Business as training to unite mind and body

Man is the unity of mind and body, which must be centered on God.

Through the fall of man, man lost his direction centered on God and became centered on Satan instead. Because of that, fallen man has no clear purpose in life.

Satan influences fallen man to give up to live for God and for others. The physical comes to dominate the spiritual, and the mind is unable to be subject to the body. The body dominates the mind, and mind-body unity is disturbed.

Fallen man has lost awareness of the living God, and is unable to unite mind and body centered on God even if he wanted to do so.

Unity of mind and body must be centered on God. It therefore starts with the desire and commitment to live for God. Then, centered on this desire to live for God, man must think, feel and plan for God and finally act for God. Unity of mind and body means that Satan cannot interfere in this process.

Fallen man who wants to return to God has the problem of not knowing God and God’s wishes.

When God asks someone to do business, it becomes easier for man to understand God’s will for him or her. Simply speaking: God’s Will for that person is to be successful in business centering on God.

Based on man’s commitment to live for God, which means the heartistic unity of man with God, man can now also center his mind and body on God by fulfilling God’s Will. God’s Will is that the person brings an offering of creation. There is a time period, and there is the exact goal being set for a certain amount of money, that is creation.

By giving everything to fulfill that goal within the time period set for it, man is learning to unite mind and body centered on God.

Satan will attempt to stop man in reaching the goal. Satan can do that by influencing man to give up his commitment for God or giving up to reach the goal.
Satan works by accusing man that he or she is not God’s child and by tempting man to become centered on something physical.

To make sure he or she will fulfill the purpose centered on God, man can work to strengthen his or her mind by prayer and studying God’s Word. Man also can make effort to protect himself against Satan’s temptations by training to subjugate his body through fasting, cold shower conditions, restricted sleep, refraining from sex.
 

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The meaning of business

  
In the English language, business originally would mean: to be busy. Because fallen people are all the time busy with doing only one thing, to make money, business came to mean: to acquire money.

Money represents God’s creation. Therefore, business concerns man’s relationship to creation.

Originally, all creation belongs to God. God is invisible and doesn’t have a body to directly deal with creation. Yet, in a sense, this is not true, because God does have a body. That body is man. Man is God’s body, and deals with creation directly.
In the original ideal, business means the relationship of man with creation, whereby man is in the position of God’s body.

Because of the fall of man, man lost the position of being God’s body and became Satan’s body instead. Therefore, through the fall, God lost His dominion over creation and Satan falsely stole that dominion.

In the course of restoration, business has many aspects. One of these aspects is that through business, man can restore his position of being God’s body having dominion over creation.

How did man lose his position of having direct dominion over all of creation? It happened because of the fall of man, the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve and the physical fall between Eve and Adam.

For man, to restore his dominion over creation, he or she must therefore first of all indemnify the fall. Man, working to get dominion for God over creation, simultaneously must restore his or her fallen relationship into original relationships. Then Satan will lose the right to use man as his body, and Satan must give up his false dominion over creation.

By restoring creation, bringing creation from under Satan’s dominion back under God’s dominion, man is restoring himself. Satan will only give up his dominion when man proves that his love is not Satan’s love, but God’s love.

Because of self-centeredness, man gave up his original relationship to God and his true dominion over creation. Now man must restore the relation to God by being God-centered, laboring hard to restore, that is to re-create creation, and by having true relations with other man instead of self-centered, false relations. Then Satan must give up his false claim over man and over creation.


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