Spiritual Advantage with Sam Stone

Recently I finished reading Perry Marshall’s new book, “Memos from the Head Office.” It receives nearly 100% five-star reviews. It’s about how entrepreneurs consult God to make business decisions. It’s rare to see a business book written by a bestselling author in business talking about God. Since the word “God” carries a lot of baggage, he chose the Head Office.
That is a very practical book about communicating with God. You don’t have to be in business to enjoy this book because it can be applied to your daily life. If you want to align your life with God’s will, learning to communicate with God is a blessing you must seek.
At times like this, when we are socially distanced due to the prolonged pandemic, our close contact with God is essential to maintain well-being and sanity. God is not just an imaginary friend to keep you company when you are lonely. According to Jesus, he is a practical guide, counselor, and advocate for your daily life, relationship, and leadership.
In fact, Jesus said that you could see God if you meet the condition. That is what the sixth blessing is about. We have talked about five blessings in the past five weeks. If you have followed the steps, you are about ready to see God at this stage. Let’s review the steps.
Consciousness: without consciousness, there is no progress.
Abandonment: we must abandon everything that keeps us from moving forward.
Reliance: we learn to rely on the abundant resources available for us to move mountains.
Edification: edification feeds our spirit just as education feeds our mind.
Forbearance: forgiveness and tolerance are the only way of living a holy life.
Refinement: how to condition our spirit to see God. That’s our topic today.
Enlightenment: Next week’s topic
Endurance: The week after next.
If you put them all together, it forms the acrostic CAREFREE. Carefree is not the same as careless. It’s childlikeness Jesus repeatedly told us to live—a life free of stress and anxiety so that you can shine your light brighter and broader and live life to the fullest as Jesus promised.
Now, let’s proceed with today’s topic on seeing God based on what Jesus taught.

Business is warfare. To be an entrepreneur, you must learn the Art of War. Sunzi’s Art of War says that all warfare is based on “deception.” For example, when you are weak, you must pretend to be strong so that the enemy might think you are strong and surrender without a fight. When you are strong, you must pretend to be weak so that your enemy will be underprepared, so you can easily win.
Without deception, warfare will be like a dog fight. Even if you win, you will suffer casualties. So, deception is a lesser evil in warfare to reduce collateral damage. Today, I have heard most MBA students around the world have to study Sunzi’s Art of War because business is warfare—a game of deception.
Every deception erodes our integrity and puts weight on our conscience, consciously or unconsciously. As a result, some people prefer to stay away from the holy ground, consciously or unconsciously. Simon Peter was a businessman, and when he discovered Jesus’ divinity, he asked him to go away.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).
We know Peter was always authentic. He never hid his feelings from the moment he appeared in the Bible to the time he was crucified upsidedown. Would it be nice if there was no God? Then we can do what we want and don’t have to worry about exposing our skeletons in the closet.
We all want to live with a clean conscience and deal with everyone with integrity. We all want to do what is right, but we suffer guilt and shame when we miss the mark. Entrepreneurs are warriors who shoot more, so they miss more. Therefore they suffer more guilt.

According to Mencius, the great Chinese philosopher, you need three advantages to be successful in life:
Spiritual Advantage
Local Advantage
Social Advantage
Let me explain from the bottom up. Some people are born with a Social Advantage, such as having wealthy parents or well-connected relationships with higher-ups. However, you don’t have to be born rich or well-connected to have Social Advantage because you can build Social Advantage by learning people skills. In that case, you have a 33% chance of success.
Secondly, if you live in a good location, you have the Local Advantage—as the real estate slogan says, “Location, location, and location!” For example, if you live in the United States, you are in the land of opportunity. Some people risk their lives to come here. So if you can manage to move to a beneficial location or somehow turn your location to your advantage, you have another 33%, making 66% total. However, this is not as easy as building social skills.
Now, if you add the Spiritual Advantage, you have a 99% success chance. The good news is, having the Spiritual Advantage could overwrite some other disadvantages you may have.
Spiritual Advantage means having divine favor. A person with divine favor is destined to succeed in life. Even if you don’t live in a good location, even if you don’t have good social skills, Spiritual Advantage will make up for those disadvantages. I am sure you have seen some people like that. They look quite stupid, but they turned out to be successful beyond expectation. Maybe that’s why Mencius put it at the top of the list. Jesus said,
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Mat 6:33).
It means if you have the Spiritual Advantage, everything else is taken care of. You become one of the luckiest people in the world.

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