Andy Mason (00:01):
Hey, welcome to the conversation. This is Andy Mason and you're listening to Authentic Conversations around the messy intersection of faith, family, and Business. And you would've heard last session around how God's spoken to us about transitioning or expanding to the East coast. Today I want to just unpack a little bit of a, of a process of how do you go about getting an idea, building a business, dreaming with God? What does that look like really in three areas. One is the coming up with vision or the idea. Two is that plan, like turning that into a plan. Three is the execution of that plan and just using the story of what we are doing right now in terms of how to do that or how I do that, what works for me. I want to encourage you as part of this journey with God, he doesn't just tell us what to do, he actually invites us into a journey.
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The good part about that is it's an invitation to a relationship. So much of us want their destination or the outcome to be fixed, determined and get there as fast as possible. But there's so much that goes on in the day-to-Day wonder and the day-to-Day, getting to know you, walking with you. That's the beauty of Christianity. Every other religion, it's about your effort to attain to something some higher being realm power. The beauty of Christianity, it's not that God recognized that you can't, you're never going to match up. And so he came down to us, which is absolutely profound, that God would make himself one of us, come and live among us, pay the price for us to access this union, this walk with him. So that's what we're on this life plan to do is what does it look like to walk with God?
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And that's what we are all about with heaven and business, equipping you to partner with God in your work and engage in the wellbeing of the city you serve. So let's bring it back to what are we going to talk about today? So how do I dream with God? Come up with vision, turn it into a plan and then execute. So just there are going to be a couple of things that you're going to get out of today. I cannot unpack the entire process in 20 minutes, but here we go. Three keys to start you off. Three keys to understand this. And these are approaches of people that I see that just like you got to choose which one are you, and number one is passive. Number two, performance. Number three, partnership. So in my walk with God, is it passive? Is it? It's just like whatever will be will be and God will tell me what to do and I'm not going to do anything.
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He tells me what to do and I pray, God, what do you want me to do? And I don't hear anything. So I don't do anything that's passive, that's sitting back waiting for God to act. And there is so much more. There's so much more. It's not passive. If you have walked with God more than a few years, more than three years, that's what the disciples did. They walked with Jesus for three years. Then he left him and said, you guys, you've got it now. Run with it. They were way less equipped than you and I are. So there is so much more for you to access. This is an invitation. Grab a hold of the book, God with you at work. It will help you grasp that and realize, oh wow, I'm invited to do something more. Second is performance, which is trying to prove how much you love God by how well you do work, discipline focused.
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Those things are all good, but that is not a partnership. That is you and your efforts that you trying to hold onto God, trying to prove that you can do this, trying to perform your way into his pleasure. While that may be noble and good and look wonderful, it's usually accompanied by striving and just this whole thing of perform, perform, perform. It's never enough. God is never satisfied. I am never satisfied. I'm continually beating myself up. What's the invitation to partnership Where? How much of God, how much of you? It's all of you and all of God. It's this thing of grace, undeserved love, which is there's nothing that I can do and the power to transform any situation, the power to transform any situation, which means that I have the power to do this. This is beyond my own ability, but I tap into something that is supernatural, that's called my walk with Jesus.
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That's called this relationship with him that I lean into every single day and I'm leaning in because why? He is leaning into me. Psalm 40 says, I cried out to the Lord, he inclined himself to me and heard my cry. That's this. That's the God of all creation is leaning in to you. Will you Psalm 46, 10, be still and know him and build a relationship just like you would build with a person. Moses walked with God and talked with God face to face like a man talks to his friend. If Moses can do that in the old covenant, so can we with who we have access to today, the Holy Spirit. So those three things, where are you at? Are you all about passive, just waiting God for do everything? Are you performance, which is all you do? Everything. And then God shows up sometimes.
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Or it's this partnership where you're not sure where you stop and he starts. It's just this relationship that the two of you are walking together and working it out. So let's break it into some other categories. So vision. How do I come up with a vision? Well, again, I told this story. You can jump onto this last podcast coming up with this hearing God saying, expand heaven and business to the east coast. I have now have a vision for where we're going, but it wasn't through my great ability. It was actually listening. Actually, if it was just up to my ability, I would've messed it up because I was so focused on performance, trying to accomplish something, trying to obtain the task. Read, just listen to that story about trying to find the location where we would be going. Day one, I'm just irritated. Day two, I'm discouraged because I'm going too fast and trying to grasp it and get to the destination as fast as possible rather than slowing down and enjoying the journey, the process, the moment that I leave joy behind, which is not necessarily happiness but joy, it's an internal inside job.
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The moment that I leave joy, peace, and hope behind, I've left my partnership with God behind. I've got into my own ability. That's what I did. So I had to slow down. There's this story in the Bible of these two people, Mary and Martha. Martha is running around doing great things, great things, but it's all performance. It's ordering, doing, rushing, running, setting goals. All of these things are good things unless they distract you from the one thing that is most important. One word thought idea from God is better than everything else. So Jesus says to her, Martha, Martha, you are busy and distracted with much serving. As in you can do too much. You're leaning in too hard. Slow down, be still. Mary has chosen that which is greater. Sit at my feet and listen to my voice. So what's the key to vision and goal setting with Jesus?
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It's actually being still, it's listening. It's being aware and cultivating this relationship to hear his voice. If you say, well, I don't know how to do that, jump onto our website, authentic solutions.com and search for a course called, Hey God, what now that will literally walk you through a 12 session mini course on how to hear God for practical decisions you need to make on a daily basis. It's real, it's practical. It's worked for me and it can work for you. That's the most natural thing. So number one is the vision and goal setting with Jesus. I have a goal, I have a plan, but I'm just plucking numbers or a direction out of the air. I'm doing that in relationship, asking questions like, Hey God, what's your dream for me this year? What's your dream for my company this year? When you look at me?
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What do you see? What do you have for me to learn this year in the context of life and business and family? And then you write down the thoughts that you hear. So that's number one, the vision, the goal. Number two, the plan. You say, well, I don't plan. I just trust God. Yeah, how's that working for you? There is a plan. Jesus had a plan. He was following a plan. He had a purpose. Actually, it was written about him hundreds of years before he was born. So it was like there was parts of it that was scripted. And if you read the book of Matthew again and again and again, it says in order to fulfill that which was written, it was a plan. We are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared in advance for us to walk in.
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What is that? That God has a plan for you and it's good. Jeremiah says this, I know the plan that I have for you, plan for good and not for evil. And Romans eight, all things work together for good, for those that love him, and according to his purposes, God is a plan. So you have a plan. So I take the vision that I have and I map it out. How can I break that down? It is something that is practical. And again, I'm doing that with a firm grasp of peace, hope, and joy in the process. But I'm mapping out, one of the keys for me is wise counsel, wise counsel, people with wrinkles and body scars. Not someone that's naive and never been in a battle before, but someone who's seasoned, who's walked through this, who has body scars and has learned from those body scars as opposed to they're still running around with a knife stuck in them, bleeding everywhere, bleeding over you offended with everything.
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I'm not going to listen to that person. I mean, listen to the somebody who's got grace has walked with wisdom, has kindness that I'm not afraid to pay for that advice because it's worth it. So I'm looking to make a plan, encourage you. What's your plan for this year? I'd encourage you. Are you one of those people? That's the whole ready, fire, aim or fire ready? What are you in terms of? We're all different kinds of people. So work that out, understand who you are, and then partner with God with that. Okay, I've got a tendency to just jump in without planning. Okay, well, perhaps you could get some wise counselors around you to make a plan. Cool story on that. I was talking to a friend, his business was going sideways and he was blaming his business partners. I have a conversation with him and finally I say to him, Hey, this is not your business partners.
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This is you and this is why. And he pushes back and says, ah, you're just agreeing with him. You're just on their side. You've just left him to their story. And I said, no. And I gave him four reasons why. This is you. You're to build a very significant business. You're spontaneous. You love this vision, you love this charisma, you love connecting with people, but you haven't laid down the plan. And then as I'm talking to him, knowing that I could potentially lose my friendship with him because it's not fun. The feedback that I'm giving him, by the way, this is a friend. I'm not getting paid to do this. I'm giving this because I care for more for him than I care about how he feels about me. So what happened in that moment is what I would call a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge.
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I said, actually what you need is you need someone that's built a company the size of what you're looking to build, and you need this person to mentor. And here's what kicked in. I said, close your eyes right now. God's going to show you the picture of someone that will be a guide and a mentor with you afterwards. He says to me, Andy, I didn't believe anything of what you were saying and I didn't want to do it. I didn't agree with you. I just went along with it because of my friendship. But as soon as I closed my eyes, I saw the picture of somebody that I don't like. This is get this. Your advisors won't be all people that you like because they're not like you. They're different. You need someone to help you grow. And in order to grow, you've got to have some feedback and some input that is outside your wheelhouse, your experience of what you can do in your own ability that will force you cause you or invite you into growth.
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So the next day, my friend approached this guy that he doesn't like and said, Hey, I was wondering if we could have a conversation. I was wondering if you'd be willing to mentor me in growing my business. Now what you dunno about that guy is he'd built a billion dollar business. So in terms of being a position to mentor, brilliant, but he's everything that my friend is not structured, disciplined, detailed. He's got all of that down to a t plus Godly moral excellence. So this guy, when my friend asked him saying, would you be willing to mentor me? This guy says, oh, you know what? Two years ago I got a prophetic word that I'd be mentoring or walking with your company. I was waiting for you to ask, get that? Within two weeks, that expert was looking at the business, looking at the accounts and uncovered massive transactions that were going on that would have sunk the business if he hadn't listened to wise counsel and made a plan.
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What's the point? Planning with Jesus is a beautiful thing. Planning with wise counsel, plans fail for the lack of counsel, but with wise counselors, plans are established. That's the book of Proverbs. So number one, vision dreaming with God. Number two, the plan. Number three, execution. I just want to highlight this is the day to day getting out and doing something, it's messier than what you think. Even the most noble, godly, divine strategy from heaven is not clean, tidy, and beautifully laid out. It is messy. How do I know that? Look at the book of Luke chapter two. So we're talking thousands of years of prophetic words plan in advance that God is going to insert a savior into the world, even down to where he's going to be born. Now what do we see? There was no room in the inn, so they had to go into a manger, place this baby, the savior of the universe in a manger.
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What's the point? Don't you think that Joseph could have been more organized, more planned if you had your wife and you know that you've got to go to your hometown and get for this? They were doing a consensus, don't you think? I mean, how would your wife have responded to you? It's like, ah, sorry, I forgot to make arrangements. We're just going to have to live in the outhouse, in the back room with the animals. How's your wife? What kind of feedback is she going to give you for me? That would not be good. Not be good at all. And this is the savior universe. What's the point? It was messy. It was smelly. They had to pivot and adjust and do things differently. Just because you're following God doesn't mean your execution is going to be clean and perfect. I mean, look at Peter just like learning the time that he took initiative and then the time that he didn't take initiative, cutting someone's ear off, trying to protect Jesus.
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Jesus is like, oh, Peter, not again. Then he picks up the air of the servant and puts it back on. It was when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane. What's the point? It's messier than you think, and it's okay, get up, learn, keep moving, keep navigating forward. There's this whole thing about entrepreneurism, which is so much in the kingdom of God, is as you take a risk, your ears will hear a voice from behind you saying, this is the way walk in it. Most of us are waiting for the voice in front of us saying, come over here and do this and do this and do this. No, you don't grow as the sun when you're just told what to do. You grow when you realize, oh, I already know what to do. I know what is noble and right. It's on the inside of me, not external.
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It's an internal governing system. And as I go, I am listening for his voice, editing my way, adjusting. If something doesn't work, I adjust it, edit it, rearrange it, try it again and keep going. So what's the point? Where are you at? Are you passive and you need to get a fire up your backside and get moving and actually engage with God? It's an interactive invitation. Are you all in performance? It's all about you and you are grinding over grace? No, it's grace over grind. It's his amazing power at work within you. Which doesn't mean you throw out the plan. It means you have a plan. But you do that in relationship and you stay aware of peace in the process. You stay aware of connection with people. It's not about transaction, it's about relational progress. It's about Ford Taylor's book Al Leadership. It's this invitation into partnership.
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And through this partnership, I dream with God. I turn that dream into practical action steps that I'm moving forward and then I execute. I commit to myself and to others to make daily steps, daily actions that move me towards this great and noble goal, vision idea. And we look back and say, look what the Lord has done. This is amazing how fast we're growing in momentum and favor and growth, and I am so grateful. So I bless your week, trust this is of value to you. Jump on, subscribe like this, share this comment, and thank you for walking with us as we seek to connect, train and activate you and your partnership with God at work, and engage in the wellbeing of the city that you serve.
