Luck or Grace: The Intersect

Author Scot C. Taylor shares an excerpt from his new book Luck or Grace: The Intersect

The Introduction

In 2010 I was faced with the realization that my thirty years of entrepreneurial pursuits in publishing, finance, hospitality, real estate, media, and marketing, although extensive and lofty, had left me financially destitute. The $1.8-million estate I owned was sold at a foreclosure auction; my media firm suffered from the great recession; and my children and I found ourselves wholly dependent upon my wife’s income.

Stunned that all my entrepreneurial pursuits had left me with great accolades but empty handed, I began to ponder why it is that some people are lucky, blessed, fortunate, or whatever you want to call it, while I seemed to be the opposite. I was at rock bottom. And so, like when I was searching for some change under my wife’s car seat but found a 2-for-1 coupon for a burger…after a self-pity party I was pleased to realize, as I hope you will, that I had been blessed beyond measure. I had received more grace than I thought possible.

My true blessings were overshadowed by my entrepreneurial passion and my pursuits to make my ideas become industries. My wife, children and I are in very good health; we have no sickness, no injuries, and no disease. We have only been close to being homeless twice, and were blessed to have had my brother and his wife bring food without us asking. It was an answer to a prayer that we desperately needed. In fact my life has been an abundance of peace, love, and joy.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior in 1979 and since that time my hunger for God has never been satiated. Yet, with over thirty-two years of endless and tireless pursuit of God’s wisdom through biblical studies and fellowships, the nagging question was still left outstanding. Why did my entrepreneurial pursuits not pan out like my contemporaries’?

I live by the Golden Rule: honor God in all things, and work like an ant colony. But I found that the more I looked at what others had, the more that what I had seemed anemic. This downward cycle ended up in a thought process of covetousness, envy, greed, and disappointment. I decided to fully exhaust contemporary and historical opinion, and found what I call the “intersect.”

Other writers have attempted to define success, luck, and power, and how to get or earn it. Writers such as Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich, or Rhonda Byrne, who wrote The Secret (largely considered a rewrite of The Secret of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles), and many other pop-motivational people or hocus-pocus authors have answers and solutions.

These modern-day soothsayers hawk their books, videos, and speaking engagements to sell you the lie that you can control your life in the “Universe,” “The Matrix,” or in your mind. They call on tactics like mental projection, cosmic karma, visualization, and whatever itches the ears of the needy.

At the end of this reading you will be certain that the only options we have to believe in are either grace or luck.

The question I will not challenge is when your intersect began. It’s the same for all humanity. For those that believe in luck it was chance that one of the 300 million sperm sailors actually hit the target, a lucky bull’s eye for one lucky sailor that just so happened to have an x or y chromosome, which will create that first single cell that will carry your name.

However, for those of you who believe in grace, according to the Bible you were knitted in your mother’s womb.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139:13-16

The egg and the sperm that formed you were directed by God and for his pleasure. That’s right, you. His pleasure. You are not an accident, you are chosen.

Before you can fully understand the Intersect, definitions are in order to properly align the hidden mystery of lucky/fortunate people and blessed/grace-filled people – one of which we all want to be. Not once have I heard anyone say to me, “Scot, I want to be one of the most cursed and unlucky persons alive.” If that’s you, I am certain you will reconsider your position. What I do hear is, “Scot, I want to be really lucky and really blessed.” Well you can!

Scot C. Taylor is a career entrepreneur with successful startups in advertising, publishing, fast food, and consulting sectors. Mr. Taylor was a fellow Co-Founder/Director Marketing of Looking Good Calendars USC’s poster boy’s in the 80’s, Co-founder/Director of Operation Health Hut Inc., North America’s first natural fast food restaurant; and founder/CEO of Outdoor Advertising Systems, Inc. (OAS), North America’s first and master leaseholder of advertising on lunch trucks. Mr. Taylor is the active CEO of OAS and his marketing and consulting firm, Fortune II, Inc. He resides in Laguna, California with his wife of 20 plus years. To learn more about Scot C. Taylor’s new book, visit Luck or Grace