My Founding Verse
At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is April Anthony.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - Jeremiah 29:11
So, I guess I'm going right back to the way that he's speaking to me in an old way, because I've told our team here at Encompass so many times about the verse on which I founded my current company. And the interim story is that my first company I owned from 1992-97, sold it to public company, and they proceeded to wreck it in short order and ended up filing bankruptcy about a year and a half after I sold it to them and terminating all my employees that had been there and just really making a mess out of it, sort of leaving me feeling uncertain where to go.
But when I started this company, my current company, I did so really with this verse on my heart from Jeremiah. We're all probably familiar with it, it says, "I know the plans I have for you, declares Lord plans to prosper, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." You know, I think that verse is what I've told my team over the years. Now, 22 years that we've been running this business and that's the verse that this company was founded on.
And it was founded at a time when the home health care industry was in kind of a shambles. When my own personal career had gone off the rails after having sold my business. But even in that moment, knowing that this verse is true, it doesn't always happen immediately, just as it didn't in its original time. But that if you will just be true to God, you'll be true to his promises. Over time, he will bring me through the challenges that he will not let me be harmed. That, in turn, he will prosper you.
And I have reminded our team, even in the course of this pandemic of that founding verse that our company was founded on. So I think that that is, for me, not new wisdom. That old wisdom, that wisdom that is proven to lead us through the past 22 years and I'm particularly confident it will lead us through our current crisis.