Dec 15, 2022
Episode Summary:
Have you ever thought about the fact that God doesn’t need us to
accomplish things in this world, but that he offers the opportunity
for us to partner with him? Have you ever pondered what partnering
with God means, or how to go about it? In this episode, I chat with
Kim Avery about partnering with God in the nitty, gritty details of
business and life.
Quotables from the episode:
- I took a long, hard and honest look at my business and my
client’s businesses and had to ask myself these questions: if our
business partner is the Almighty, all-knowing, all-providing God
why don’t our businesses look any different than the businesses of
those who don’t know God?
- More than that, we don’t we look any different than
entrepreneurs who don’t know God? We are just as hurried, worried,
and stressed as they are.
- We try to do things for God, but the invitation is to have God
with us. That’s a totally different game when we make God our
CEO.
- I’m so thankful to be learning that God really does care about
all the details of my life and that He is available and waiting to
help me with it.
- As Christ-centered entrepreneurs, God wants us to be bold,
humble, joyful, peace-filled, so that what overflows out of us onto
others will be consistent with His character.
- Partnering with God in prayer doesn’t have to be complicated,
fancy, or heroic. Instead it can be BRIEF:
- Business-Related: Abandoning our default
mindset of if it’s going to be, it’s up to me, we invite God into
our daily work, seeking his supernatural presence, purposes, and
power.
- Relevant: Exchanging our typical global
requests, “Bless this business, Lord,” for our granular reality,
such as “Help me to be humble and self-forgetful in today’s meeting
with Bob,” we ask God to work in and through every specific
attitude, activity, and engagement of each particular
day.
- Inside out: Shifting our prayer focus from
a results-only orientation, we pray in cooperation with the way God
most likes to work—from the inside out:
-
- In us
- In our relationship with him
- In our relationships with others
- In our relationship with our business
- The results our work has in the world
- Expectant: Acknowledging that God is
always at work, even when things are not what we’d hoped, each day
we watch for his moment-by-moment movement, trust his promises, and
celebrate his answers.
- Frequent: No longer compartmentalizing our
relationship with him to discrete times of the day, we practice the
presence of God throughout each day, ceaselessly interacting with
him as we partner with him to change the world.
- We all have a head knowledge that God is for me, but we need to
take God’s grand principles into our small, granular reality.
- The failure rate in small business is so high because we need
to shift our focus to what God is doing in us rather than because
of us.
- Failure comes when our contribution outpaces our
character.
- We live in a largely unchurched world, so as entrepreneurs, God
gives us the opportunity to reach those who might not otherwise be
reached because they don’t set foot in a church.
- When we are not trusting God with every aspect of our business,
and instead default to worry and hurry, we are essentially being a
functional atheist, because we are believing God will not
provide.
- Start super small with very specific requests that you know God
also wants for you, then walk expectantly through your day watching
for how He is at work. It’s a treasure hunt and a grand
adventure.
Scripture References:
- Jeremiah 33:3 NASB ‘Call to Me and I will
answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you
do not know.’
- Isaiah 28:16 ESV “Whoever believes shall not
be in haste.”
- 2 Corinthians 9:8 NASB "And God is able to
make all grace overflow to you, so that, always having all
sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good
deed;"
Recommended Resources:
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Guest:
After leaving her career as a counselor to become a Professional
Life Coach, Kim also became an accidental entrepreneur. Coaching
was in its infancy then, so it took her years of trial and error
and training to create a path to success.
Since that time, she’s made it her goal to help other Christian
coaches and entrepreneurs shorten and streamline the business
building process.
Kim is now a successful business coach, Vice-President of
Marketing at the Professional Christian Coaching Institute, co-host
of the Professional Christian Coaching Today podcast, author of The
Prayer Powered Entrepreneur: 31 Days to Building Your Business with
Less Stress and More Joy.
Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson
Audio Technical Support: Bryce Bengtson