Prior To Returning to the private sector and my academic roots in aviation engineering, I was partner in a European consultancy that ran government-to-government aid programs. One of our major assignments involved designing a program to help new entrepreneurs in the former Soviet Union start small- and medium-sized businesses.

These new ventures would either be spinoffs from existing industrial structures or service-related start-ups. In both cases, there were no working models in that part of the world—there were no smallor medium-sized businesses when the Soviet Union broke up, no individual entrepreneurs. Fostering entrepreneurship and company-building would all have to be done from scratch. The tasks looked, and in some ways still look, daunting.

Among those tasks were assisting new governments with administrative procedures for business regulation, and structuring legislation for such areas as taxation, accounting standards and practices, business registration, and product certification. There were also the challenges of dealing with red tape and corruption—how to conduct legal businesses in a climate that was hostile to private enterprise. And not only was the existing economic system in disarray, there had been no acceptable level of environmental protection practices in existing industries, the social and pension systems had collapsed, and the preexisting system of personal fiefdoms (openly known as the system of benefits and privileges) was based on political connections and clout.

In order to cope with the complexity of the assignment, I found my spiritual tools to be the most important assets I brought to the job. There were both immediate challenges and long-term demands. The immediate problems we faced were like acute bodily conditions one might be praying about—they required immediate inspiration, on-the-spot ideas, and the strength of conviction to act on them. When facing short-term problems, we were tempted to rely on organizational or interpersonal skills for solutions. But these skills by themselves will not take you anywhere near a sustainable, that is, enduring and harmonious solution that could lead to further development. I found that the best answers came as I relied on spiritual intuition.

The long-term or big-picture challenges came as I asked myself, "What am I doing here? Why are we involved with a job that is so supremely complex? Will anything we do make a difference in the long run? Can we actually create change?"

I found it very comforting, and a source of inspiration, to know that nothing actually happens that doesn't fit into the divine plan—that there is a supreme intelligence, or universal Mind, which is an instant help when we're in trouble. Nothing is too complex to this God who is infinite Mind.

I believe that each of us is entitled to inspiration by divine design. Inspiration isn't an accident of birth or circumstance. It isn't an occasional visitor that comes when we offer the "right prayers" to a God who is little more than an absentee landlord. But because God is Truth itself, the inspiration He gives us is as universal and constant as He is.

Another important factor in this assignment involved watching my motives. Quite a mixture of motives can be found in the economic development community—from real altruism, to escapism (people running away from the challenges of the world), to ego gratification. Sustainability in any enterprise depends on having clear, pure motives, and essentially spiritual goals—which, to my sense of motivation, means a desire to do the most good for the greatest number, at the least cost to both people and the environment.

One major lesson from my involvement in this aid project came as I learned that we cannot do another's work or learn his lessons for him. We can facilitate learning. We can contribute to others' problem-solving competence. But we can't solve their problems for them or enable them, in one big leap, to hop over their own generations of business and governmental experience.

Sustainable business development within a society that has no history of individual enterprise can't be engineered. It comes with experience. If we try to substitute learning by "textbook" instruction for learning from experience, we will create a greenhouse plant that will wither in the real world of competition and profitability issues.

If my assignment had been to an undeveloped region of the world, the aim would have been to introduce practices that mitigate negative impacts on a nearly virgin environment. In the former Soviet Union, however, with its preexisting environmental problems caused by antiquated industrial practices, the need was to find ways to undo the harm already done. So the question became, how could we make the environment livable again?

Once more, I found it extremely helpful to rely on the power of right motives, and sorting out one's motives is a valuable school called self-examination. Without that investment, we stand on clay feet.

I knew that if our desire was to help a society undo harm, and to help them find more benign and productive ways of conducting business, I could rest assured that the actions we recommended—even with all of their interdependencies and potential repercussions—could not turn into new liabilities. I trusted that due diligence was what was required of me, and that God's management of events would take care of both the response to immediate needs and the big-picture evolution.

I'm thankful to say that a number of the projects my group and I launched are still in place six years later. They have provided a visible signal that progress is possible at this moment. To me, these projects are living proof that prayer is effective and aids in producing sustainable economic growth.