You know the version of yourself you show investors. The one you show employees. The one you put on for clients when the numbers aren’t great and the timeline has slipped and you’re privately not sure if this thing is going to work.
It’s a performance. And most of the time, nobody calls it that. Because everyone else is performing too.
Here’s the problem with the performance. It doesn’t stay in the boardroom. Eventually, the front you’ve built becomes the only version of you that anyone sees, including yourself. You become a walking shell. Polished on the outside. Hollow somewhere deeper.
John Marsh knows this. Not in theory. He lived it.
Within a year or two of having his first son, John and his wife Ashley were three days from divorce, fighting over custody, buried under $1.5 million in debt, $99,000 overdrawn. John was a drug addict. And one afternoon he went up to the attic of their broken-down old house, moved the fan aside, set up a rope, and decided to end his life.
In that moment, desperate and out of options, he cried out to a God he didn’t know. And something shifted.
He came downstairs a different man. Ashley didn’t believe him. Reasonably so. Why would she? But by October that same year, slowly, with three years of counseling and seven years of weekly sessions, they found each other again. They started a construction company with $1,000. They stayed in their small town of Opelika, Alabama, and began to build, one paycheck at a time.
Today, Marsh Collective owns over 100 properties, runs multiple restaurants, a construction company, a historic renovation business, and a consulting firm that helps towns turn themselves around. They went from $99,000 overdrawn to helping communities find what they call patient capital, properly aligned capital, and productive capital.
But none of that is the main point.
The point is what happened in the attic. The point is what happened when John had nothing left to perform with.
There’s a story in Genesis that mirrors this. Jacob was one of the most driven entrepreneurs in all of scripture. Born second of twins. No inheritance coming to him by custom. He had every reason to be scrappy and self-reliant. And he was. He was resourceful, innovative, and ruthless. His name literally meant deceiver. He did whatever it took.
And for a long time, it worked. Until it didn’t.
When Jacob finally hit his wall, the business failure, the family fracture, the fear for his own safety, God showed up. Not with a pep talk. Genesis 32 says God appeared to Jacob in the form of an angel and wrestled with him all night.
Jacob couldn’t win. That was the point.
In that wrestling match, Jacob learned something that all his success had never taught him. He couldn’t outwork God. He couldn’t carry it all himself. He had to depend on something outside of himself. And as a physical reminder of that lesson, God touched Jacob’s hip socket. From that day forward, Jacob walked with a limp.
The best leaders lead with a limp. Not because weakness is a strategy. But because the limp is honest. It says, I have been broken by something bigger than me, and I stopped pretending otherwise.
A.W. Tozer wrote:
“Before God can use a man greatly, he usually has to hurt him very deeply.”
Moses failed before he led Israel. David waited years before God used him. Paul spent long stretches in obscurity before God moved powerfully through him. The pattern is consistent enough that it’s almost standard issue—brokenness before usefulness.
And there’s a financial dimension to this that entrepreneurs often miss.
The self-made narrative is a lie. Not a useful exaggeration. An actual lie. When you believe it’s all on you, you start doing things that aren’t right to protect what you’ve built. You sacrifice integrity for outcomes. You burn people to make numbers. You become the kind of person you wouldn’t have respected five years ago.
But when you understand that God is your supply, not your own cleverness, something changes. You stop being ruthless. You start being faithful. And the measure of success shifts from effectiveness to obedience. Did I do what God asked me to do? Did I do it honestly? Did I trust Him for the outcome?
That’s a different way to run a business.
There’s also a venture capital insight buried in all this. A VC friend in the video makes a quiet but important point. Investors aren’t always eager to back someone whose first venture worked immediately. Sometimes the better bet is the entrepreneur who’s shown tenacity through failure. Because failure changes you. It makes you more honest, more patient, more grounded. The limp produces a character that success alone never could.
So here’s the question for you. Where are you still performing?
Where is there a gap between the version of you that shows up on investor calls and the one that sits alone at midnight, wondering if this is going to hold? That gap matters. Not because it disqualifies you. But God is more interested in the honest version than the polished one. And the honest version is where He works.
John Marsh was raw, dirty, and out of options when God met him. Not in a church. Not in a prayer meeting. In an attic. At the end of himself.
That’s exactly where grace finds people.
If you’re carrying more than you’re showing, you don’t have to keep hiding it. The limp isn’t a liability. It might be the most important thing you bring into every room.
Watch the full session here: Session 6 – Ministry in Word
Credit: Faith Driven Entrepreneur
