Partnerships. (Part 5): We must always, always respect agreements, and contracts.....

In the book of Joshua, there is a story about a group of people, called the Gibeonites, who managed to secure an agreement with Joshua and his leadership team, by false pretences. When the leadership of the Israelites, discovered what had happened, they were furious. The intriguing thing, is what happened next:

Joshua 9:18-20 (Living Bible, The - TLB)
18 ...... The people of Israel were angry with their leaders because of the peace treaty.
19 But the leaders replied,"We have sworn before the Lord God of Israel that we will not touch them, and we won't.
20 We must let them live, for if we break our oath, the wrath of Jehovah will be upon us."


"These things were written, for our learning";
so what do you learn from this incident, that can be of help to you, in your business, even today?

1. Before you enter into agreements, of any kind to work with other people, you must do your due diligence of those people properly. However once, you enter into an agreement, and you give your word, you must adhere to the agreement, that you signed!
All too often, people try to back out of agreements, they have made if they find, they believe they were misled, or the other party, did not give them the right information about themselves, or even misled them.

2. Adhering to, and respecting an agreement, with a party that you consider weaker, than yourself, is the ultimate test of integrity. It is never about the integrity of the other party... It is about your integrity, that you must focus on.
There is nothing that disturbs me more, than business people, who do not want to respect agreements, they have made, when the situation no longer seems to favor them.
They are people who default on loan agreements, supply agreements, and contracts simply because they consider the other party, too weak, to do anything to them.

Joshua's integrity was tested to the full, when the Gibeonites , were attacked, and appealed for his help, under the agreement.
Now, many people would have said, "this is God's vengeance against those lying cheats, let them deal with it, themselves".............read on!
-Joshua mobilised his army to go out and fight the enemies of the Gibeonites.
-And here is another thing, God joined the fight, with Joshua, to help save the Gibeonites!

When you enter into an agreement, whether it be verbal or written, you must respect it.
- Don't borrow money from people, and when they come looking for their money, you threaten them, and tell them to go away.
- Don't promise your employees salaries, and promotions, that you will ignore, once you get them to do what you wanted.
- Don't strip your partners of their shares, simply because you believe you have more power.

Finally, you must also respect agreements that others have made, before you came. If you buy a business, or property, respect existing agreements, and even titles. If you take over management, or leadership, respect every agreement, made by your predecessors, even if they were not smart agreements, in your opinion.

Time constrains me to tell what happened when a King of Israel, hundreds of years later, ignored this very same agreement with the Gibeonites.

God loves integrity.

The end of this series.