Bible Verses for Business Owners: 3 I Keep Coming Back To
- Jayden Vass
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
How are you glorifying God in your business?
Not a rhetorical question. An actual one, and one I find uncomfortable most weeks.
It's easy to ask God for blessings on the business. It's easy to thank him when the month closes well. The harder question is what you're doing with what he's already given you.
That's the question underneath this whole post. Watch the short version here: Christian business owners. You can also catch it on Instagram.
Three verses come up for me more than any others. All three get quoted constantly in Christian business circles, and all three, I think, get read backwards.
1. Matthew 6:33, which isn't about growth
"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)
This is the verse people put on the wall when they want a bigger business.
Read what comes immediately before it and that reading falls apart. Jesus is talking about food and clothing. Not revenue. Not headcount. Not growth. "All these things" points backwards at the basics of staying alive, spoken to people genuinely worried about them.
So it isn't a formula for scale. It's the cure for a specific kind of fear.
And that fear is worth naming, because it changes how you run a business. Scarcity makes you take clients you shouldn't. It makes you quote higher than the work is worth, or lower than it costs you. It makes you say yes to a bad-fit patient because December looks thin.
Chase the kingdom first and the fear of not having enough loses its grip on your decisions. That's the promise. Not a bigger business. A less anxious one, run by someone making clearer calls.
Which, in fairness, often does produce a better business. Just not for the reason the wall art implies.
2. Colossians 3:23–24, written to people nobody was watching
"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." (Colossians 3:23–24)
Context matters here too. Paul is writing to bondservants.
People doing work nobody saw. Work nobody thanked them for. Work with no prospect of promotion, recognition or a testimonial.
That's the point of it. The unseen work counts.
For a business owner that lands somewhere specific. It's the follow-up call you made when you could have let it slide. The invoice you corrected in the client's favour when they'd never have noticed. The refund you gave because it was right, not because it was demanded.
Nobody's watching any of that. Paul's argument is that someone is, and that he's the one you're actually working for.
This verse is where the whole idea of ordinary work as a calling comes from. Not just ministry work. Ordinary work, done honestly, by someone nobody is applauding.
I find this one steadying on the weeks when the effort and the results have come apart.
3. Deuteronomy 8:17–18, which is a warning
"Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth..." (Deuteronomy 8:17–18)
This is the one most often quoted as a promise of wealth. Usually verse 18 on its own, usually on a graphic.
Read verse 17 and it's the opposite.
Moses is warning Israel before they prosper, because he knows exactly what prosperity does to people. It convinces them they built it themselves. The whole passage is a guard rail against pride, not a guarantee of profit.
That's why I need it, and not in the way I'd like to need it.
Because when a campaign works, the instinct is immediate and it's mine: I did that. I found the angle. I wrote the hook. And some of that is even true, in the way that a farmer's work is true, which is to say it's real work performed on ground he did not make.
The verse doesn't say your effort is meaningless. It says the capacity for the effort was given to you. Those are different claims, and the second one is much harder to hold onto in a good quarter than a bad one.
Where this actually shows up in a business
The three verses land in different places, which is why I keep all three rather than picking a favourite.
Verse | Common reading | What it actually addresses |
Matthew 6:33 | A formula for growth | The anxiety that makes you run a worse business |
Colossians 3:23–24 | Work hard, generally | The work nobody sees or thanks you for |
Deuteronomy 8:17–18 | A promise of wealth | The pride that arrives with success |
Read that way, they're not three motivational quotes. They're three corrections, aimed at three different failure modes, and each one is aimed at the owner rather than the business.
Anxiety. Invisibility of effort. Pride.
I've been caught by all three.
The question I can't get around
Back to where this started.
It's easy to ask God for blessings in the business. It's easy to be grateful in a good month. The harder discipline is asking what you're doing with what he's already blessed you with.
That question has practical teeth. It shows up in how you treat a client who can't pay. In whether you tell someone their marketing doesn't need your help. In what you do with margin.
I don't have that fully worked out. I'm asking it as someone still in the middle of it, not from the other side.
If you've got verses you come back to in your own business, I'd genuinely like to hear them.
Frequently asked questions
What are good Bible verses for business owners?
Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23–24 and Deuteronomy 8:17–18 are three that speak directly to running a business, though each addresses something different: anxiety about provision, work that goes unseen, and pride after success. Reading them in context matters more than collecting them, because all three are commonly quoted in ways that reverse their meaning.
Does Matthew 6:33 promise business success?
Not in context. The verses immediately before it are about food and clothing, so "all these things" refers to basic provision, not wealth or growth. It addresses anxiety about having enough rather than promising expansion. That distinction matters, because reading it as a growth formula sets up disappointment that the passage never invited.
What does Colossians 3:23 mean for everyday work?
Paul wrote it to bondservants whose work was unseen and unthanked, which is precisely why it applies to ordinary business tasks. The follow-up call, the honest invoice, the correction nobody would have caught. The passage argues those are done for Christ rather than for recognition. It is the root of the idea that ordinary work can be a calling.
Is Deuteronomy 8:18 a promise of wealth?
It's usually quoted that way, but verse 17 frames it as a warning. Moses is cautioning Israel before they prosper, because prosperity tends to convince people they created it alone. The passage guards against pride rather than guaranteeing profit, and reading verse 18 without verse 17 inverts its meaning.
How can a Christian business owner glorify God at work?
The honest answer is that it shows up in decisions nobody audits: how you treat a client who can't pay, whether you tell someone they don't need your service, what you do with margin. Asking for blessing is easy. The harder discipline is asking what you're doing with what you've already been given.
Does Lead Shark Marketing work with Christian business owners?
Yes. Lead Shark builds patient acquisition systems for wellness clinics and health practitioners, and plenty of the owners we work with run their businesses on conviction as well as strategy. Faith isn't a requirement either way. Honest work is.
If you run a wellness clinic and the marketing side is where you're stuck, that's the part we help with. Lead Shark Marketing builds patient acquisition systems for clinics and practitioners across North America.
Andrew Vass runs Lead Shark Marketing, where he builds lead follow-up and appointment-setting systems for wellness and medical clinics across Canada. He spends most of his time watching clinics lose booked revenue in the gap between a lead coming in and someone calling them back.
