Spiritual help is sometimes viewed like a spare tire, only pulled out when needed. But viewing your spiritual help as headlights can made a positive difference. By Gary Shotton #000190 Click Here to download in audio (.mp3 format); right click on link and select “save as” Click Here to download in video (.mp4 format); right click on link and select “save as”

Spare Tires Or Headlights

By Gary Shotton

Hello, I’m Gary Shotton and I’m here to talk about Inspiring Better Business. Boy, am I excited about this topic! I have been traveling around the world talking about better business. How can we do better business. And today we got to talk about a kind of a funny title spare tires or headlights. Now if you watch a number of these videos, you’re going to know that some of them just a minor few will have a more spiritual context. So, if you happen to be an individual that isn’t interested to hearing about God and hearing how God involved in the business then you could just choose another video. And this will be stored under the spiritual categories.

So, headlights and spare tires. Well, I have talked with several Christian businesspeople and most want God on their side. They want God to help them. They want God to be a part of their business. And you see certain things on certain business cards that imply God is my partner, God is my co-pilot, God with me, scripture verses and I’m fine with all that. I don’t happen to follow that pattern. But if you choose to do that, that’s fine with me but I do encourage a reflection of God. So, that puts an extra pressure on you. There’s going to be extra people watching over you and wondering is this a scam, or they’ve had other bad experiences some of them from time to time with other people that had that. And I personally prefer just to say let’s just do good business. Let’s do God base business and then let people see and understand when we get that relationship built that God is the source of my wisdom. That’s the way I view it. God is the source of my wisdom. He’s my helper and my guide.

Now I have run across quite a few people though that have said that and then over time I watch and see what they’re doing and maybe they need a little help on that subject. So, I’ve discovered an analogy a parallel and I’m calling it “Spare tires or headlights”. And there’s a lot of people that want God to be what I would call their spare tire. They’re driving down the highway, they’re doing business and they’ve got control of this, they’re in charge, they really don’t have God in charge of what they’re doing. They kind of say that on the side, they kind of imply that on the side but when push comes to shove or when a difficult situation arises, they don’t turn to God as their guide, they don’t turn to God daily, on a regular basis. They kind of want God to be back there in the spare tire in the trunk and when it really gets bad, I mean their tires are blown out, there’s no other option, they’ll pull over the side and they’ll pull out their spare tire. They’ll pull out the God factor and then they will just ask God miraculously to take over. And then fix all these processes and things that’s been going on when God wasn’t in charge. They knew and they acted, and they were 100% in charge or 99.9 percent of the time they were in charge and God was there just as a little bit of a plush a or a little bit of an extra and again the spare tire.

Well, I prefer to think God is my headlights. God is looking ahead of me and I’m looking through the lights of God. I’m looking through what God has prepared down my way. I want to consistently be going forward not backwards. I don’t want to look in the rearview mirror. I’ll learn from my experiences. But I want to look forward. I want to see what ahead. I want to see as far ahead as I possibly can see. And you know headlights are something that you don’t have necessarily turned on all the time. Now in the United States we don’t turn him on all the time. In Europe, I was just recently in Europe, and we got pulled over twice because we had forgot to turn on our headlights. It’s a sunny day, there is no reason for headlights in my mind but that’s a law. So, many countries or some countries have headlights on all the time. The point would be the analogy would be I want God to be looking out ahead seeing how to head seeing and guiding me in advance.

Now, sometimes we don’t really need those lights and I make the analogy that God really expects us to do everything we possibly can do on our own intellect, our own ability, our own work, our own desire, own Drive. Of course, God’s helping me. And when he really steps in along that path, is when he’s stepping in when I can’t do something for myself. Now, again while I’m doing that God’s helping me, guiding me, but I don’t every day wake up and decide to ask God you know, Do I do this? Do I go to work? I don’t ask God what kind of shirt I put on. I don’t ask God what kind of food I should eat. I don’t ask God all daily on a moment-by-moment basis I don’t ask God. But I have God’s presence in my mind. I have God’s provision; I have God blessing me. And I look to God continually but it’s not consciously at that point; because I know God has equipped me to do things basically on my own with his direction and he looks to me to do that in a positive way.

I do believe what I do is consistent with God’s plan. But now when I get my back against the wall I need a miracle, I’ve done all that I can do on my part, and I now can look to God, and I can turn on those headlights and say God I really needed some help here. I really do need some help. Now we have God. We have God the Father, we got God the son Jesus who died on the cross for my sins and we’ve got God the Holy Spirit. In one place in the New Testament or several places it says clearly that Jesus said I must go away so I can send you the comforter. The Holy Spirit. That’s the part that’s with me. It’s kind of always like he’s just consciously with me. I thought of another analogy I hope it’s fair here, that if you’re a mother or even a close for sure the mother and certainly the father’s also but a mother would be very conscious of their infant child being with them or know where that child is all the time. In other words, if they were a working mother which is fine working outside the home, they would make sure that that’s child is in the care and protection of somebody they trust. And they would not want to know that that person that they trusted that child with took that child and went anyplace different than where they were expecting. In other words, the mother especially in the father’s also but the mother especially wants to know and is conscious of where that child is always. That’s true almost all the way through childhood. I want to know that Johnny is over at this safe house.  Are they’re over visiting and friends? They went roller-skating. Whatever they’re doing mama especially knows and is conscious of where their children are.

Well, in a similar way to me I believe I know and am conscious that the Holy Spirit is always with me. It doesn’t control me. Yes, I let him control me, but I am doing what I know to do. I’m doing business, I’m doing the accounting, I’m doing the day-to-day affairs knowing that the Holy Spirit is always with me. And the Godhead somehow, I don’t know all the details pulls it together and works together that I just am a team truly amatory team with God. Now does that mean I never make a mistake. Absolutely not. Anybody that says they don’t make mistakes are frankly not trying anything. I think that God has a plan here. He doesn’t want us to make mistakes. But you know we learn more when we make mistakes than when everything goes smooth. You understand that? We learn more when we have a difficult time than if the road is totally smooth. And so, I believe the perfect father, the God, the Godhead in there someplace is handling us like we are his children. And he lets us experiment out kind of to the limits of our maturity. And then he allows us to make some mistakes. That’s part of the process. That’s how we learn.

A child is learning to ride a bicycle; you know you’ve got to take the training wheels off at some point and at that point there’s a probably a pretty good chance that child is going to wrap that bicycle and skin their knees and maybe their hands and they’re going to cry. And somebody can say why would you let that happen? Well, that’s kind of how you learn how to ride the bicycle. And you don’t go so fast, or you don’t turn so sharp. And so God is a lot like that in my opinion. He’s a perfect father. He’s perfect. Jesus is my part of the family of God. The Holy Spirit is with me. I’m not doing a theological study on this. I’m just telling you somehow in a miraculous way God is guiding and leading and directing me every minute in my business. I love it and I think that’s the way it should work. Now thank you for being with me. I hope this was not too spiritual. I hope this was helpful I want to Inspire Better Business. Thank you.