Go Back and Get the Notebook

"If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." Isaiah 1:19 (KJV)

It is easy to get caught up in the hustle.

In always feeling like you have to be launching something, building something, announcing something just to stay relevant. The world of business, and honestly the world of Christian entrepreneurship, has a way of making you feel like if you are not moving you are falling behind. And so we move. We plan. We launch. And then somewhere in the middle of all of that activity, we turn around and ask God to bless what we already started.

But Sheryl Landry-Grant said something in her piece The Business of Contentment that I want to pull forward into this conversation. She talked about how we get the idea, we plan it, we launch it, and then we seek God's approval. When it should always be the other way around. I want to talk about what it actually looks like when you flip that order. Because I am living it right now.

God Gave Me the Blueprint Before I Even Knew It

In February of 2023, God gave me the name SAVEDpreneur.

I was in a season of seeking Him heavily. Genuinely asking what my next move in business should be. And when He gave me the name, I did not ruminate on it. I did not sit down and map out a five year strategy or ask how it was going to make me money. I just did what the Holy Spirit told me to do, which was to open a Facebook group and bring believers, entrepreneurs, founders, and business professionals into a space where we could build community and fast and pray together.

So that is what I did. I opened the group in March of 2023. God grew it. He blessed it. And He kept showing me more.

Around that same time, He also gave me an urge to start a magazine. And that is the part I did not act on right away. Instead of building it, I ended up helping a business connection with her magazine. I had the idea. I had the impression. But I did not connect it to SAVEDpreneur™. I just knew I wanted to spotlight entrepreneurs and use my over a decade of PR experience to help people get the backlinks, the brand awareness, the visibility that I knew they needed.

But I delayed it. For almost two years.

Then in February of this year, the Holy Spirit said it again. Spotlight these entrepreneurs. Build the magazine. And this time I moved.

The Notebook Already Had the Answer

A couple of days ago I was talking to Lethabo, who has been a mentee of mine for about three years now. I was telling him what I wanted SAVEDpreneur™ to be, how I wanted it to grow, what I was building. And I shared with him a note I had written back in 2023.

Everything I was describing. The magazine. The membership levels. The podcast. The contributor model. It was already there. I had written it all down three years ago and did not even realize I had been building toward it the whole time.

And here is what got me. I always tell my clients, I say it from stages, I say it in sessions: the million dollar idea, the plan God gave you, is already written down somewhere. It is in a notebook you closed. On a voice memo you forgot about. In a note on your phone from three years ago. God gave it to you. You just put it away.

I always say go back and get the notebook.

And here I was, having to take my own advice.

The Hustle Will Make You Miss It

This is what I want you to hear. The hustle, the pressure to always be doing something, to stay visible, to chase what is trending, can cause you to miss what God is actually trying to do through you.

We spend so much energy chasing what looks successful instead of building what God assigned. And right now, in this economic moment, that distinction matters more than it ever has. The world's economy is going through a shaking. Things that were built on hype, on vanity metrics, on what looked good on social media, are not holding up. But the things God told people to build, the assignments He gave that people had the courage to walk out in obedience, those are the things that are standing.

The wealth is being transferred. But we have to learn to steward it. And God is not going to give you the million if you are not managing the fifty thousand. He is not going to send a million people to sit under your voice if you are not faithful to the hundred people already in front of you.

I know this not because I read it somewhere. I know it because I am living it. Every single time I activate on what the Holy Spirit has told me to do, it flows. I do not have to toil for it. I do not have to force it. The ease is the confirmation.

Willing and Obedient

The condition in Isaiah 1:19 is not complicated. It is two things: willing and obedient.

Willing means you have made the decision in your heart. You are not half in. You are not waiting to see how someone else responds to their calling before you commit to yours. You have said yes.

Obedient means you move when God says move, how He says move, with who He says, on His timeline. Not yours. Not based on what someone else is doing. Not because a trend is hot right now. Because He said so.

When you take the first step in that posture, God gives you the next three. He does not show you the whole staircase. He shows you the next step. And then the next. And the only way to see it is to already be moving.

So I want to ask you something. Is there a notebook you closed? A voice memo you forgot? An idea God dropped in your spirit two years ago that you talked yourself out of because you did not know how it would work?

Go back and get it.

And then get into a community of believers who will fast and pray with you, who will war on your behalf, who can hear God alongside you. Because you were not meant to build alone. The foundation of everything we build here is Jesus Christ. And when He is at the center, what He told you to build will not just survive. It will flourish.

"If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." Isaiah 1:19 (KJV)

The good of the land is waiting. But first, you have to be willing. And then you have to move.

Maleeka Hollaway is the founder of SAVEDpreneur™ Media and Lead and Influence. She builds from obedience and teaches from testimony. Join the SAVEDpreneur community and the monthly prayer and fasting at SAVEDpreneur.com.