Andy Mason (00:01)
Hey, what would it be like to have a normal relationship with God in your place of work? Not just doing the quiet time, check the box, read your Bible at lunchtime, pray with a few people, have a Bible study, but actually in the ins and outs, asking questions, hearing his voice, making tactical changes as you go. Well, today, my podcast guest is Bill Job. Bill has more than three decades experience leading.
Building manufacturing plants in China. And what's really unique about Bill is not that he was equipped, experienced, had the background, had the anything, but literally he learned to hear God's accent. He learned real time how to hear God's voice, apply that, have God as King, not just as consultant, and walk with him in what Bill calls his inconveniently invisible friend.
That's what we're about with Heaven and Business is training you to do the same. Heaven and Business conference coming up in Dallas is all about that. Business people from across the country and gathering together, connecting with one another, hearing keynote speakers, the likes of people like Bill Job, and then the case studies to apply what others are hearing and are doing to our own lives. And then beyond the conference, we've got our growth path.
Which is providing you that journey to apply that same lessons to your finances, your hiring, your firing, your cash flow, your legal, your business growth and development. You can find out more on heavenandbusiness.com. But here's my conversation with Bill Job.
speaker-0 (01:42)
So, Bill, give us a snapshot of business and life for you. Who are you? Where are you? And over the last few decades, what have you stewarded?
speaker-1 (01:53)
So I became a believer when I was twenty one, born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, had to go to California to hear the gospel, which my Tennessee and friends don't like to hear about. And I was in the Navy, stationed for six months in the Philippines, two or three years after that. And when I landed in the Philippines, I asked the Lord to show me what the Christians were so I could get busy and he goes, No. And I ask again and he says no, and I go, Lord, what's up?
And he says, You are so busy, the two of us have no time together at all. Does that sound right? Yeah. I said, Well, what do you want to do? And so he led me into an evening plan. He said, It's real simple. If you talk to me for five minutes, I'd love it if you'd listen for five. And so over the next couple of months I learned to recognize his accent. And he made it easy to do that because there was I was trying to minister to guys who were like out of the hippie culture in the Navy.
But they were doing a lot of drugs and I was hanging around with them, so they thought I was a narc and they put a contract out on me to kill me in town. So I stayed on the base a lot. So actually I wasn't really being super spiritual. I was just kind of bored but hanging out with the Lord an hour or two at night. During that time, he gave me an assignment to go to China for him. We got a chance to move in eighty seven. By then I was married, had two daughters, six and eight years old. And we had
You couldn't have your own company at that time, so that wasn't a business plan. But two months later the laws changed. I asked the Lord if we could do that, and he got we got a green light. So we started a company in eighty eight,
speaker-0 (03:24)
if you had to summarize that period of time, what is the impact that you've seen God do? Now I want you to think what would be the impact of a missionary? We're not saying it's less or more, but missionary typically rely on on somebody else.
to give money so that they can do the work of ministry and then hear the story of what happens. Fast forward to what what's that, four or five decades?
speaker-1 (03:51)
Yeah, well thirty-two years on site there. we wanted to be a blessing to a community and now we look back and we realize we brought in about seventy-seven million dollars in salaries.
speaker-0 (04:03)
What what would have happened if you'd been a missionary?
speaker-1 (04:09)
Typically as a missionary we would have gotten a one point three million dollars for that time period. And instead we didn't need any of the money from the church and we gave money back. We distributed about two point five million dollars in the last seven years, I guess. Just for kingdom stuff. Out of the small factory.
speaker-0 (04:28)
Okay, tell us how many businesses started, turned, sold?
speaker-1 (04:33)
Yeah, there was essentially nine different production lines. they're sometimes grouped together. three companies, I d very distinct companies got started. I gave the first one away at the Lord's leading when a second one came along that I felt like I needed more time to.
speaker-0 (04:53)
You you gave the business away?
speaker-1 (04:55)
Yeah. Well i it's never was mine.
Right?
speaker-0 (05:04)
Okay. It was it wasn't mine. Was that a wrestle?
speaker-1 (05:07)
No. No, I mean if there's a progression of hearing an idea, saying I believe the idea, and then you notice you don't talk like you believe the idea. And I notice that about myself and I go, Well, what does it look like if I actually believe I'm a steward?
speaker-0 (05:27)
Three distinct businesses plus nine production lines that could have each have been spun off independently. Seasons ranging from two hundred to six hundred and fifty employees. What was his background and training?
speaker-1 (05:43)
Philosophy. So the good news about philosophy is it doesn't qualify you for anything, but it doesn't disqualify you for anything either.
speaker-0 (05:51)
Let me think about that. You started with about ten thousand dollars of investment and later had the capacity to invest much larger levels.
And in later years giving averaged about four hundred and thirty thousand dollars for five years, and your best estimate roughly nine to ten million given over about thirty years. Yeah. That's a highly profitable missionary.
speaker-1 (06:18)
Yeah. I my partner's a good business guy.
speaker-0 (06:21)
Just
so people get a context, what what kind of business? Like you think you're gonna go to China and get a job and then and be a missionary. Right. So how'd that work?
speaker-1 (06:34)
Well, when the chance came to have our own company, I prayed about it, got a a green light from the Lord, but we didn't know anything about business and so we said, let's stay really small. I had a guy I was discipling in the States who had the ten thousand dollars that we needed for an
speaker-0 (06:48)
So the ten thousand dollars wasn't even your own? No.
speaker-1 (06:51)
Well, when we moved to China I had a home, sold it, we had three thousand dollars profit, and I packed up the kids and my wife and we went. Right?
speaker-0 (07:05)
If you have clarity, obedience is the natural thing to follow.
speaker-1 (07:07)
If
you don't have clarity, push in for clarity. Our job is to listen, his job is clarity.
speaker-0 (07:14)
Okay, really good. Come back a step. While you're in the navy, you heard God say, What if you spend as long listening as you do talking? Right.
speaker-1 (07:26)
Okay.
speaker-0 (07:27)
Is that for your marriage? Is that for your walk with God? Is it what's that for
speaker-1 (07:31)
That
was my walk with God. He he said I was all kind of freaking out 'cause he said, The two of us we need time together. And the first night it was so awkward. I I was still thinking of a religious context. And so I should have been further down the road, but I actually wasn't at the time. And so I go to the chapel and it's locked up and there's a tree stump next to it and I go, Okay, I'm gonna have time with the Lord and I sit on the tree stump and my mind goes to a church bulletin.
This is like so stupid. And like, okay, what am I gonna do? welcome visitors. Take up an offering, sing a song. And I realized I didn't have a grid for an actual relationship. What normal relationships look like.
And throughout this whole journey he keeps taking me back to normal relationships. I was down in in Brazil, speaking at a business as mission kind of gathering in the in the morning and at lunchtime a guy comes up and he goes, Pastor Bill, I want you to pray for me. And I almost corrected him, said, Well, I'm not a pastor. And the Lord said, Well, you have a business. If you have a business, you're pastor. You have a congregation.
You're responsible for them. And so I d I didn't correct him and I'm listening to him and he says, Well, I'm a a pastor, but I have a full time job and we have to support ourselves that way. And I sell cars. And we sell we have to sell twenty six cars a month to stay open. It was the twenty fourth, I think, of August that year. And we've only sold six. That's not good, right? I'm not great with math, but no I know that's not good. And so I'm preparing
To pray for his business to be more successful. And so the Lord interrupts me and he says, Ask this guy if he's trying to have a spiritual relationship with me. And so, excuse me, sir, are you trying to have a spiritual relationship with Jesus? And honestly, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, what a stupid question. Of course he is. And he goes, Yes, I am. And then the Lord says, Tell him to stop it.
You know how you're swinging on a limb, you know, these things. Sir, I think the Lord wants you to stop doing that. And I'm just praying, Lord, land this plane, they'll get us someplace. And then the Lord says, Tell him to stop it because he does not know how to have a spiritual relationship. Tell him to have a normal relationship with me. Because he can do normal. That is a great summary of everything I've learned in the last thirty years. We all can do normal.
But because it's with him, we put it in a different category and we go weird on it. Right? No, you can listen to each other. Just listen.
speaker-0 (10:15)
So how did you learn to hear God's voice?
speaker-1 (10:17)
Practice. I learned his accent. He's got an accent. the Greek word for voice is tone. There is something unique about him. It's like they say a mother will recognize the the cry of their child. If you can put thirty kids together, she can pick it's that same thing. And and the message. Like, does this come from the world's best father or not? That's a good giveaway.
speaker-0 (10:45)
Tone that comes from the world's best father. And then you just learn to listen.
speaker-1 (10:49)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (10:50)
And then you start to see him do things.
speaker-1 (10:52)
Look,
let me just let me comment. This is easy. I mean, he's the best communicator in the world. He's made us for this. This is not a trick. It's fundamental to relationship. We just need to get it in the right category. That it's a normal relationship who is with someone inconveniently invisible.
Right?
speaker-0 (11:21)
When you hear multiplying kingdom impact, what do you think most leaders misunderstand?
speaker-1 (11:27)
The kingdom. I went to seminary for three years, we never had one class on it. The only metrics that you are given is church planting and church growing. And the k the problem is you can't put a church into a factory. But you can put the kingdom in anything.
And it makes perfect sense if the king is over the company that you're stewarding. Now it's a perfect marriage.
American culture works against you. in certain areas. The Lord asked me one time, What are the chief cultural values of the US? I answered, freedom and independence. And then the Lord said, You know, he's so funny. He goes, You know, they don't exist in my kingdom, right? I thought, Huh, I wasn't quite aware of that. And the other thing is we have a culture that despises kings. Now I have one.
And I have no training of what to do with him. And so I think theoretically we turn him into a consultant.
We make his words optional but important, but ignorable. It doesn't work that way. So I learned more about the kingdom from having a factory than going to seminary. Because in the factory it's an entity that you're operating. The kingdom is an entity he's operating. I mean it's the biggest thing going on in the world. We've all experienced in one sense that we're transferred from a kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.
And now he's beginning to use us in more of those transfers and expansions.
So a group of missionaries in Turkey asked me to speak on the issue of if as missionaries now have companies that they're starting in in closed countries, but they're used to having an hour in the morning where it's kind of protected, you know, their time with God. And they call it the hour of prayer. He said, How do you protect the hour of prayer that when you're working eighty, hundred hours a week starting a new company? It's a very good question. And so I just asked the Lord, what do you want to say to them?
And he goes, What part of prayer are you talking about? He says, Are you talking about the part where you guys talk or the part where I get to talk?
speaker-0 (13:39)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (13:41)
And so I said, I think they're talking about the part where they talk. And he said, Tell I love for whatever they can do. An hour is precious and I love being with them. But the approach is relationally dysfunctional. I said, Can you explain that?
speaker-0 (13:59)
The approach. Your approach to me is relationally dysfunctional. God. Yeah.
speaker-1 (14:06)
Yeah. We do a lot of that. It's because he's invisible. If you could see him, you'd know exactly what to do. It's it's not hard to figure out. So I said, What do you mean and what do want to say? He says, Well, what you guys are forgetting is let's say seven to eight, we're together, you're in your chair drinking your coffee, reading the book, probably not even talking to me or listening to me. But then you get up and you go about your day and I'm right there y at your elbow. You use that phrase. I'm right there at your elbow all day
and you never talk to me again all day until the next morning at seven o'clock. You're rude.
So I said, What do you want to tell him? He said, I'd love it if they if you just check in with me every six minutes. And if you have anything to say or ask, just go ahead and shoot it up. Let's just touch base. And you can actually develop a habit of doing that. It's natural for a Christian.
to do this. It's not unnatural. It just makes a lot of sense.
speaker-0 (15:08)
So that's how a philosopher ends up with hundreds of employees. Yeah. And doesn't die under the weight of it.
speaker-1 (15:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
Don't don't take it as a goal to try to love people. Take it as a goal to abide in Christ. He loves them. I I got this later on.
The company I gave away that I mentioned, four years later, the guy I gave it to invited me to a kind of a banquet with about sixty of the old employees and there was a new girl I'd never met before. She'd been in the company for six months, and she came over and sat next to me, she said, I want to get to know you. And I said, Well, that's possible, but I'm curious why you would say that. And she said, Y you don't know this, but these people talk about how much you love them every single week.
But it had been four years since I'd been there. And I'm trying to get my mind around what's happening, because I wasn't trying to love them. And then I realized, it's this is so easy. I'm trying to abide, and he's giving me little nudges. Like, okay, ask me Jun how her son is doing. He had been sick. So I ask her. And she thinks I'm the best boss in all of China because I ask her about her son. Touch this guy in the shoulder. Tell that guy he's doing good.
You get these little subtle things, you don't even notice them as an issue. They interpret it as being loved by God. We're just the vessel. We're not doing the heavy lifting in any of this stuff. And so four years later, this is still reverberating in that company. That's incredible. And again, I'm the visible one of the partnership, but the invisible partners does all the hard work.
speaker-0 (16:56)
So what's the most fruitful outcome of your life's work?
speaker-1 (17:00)
Seeing people connect to the Lord and get their own instructions, get their own assignments. I feel like if they try to duplicate something I do, it's gonna be very short lived. But if they get connected to the head of the church for their own assignment, that will never stop. And they'll get accurate identification. So I came into work one day and Xiajiang was not at his work table and I asked where he was and they go, Bosh, you didn't hear he quit.
Shao John quit. What do you mean he quit? Yeah, w well why? Well, apparently God told him to go home, start a company, and plant a church. Really? Who gave him authority to do that? Boss, isn't that what you did? this is contagious. And so then four more people, one by one, were assigned by the Lord to go home.
Plant a church, start a business in the hometown. Two girls went into a ministry among minorities just because the Lord had told him to do that. Those were the ones I knew about. I was in Australia in August and met two girls who I knew as like three or four year old kids. They were children of one of the employees. And they filled me in on their dad. Their dad left the company twenty eight years ago. And they we got on a video call and he had
developed a dental like related business in another town and he took me upstairs and he was so proud to show me the 80 chairs that were set up for the church above the dental practice. And I I didn't know anything about this guy. And the the daughters are saying he still quotes you all the time. So why I didn't I'm not that smart. my friend is
I bet the Lord gave me some things to say to him and they resonate with him. Yeah, that proof.
speaker-0 (18:56)
Friend.
speaker-1 (18:57)
Yeah. He's really smart.
speaker-0 (19:01)
Bill, would you just release however you want to a blessing
Over people in the room. Do we just get it?
speaker-1 (19:11)
In Jesus' name I break off every lie, every deception, every cultural misdirect that keeps everyone here from seeing the pure simplicity of a childlike relationship with you, our our our host, our fellowship, the Father and the Son and the Spirit. And we just ask you, Lord, to draw us to yourself.
Each one on our individual trajectory and individual path, healing the wounds of our hearts, breaking away the truths, and giving us such a joyful hunger for you, for more of you, Lord. And we just thank you so much that this is really what it's always been about. And it's so much easier to attain than we thought. It's not knowledge based, it's not religion, it's not any of those things. It's just pure.
normal relationship with a group that happened to be inconveniently invisible. So give us l like those lenses you take to the 3D movies. Grant us lenses to see you, to know that you are with us and to understand what naturally would be the normal response to your presence in our life, twenty four seven. In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Andy Mason (20:45)
Bill's story is amazing, but the relationship behind it is supposed to be normal.
The invitation for you is to develop your own walk with God in your place of work. Are you in the situation where you're treating God like a consultant rather than as your friend and king? Well, take a moment now and just go back and say, God, forgive me for where I've reduced you to an advisor rather than someone who walks with me and I'm stewarding your company. Then take some time to pause and think and listen.
What is he saying to you and how can you build that? How can you apply the lessons that you from Bill Apply that to your own business. That's what we're about with Heaven in Business. And that's what's going to happen with creating room for you to do the same at the Heaven in Business Conference in Dallas coming up soon. You can find out more about that Heaven in Business Live.
And if you're serious about growing further and building this into a lifestyle, not just an event, then join us on the growth path. You can find that on the heavenandbusiness.com website where we walk with you over a 12-month period, building the habits, the lifestyle, the wisdom, and gaining this with others as you're applying a walk with God in your daily work to partner with God, build better business, and multiply kingdom impact.
