By Andrew Greenhalgh, Life Group leader, Jubilee Church Wirral

Do you ever get the feeling God’s trying to tell you something?

Last week I was having a Zoom chat with a fellow business owner. She essentially helps people with their personal brand, which can be defined as the principles which govern who they are, what they’re about and why they do what they do.

Organisations have brand values, some based on quality, some on affordability, some speed of delivery or reliability.

People have brand values too. If you’re a one-man business it’s about what sets you personally apart from other people doing the same things. In normal life it’s essentially your personality.

She was making the point that once you had defined your personal brand, everything you did came naturally from that. She asked me what my personal brand was, and what my “why” was – as in why I do what I do. What makes me different?

I struggled to answer, which bothered me. I’m a copywriter and one of the reasons I do it is because I enjoy it; another is that I like to help people. But that is not much of a personal brand or a “why”.

Then, on Sunday, Dave spoke about our reward. One of the many notes I made read “We are here for the Gospel. Not for money, kudos or anything but seeing Jesus glorified.”

Another note referred to the parable of the talents and read “Don’t hide what God has given you in the ground.”

It felt like I’d been slapped around the face with a wet kipper. Well, almost.

My “personal brand”, my “why”, was using the gift that God has given me to serve Him. I know that the gift that God has given me is writing. (Believe me, it causes my insides to curl up in horror at writing that sentence because I really don’t like saying I’m good at ANYTHING.)

Anyway.

I’m just in the process of relaunching my business as a copywriting-only business and so it couldn’t come at a better time.

Then, as if God felt I needed more reminding to actually do something with this, I had another Zoom meeting with a different business owner on Monday afternoon.

He asked me why I did what I did and I took a big gulp.

I said that I am a copywriter because I love writing but that I was a Christian and I felt that God had given me the gift of writing. That was why I did what I did. I said that we all have gifts and we all need to use them.

I held my breath.

It turned out that he too was an active Christian and we talked for a good half an hour about God telling us what He wants us to do, about being able to help others both in business and outside it, about how good it was to meet a fellow Christian business owner and about how he had also felt prompted, some time ago, by a church leader talking about gifting.

It was quite a meeting, and one of many. We may well work together in the future.

One of the supposed golden rules of business is to not talk about politics, religion or sport.

Well, that rule can go jump. And anyway, I’m not religious. I’m a Christian.

And why do I do what I do? I do it because Jesus has asked me to, and I do it for the glory of God.

Andrew Greenhalgh with his wife Julie