Investing is the allocation of resources to produce a profit. It is one of the five uses of money discussed in a prior “Business Tip.”1 In this “Business Tip,” the focus is specifically on financial investing.
The purpose of financial investing is to produce a return on investment (ROI). Financial investing is different from giving. Though both are intended to produce a return on investment, giving should produce an intangible ROI (maturity of character) and investing should produce a tangible ROI.
Before the industrial age, investing focused on the accumulation of real estate, gold, silver, livestock, crops, minerals, and labor. Today investing is primarily focused on publicly and privately held investments.
Publicly held investments provide an easy way to buy and sell interests in real estate, companies, and commodities. While the ease of the public markets makes them attractive, there are still many investors who prefer privately held assets.
Regardless of a person’s preferred method of investing, Scripture provides guidance on how to invest in a way that will enjoy divine favor.
Consider the following examples:
Invest in people who praise the Lord.
May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. (Psalms 67:5–6 NIV)
Invest in people who pray and seek God’s favor.
Ask the LORD for rain in the springtime; it is the LORD who makes the storm clouds. He gives showers of rain to men, and plants of the field to everyone. (Zechariah 10:1 NIV)
Invest in people who put the Lord’s agenda ahead of theirs.
“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house (of the Lord), so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD. “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. ‘Why?’ declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops.” (Haggai 1:8–10 NIV)
Invest in people who humbly keep their options open.
Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well. (Ecclesiastes 11:6 NIV)
Invest in people who repent in the midst of calamity.
“When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not turn to me,” declares the LORD. (Haggai 2:16–17 NIV)
Invest in people who serve the Lord in the midst of prosperity.
Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. (Deuteronomy 28:47–48 NIV)
Don’t be deceived by fads. The correct way to invest is based on a sound view of what God blesses.
Here is your business tip. Regardless of the vehicle of investing (public or private), the purpose of investing is to produce a tangible ROI. The best people to invest-in are those who are humble, submitted, and teachable before God. Such people will seek to align with the will and ways of God in their thinking and actions. These people will enjoy the favor and blessing of God in their work.
