Episode 153 - Hearing the Voice of God with Bill Job
You no doubt have heard the saying that the primary purpose of business is to increase the value for its shareholders.
Well, today’s guest might not agree with that. Instead, Bill Job would tell you that that idea is a little shortsighted. Instead, he believes that the purpose of business is to create eternal value.
But what does that mean, and how does that work in practice? And how do you hear from God to know that the work you’re doing is having an eternal impact? We’ll let Bill walk you through the work he’s doing in China and explain for himself...
Episode Transcript
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Bill Job: There's something interesting in the Greek language, you know, the scripture tells us over and over, but you're going to hear his voice, you're going to know his voice, going to recognize his voice. That word for voice is tone. It could be translated tone. Actually, it's like his accent. He's got a particular tone about him and that once you recognize which of the voices are going off in your heart, you can discern, OK, I don't have to listen to this one. I don't have to listen to that one because they're trouble. But this one I better pay attention to.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I'm here with William. William. Greetings, brother.
William Norvell: It's good to be here. And we're bringing a Bill on, so it's going to get confusing for everybody.
Henry Kaestner: That's right. Well, yes, one is an Alabama fan and the other one is not maybe is Bill, are you an Alabama fan?
Bill Job: My daughter and son in law live down there, so I've learned to take it on.
Henry Kaestner: Oh, my God.
William Norvell: Amen, amen. This is going to be a great day.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so here's we're going to do something a little different this time. And it's fun when you've done 130, 140 of these is we have to do something completely new. What we typically do is we pray before we go live. We pray with our guest. Before we go live. We count backwards three to one. We clap and then we go and we're off to the races. Today, we're going to do something a little differently because the guest, quote on quote, kind of calls for it. And it's a lesson that I have learned. We're going to talk about this a bunch. But Bill has helped me to understand more about the importance of inviting the Holy Spirit into what I do all throughout the day. And so rather than just pray before our time gets started, we're going to pray live with you as you're listening to this on a run or in the car or with a bunch of friends around a conference room table. We're going to pray and we're praying right now on December 1st of 2020. You might be listening to this in May of 2023. But wherever you are, invite the Holy Spirit into your time. As you listen to this, as we invite the Holy Spirit, it's a God that's above all time. We invite God into our time together right now so that your heads, wherever you are, please, unless you're driving, in which case, don't bow your head. Just pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the way you love us. Thank you for our guest. Bill, dear Lord, we don't want to perfunctorily ask that you'd be with us. We don't want to just celebrate the fact that wherever two or more are gathered that you're here as well. We know that you are. We thank you for the fact that you are faithful to that and that your promises are real. But dear Lord, we want to actually we want to invite you in, we want to beg of you to be with us. And not just a symbolic way, because we are the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast and you'd expect that we would our audience might expect that, but because we really want you to be here, we want you to guide this conversation. If we're listening to this, we want you to be able to open up our heart, our mind, our soul to the messages that you would have us learn. And so that as we finish our 40 minutes or so together, that we might know you more fully and seek to live for you more earnestly, out of gratitude, out of conviction and out of obedience. We pray for this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen, Bill. So it's super cool to have you. Where are you? In China. Are you back stateside?
Bill Job: I'm stateside.
Henry Kaestner: Gotcha. So do you feel like a fish out of water? A little bit. What is it look like for a guy that grew up in the States, but he spent so much time in China coming back to America?
Bill Job: It's difficult. It's not as easy as you would think. They say that reverse culture shock is harder on you than the initial culture shock. And we're experiencing a bit of that. But I'm trying to figure out how does the Kingdom operate in the US and is it different than it is over in China? Because I got to where I think I understood a bit of it over there. And now I'm trying to figure out how does it work over here.
Henry Kaestner: So I'd love to get your perception of it. Before we do that, though, there's kind of an appetizer. Give us something that somebody has spent. And how long have you been in China now? 32 years. OK, that's a long time. So you coming back and you've been obviously you visit frequently, but so you come back in the reverse culture shock. What's something that surprises you as somebody grew up in America? But I spent so much time overseas coming back in and you're like, I can't believe they do this. Give me something.
Bill Job: One of the things I think is the degree to which our pursuit of independence actually interacts with how we relate to each other, because in the States we end up culturally really liking the idea that we live independently. But in China, they don't have that as a cultural norm and relationships actually have become very, very important to them. So most of my friends stay in touch with their third grade classmates and I can't even remember a third grade classmate. But because it's important to them to have significant relationships throughout their whole life, they actually hang on to them and they invest in them in a way we don't over here.
Henry Kaestner: That's very interesting. I was reading a book, a new book by a woman named Rebecca McLaughlin that's called Confronting Christianity, and she talks about some of the challenges that we have in intimate relationships. And she talks about the different sacrifices that the folks in the early church had to endure and some of the crosses that they had to take up. But she said one of the things that you don't see much of in the Bible, you hear about Paul being shipwrecked and all these things, but you don't hear of him or others really being lonely. The early church was in a community together. There was no loneliness, isolation. And it strikes me that it's interesting that in China, the same thing sounds like that that happens. And then you come here and you see people living independently in isolation and it feels alien to you and it should feel alien to you, should feel alien to us. It's noticeable as we get started. Just give us a bit of a biographical sketch. Who is Bill? How long has faith been a part of your life? How in the world did you get to China?
Bill Job: OK, so I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I think we thought we were, but I didn't have any kind of a relationship with the Lord, and none of us would have understood that. I ended up in California, in the Navy, and my drinking buddy invited me to a church and I asked him what kind it was. And he gave me a name that was very evangelical. And I said, no way. And then he said to get me a date with California's junior miss. And I said, OK, maybe so. Anyway, I visited and these people just loved me in a way I couldn't understand. And after a month, I ended up experiencing that relationship with Christ. That was in 1969. I was in the Navy for another three years. And toward the end of that, I was stationed in the Philippines. And the Lord had kind of chastised me about not having any time with him alone. And so I was developing a habit every evening with spending an hour or two just walking on a soccer field. And he had said that the only requirement for this time was if I spoke to him for five minutes, which he hoped I would, I needed to agree to listen for five minutes. It really was a very profound, basic relationship, what I want. But I began to actually hear him. He's got an accent, you know, so you have a number of voices that you entertain and his voice has an accent. And once you start recognizing his accent, then you can pick him out of the other kind of noise and then begin to discern what it is that he wants you to do and that. Got me started on the right path during that time,
Henry Kaestner: so all I want to stop you for just saying, because I want to hear about how you've come to understand. He said two things here that are really, really important. One is that Relationship 101 is to spend as much time listening as speaking. I probably I don't speak very much to God, but I probably spend it's probably 99 percent, one percent if it's that. So that's going to the impact that a little bit. And then tell us more about this accent and understanding how to listen for God's accent.
Bill Job: Well, I think in that season, I first really started noticing it because I was in the Navy and this was in the late 60s and a lot of hippies were enlisted overseas. People kind of changed. They morphed into something else. And I felt like the Lord wanted me to minister to the guys in the barracks where I lived. I was an enlisted guy and after two months, I went back to the Lord and one of those evening walks and I go, Lord, I think we need to quit this because it isn't working. And I don't hear voices in my ears because he doesn't sit on my shoulder. He's in your heart. So you hear it's something that happens in your heart. And I think he downloads with data packs in a sense that you can understand something he wants you to understand really fairly rapidly. And so when I was saying I wanted to quit trying to hang out with these guys because it was a problem, he said, yeah, it isn't working. Do you want to know why? And I knew I wasn't creating that voice myself. And I said, well, yeah, OK. He says, because you don't love these guys. And I thought, oh, I think it just got busted because I don't I was doing it out of a sense of obligation. He said, why don't you just shut up and go listen to them and even listening to them. And this is something I learned. And so you don't need to be talking all the time was the basic concept. And so I went back for another two months and I tried to follow what he said. And then I was called into the captain's office of the squadron we were in and the captain said, these people want to talk to you. And I think it was somebody from the Pentagon. And what they wanted to know was how I was doing it, because I was also kind of hosting a drug abuse program for the guys in the Navy. And I said, how do I do what? What do you want to know? What's the question? He goes, Well, you have the most successful drug abuse program now in the Pacific fleet in the last two months. And we want to know how you do it. And it turned out that by me trying to not minister to these guys, the Lord is actually showing up and they were experiencing his love through me. I had to represented it and they were now becoming free from their drugs. And then they were confessing that to the captain of the squadron and they were telling him that now we're off of this stuff. And apparently there was a number of them. And so got the interest of what I heard was the Pentagon at that time, they wanted to kind of do best practices for drug abuse programs in the Navy. But that's what I heard that accent, because he said, you want to know why this isn't working. It's because you don't love these guys. So that's something you tend to remember. And then I heard it again. Do you want to fix it? And I recognized, oh, that's that same accent that gave me that other thing. And I began to get familiar with his tone. There's something interesting in the Greek language. You know, the scripture tells us over and over, but you're going to hear his voice. You're going to know his voice. It's going to recognize his voice. That word for voice is tone. It could be translated tone. Actually, it's like his accent. He's got a particular tone about him and that once you recognize which of the voices are going off in your heart, you can discern, OK, I don't have to listen to this one. I don't have to listen to that one because they're trouble. But this one I better pay attention to. And that's when I began to get it. It's almost like a habit or a set of experiences of that voice. And so when that voice said, I want you to go live in China for me, that's your assignment. I go, oh, OK. I didn't like the assignment. I didn't want to go there. It wasn't really a positive experience for me, but it was clear. And then I found like two or three months after that, I got out of the Navy and I met a guy who was in California in the Bay Area, and he invited me to his home for a party and ended up introducing me to some people at his church. And the church was the largest Chinese church outside of China at that time in the 70s in Chinatown in San Francisco. And a year after that, I was full time pastor, had never been to Bible class. And so I'm thinking, OK, I got that voice. He said, I'm going to live for him in China now without lifting a finger. I'm in a Chinese church pastor accented English speaking quotes. And so I'm thinking I do see the pattern and it gave weight to the idea that that accent really was him.
Henry Kaestner: So I remember you were a pastor in a church, but then you're also learning down at PBC Peninsula Bible Church, you're learning theology and run over to the church and preaching it that night, right? Yeah.
Bill Job: Well, what happened was the lovely folks who just love me to the Lord made me a Sunday school teacher over the college kids the next week. So I'm a week old in the Lord. And now I've got some college students and I'm like two, three years older than they are. And I honestly did not know a thing. And so I found out that PBC was up the street, this really gifted teaching church, I would go to their 8:30 service, learn something, go to my 10'clock class and regurgitate it. And that's how I began to realize that the Bible was actually knowable. I didn't think it was noble. I had this mystical, weird sense of, you know, special people can read it to make sense. But I wasn't one of those guys. But the way they opened it up, you could begin to sense, oh, not only do I understand this passage, I understand how to understand other passages. It was really encouraging.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so you're teaching this class, you're getting trained up, you're growing in your faith. There are probably lots of different things that I'm going to end up glossing over through this. But how do you get back to China and tell us about just give us an overview of some of the businesses that you're involved in.
Bill Job: OK, so I knew that I was to live there someday, and that was delivered in 72. But I had to wait until 87 for an opportunity to come. I was speaking to a Chinese conference and somebody told me about a particular city called Xiamen, where they were allowing foreigners to bring their own children if they wanted to come and study Mandarin. So I was sort of cocked and ready looking for an opportunity. But it wasn't easy to go then. So we moved in eighty seven and it was because that university alone would let us bring our children and study Mandarin. But there was no plan for any BAM operation. That concept wasn't there because you could not have your own company at that time. Everything was a joint venture and they were all disasters, so it wasn't on the radar. Two months later, the laws changed, allowing foreigners to have their own businesses. I prayed about it. I felt like the Lord said, sure, if you want to go ahead. Sometimes he just says: if you want to do this, that'll be fine. He doesn't make decisions for you, gives you choices. And so we've put in an application. We thought it would be good if we don't get a company for a year or two because we're not prepared. We had no money, no market, no ideas. And I asked someone how long would it take to get a license? And they said nobody's done it before. We think a year and a half is a good estimate. And I thought, great, I might be just finishing up two years of language work at the company, ready to rock and roll, gives me a year and a half to get ready. So we put the application in and it came back in thirty days approved. And so now we're a year and a half ahead of schedule and we still don't have anything, you know, really planned. Our first company was a hand tied fishing fly company because my partner in the States wanted to do that. But he got ill with ALS and died about a year into the project. So we had a lot of challenges after that.
William Norvell: Wow Bill, thank you for sharing that. And I want to dig into Polygon Composite a little bit. I want to go a little deeper into the company. You have what it does. And of course, as we move into that, we want to talk about some of the manifestations of the spirit and how you run your company from that perspective. But to start, just what do you do? What did you set up there? And where is the business today?
Bill Job: Well, the company that really grew and got legs to it, I gave that away after about twenty two years, the Lord told me that I'd steward it well for 20 something years, but it would be a good idea to let Mr. Wu steward it for a while. So I wrapped it up and gave that to him. Just before that, two U.S. businessmen asked me if I would joint venture with them to do a China operation that paralleled their U.S. operation because one of the big customers was coming to China. They wanted to use the products, but they weren't going to import it. And I said, sure. And so that was a composite material company, the U.S. companies as Polygon Composites in Walkerton, Indiana. And these were a couple of wonderful brothers that owned that company. And so we started a new company in Hong Kong that opened up a factory in China. And I was a minority partner of that one. I handled everything outside of the state. So all of the China operation management, everything. And so that got up and going. And I asked the Lord for some help. Remember, Jesus was good with his hands right when he was here. He's like a carpenter. He's still good with his hands, but he doesn't get a lot of invitations into projects that are hand oriented in the physical world oriented. So I asked him for some help and we got some neat efficiencies that really made us significantly more productive than anybody expected. So therefore, these partners wanted to actually see if they could purchase my shares and buy me out. And so I asked the Lord, because as a steward, I don't have authority to make those decisions right. They're not my shares. So I checked with the Lord and he said, if you want to, that'll be fine. But he goes get a fair price for it. Don't leave anything on the table. And so we got a third party to develop a price. And it led us into a period of time of kind of negotiation because they weren't sure that was a good fair price. And as a result, we were kind of stuck relationally. So we ended up in Hong Kong in a mediation to try to get a resolution. And so what happened was they made me an offer that I couldn't accept for my 40% of the company and then the Lord said, flip it, I go, "Lord what are you talking about?" he said, flip it. And I realized what he was suggesting is that I make them an offer for their shares instead of them buying me out. Why don't I buy them out and I'll use the same ratio that they offered me so they would probably agree to the ratio. And so I made them the offer and they accepted it. And then I said, I also want to use the cash in the company to buy your shares back at that rate. And they agreed to that. And so we got that whole thing worked out in a day and leaving the building, the Lord asked me now, he said, how much money out of your back pocket did that take to get this company? And I'm thinking, I don't think I took anything in my back pocket. And so it gave me a company when I was planning to sort of retire out of that and from that company. Now, that's the one I interact with daily. And the company is led by a little girl that I met when she was eight years old. She was a neighbor about four houses away, one night walking home and really dark little alley. I felt like somebody tugged the back of my shirt. You know how sometimes you get a sense of that. And so I stopped to look around and I looked down and there was this little lintel, a little concrete lintel, a stone lintel that you would step over to get into this little room. And the room is like a closet. And there was this little tiny face down there. And so I looked down to see who it was and knelt down and introduced myself and just got a little introduction going. And then every two or three weeks for the next ten years, the Lord said, I want you to go back and see her again. Her name was Lie Na. And her story, she was actually a front page human interest story locally because her mom had tried to get rid of her because she was severely disabled and had put her in a boat, kind of pushed her out. We lived on an island and then somebody rescued her and then her mom put her in a garbage can is what I heard. And this neighbor rescued her out of the garbage can and was raising her, and that's when I met her. So for the next ten years, we just built up a friendship. I knew she would want me to give her a job in the handicraft company that we had at the time, but it wouldn't be good to give her a job. So I told her we're hiring people with CorelDraw skills and she went and got a tutor learn the skills necessary to use CorelDraw. And I gave her a test and she entered the company because of her skills. And then she just rose right up in the company because you're just smart as she could be. And when I got the company back from my other previous partners, I developed a small board of directors. And our first meeting was going to be to actually get a new manager for this company. We needed somebody on site that would be able to manage it and run the whole thing. Polygon has only about 100 employees, and so it's not a big company, but it's got stuff going on. It's got worldwide sales. So one of the board members was born in our city, but now lives in the States. And he had just visited and he said, Bill, I don't think we need to hire a new manager. And I said, well, how come? He says, you know, you got four division leaders, right? Four division heads. I go, yeah. He said one of those is the functional manager of the whole company. She is actually making all the decisions and everybody else really likes it. And I really. Who are you talking about? It's that little girl in the wheelchair. She's running the whole thing for you and doing a great job. You said I've been in three thousand different companies in China and I can read the dynamics of a staff. You've got a good company and you've got a good leader. So that little girl that I met when she was eight years old is now running the whole thing for me. So she's like a daughter. We really are like family in many, many ways.
William Norvell: Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing story. Amazing story.
Henry Kaestner: So one of the things I picked up on that I just want to go back to, if you don't mind, is that I've heard people talk about, you know, it's one of the marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, for the listeners. And you may be familiar with the eight marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur one is stewardship versus ownership. And I think the Christians pay a lot of lip service to the fact that we don't really own the business, but we store it. But my sense in talking to you is that you actually really, really believe it. It just it impacts your thinking in a way that's different. Just talk a little bit about that. Have you always believed that? And then just kind of how does that manifest itself and how do you run your business differently because you actually believe that you're not the owner?
Bill Job: Let me just offer kind of a disclaimer. I think I get this stuff right only about one percent of the time. I don't feel like I'm down the road very far and understanding accurately the question that you're asking, because I continually find myself learning new things about it that indicate my thinking wasn't really deep enough. And so I'm on this journey where I've learned more in the last five years about the kingdom than the previous forty five years. It's just this thing that's opening up for me. And wherever I look, if I want to learn more new things about it, the Lord will teach me. So he taught me something just recently because at his prompting, the Lord gave me an indication that I should give another man a thousand dollars because he needed it to keep his company alive and the Lord liked his company, and so you don't make these decisions quickly. I waited on that three months, I think, before I had real clarity. And so then I did what he asked me to do. And people think of me because of that as being a generous person and the Lord to remind me it's impossible for Stewart to be generous.
Henry Kaestner: Hmm. He can do nothing to give.
Bill Job: He's got nothing to give! He can be obedient, but he can't be generous. So I'm happy to have people say, well, Bill's obedient. I think that's the goal. But I'm not actually generous if I'm give you always somebody else's money.
Henry Kaestner: Right. When you start thinking that way, it shows that you're actually starting to get it. I have not been thinking that way.
William Norvell: That's awesome. I love that. And I'm interested as well because I met you. You may not remember I met you at Lion's Den as well a few years back. And I know you met a lot of people. But, you know, that's kind of a business as missions conference. And I know that's a place that you've spent some time when you hear the phrase kingdom mindset or kingdom business, I think that that carries some weight to everyone. Right. Their mind goes to something. And I'd love for you to share with our audience. What does that mean to you and what have you seen that mean throughout your businesses, throughout the people you've known? And kind of how have you seen God work through a kingdom business and help people have a kingdom mindset?
Bill Job: Great question. I think I mentioned this, but when I ended up in China for the first time, I realized after the first couple of years that every idea I had about how to partner with God to get this thing done was wrong. They all had to be shifted, every single one of them, and the kingdom would be one of them. I think what I went there with, because I had learned about it somewhat, actually not a lot. But in seminary, we tend to confuse it with the church. And so a lot of people in the BAM world try to put church events and church activities in a company and call it a BAM thing. But Lord began to teach me about it, and again they are fun ways. He teaches with this great sense of humor, but he drives home really deep issues. And so this one began for me, understanding that a kingdom was a place where you got a king and a place where he rules well. So we right away got a problem. Like if you live out of the country and you look back at your home country after a couple of years, you'll see things you never saw before. So in one time, one conversation, the Lord said, what are the main cultural values of the United States? Thought about it and I said. Freedom and independence. And he says, you do understand they don't exist in my kingdom, you begin to realize, oh, I don't think I thought about that.
Bill Job: I, I think we actually think of every element of the American culture as being positive and something can be folded into the Kingdom of God. And I love freedom and independence as they as they are involved in the geopolitical world. They're totally great things, but it doesn't come into the Kingdom and continue to be great. So, Scott, if you think of Richard the Lionhearted and the Knights of the Round Table loving their freedom and independence, if you just said to them, it's great having someone's freedom, independence, they go, no, no, we've got a king. We don't have freedom and independence. The other part of the American culture that's a negative is we've been trained to fight kings. We don't know what to do to honor a king. Culturally, we have no cultural training. And so now we get a king in our life and we're trying to figure what is is actually made by what I think I did to him for the longest time was turning into a consultant. And so I made his words important, but optional. And so what he actually told me that got my attention was he started with a phrase, he said the word price is not a metaphor. And good Lord, what are you talking about? And then I could see the phrase, you are not your own. You've been bought with a price. And he said it again, is that you think price is a metaphor. And I go, OK, perhaps I do. What are you getting at? He goes, it's not a metaphor. It matters. And so I started thinking about the verse and the use of a metaphor, and I realized what I said to myself. When I'm encountering a metaphor, something like this, like Jesus says he's the door, OK? He's using a metaphor. He is something like a door. And then I had the phrase, but not an actual door. He's something like a door, but not an actual door. OK, I'll try to figure this out. And so he was telling me that I was thinking I'm something like a slave, but not an actual slave because I had been bought with a metaphorical price. So therefore I'm a metaphorical slave. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn't a metaphorical price. It was a quantity of my blood I bought you. You will press for a real price, so you're really my slave, you actually really belong to me. This is not metaphorical. You're mine. And now he's laughing as he's telling me this. He's got this great sense of humor. He's so kind, but he is drilling down into something that I would probably never have wandered into on my own. So once I agreed with him that I'm his, I'm absolutely his. I mean, like he bought me. I belong to another person. In the real world, I'm not my own. I've been bought with a price.
William Norvell: It's amazing, Bill, what an encouragement, what an encouragement to everyone. I mean, entrepreneurs. Obviously, everyone needs the Lord's work and the Lord's voice, but entrepreneurs specifically, you know, so many questions, so often ending up when you feel like you're alone. Right. And you feel like you're the only person that can do anything. And so just love that encouragement. And as we come to a close, we would love to know another great way that I know God encourages his people. I know you believe in it through his word. And we would love to hear from you of maybe a place that God has been encouraging you lately in his scripture. And if you wouldn't mind sharing that with us, that'd be great.
Bill Job: Sure. What he's shown me is that what happens when you combine the stories of the talents and the minas with John 17. So what happens when I read the stories of the talents in the minas is I get the picture of an independent steward. And so one of the things I need to do as a steward is to figure out, does the owner of this stuff I'm stewarding want an annual meeting or a monthly meeting? A weekly meeting or what does he want? What's he actually up to? Because I think I intuitively thought an annual meeting. So because he's so wise, he's given me some stuff to steward for him, trusted it into my care, and he's going to ask me at the end of the year how we did. We're going to look at do the numbers, you know, but if you take John 17, where he hands the baton off at John 17, the way I interpret is this. He says, OK, guys, you know that thing you saw between me and my dad? You know, I never did anything my dad didn't tell me to do and never did anything he didn't. I never said anything you didn't tell me to say. And everything I did, I did to his strength. You know, that thing we do. You've seen it, right? Well, from here on out, it's going to be between me and you and you and me. It'll be me and you and you and me the same way it was me and him and him and me. That thing says we get to be that way close to him all the time as stewards. And so that's what helps me to get a sense of stewarding is a moment by moment constant opportunity for me to step into that realm where Narnia is really closer than you would ever think to do the stewarding function of the resources you've given me to handle.