Mind Your Business: God’s Way to Level Up
The three words “Mind Your Business” can be fighting words depending on who you’re talking to. When we tell someone to mind their business, it’s often because they’re being nosy about what’s happening in our lives instead of focusing on their own. On the flip side, when someone tells you to mind your own business, the offensive tone often triggers a rhetorical question like, “Who are you talking to?” Or we look over our right and left shoulder to suggest there’s got to be someone close by they are talking to like this because they can’t possibly be talking to me.
But here’s the thing: we shouldn’t view the statement “Mind Your Business” as offensive slander that ignites a fit of anger inside of us, making us ready to take off rings and earrings and has us prepared to square up. Instead, we should see it as wise advice that, if taken literally, can help us level up. The scripture puts it like this:“…Aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12).
It’s interesting to note that the writer associates minding your business with lacking nothing. If you feel you lack wisdom, prosperous relationships, resources, or the right connections, please don’t take offense when I tell you this: you need to start minding your business.
The word mind in this context comes from the Greek word prasso, which means “to practice,” “to commit,” or “to be busy with.” Minding your business isn’t just about staying out of other people’s affairs or avoiding being nosy. It has everything to do with practicing and committing to the desired outcome of what God has placed in your heart.When you focus your strength and energy on what God has purposed for you, you’ll begin to understand the wisdom of minding your business.
When Jesus was just 12 years old, He and His family made their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for worship. On their way back, His mother Mary—much like Kevin’s mother in the movie Home Alone—had a strange feeling that something (or someone) was missing. After a headcount, she realized that her son Jesus, not yet a teenager, wasn’t with them. Retracing their steps, they found Him back in Jerusalem at the temple. To their astonishment, Jesus was explaining the scriptures to the teachers of the law.
Understandably concerned and upset, his mother asked, “Why did you do this? We were worried, searching all over for you!” Jesus responded, “Didn’t you know? I had to be about My Father’s business.” In other words, Jesus was saying, “I was minding my own business—committed to the desired outcome of what God had placed in My heart.
”Let me ask you a question: Are you committed to the desired outcome that God has placed in your heart? Are you willing to prasso—to put into practice what God has put on your heart in this season?My friends, if you’re willing to mind your own business, I believe you’ll see doors open, your health renewed, and the work of your hands prosper. Why? Because God desires that you lack nothing!
