enduringly successful organizations. Such people enjoy the freedom of the healed beggar; that is, they live in reality.