The Problem With Being the Solution

The Intent I Defended

My intent was to help people.

That sentence is true.

It is also incomplete.

I wanted to solve problems, create opportunities, move faster, generate better results, and help people reach outcomes they could not reach alone. I could see possibilities other people missed. I could walk into confusion, identify what was broken, and begin building a way through it. When something seemed impossible, I usually did not hear a warning to stop. I heard a challenge to figure it out.

That ability helped people. It built businesses, created income, opened doors, organized teams, and moved ideas into action. It also became tangled with my appetite for speed, my attraction to risk, my confidence in my own judgment, and my desire for greater outcomes for myself.

I kept moving faster because the results appeared to prove I should.

Then the methods crossed lines that should never have been crossed. Policies were violated. Laws were broken. People were harmed. Legal and financial consequences followed.

For a long time, I wanted the beginning of that story to explain the end of it.

I wanted the desire to help to reduce the seriousness of the harm. I wanted people to understand that I did not wake up wanting to damage anyone. I wanted my heart to serve as evidence that the impact should be interpreted differently.

Intent matters.

But intent is not the only thing that matters.

God sees the motive.

People experience the method and the impact.

Faithfulness must answer for all three.

Built to Fix Things

I did not discover problem-solving in a boardroom.

It began much earlier, growing up around ranch work and the ordinary demands of rural life. Broken things did not repair themselves. Animals did not wait until the timing was convenient. Weather did not adjust to our calendar. If a fence failed, equipment stopped working, an animal needed care, or a job had to be finished, someone had to figure it out.

I became fascinated by the exchange hidden inside a problem.

You could take something broken, understand it, repair it, and receive a reward. Sometimes the reward was money. Sometimes it was dinner. Sometimes it was praise. Sometimes it was the satisfaction of making something work again. Sometimes it was a new skill that would not reveal its value until years later.

The reward did not have to be immediate. Solving one problem taught me how to approach the next one. Every repair added another tool to a toolbox that no one could take away. Resourcefulness became confidence, and confidence became an instinct: send me out, and I will find a way to get it done.

People learned they could rely on that instinct.

So did I.

There is nothing wrong with being useful.

Scripture honors diligence, wisdom, service, stewardship, craftsmanship, and work done wholeheartedly. The ability to see a need and act can be a gift from God.

But every gift requires government.

Resourcefulness without humility can become self-reliance. Confidence without accountability can become presumption. Service without boundaries can become control. Speed without wisdom can outrun truth. A person who is repeatedly rewarded for fixing things can eventually begin believing that every problem belongs in his hands.

I did not recognize that danger while the gift was still receiving applause.

When Responsibility Arrived Early

By high school, the problems were no longer limited to ranch work.

My parents went through a divorce. I stepped into a parent-like role with my brother and a support role with my father during a season of deep depression and suicidal thinking. I learned to scan the environment, anticipate what could go wrong, absorb pressure, and carry responsibilities that felt too important to leave unattended.

Some of that helped our family survive a hard season. Some of it came from love. Some of it came from fear. Some came from a young person trying to create order when the adults and circumstances around him felt unstable.

I need to be careful when I describe that chapter. A child does not cause an adult’s depression, divorce, withdrawal, or decisions. I was not responsible for healing my father or replacing a parent. I was doing what I knew to do with what was in front of me.

But the season taught me a pattern that followed me into adulthood:

When things fall apart, step in. When someone cannot carry the responsibility, carry it for them. When waiting feels dangerous, act. When other people are overwhelmed, become the stable answer.

That pattern can look like leadership. In a genuine emergency, it may be leadership. But when the emergency ends and the pattern remains, help can quietly become enablement. The person solving everything becomes exhausted, and the people around him never develop the muscles they would have needed to carry their own responsibility.

I began learning how to become indispensable before I understood the danger of being needed.

The A+ Nobody Earned

The pattern followed me into college.

When a group project was assigned, I often solved it myself. I could move faster alone. I knew the quality I expected. Delegation introduced uncertainty, and uncertainty threatened the grade. If I took control, the work would be completed and everyone would receive an A.

The result looked excellent.

The impact was more complicated.

My teammates received a grade they had not fully earned. They could present a result without being able to explain how it worked. I became more convinced that carrying everyone was the most efficient approach. They became more convinced that I would.

I solved the project while preserving the problem.

That sentence describes more than college.

There is a form of help that removes an immediate burden while leaving the person less prepared for the next one. It creates relief without growth. It produces an outward win while quietly building dependence beneath it.

The grade measured the project.

It did not measure what the process was teaching us about responsibility.

The Midas Touch

In business, problem-solving became valuable.

People did not only ask me to repair equipment or finish an assignment. They asked me to build companies, create marketing systems, generate revenue, negotiate agreements, rescue projects, solve cash problems, and find a way forward when everyone else had run out of ideas.

I became known as someone who could make things happen.

At one point, articles were written and high level introductions about my “Midas Touch.”

The phrase sounded like a compliment. It said that the things I touched turned into money, growth, opportunity, or success.

But the old story of Midas was never meant to celebrate a man who could turn everything into gold. It was a warning about a gift becoming a curse when appetite governs it.

Once people believe you have the Midas Touch, ordinary human limitations begin to feel like betrayal.

Saying, “I do not know,” threatens the image.

Saying, “This is the wrong project,” disappoints the person who came looking for a miracle.

Saying, “The result will take longer,” feels weaker than promising speed.

Saying, “You must carry your part,” risks losing the deal to someone willing to promise that the client will not have to change.

So I took on situations that should not have been mine.

I worked with people who had placed too much confidence in me and too little responsibility on themselves. I entered deals with the wrong structure, the wrong expectations, or the wrong people because I believed my ability could overcome what wisdom was trying to show me.

Sometimes it worked long enough to reinforce the problem. Sometimes the blowup would happen right away.

Every unlikely win became evidence that the next warning could also be ignored. Every rescue made the role more believable. The greater the problem, the more valuable the solution appeared. The bigger the solution, the bigger the reward could become.

The gift was still present.

But the gift was no longer surrendered.

When Faster Became the Product

I used to say that if money could solve a problem, it was not really a problem. I had heard that from Danielle early in our marriage and loved the idea.

There is a practical truth inside that statement. Some problems are directly financial. A bill can be paid. A tire can be replaced. A debt can be reduced. A business can hire the missing capacity. Money is a tool, and the right resource applied to the right need can create real relief.

But money cannot repair every condition that created the need.

It cannot create wisdom in a person who refuses correction.

It cannot manufacture trust after deception.

It cannot make an unhealthy system responsible.

It cannot turn a shortcut into stewardship.

It cannot heal addiction simply by covering its latest cost.

It cannot make a person whole by making the numbers temporarily look better.

I also believed that the bigger the problem I solved, the bigger the check should be.

That idea trained me to move toward larger problems, larger stakes, faster outcomes, and greater rewards. Eventually I began asking whether I could solve the “faster money” problem without the ordinary work, patience, limits, and accountability of building a healthy business.

I went full speed toward an answer.

Speed can create the sensation of clarity. Decisions happen too quickly for questions to catch up. Movement feels like confirmation. Early results silence the people urging caution. The person producing those results can mistake momentum for permission.

Proverbs 19:2 warns that desire without knowledge is not good and that hasty feet miss the way. The verse does not condemn desire. It exposes the danger of desire traveling faster than wisdom.

My desire to help did not disappear.

It was joined by selfish ambition.

I wanted to help people, and I wanted the outcome to prove something about me. I wanted people to win, and I wanted to be known as the reason. I wanted to solve the problem, and I wanted the size of the reward to confirm the size of my ability.

That mixture matters.

The Heart and the Fruit

Scripture refuses to let us choose between motive and impact.

Proverbs says our ways can appear innocent in our own eyes while the Lord weighs our motives.

First Samuel says people look at outward appearance while God looks at the heart. God sees beneath the explanation, the press release, the public result, and the version of the story we tell ourselves.

Jesus also says that a tree is recognized by its fruit.

In context, He is warning about false prophets and the difference between appearance and character. The passage does not teach that every sincere intention will automatically produce a good consequence. Human beings can mean well, misunderstand a situation, choose an unwise method, and cause real harm.

Fruit still reveals something important over time.

If I repeatedly claim love while leaving disorder, secrecy, dependence, and damage behind me, I cannot keep presenting intention as the only evidence that matters.

If the method requires deception, manipulation, lawbreaking, hidden risk, or the suspension of other people’s judgment, the stated goal does not make the method holy.

James makes the conflict even more direct. He contrasts selfish ambition... which produces disorder with wisdom from heaven, which is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, merciful, impartial, sincere, and full of good fruit.

James does not ask only, “Did you get the result?” He asks what kind of wisdom produced it.

Romans 3 rejects the idea that we should do wrong so that good may result. A desirable end does not baptize an unrighteous means. God cares about the people we hope to help, the heart driving us, and the road we choose to reach them.

Intent and impact are not competitors.

They are both witnesses.

The Truth About Mixed Motives

Repentance does not require me to lie about my past in the opposite direction.

I do not need to say that every desire to help was fake. It was not.

I do not need to pretend that no one benefited from my work. People did. I do not need to deny the businesses built, opportunities created, problems solved, or individuals served simply because later chapters revealed compromise.

But I also cannot use the sincere parts of my motive to defend the sinful parts of my method.

The most honest answer is that the motives were mixed.

Service was present.

So was selfish ambition.

Faith was present.

So was presumption.

Generosity was present.

So was the desire to become indispensable.

Confidence was present.

So was pride.

God-given ability was present.

So was fleshly speed.

Naming the mixture is not an attempt to divide the responsibility. It is the beginning of understanding how the gift became dangerous. If I reduce the story to “I only wanted to help,” I protect the pattern that caused the harm. If I reduce it to “everything in me was evil,” I avoid the harder work of learning how a real gift must be surrendered and governed.

The lesson is not to stop solving problems.

The lesson is to stop using the gift as proof that I should be trusted without limits.

The People Who Carried the Impact

The people affected by my decisions did not live inside my intention.

They lived inside the impact.

They experienced financial loss, broken trust, uncertainty, anger, disappointment, or fear.

My family experienced the pressure and consequences that followed me home. The legal system did not exist merely to evaluate the story I told myself about why I acted. It also had to examine what I did, which boundaries were crossed, and who carried the result.

That is not a rejection of grace.

Accountability and grace are not opposites.

Consequences can remain after forgiveness. Restitution can be required even when repentance is sincere. A person can be loved by God while still being responsible for repairing what can be repaired and accepting what cannot be avoided.

Zacchaeus did not respond to grace with a better explanation of his motives. His response included financial repair. Restitution did not purchase salvation, but grace produced a willingness to address impact.

That matters to me now.

I cannot repair harm by proving that I once hoped for a better outcome.

I cannot ask the people affected to carry my preferred interpretation of the story.

I can tell the truth, cooperate with accountability, make restitution where possible, accept consequences, change the patterns that produced the damage, and allow the sincerity of repentance to be measured over time rather than demanded immediately.

Good intent can explain how a wrong road began.

It cannot make the road right.

I Was Never the Savior

The deepest correction may be simpler than business, money, law, or reputation.

I am not anyone’s savior.

I can serve people. I can solve real problems. I can bring experience, strategy, money, work, relationships, creativity, courage, or clarity into a situation. I can help someone walk around a land mine I once stepped on. I can tell the truth about what happened when I ignored a warning. I can use every skill God placed in my hands.

But I cannot become the source.

Paul corrected the Corinthians when they built identities around human leaders. One planted. Another watered. God made it grow. The servants mattered, but they were not the source of life.

That is the proper position of a problem-solver.

Plant.

Water.

Work wholeheartedly.

Tell the truth.

Use the skill.

Then leave room for God to be God and for the other person to become responsible.

The seasons when people placed more trust in me than in the God they served were not my greatest seasons of leadership. They were some of my most dangerous seasons. Even when someone else offered me too much trust, it was my responsibility to correct the imbalance. Too often, I accepted or reinforced it because their dependence fed my identity. My identity encouraged greater promises. Greater promises required greater control. Greater control made honesty about limitations more difficult.

The cycle could look like service while moving everyone toward idolatry.

I was not helping people by allowing them to believe I was the golden bullet, the Midas Touch, or the answer to every problem. I was accepting a position no human being can occupy without eventually failing the people who placed him there.

Carry the Burden Without Stealing the Load

Galatians places two instructions close together: carry one another’s burdens, and each person should carry their own load.

Those instructions belong together.

Love refuses to leave a person crushed beneath something too heavy to carry alone. Wisdom also refuses to remove every responsibility that would help the person become honest, capable, and mature.

Healthy help asks, “What burden can I carry with you?”

Unhealthy rescue says, “Give me the entire life, and I will carry it for you.”

Healthy service clarifies ownership. It defines what I will do, what the other person must do, what cannot be promised, which risks remain, and where the decision still belongs to them.

Unhealthy service needs to be needed. It quietly benefits when the person stays dependent, confused, impressed, or afraid to move without the rescuer.

That distinction applies in business, friendship, ministry, parenting, and marriage.

A consultant should not build a company that can function only when the consultant is in the room. A leader should not hide knowledge in order to protect authority. A parent should not complete every difficult task for a child and then wonder why the child fears difficulty. A husband cannot take responsibility for another adult’s entire emotional or spiritual life. A friend cannot become someone else’s conscience.

Help should create movement toward truth, strength, responsibility, and God.

If my solution requires permanent dependence on me, I may not have solved the deepest problem.

The Reward That Arrives Later

I have always understood that the reward for solving a problem may not arrive immediately.

As I mentioned earlier, sometimes the reward is money. Sometimes it is a meal, a relationship, a new skill, or the quiet knowledge that a person is better because you showed up. Sometimes the first thing that arrives is fear.

Some of my present circumstances are surrounded by fear. I am facing consequences connected to decisions I made in the past. I do not know every detail of what the next years will contain. The uncertainty can tempt me to treat today as nothing more than a waiting room for judgment.

But the future may reveal a reward that does not look like the one I once chased.

The reward may be a new respect for freedom because I finally stopped taking it for granted.

It may be the ability to tell a man with dangerous confidence exactly where confidence became presumption in my life.

It may be the ability to teach a business owner that fast growth is not success when the system underneath it cannot carry the weight.

It may be children who understand that confession is not weakness and that consequences do not cancel identity.

It may be a marriage made more honest because image no longer gets to control the conversation.

It may be a problem-solving gift that becomes safer because the man carrying it no longer needs to be mistaken for the source.

I cannot use future usefulness to call past harm good. I cannot turn another person’s loss into a prop for my redemption story. What happened deserves truth, responsibility, and repair on its own terms.

But I can believe that God will not waste the repentance.

The Problem-Solver I Want to Become

I still walk into difficult situations.

I still help people who cannot yet see a way forward. I still build businesses, create systems, negotiate solutions, teach lessons, generate resources, protect my family, and use experience earned through both triumph and failure.

But I want to become a different kind of problem-solver.

One who tells the truth before he sells the vision.

One who slows down when wisdom asks another question.

One who can say, “I do not know.”

One who refuses the wrong project even when the check is large.

One who identifies the risk without assuming his ability can control it.

One who helps people become stronger rather than more dependent.

One who gives God the credit without using spiritual language to avoid responsibility.

One who recognizes that repair may require more than an apology.

One who can be useful without needing to be indispensable.

One who measures the solution not only by whether it worked, but by whether it was true, lawful, wise, loving, and faithful.

The goal is no longer to become the answer to every problem.

The goal is to be obedient with the ability God placed in my hands.

The Right Solution

My intent was to help people.

I can say that without using it as a defense.

My impact included real good and real harm.

I can say that without allowing either side to erase the other.

My methods sometimes reflected service, wisdom, courage, and hard work. At other times, they reflected selfish ambition, haste, presumption, and a willingness to cross boundaries for an outcome I had already decided was good.

I can say that without pretending the mixture removes responsibility.

This is what alignment means to me now:

The heart must be surrendered.

The method must be righteous.

The impact must be faced honestly.

The harm must be repaired wherever possible.

The credit must return to God.

And the person being helped must never be taught that I am the source.

I spent years believing my value was found in the size of the problem I could solve.

Now I am learning that sometimes the most faithful solution is a boundary. Sometimes it is a slower plan. Sometimes it is telling someone the work they must do for themselves. Sometimes it is admitting that I am not qualified. Sometimes it is accepting a consequence I cannot outwork. Sometimes it is simply planting, watering, and trusting God with the growth.

I am still a problem-solver.

Prayer

Father, You see beneath every explanation and weigh what is hidden in my heart. Thank You for every ability You have placed in my hands, including the instinct to solve problems and move toward difficult situations. Forgive me for the times I allowed that gift to outrun truth, wisdom, law, love, and accountability.

Show me where service became control, where confidence became presumption, where urgency became haste, and where a desire to help became mixed with selfish ambition. Do not let me use good intentions to minimize harmful impact. Give me courage to confess clearly, accept consequences honestly, repair what can be repaired, and change the patterns that created the damage.

Teach me to carry burdens without stealing another person’s responsibility. Teach me to equip people without making them dependent on me. Surround me with wise voices I cannot charm, pressure, or outrun. Make my methods as faithful as the outcomes I desire.

Keep me in the position of a servant. Let me plant and water with excellence while remembering that You produce the growth. Remove every identity that asks other people to treat me as the source. Let the work of my hands point back to You.

Align my heart, my methods, and my impact. Make me useful without making me proud. Make me courageous without making me reckless. Make me fast to obey and slow to justify myself. Use even this season of consequence to form a man who can be trusted with the next problem.

In Jesus’ name, amen.