by Ray J. Berryman

Introduction

Hi, I'm honored to be with you today and to be able to share with you some experiences I've had in my life, and discuss with you what true success really is. About 6 months after graduating from college with a degree in Engineering, I was introduced to how a person could have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ and I received God's free gift of salvation. I was excited about my newly found faith in Jesus Christ and immediately bought a Bible and began reading it every day. I also began attending an evangelical church and began to grow in my faith. Within weeks I heard about the concept of tithing so I immediately decided to start tithing. As I read the Bible, prayed, and gave money to God's work, my life really began to take on meaning.

I wanted to have a successful life, and in my pursuit of success I began to put into practice some principles that seemed to work well together to help me discover how to have a truly fulfilling life. I have discovered that the primary ingredient in success is integrity. Integrity is simply being honest in all we do, being sincere and morally sound. This means we are following the basic values and principles that are taught in the Bible. When integrity is employed in what we do, success will result. I have experienced this and observed this in all areas of life. However, I realized that I was capable of failing in my intentions to live a life of integrity, but I also realized that with God's Holy Spirit I could have the power to overcome temptations and be empowered to employ integrity in all I did. I soon discovered that by living a life of integrity and trusting God with all my financial matters, as well as all other areas of my life, things began to work out successfully and I could experience peace and joy in my life.

Success

What really is success? The most popular definition of success is someone who has a lot of money; or perhaps someone who is famous like a star in sports or entertainment. In fact a man could be on his third or fourth marriage, an alcoholic, dishonest, and abusive, yet if he has a lot of money, he will be considered successful! We all know that success is much more than money and fame, yet the world has lied to us about what success really is, and how to achieve it. True success brings us fulfillment in life and enhances our lives in all we do, and we will experience love, joy, and peace in our lives!

Integrity

To be successful we need to have integrity. We need to be careful that a competitive spirit is not driven by the desire to win at "any cost" by compromising our integrity, but results in improved skills, more efficiency, and better quality. The "end" does not justify the "means." Compromising our integrity is always wrong and will eventually lead to a life of emptiness. To be successful we need to love and care for others. We need to follow the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule—"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Jesus demonstrated this in all He did by serving others and He was the example we need to follow. These Biblical principles are the foundation on which integrity stands. They are also the foundation of a free society and are absolutely necessary for true success. We need to be accountable to these principles and hold others accountable to them. By applying these Biblical principles in our lives, we are aligning ourselves with the very way we were created to be, and this will result in facilitating greater success in all we do.

Be an Example

We need to be a "living example" of what we say, demonstrated by what we do, just as a parent needs to be a living example to his children by doing what is right, not just saying what is right, our actions confirm our words. If we tell our children to do right things and then we go and do wrong things, and then tell our children—"you had better not do these same wrong things that I just did! You better do what's right!"—our words will have no meaning at all, and our children will not pay any attention to what we say, but they will copy and do our same wrong actions, because—"our actions speak louder than our words." Our actions will demonstrate who we truly are; revealing whether we live a life of integrity, or a life of corruption. We must be careful not to impose rules on others that we exempt ourselves from—this is the essence of corruption. We may have the authority to exempt ourselves from these rules, and feel entitled to do so at times, but to do so is corruption of the most subtle kind. We must subject ourselves to the same rules we expect others to follow. As leaders, we must actually hold ourselves to an even higher standard than others, demonstrating integrity in all we do and being a living example of what is right. Living a life of integrity is not an easy thing to do. It takes discipline, and to do so consistently, requires us to have "supernatural power" within us that gives us the discipline and capability to overcome our corrupt human nature.

My Career History

After graduating from the university I took a position with the NASA Space Program as a research engineer and helped develop the Command and Service Modules for the Apollo Moon Project. This work with NASA was very exciting and rewarding. In the NASA Space Program we needed to exercise integrity in all that we did and they diligently trained us to do this. The consequences of not doing so could be devastating and could result in great loss of life and resources. This initial introduction of employing integrity into my professional career would be foundational for all that I did in life.

After working for NASA for several years, I decided I would like to make a career change. I wanted to help our communities become better places to live; so I took postgraduate studies and became a Civil Engineer and then provided services for two cities in California. I then took a job with a Civil Engineering firm with about 150 employees and worked in their 3-person Municipal Engineering group. I conducted my work with integrity which resulted in outstanding performance, and in less than a year, I was promoted as Vice President of the 3-person Municipal Engineering group. I continued to employ integrity in my work and, in just 4 years, my group grew rapidly to over 400 employees; and a year later, I was appointed as General Manager. Over the next 2 years we continued to rapidly grow to about 800 engineering staff. By employing integrity in all we did, success was resulting. All during this time, I continued to diligently read my Bible, be active in my church, and began increasing my giving above my tithe.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the owners of that company had been using corrupt practices to get new work for their areas of responsibility. This was totally inconsistent with the Biblical principles of integrity we were using, and these differences in principles led to un-resolvable conflicts between the owners and me, so I resigned from that company. Other key leaders also left, and that company eventually went bankrupt. The corruption that was present with the ownership of that company had weakened it to the point where it could no longer survive. Corruption leads to devastating consequences in all areas of life as we have witnessed in the United States where we have seen some of the world's major corporations fail as a result of their corrupt practices, including: Enron, Anderson and Anderson, WorldCom, and others.

In reality—When integrity is practiced—success results! When corruption is present—failure results!

After leaving that firm, I started my own company. I had just one employee, myself, and I was committed to operate my new company with integrity in accordance with Biblical principles, and provide quality services to our clients. My goal for the company was not to be a big company—my goal for the company was to be a good company; one that operated with integrity and was honoring to God. The bi-product of operating this way resulted in significant growth and success, and in just 6 years we became recognized as one of the top 500 engineering design firms in the United States. This is quite an accomplishment when you consider there are approximately 75,000 engineering design firms in the United States.

As our company continued to grow, our personal income was also growing, and we found that our giving to Christian ministries was increasing and becoming quite substantial. We were giving well in excess of our tithe and we began to realize that we had a responsibility to be wise stewards in our giving. In 1989 we met Hugh McClellan of the McClellan Foundation and he shared with us his concerns about not being strategic in giving, and the responsibility that we have as God's stewards to be wise with the resources He entrusts to us. At that time we decided to become more diligent and responsible stewards, and we began to try to determine where we could give more effectively and have a greater impact for the Kingdom of God. We set out on a journey to become effective givers and we used the McClellan Foundation's research to help determine where God would have us be involved. We also pursued other sources to help find effective ministries and tried to conduct due diligence efforts to identify the most effective ministry opportunities. Over the next few years we became involved in supporting 20 to 30 highly effective Christian ministries, and we were truly experiencing God's abundant blessings.

Our company continued to grow and by 1994 we had nearly 400 employees. My salary had also continued to increase and was now over $1,000,000 per year. We had just finished building and moving into our new dream home in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, California, and it seemed like everything was going great. We were making more money than we ever had expected to, we were giving more money than we ever thought we would be able to, and we lived in one of the finest areas in the world. And to top it off, we were involved in resourcing many excellent Christian ministries with significant giving, and I set a goal that some time in the near future I would start giving over a million dollars a year to Christian ministries.

However, in the next year everything began to change. The previous year we had acquired a firm in Florida and merged it into our west coast operations headquartered in San Diego. This merger soon became a disaster. We couldn't understand that because we had diligently prayed about this acquisition and felt certain that it was God's plan to go forward with it. In any case, it just didn't seem to be working. In addition to that, we were entering a severe recession in California and our business took a downturn. Within two years we lost over $10,000,000 in value and we incurred substantial debt. The financial challenges were overwhelming, but during this difficult time we just kept on operating with integrity and continued giving to Christian ministries. At times it seemed impossible to continue in business, but we kept persevering and operating with integrity. Our situation got so financially stressed that we were not able to pay the United States government the Federal withholding taxes that we were required to withhold from employees' paychecks. Every time we were late with a payment we would be assessed a penalty. Over an 8-month period we had been fined penalties amounting to about $400,000. We had no choice but to pay these penalties or we would have been in jeopardy of having our company taken over by the government and closed down. These penalties worsened our already stressed financial condition making our situation even more severe, and we were getting further behind on paying the taxes we owed. The amount of money we owed to the government for unpaid withholding taxes had continued to increase to the point where it had exceeded $1,000,000 and we had no idea how we could ever pay it.

I told my wife that the situation was so serious that if things did not begin to turn around soon that I could be in jeopardy of being accused of mishandling the government's taxes and there was even the possibility that I could go to jail, even though we had been exercising integrity in all we did. We tried every way to improve our financial position, but we just did not have any solutions except to just keep working with integrity and doing the best we could. I must admit that it was very tempting to cut corners or lower our quality, but we knew we could never compromise our integrity, even if we had to take financial failure as the alternative. Through much praying and trying to find how we could come up with the necessary money to pay the taxes, we noticed that we had 400 acres of land that we bought about 7 years earlier for around $50,000 in the Arizona desert while they were in the middle of a recession there. I had heard that the recession in Arizona had ended, so I called the agent that I bought the land through and asked what the land was now worth. He said that the whole area was rapidly developing and that the land we had was right in the center of development, and that it would be worth about $1,000,000. This was a total surprise as I didn't think that it would be worth much more than we had paid for it. I sold the land and with the proceeds I was able to pay the taxes just in time to avoid the government from taking over my business.

However, the story doesn't end there. Shortly after paying those taxes, our tax attorney said that we should file an appeal with the government requesting that they refund our penalties. He knew that we had been exercising integrity throughout this whole situation and doing the best we could in paying our obligations. He said that we were not malicious when we were late in trying to pay our taxes, but that we just did not have the money available to pay them on time. In fact, we had actually exercised prudent action in how we paid our obligations, including our taxes. He said we should explain that if we had made our tax payments on time it could have overburdened our financial position so much that we could have failed financially, and that by our exercising prudent action in the timing of our payments to them, and others, we were able to avoid financial failure, and eventually pay our taxes. We decided to file the appeal with the government that explained our actions and essentially stated that we had exercised integrity throughout this whole situation and that we would not have been able to stay in business if we had made our tax payments on time. We requested they refund the $400,000 in penalties that they had fined us. This claim was so unusual they could not handle it in their National Tax Center headquarters so they sent the entire appeal to their key attorneys in Washington, D.C. for review. After months of review and consideration, they confirmed that our appeal was reasonable and they refunded the entire $400,000. In addition to that, they added about $40,000 in interest that the money would have earned during the time they had it, and sent that to us also. These unexpected events substantially helped our financial situation and positioned us to be more financially able to continue our operations during that difficult time period.

During these difficult years we learned many lessons. We discovered it was not what we were giving that really mattered, but what we were keeping. Although we felt that we were giving a lot, we realized that we were keeping much more. We were beginning to realize that it was really God's money we were keeping and we were spending God's money on things that we never should have. We began to realize that good stewardship is using God's resources to the maximum for His glory and to enjoy the good things He gives us in moderation. We felt that we needed to live a simpler lifestyle and I had come to the realization that I would probably never be able to achieve my goal of giving over $1,000,000 per year for Christian ministry work. The losses and setbacks that we had experienced dampened my optimism to achieve such a lofty goal.

In 1998 the economy began to turn around in California and our financial condition began to improve. Our west coast operations were becoming profitable, but the Florida offices were still a disaster and they were now losing about $1,000,000 per year. I just wanted to "spin them off," so I flew out to Florida to work out a deal to sell the Florida operations back to the original owners. They were interested and they were able to put together a team to buy back the Florida company. I just wanted to get rid of the whole Florida mess and stay on the west coast. I began to pray about the whole situation and I distinctly heard God telling me that it was not His plan for us to sell off the Florida operations. His plan was for us to sell our home in Rancho Santa Fe and move to Florida to bring leadership and direction there. I could hardly believe what I was hearing and I certainly did not know how I would tell my wife what I had distinctly heard God say. When I flew back to California and told my wife that I had been praying about the whole matter and that God had revealed to me that He wanted us to sell our house in Rancho Santa Fe and move to Florida, she answered and said that she had also been praying about it while I was gone and that she had received the same answer from God that I had. We were shocked, but we knew what we needed to do. Although we had lived in California all of our lives and never intended to ever move from there, especially to Florida, we knew we had to follow God's leading and in December 1999 we moved to Florida.

In the next two years we were able to completely reorganize the Florida operations and eliminate most of the losses. By 2002, our total nationwide operation had grown to nearly 800 employees and we were again quite profitable. Our leadership team was being strengthened and we mutually developed a Mission Statement that stated that our mission was "to honor God in all we do." We were proud to post it on our website along with the Biblical values by which we would operate our company. Our profits and growth continued to improve and our company gained an excellent reputation for its integrity. As a result of this, in December 2002, a major multi-national company from Europe, pursued our company as part of their acquisition strategy and offered to buy our company for an extremely generous amount. I was not interested in selling the company as I felt things were really beginning to turn around, so we prayed about whether we should sell the company, and we felt assured that this was God's leading. After over a year of negotiation and due diligence, the sale was completed in 2004. Just two months before the sale closed, I discovered that the reason this company had sought us out as a strategic acquisition for them was because of our Florida operations. Unbeknownst to me, our successful reorganization of the Florida operations over the previous two years had put us in direct competition with a subsidiary company of theirs and we were winning their client base in Florida. They checked our company out to determine who we were and they were impressed with our excellent reputation and integrity. They had wanted to acquire an American company with high integrity to represent their enterprise in North America because their firm was a quality assurance type firm, and their success depended on their reputation for integrity. They decided that our firm was the candidate firm that they were looking for to acquire.

This whole situation would never have happened if we had spun off our Florida operations as we had originally intended to do, or if we had not followed God's direction to move to Florida. By operating with integrity and trying to honor God in all we did, we were experiencing success. Selling the company allowed us to be able to use significant proceeds from the sale of the company to help support Christian ministry work all over the world. We are now able to travel and share this with others, and encourage them to live their lives with integrity, to help others, and to honor God with their resources. In so doing they will also begin to experience what success is really all about—true success.

Lessons Learned

We were finally beginning to see God's hand in all the situations that happened over the previous 10 years and how He was teaching and developing us through these difficult times, including: the acquisition of the Florida firm; the impact of the recession; our significant financial losses and His preserving us; our Spiritual growth during these times; our recognition that we really owned nothing and that God owned it all; our realization that our job was to steward God's resources, not embellish ourselves in them; our not selling the Florida operations back to the original owners; our following God's call to sell our house in Rancho Santa Fe and move to Florida to bring leadership there; God orchestrating the sale of our company for an unbelievable cash deal; as well as many others.

I had previously given up on my goal to be able to give over a million dollars each year to Christian ministries, but now as a result of the sale of our company we have been able to begin to fulfill that goal, although in reality, it was not us that were able to fulfill it, but it was God. We have learned that our plans, which sometimes may seem overly optimistic, are nothing for God to accomplish and exceed if they are in accordance with His will. He can exceed our loftiest goals whenever He wants to and He will even use us to accomplish His plans for us. We just need to walk by faith and not by sight. God is awesome!

Giving Generously

To be successful we need to understand that we were created to be generous with our resources, and to be willing to share them with others. The idea of giving generously may seem foreign to most people, especially when they are in need of money. We seem to think that in order to be successful we need to gain all the money we can and accumulate more and more. We believe that the more money we have the more successful and happy we will be. But in reality, the more we have, the more we want, and our desire to accumulate more increases. The more we accumulate, instead of feeling satisfied with what we have, we become greedier and more dissatisfied. Our focus turns more and more to ourselves and away from God and others, and we become more self indulgent and insecure. Our lives then become more complicated and actually become emptier; this is because we were created to give, not accumulate. When we give, we are in alignment with the very way we were created to be, and we find peace and joy in life. We can only experience this peace and joy when we follow the teachings of the Bible and adopt a lifestyle of giving. The more we give, the better we feel and the more we prosper. This allows us to be able to give even more. The laws of our Creator that govern it bind this principle.

An interesting metaphor of giving is an example of nature itself. In Israel, at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River flows freely as it winds its way southward to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is called that because no fish or organisms live in it. The high salt and mineral concentration, along with the stagnation, prevent the possibility of life. What is happening there is the physical laws of hydrology and nature are controlling the results of these natural circumstances. Nothing different can be expected because the laws of nature that govern it bind this hydrological condition. When the Sea of Galilee receives its waters from the mountains to the north and gives out fresh water to the Jordan River, it stays healthy and prospers with life, and gives life to the fields that receive water from it as it makes its way to the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not give out, it just receives and accumulates, and like a big "black hole" is never able to fill the empty valley in which it is situated in the lowest place on earth, 400 meters below sea level. It just continues to stagnate and become more and more corrupt.

The same is true with mankind and the laws of God's creation. God created us after His own image to be like Him and as we live our lives with generosity, in alignment with His created ways, He blesses us and we prosper. When we give out and not just take in and accumulate, we are refreshed and we experience the best in life. When we receive, hoard and accumulate, we stagnate and become corrupt. Just as the physical laws of nature bind the seas and rivers, the spiritual laws by which God created us bind human life. The Sea of Galilee receives fresh water and it gives off fresh water and enjoys abundant life. The Dead Sea receives fresh water but passes on nothing and is empty, corrupt, and dead. It is a great metaphor for life. People who have learned how to pass on their God given resources to others prosper and are fresh and vital. Those who don't are stagnant and "dead."

Jesus said: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Acts 20:35

As mentioned earlier, God owns it all. He gives us everything we have to manage and invest for His glory. He allows us to pay ourselves whatever we want to and directs us to "occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13 KJV). He expects us to be wise stewards and earn Him a good return on His investment in us. It is absurd to think that what we have is ours and that we are going to please God by giving Him 10% or some lesser amount and hoard the rest, especially if we are wealthy and we are unnecessarily buying things that bring us glory and boost our ego making us feel like we are better than others. Don't get me wrong, for some people giving 10% of their income is a sacrificial gift and God is pleased with that. I am talking about those of us whom God has enriched with much. I believe that He expects us to be wise stewards of His resources and to use them for His glory to accomplish His work. I'm convinced that God does not want us to accumulate a lot of money so that we can be completely dependent on ourselves, and not on Him.

Please don't miss the opportunities and the joy of giving which leads to a fulfilled life! You will prosper with abundant life and share in giving life to those in need by giving to effective Christian ministries that reach the lost and help the needy. In addition to this you will be investing your treasures in Heaven where they will earn eternal dividends. The Bible says,

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).

Where are our treasures? What are we working for to obtain? What do we want to buy? What is our desire right now?—When we find where our treasures are, we will discover where our hearts are!

I encourage each of us today to really reflect on our relationship with God as His stewards, and become the best stewards we can be. I hope it will bring our Master pleasure when He sees what we are giving for His Kingdom, as opposed to what we are keeping for ours. And that we will one day hear His words:

"Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your Master's happiness!" (Matthew 25:21)

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