Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Ladder Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times we're living in. Today, I want to finish up God's Mergers and Acquisitions, Part 2, which explains how Heaven merges with God's people on Earth.

In Luke 19, we find the parable of the ten minas, in which a nobleman gives ten servants a sum of money and instructs them to be busy growing his investment until he returns. This day of accountability is approaching, and what I'm seeing is that most believers, number one, don't know what God gave them to be busy doing, and number two, can't see the money that He gave them.

Luke 19 tells us they each started with ten minas, however much a mina was worth then. That doesn't matter, because you may be looking at your bank balance and conclude, "Well, the Lord didn't give me anything, so I guess He doesn't consider me a steward." Wrong conclusion. I have found that I never had the money that I needed at the time for what I ended up doing. Not by a long shot.

But I was faithful to do three things. Number one, I spent time with the Lord each day. Number two, I tithed everything that I was given. If all I had was $10, then I gave the Lord $1 of that. And number three, I worked hard at self-discovery, learning what God put inside of me.

The other day I had a dream which referenced a dream from 2010, which applies to this parable in Luke 19. The dream opened and I was upstairs in my grandmother's house looking out the window at all this strange activity going on outside. The town was in turmoil, with sirens blaring and police cars speeding up and down the street.

And all around my grandmother's home were vehicles, cranes, and workmen rewiring the house. Now, my sense in the dream was that the power base for the city was shifting and certain homes were being rewired to receive communication about this shift. I was excited about this, but I was determined to find out what was going on.

I went up to the man in charge and I said, "Surely you've done a background check on me to know if you can trust me to let me in on what's going on." And he said, "Oh, we know everything about you. You're solvent." And the dream ended. Now, this was one of those divine clues the Lord can drop on us in a dream.

The first thing I did was look up what the word solvent meant, because somehow I sensed it was important to this huge electric company and it had to do with my ancestral destiny since I was in my ancestral home. The word solvent means being capable of meeting financial obligations. Now, this certainly relates to the Luke 19 parable, to which stewards were operating in financial integrity.

I recently heard a teaching from Orthodox Israeli Rabbi Anava about this very quality. He was reading from the Gemara, which is rabbinical commentary on the Mishnah. Anava said the Gemara explains that when the soul leaves the body at death, it goes to the heavenly courts, and the first question the soul is asked is this: Did you deal in business honestly?

I found that fascinating. Once again, the Master of the Universe is stressing the importance of solvency and financial integrity. This character quality is foundational to Heaven taking notice and wanting to merge with something that you're doing on the Earth. God is looking for stewards who are solvent.

In part one, I passed on a number of lessons I learned in identifying the specific strengths and skill sets that I was given over various stages in my journey. Now, before revealing my personal experience of a heavenly merger and acquisition, let me give you one final self-discovery exercise to add to what I taught in part one.

Exercise number three is a book called Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Dr. Donald Clifton, based on a study of over two million people. At the heart of this book is the popular StrengthsFinder questionnaire that you can take online absolutely free, and it will generate your top five strengths.

Now, buying the book will take you deeper, but just to give you an idea of how insightful this testing is, let me share a few sentences describing my top three strengths. Number one is called Maximizer, which is described this way.

Guest (Male): With a Maximizer, excellence, not average, is your measure. Strengths, whether yours or someone else's, fascinate you. Having found a strength in somebody, you are compelled to nurture it, to refine it, and stretch it toward excellence.

Candace Long: Oh my goodness, this is what I love to do. I use this strength not only in my teaching and coaching, but creating programs like this one to help you identify your strengths. My number two strength is called Strategic.

Guest (Male): The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It's not a skill that can be taught. It is a specific way of thinking which allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity.

Candace Long: Now, if you've listened to my teaching for any length of time, you see this strength at work in the patterns that I see unfolding on the biblical end of days. My number three strength is called Achiever.

Guest (Male): Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. You have an internal fire burning inside of you. It pushes you to do more and keeps you moving with a high level of productivity.

Candace Long: This trait often threatens friends, colleagues, and family, because most people simply do not understand my drive. They keep trying to get me to chill. So as you can see, each of these three themes reflect a huge part of who God made me to be.

Now, what I want you to see is how uniquely different the Father made each one of us. He is waiting to reveal your strengths, but the step that most people miss is doing your own self-discovery work, and that takes time and commitment. Let's move on now to God's mergers and acquisitions.

I'm going to remove the word "God" from the equation for just a moment and talk about mergers and acquisitions, which was part of my MBA curriculum. In the natural, M&A, or mergers and acquisitions, is a corporate strategy whereby a large company wants to grow and increase its market share.

So it looks for a smaller company doing something similar who is open to being acquired. The big company then buys or acquires the little company and merges its assets, intellectual properties, and management team. In simpler terms, a big fish swallows a lot of little fish and suddenly becomes the kingfish of the pond virtually overnight.

Now let's answer a few questions. Number one, why would a little company want to be acquired? In one sentence, it's to see its vision come to life quickly once it's acquired. I have had a front-row seat inside one of these little companies for over ten years, waiting for just such an acquisition.

In 2015, I went to Israel as a consultant at a business forum to encourage the startup ventures of Messianic entrepreneurs. Israel, as you know, is known for its technology and innovations. And having been called to the business sector in 1970 and led to pioneer in the field of creativity and innovation, I was in my zone.

One of the trip's highlights was visiting one of Israel's most respected incubators for young startups in agrifood and medical technologies. I couldn't wait to learn how the best of the best incubates an idea. And here's what I learned. This big incubator vets hundreds of ideas that they receive every year, ultimately selecting only eight to ten submissions.

They then surround these ideas with money from the State of Israel and management expertise, and they contract to work alongside the startup CEOs for however long it takes to be acquired by a global corporate giant. Now, the payoff is huge.

The new technology takes off immediately, the funds are there for immediate rollout all over the world, and the startup team is handsomely rewarded for all of its sacrifices and the investors get a great return on their money. It is a brilliant system. Now, during the forum, I was drawn to a particular startup whose medical device technology impressed me.

I knew that this would help women all over the world. I felt led to become an angel investor in the company that I'll refer to as "Little Fish," simply to protect the anonymity of current negotiations. I was excited to be on the ground floor helping an Israeli innovation come to life.

In 2017, I went back to Israel to monitor my investment and spend time with the CEO of Little Fish. I felt part of the team. Learning that I had just published my book, The Ancient Path to Creativity and Innovation, the incubator invited me to speak to their startup CEO family. Thankfully, I was warmly received.

Over the next two years, the incubator contracted me to consult with several of their startups who were exploring ways to introduce their products into the United States. Last year I was contracted to put together the creative team and develop the branding icon for Little Fish, whose technology is being well-received into the US market.

It continues to perform clinical trials, submit its findings, and go through all of the regulatory hoops for global certification. All that to say, I know firsthand what it takes for a little fish to prepare itself to be acquired by a big fish such as Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, or Abbott Laboratories.

The second question is: What does a big fish look for in a company to acquire? Now, pondering this part is what has been so revelational. An ideal merger is about much more than the idea or the technology itself. Anybody can come up with a great idea and create some sort of prototype. The business landfill is filled with these.

Rather, what big fish is looking for is an idea with legs. Now, what's that? It's a company who not only owns registered intellectual property but has a solid business plan and management team who has been walking out the vision day in and day out.

Big fish is looking for how much skin you have in the game. Have you put in everything you've got to field-test your product, analyze what works and what doesn't, and keep doing whatever's needed to make it all work? Big fish does a thorough background check on who is leading little fish.

Is the management team solid, credentialed, and proven? Are they trustworthy? Are they solvent? Do they deliver what they promise and get everything done on time? Is their paperwork complete, every time? How do they manage their working capital? Is their IP registered in every country they want to do business in?

Have they complied with government regulations and certifications on a global scale? Does the CEO have the support of her management team and is she willing to keep leading the team? Or is she just looking to make her millions and move to the Caribbean?

Big fish spends years in its vetting process because once they commit, they know little fish inside and out and can prove to their shareholders that this acquisition is going to be profitable and grow the company quickly.

One day in 2023, I was praying about my personal investment in Little Fish, that the right doors would open. And I was specifically asking the Lord to strengthen the corporate infrastructure so that it would be better positioned to be acquired.

Telling the Father that I want to realize a return on my investment because of what I envision doing to reinvest that money into my own kingdom work. Suddenly, the Lord brought to mind the mergers and acquisitions strategy that I had studied so long ago and connected the dots to what the Lord is doing now.

Just as the man told me in the dream, "Oh, we know everything about you. You're solvent." This is what is happening. The Master of the Universe is vetting every servant on Earth to identify those that He desires to acquire, so to speak. Now, once you acknowledge that you're being vetted and agree to the merger, then He can move you to the next phase.

Now you might be asking, who is doing this vetting? Who is reporting back to the Master the stewards that are doing a good job, who have a tireless spirit, a great mission strategy, who walk in integrity, who manage wisely what little they've been given? Who is He getting all those reports from?

Angels. Psalm 91 says that He has given angels charge of His children throughout life. My understanding is that two angels are assigned to each one of us. In Genesis 28, God showed Jacob a ladder between Heaven and Earth with angels ascending and descending upon it.

Now, what I am given to understand is that when the work of one of His servants aligns with what He is looking to build and expand on Earth during the Kingdom, our angels report to their supervisors up the angelic chain of command who ultimately report to the Master.

He in turn sends back angelic confirmation along with specific assignments to assist the earthly servant in expanding on Earth what has been approved in the heavenly council. Now, that same month in 2023, while I was still meditating on this revelation, I had a multi-layered dream with many scenes, which always means that the dream is outlining multiple stages in the dreamer's journey.

Now, the final stage that I saw involved a separate studio run by high-level gifted media professionals. In the dream, I had just spoken at some event and an influential woman suddenly appeared on the scene and pulled me aside. And she said, "I've never heard you present something before, and I believe what you are saying is important."

I was visibly moved that she noticed me, since I rarely receive affirmation from listeners on what I do. I told her how much her words meant to me, and then she leaned in and said this: "Say the word. Tell me what you need and we'll make it happen." Then I woke up. This became a meaningful dream that God used to direct my next step.

During the time that I spent with Him breaking out this dream, I realized that this woman was an angel who was sent to observe what I was doing and teaching. And she was basically telling me, "I'm on assignment representing a team of angels. We're here to help you, but you must be specific about what you need."

Now, this dream shook me. It was part of Heaven's vetting process. The Father was watching to see what I would do next. I spent the next week praying into the dream, asking for wisdom as to what specifically to ask the Lord for. Now, I have revealed in earlier teachings that the Lord has directed me to make petitions to Him many times before, so that part of the instructions I understood.

What was new about this dream, though, was being visibly approached by an angel with an offer to help. Now, this concept may seem out there, but it was confirmed in that the dream itself looked very different from other dreams that I have had over 24 years as a seer.

The action within the dream unfolded like a Steven Spielberg movie rather than a low-budget B movie like earlier dreams. It was as if a new dream director was brought on board to conduct that particular dream. I even made note of this observation in my dream journal, and the Lord confirmed that I had now been assigned to a higher level of angelic oversight.

Now, that was in 2023. Knowing this made this next petition even more important to complete. I was very specific. I wrote down what I was willing to sacrifice financially to expand my teachings and proposed using multiple radio stations to bring my life's work to a close and leave behind a legacy of teachings in the land of my forefathers to prepare others there for the Kingdom.

I specified who I wanted to reach, what it was going to cost. I listed my available sources of funding, what stations I wanted to partner with and why, how long this media campaign was going to take, what my goals were, when I needed to begin, and the deadline that I needed as confirmation from the Lord that I was going in the right direction.

Within two days, while in prayer, the Lord downloaded the funding strategy for the vision, which involved selling a major asset. I didn't hesitate because I knew in my heart that I wasn't alone. My radio production work, my teaching and coaching, publication efforts, all of it, my entire infrastructure and intellectual property was being acquired by the Master of the Universe.

Over the next two years, my company, Audeo Media Group, went to another level, and Lessons in the Ladder Days grew over 5,000% measured in downloads that are reaching people all over the world. I thought that that was my final assignment, but in 2025, the Lord gave me a larger vision of partnering with Salem Boston to produce and distribute Shabbat Shalom, a weekly three-hour radio program taught by a team of teachers to offer listeners a year's worth of Torah study learning God's ways prior to entering the Kingdom.

What has been so marvelous to me is that this work utilizes every single one of the gifts and strengths that I identified within myself over 56 years of self-discovery. Not only am I fulfilled immensely by this work, but it has given me a sense of what I will be doing in the Kingdom. I want this same experience for you.

The final question I encourage you to ask: What can I do to be acquired? Listen to this series again, carefully. Take notes. Pinpoint where you are lacking and make a plan to head in that direction and stick to it. If it's understanding your strengths and gifts, start there.

Don't just sit around listening to me talk about it, do the work by starting with just one thing and doing that thing well. Don't worry thinking there's no way you can do everything in time. He's only looking at your next step. Will you ask Him to show you what He created you to do?

I'm always available for coaching or teaching a group that you put together. To share this episode, go to candacelong.com/podcast and look for the episode God's Mergers and Acquisitions Part 2: How Heaven Merges With God's People on Earth. I'll provide links to the resources that I mentioned in the description notes to this episode.

Please consider studying the Torah with us every week on ShabbatShalomRadio.com. You can check our website for details. I want you to know that I'm praying for you, that you will find joy in doing the work of self-discovery before the Lord. He has so much to show you. I'm Candace Long. I want to thank you so much for listening to Lessons in the Ladder Days. God bless.