This last Friday’s Exchange had Bill Taylor share on the “Power of Dreams,” an encouraging morning as Bill enriched the group with his testimony and saw how God had given him dreams that God had brought to reality.

Bill is the CEO of a large and award-winning company in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. He has also been quite involved in mission / apostolic work and the local church, in addition to serving on the Board of Zambia Project, a grouping that conducts social justice projects into Zambia and plants churches.

Bill shared how, from a very young age, he used to dream of being a business person. He included a couple of humorous life stories that also taught him a lot – such as, when he was eight years old, a truck carrying watermelons had an accident near his house and he took he bashed up watermelons and made them into juice, so that he could sell the juice to the neighbourhood. It was a huge failure, but it taught him that you need to have a product of value.

Also, it taught him that you need to sell to a market that has money, as he grew up in a neighbourhood that was in most respects quite poor. Bill linked this into how, as Christians, we shouldn’t be ashamed of making a profit – it’s what we do with the profit that matters, not the desire to make a profit.

Profit comes with hard work, something Bill has had a lot of experience in. A lot of Christians aim to have a balanced lifestyle and many times this means they shun hard work. But Bill says he has struggled to find a Christian that can really define what a balanced life looks like. So while rest is important, so is work, and Christians shouldn’t be afraid to work hard.

It’s been a journey for Bill and his wife on the way to where they are now. Bill even shared how, for six months at one stage, all they really were able to eat were Koo beans and two-day old bread from the baker close by (who his wife managed to make a deal with). It’s encouraging to see that God eventually brings us out of these kinds of situations and at the same time those kinds of situations can bear tremendous fruit. It’s difficult to see that when we’re in them, but we’re not in them forever!