Episode 199 - Power to the Prayer People with Kim Avery
When it comes to business, are you talking with God on a regular basis? Or do you feel like your days are too packed for prayer? Kim Avery, author of The Prayer Powered Entrepreneur, believes an open line of communication with God is the singular most important discipline every successful business owner should incorporate into their daily routine. Join us on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast to hear more about the power of prayer.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast today's episode, we have a fantastic guest. Her name is Kim Avery Kim is the vice president of marketing at the Professional Christian Coaching Institute. She's also the founder and president of Kim Avery Coaching, a global coaching firm that specializes in equipping coaches and entrepreneurs to build successful businesses as they partner with God to change the world. Kim recently wrote the prayer powered entrepreneur. It's a fantastic book. We're going to talk to her more about it during our episode today. So let's welcome in now, Kim Avery to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast Rusty. How are you?
Rusty Rueff: I'm well today. How are you, Henry? I'm doing.
Henry Kaestner: Give me something new. Give me and their listeners something new about how God is working in your life.
Rusty Rueff: Well, interesting that you would say that my pastor and I have been working on a book for the last five years, and we're just at a point where we put it out to beta readers, and we're really excited about that. You know, so, you know, God's beginning to open up and show those things to us.
Henry Kaestner: So how many blogs have you done on faith in the workplace? Is it three thousand
Rusty Rueff: three thousand and forty five?
Henry Kaestner: As you can see some material to work with?
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, we got a lot of material to work with. What we've been trying to do is we've been trying to think about, you know, what Jesus said about love and then what is it that we can apply from the lens of being here as entrepreneurs and being in Silicon Valley? How can one apply those principles of love into our work and into our everyday life? And so it's been a lot of fun to work on. We're still not quite done, but you know, God's began to open up some doors for us, so it's been exciting.
Henry Kaestner: That's very cool. I'm really looking forward to reading, and I know that our listeners are too. And speaking of books, we have an author with us today, Kim Avery, talking about the power and the importance of prayer. Kim, welcome.
Kim Avery: Thank you. It's great to be here today.
Henry Kaestner: So Kim, if I'm honest, prayer is something that I paid probably the most lip service to. On one hand, I intellectually understand how important it is. We've been talking recently at our staff and then with some of these FDE groups, you may know this already, but we have this eight week FDE course where we walk entrepreneurs through the marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and I've got a chance to lead two of them. We've got more than 700 people going through them right now. It's been a lot of fun. I get that led to because I want to hear what they're saying and how they're interacting with the content. And just today we're talking about the lessons from the good kings of Judah and Second Chronicles and how even the good kings of Judah were not seeking God out before making important decisions or talking about how important prayer is. And then we're all kind of just owning the fact that we all just do it really poorly. And you have understood that that's a reality, and that's something hard for people to push through. And yet it's really important enough. And so you've written a book to tell us how to do it. So really, looking forward to today? Thank you very much for being with us.
Kim Avery: Thank you. And can I just begin with a quick, true confession? I'm a prayer flunk out and I deserve to be in that room with you and the other people. So just as a fellow junior who understands the importance of prayer but never really understood that, like how do I integrate this into my every minute, I guess, of my day? And so just here, I'm excited to talk about the journey.
Henry Kaestner: Good. Good us too. OK, cool. So as we get started and want to learn more about the book and we want to learn more about you, who are you? Where do you come from? How did you get started? And obviously we want to hear what led up to the book and more about what you mean by a prayer flunk out. But what kind of house did you grow up in? What did you do in the marketplace?
Kim Avery: Who are you? Yeah, it's a very typical story. And then, like God, it has a twist right there in the middle. So I grew up in a Christian home in the Midwest outside of Chicago. Just a safe, lovely childhood went to Taylor University, a small school in Upland, the inner being. I know,
Rusty Rueff: I know, I know that school. I went to Hanover College for two years before I transferred to Purdue. We played football against Taylor back in the
Kim Avery: day, and I'm sure you won.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, sometimes someplace.
Kim Avery: I met my husband there and then went into work. Profession as a licensed mental health counselor was wanting to serve people, help people function and do better in life. And it was all going really well till about 15 years ago. I heard about this funny thing called coaching, life coaching, leadership, coaching, business coaching. I'm sure you've all heard about it, but the first time I heard about it, it just something just captured my heart. The thought of if one coach walks alongside somebody who's out in the marketplace doing well, they don't just do better. Their families are improved. Their neighborhoods, their churches, the ripple effects just go on and on from one person living just a real, intentional, purposeful Christ saturated life. So I dropped everything, went into training as a coach, got my certification, proudly hung my little diploma on the wall. And are you ready? Here's the twist I was so naive I had no idea I had just opened my own business. It was a complete shock to me as a counselor. I would walk into the hospital waiting room every day and pull out a stack of files and call the first name on the file. I had no idea how they got to the waiting room or how they found our work there at the hospital. As a coach, I walked out into the living room, looked right, looked left, no clients and I thought, Oh, this is going to be different. And so that started my very late blooming journey as an entrepreneur.
Henry Kaestner: I think that that's lost with a lot of people. Independent consultants are very much entrepreneurs, and I think that a lot of people think characterizes Silicon Valley and Rusty. And I do live out in Silicon Valley, but an entrepreneur is anybody who is responsible for setting the mission and vision of a company to get it resourced and then ultimately to get the right people on the bus. And an entrepreneur is a lot more of us than other people think. And you found that out and you didn't even know that all of a sudden being a coach and having to go ahead and figure out product market fit and get out there and sell something to somebody. All of a sudden, you're an entrepreneur.
Kim Avery: Yeah, it was completely different. So the first thing I did was sit down and cry. The second thing I did was pray and ask the Lord, how in the world am I going to do this journey? And then the twist in the story is I fell in love with business building and marketing almost as much as I had with coaching. And so the Lord has since that time kind of married those two things together, such that I now upright, primarily as a business coach, helping other small businesses, solopreneurs market and launch their businesses.
Henry Kaestner: Solopreneurs Rusty, if you heard that term before.
Rusty Rueff: I don't know that one is that without a founder. So what? That is a sole operator.
Kim Avery: Solopreneur is basically somebody who is in business by themselves, so we take out the trash. We set the vision, we do the marketing and we clean out the toilet at the end of the day. Solar. We do it all.
Rusty Rueff: Mm-Hmm. Gotcha. Okay. That's a big job.
Kim Avery: It really is. It's a lot of hats to wear.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed, indeed. OK, so fitness. First thing is, you do you cry? And then you realize if I'm going to be crying, I might as well be crying out to God. Yeah, OK. And then walk us through that experience and just launching the business lessons you've learned. And then at some point in time, you get an idea that, gosh, somebody should write a book about this.
Kim Avery: Yeah. So I wish I could say from that moment when I started praying, you know, God became my functional CEO and everything was just sailing along fine. But truthfully, I had a lot of misconceptions about prayer. I tended to think of prayer in these kind of weird, spiritual, floaty categories that it's somebody who intercedes for people overseas or people who do prayer walks around the city and the city of Chicago, or people who fast for 40 days. And those are all wonderful things, and I'm thankful that God uses prayer warriors like that. But I knew that. I knew that. I knew that God called me to build a business, which meant I had to do the marketing. I had to service the clients. I had to figure out the vision and the mission and all of the things in between. And I had no idea how prayer played into the very rightly busy life of an entrepreneur. And so I think like a lot of people, most of the clients that I work with, I kind of disconnected prayer from my everyday business life. I pray in the morning. Lord, bless this business and then I go work hard all day. And truthfully, my operating engine was similar to if it's going to be, it's up to me. You know, through all that, my self wisdom and self-sufficiency and knowledge and power and strength and connections. And then at the end of the day, when I was exhausted, if it was a good day, I'd give him a high five God. And if not, you know, I think, did he bless me? Did he answer that prayer? How would I even know? And that's when I realized that if I looked at my business, all my clients, businesses and all the businesses I knew of people who were not Christ followers, they all looked very similar. And that's a tragedy. Why in the world if my CEO is the all knowing, all loving, all resource, all connected God, would my business look the same as someone who didn't know God? And that's what sent me on a hunt for OK? There's got to be a better, different way to do this.
Henry Kaestner: So that's an interesting framework. I think it's an exercise for us all to go through. And that is, does my business look different than if I was just as secular CEO? And how do I know? And what does that even look like?
Kim Avery: Right? And so for me, it began a hunt through scripture from almost beginning to end, saying, What do I know that I know? So not just assume, Well, God maybe wants me to make this amount of money or have this boat do this yacht or do these kind of things, but just clear scriptural promises and promises and principles that God has laid out in scripture that apply in many ways to all of us and in many cases, specifically to business people and entrepreneurs. What do I know that he is working on in me, through me and for me, because scripture promises? So then how can I pray in conjunction with the way he's working? How can I cooperate with him on what's important to him? And what? I do it that way and I nail down those things. Then I actually do see growth and improvement and differences between the way I do business and frankly, the way I used to do business.
Rusty Rueff: I find that fascinating because we had a conversation with our guest a few weeks ago, who says she sits down every day and has a business meeting with God because she really does consider, you know, the Lord as a part of her business, not only in her personal life, but in her entrepreneurial life. And, you know, being in conversation all the time throughout the day in prayer is not an easy thing to do. So I think sometimes what we end up doing is we end up going, well, this is my hour. This is my 30 minutes. This is my 15 20 minutes. Talk to us a little bit about how you know we can extend that through the power of prayer all day long.
Kim Avery: Yeah, thank you for asking that because I'm passionate about that question and I think about it this way, and I know that you all are investors and you work with a lot of investors, and I am not. Don't ever give me your money to invest. Just hint. But suppose that I wanted to become an investor and somehow one of you, or maybe even Warren Buffett got wind of it and said, Oh, I really am excited. This is important to you. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull up a chair right next to you all day, every day. If you have a question, if you need a connection, if you lack wisdom, if you're discouraged, you just turn to me and ask me. I said, Thanks, Warren, that's awesome. And every day I came in and sat down on my desk and ignored him and went about my business all day long. But then at the end of the day, or maybe once a week, I met with him and said, any input, Warren, any thoughts on how I'm doing? That's the way I was treating God. And as complicated and as simple as realizing God's closer than the breath that I breathe. And he's so much smarter than Warren Buffett, and he knows everything and he cares about my business and he has a plan for it. And so if I just learn to pretend he's there, no, he's there, but pretend physically that I see him and turn to him and ask him, You know what? He's really smart and things go differently. Not always perfect, mind you, because he's promised us in this world, you have tribulation. That's also one of his promises. But things go so much better if I see him and I train myself to do business with him as my partner instead of on my own steam.
Henry Kaestner: As you talk through this, I think about. So the question and ask you here in a second is, are there biblical examples of leaders that you look at that did the prayer thing right? One example that's been an encouragement to me is near MIT, so oftentimes cited as this leader. And you can just do this case study on business leadership marketplace through looking at Nehemiah and the rebuilding in Jerusalem. But one of the things that really makes an impact for me early on is that our resources. He asked Nehemiah and seen him stressed out about the status of Jerusalem. He says, What do you want me to do? And the action that Nehemiah did wasn't to say, Well, send me back or give me money or anything like that. This says that he prayed. Yeah, and I better wasn't king. Hey, hold on a second. Let me spend my time in my devotions tomorrow morning or tonight, and I'll come back and let you know where I'm going. Excuse me, I want to go to my prayer room right now. I bet you like he did a quick, short prayer like Heavenly Father. Just give me the right words right then and there. And I like that example because it makes it feel like prayer is more accessible. And so what you just said, it was so helpful for me. Warren Buffett sitting right there like Warren, what shall we say, right? Or should we ask for? Now are there stories also that you look at in the Bible? And maybe Nehemiah is the lowest hanging fruit because you cited so often as a business example, but are there other ones that you look at to where you like? You know, that biblical hero kind of really nailed the prayer thing?
Kim Avery: Yeah, I don't know if we think of this in conjunction so much with prayer, but an example that I've been meditating on recently is when Daniel was in exile, and we all feel a little bit like exiles from the modern cultural norm these days. But when he was in exile with his three unpronounceable friends. When you talk about biblical names. Yeah. And the person who was in charge of training them basically said, Eat this food. And it was against their dietary laws. And he said, basically, test us, test us. Let us eat vegetables in this simple diet for 10 days and see to see what happens. And I feel like that's in a sense God's invitation to us as entrepreneurs. Can you just test me? Will you try running your business through my power instead of your own? And just it's an experiment that can't fail, which is part of why I wrote the book is a thirty one day, just one power point today. Pray throughout the day. Pay attention to what God's doing. Notice do it again tomorrow because we don't want to try. We want to train. Try never works because we fail and we stop. But if we were all to run a marathon, we would train every day. So we train ourselves in the discipline of prayer and then back to Daniel and his friends. Ten days later, it saw that they were obviously much healthier and doing better than everyone else. To the point, we don't know the time span, but at the. End of that first chapter, and Danielle, it says in God, gifted them with skills and knowledge beyond all their peers and and that just makes sense that if we prayed and partner with God, that that's exactly what he would do anything for us.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I've always loved the example of Daniel in the business world because, you know, Daniel had to be equipped to actually work with those people that did things that he didn't believe in, right? He had to work with all of the, you know, sorcerers and all these different things. And yet he was their boss. And I always thought that that was fascinating because, you know, how is it that he was able to do that? Well, it was probably because he had such a reliance on God, and God spoke so clearly to him on how to do that. I would imagine you've got amazing examples and stories of people who have adopted sort of the prayer chain all day long. You know that vibrant communication with God. Can you share some of those stories?
Kim Avery: There's always two sets of examples, right? There's that people often think, first of all, externally, just OK, do I make more money, right? Is the business more black than red this year? Do I get that contract? And again, we don't know exactly what God is promising in the external realm, because as you all probably know, one of God's favorite way of growing our businesses is by growing us. And so he does like to work internally as well as do things for us externally. But I think just personally an example that I'll share on both levels first. Externally, several years ago, about two and a half years ago, our daughter unexpectedly passed away, and right after that I just felt the Lord saying, You know, just lay down these private clients. Just work here, just work there, just honor your grief, take space. And of course, as somebody who worked very hard on building her business all these years, I was like, But what about but what about? But what about is just trust me in this? Trust me in this. And so for the two fiscal years, in two and a half years since then, every year I've made more money, a lot more money than I have in previous years. I've worked less and to the point where I get to it and I look at my account and I'm like, I have no idea where this money came from. I just I really don't. And he's like, Well, I mean, we can, you know, pick it apart and figure it out. I really don't want to know. It's just fun. It's just fun to see. God said, Do less. Trust me more. Don't worry about it. And then internally, I hear this again and again is God is raising up prayer powered entrepreneurs literally around the globe. Is that worry, hurry and stress that we tend to carry feeling like it all depends on us and the weight is on our shoulders just disappears and people stop them in their companies or their friends and family and say, How is it? You can enjoy the weekend when you know you still have so many things to do. Why is it? You're not worried about that when it used to drive you crazy? But it's the power of knowing that God has it and learning to see how he always faithfully provides.
Henry Kaestner: That's very powerful. So much has been written or shared about prayer. It almost seems like there's nothing new to write or say about it, and yet you found some new things to say about it. What's one thing that you've learned about prayer that might surprise us?
Kim Avery: Well, first of all, I don't think I've said anything new about prayer, and I think all the prayer books that needed to be written have probably been written. I think what's interesting to us in this era and point in time when we live is we are so inundated with information we all suffer from information overload. Yet the natural human tendency is to think if I know just a little bit more, if I learn just a little bit more, if I. And it's not that kind of book, right? What really leads to transformation is taking information, combining it with implementation until we train in it long enough that it's full integration into the way we live and do business. And that's what this book does for you. It's a prayer experience, an invitation almost to daily treasure hunt with God to take what you already know about prayer. It's simple. It's childlike. Your father will provide just ask and watch and see what he will do and then slow down and live it out. And it really is a transformative process.
Rusty Rueff: Can we have many listeners who are not solo entrepreneurs right there, entrepreneurs growing a business and have lots of people around them in their companies? And they're not all believers, but yet they want to incorporate prayer into their business. How might a business owner? Maybe you got some clues and tips. You know, we've prayer into a culture without it looking over the top or two, you know, pushing my faith on you. Or even hokey.
Kim Avery: Yeah. Which always leads to resistance, which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to communicate when we do something like that. That top down driven approach doesn't honor, I think, the invitation of, you know, interacting with the divine. And so, like most things with prayer, it's more about small seeds. If I put a a fragrant room air freshener here in the room, it wouldn't necessarily be noticed right away, but the smell would slowly grow and reach everybody who is in the crowded room. And that seems to be how God is growing prayer powered entrepreneurs around the globe and people in large companies and ministries as well as small and that people are just honoring the fact in simple conversations. May I pray for you? I mean, they don't even mean right there, right then. I have never personally had anyone say, No, you can't pray for me, right? And then checking back, How did it go? Or our company at the top, we're stopping and we're praying about this. We just want you to know we're going to watch and see what God does. Just the organic living life out loud and relationship with God is mystifying, but very curiosity provoking to the people who surround them so that now they're not defensive, they're asking What's with that? Or Will you pray for me? I worked on this, worked on the wrong word. But this interaction with this gentleman for two and a half years, I often say, Is there any way I perfect? No, no. Don't let the general general not just, you know, after two and a half years of my love offensive, this is the way I thought of it when I would occasionally feel led to ask you, Would you pray for my granddaughter? She's really struggling. And it just opened up relationship with us and opened up his mind to the fact that God can do things.
Rusty Rueff: I love that. And, you know, sometimes it does take, you know, the love offensive, the prayer over time, righteous to get people to come to where they need to come to. But what about companies that you've seen that have sort of brought prayer into the workplace? Can you share some of the stories of how that's become powerful for them?
Kim Avery: Yeah. Well, there's a couple of different ways. One of the things we're doing at prayer powered is training app per powered mastermind facilitators. And so something that companies can do, and we have about 50 facilitators trained now who go out into their community or their industry or their Chamber of Commerce or their company. Their organization just invite people to an eight week prayer powered mastermind that you don't just sit and pray. People don't expect you want to come in and just sit and pray, but you kind of learn about prayer and the simplicity of prayer and the power of prayer with some interactive principles and fun videos and different things and walk people through it. And again, I feel guilty. Sometimes they're like groups that can't go wrong. How can a prayer group go wrong? How can you start something and invite God to work in people's lives and they invite and start watching and have it not grow or have enough people be captivated by the experience? And so just inviting people who are interested into small prayer powered mastermind groups does draw in other people in the company. And then just on a personal level, I'm vice president of marketing at the Professional Christian Coaching Institute, and one of the things we're in the business of doing is I'm actually going to move out of my. Vice president, marketing chair, which I love marketing and move into a new chair, we're creating this table called Chief Press Officer because we want to build a praying culture. I'm not praying instead of the people on the team or instead of the students in the institute, but trying to have a prayer strategy and a prayer culture that will permeate everything we do. So we're just going to create space for that to see what God does.
Rusty Rueff: Chief Press Officer, you're probably going to be the first one
Kim Avery: that
Rusty Rueff: that's that's really awesome. Expand that job description for me. What all will chief press officer do?
Kim Avery: Well, I'm fleshing it out, but again, I'm never to replace other people's prayers because prayer is about relationship with God. Nobody can be a substitute for you when you're going on a date with your wife. And I can't substitute for anyone else and their interaction and growth with God. But as chief press officer, our hope and our dream is that I can sit at the same table with the leadership conversations the court teams listen as they each are wearing their departmental hats. OK, this is the State Department. This is the admissions department, the educational department. And so they're very focused on what's going on there. Number one, I can pray for all of that, but to listen and can watch God's always working, Jesus tells us that my father's always working. So watch the bigger picture strands of how God's working, inter-departmental, as well as in these people's lives to try to help us all just stop and pay attention and maybe notice the larger story that God is writing through our organization.
Rusty Rueff: I like it a lot. You know, sometimes you don't have to have a title to have a role in a company. So I would encourage our entrepreneurs who are listening right now if this is being laid on their heart as whom, like, what would it look like in my company to have a chief press officer? You don't necessarily have to make that a job. It can be a role for somebody, right? It could be somebody on the team that that's what they feel led to do and allow them to come up with the ideas and the ways that we can incorporate prayer into work. It'll be fascinating for you to continue to share what you've learned as you go into that role in the organization because I'd love to hear how that expands out over time. So, you know, in business, we have functional experts and maybe this is, you know, a little bit off of what we're just talking about. We have functional experts like we have accountants and we have, you know, different professions inside of businesses and they're really good at what they do. I mean, an accountant understands the ins and outs of accounting regulations, accounting process, accounting procedure. And you know, one of the things we don't really like. You never should have two words together. And that's probably creative accounting, right? You don't want that right? You want you want non creative accounting. But is prayer like accounting? I mean, are there elements of it that we just need to understand and be good at for it to be effective? And for those of us and you said you were a prayer flunky, I joined that club, you know, I mean, like, I love and love and love and love to read God's word and God's word speaks to me all the time. And when it comes to prayer, you know, I feel like I sometimes fumble around are those elements that you can give us that, you know, we all can feel like, wow, I'm being more effective with my prayers.
Kim Avery: I think it's rarely an either or right, but a both. And so you want everybody, at least on the leadership team, at your company to be should be knowledgeable about numbers, to understand, to interpret and read the panel and the different things that the non creative accountant is bringing to the table. So yes, there's I'm sure there's a role where somebody comes in as just almost chief ambassador evangelist for prayer. Let's not forget, let's not forget I think of that verse and John 15:05, where Jesus said, I'm divine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I knew you will bear much fruit apart from me, you can do nothing. We tend to forget that our Western culture tends to breed this fierce independence where that becomes a vaulted value, which is actually not scriptural at all. And so I think it's good to have a voice that reminds us and invites us back into the independent life that God has for us. But is it for everyone? Yes. If a part for me, you can do nothing, then every single one of us wants to be leaning in and drawing life from Divine.
Rusty Rueff: Absolutely. Absolutely. And how can an entrepreneur who's just busy and got a jam packed schedule and trying to feel like they're servicing too many constituents from their investors and their board and their employees and their partners and their customers, how do they fit prayer in the midst of all of that?
Kim Avery: How? How do you not? The rhetorical answer. And then when you think about it more deeply, again, I'm a huge advocate of brief prayer, breath, prayer, conversational prayer and starting small. Before each conversation, just train yourself with a post-it note in front of you to Lord. Show me how to minister to this person in a practical way. In this conversation, Amen letter is just a sentence. It's just paying attention. But God is already at work, and I've said this several times. But if I could just go back and unpack one phrase that I think is so key in this conversation, which is we have to be training, not trying. If we try to pray more, pray better, pray harder. Life will interrupt our best attempts and we'll go on to the next thing. We'll buy the next Christian book, we'll do the next whatever seems to be working for people. If we realize that a praying lifestyle, a praying business is what we want, then we just train in small ways the same way we would train for anything with reminders and accountability partners and opportunities, and not beating ourselves up on days that don't go well and just picking up where we left off. And of course, most of all, asking God to help us in this training process.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I once heard someone say that they actually became such a habit for them, which is, I think a lot of times for, say, the word habit. And we think, Oh, it's a bad thing. No good habits can be really good that each time they stood up in their day, they stopped and said a quick prayer and it just became their trigger. It became their trigger, you know, and we said so much. And you know, and we're encouraged to get up and move around well, every time we get up and move around, may we stop for a moment, you know, and do that quick prayer. So every entrepreneur loves a good challenge. So can you provide us one when it comes to prayer? Throw that challenge out there. So our listeners and myself and Henry, all of us, you know, will want to accept that challenge.
Kim Avery: I will. And this is actually how the book started. About five years ago, it was called the 31 day prayer challenge, and it was as simple as 31 different prompts, just a prayer prompt of something we know God wants for you. Whether it's to be teachable, whether it's to be humble, whether it's to be Christ saturated, whether it's to be prayer power, there's 31. Just do one a day and watch and see. And I feel like saying, just test God in this just for thirty one days, just choose one. Just one little thing a day. Pray put up a post-it note, a free prayer cards that go in the book, whatever, and keep your eyes on what he's doing and just see if he doesn't show up an amazing way such that I don't know. It's kind of addicting, actually.
Rusty Rueff: Hmm. And it's nice. That's a good challenge and one that I need to take up. And I shouldn't start in February, right? Because February shouldn't start on that short month. So unfortunately, you didn't get a chance today to hear from our other co-host, William Norvell, who's off today because he has some family issues that he's dealing with. But he is the traditionalist in us that he always brings us to a close by asking each one of our guests what they're hearing from God and what God is teaching them right now. And so maybe something from the scripture or something that you feel God is impressing on you right now? Please just share it with our listeners,
Kim Avery: and thanks for saying that. One of the scriptures that I come back to again and again, and I've just been sitting and it we're living in a very constantly changing world. Chronic crisis, which is an oxymoron, just comes to mind as we see all the changes that continue to go on. And the uncertainty is I feel like we're trying to fly a plane that someone else is building. Instead of that, we're building as we go along. And in that, I just keep coming back to Jesus's words in Matthew, 11, especially from the message races, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't say anything heavier, ill-fitting. I'm you keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. So when I feel heavy, when it feels like too much, when I feel like the world is just beyond my power, I think I'm carrying burdens that are not mine to carry. I just want to learn to walk freely and lightly and watch how Jesus does it. So that's why I'm trying to train myself to live these days.
Rusty Rueff: I love it. I love it. The unforced rhythms of Grace who say it's a it's what a gift it is. What a gift this. So I'll put you on the spot. If you don't mind, would you pray for us and our listeners?
Kim Avery: Oh, it would be my privilege. Thank you for asking Heavenly Father. We know that each and every person listening to this podcast today is listening because you've brought them here and whatever is going on in their life, you have a plan and a purpose for them and it is good. And it is also not to just be a reservoir, but a conduit of your grace and your love, so that the people in their company and in their lives can flourish under your loving hands. So would you please fill them with the knowledge that's beyond human understanding of how much you love them, the good things you are prepared for them and just invite them deeply in a very personal and specific way to walk in the unforced rhythms of grace that you've promised each of us. And I ask this in Jesus name.
Rusty Rueff: Amen. Amen. Amen. Kim, the author of the prayer power entrepreneur. I don't need to go through the list is probably everywhere. You can buy a book, right? You can. You could go get it. So we all know where to get books these days. Let's all reach out and grab ourselves a copy and make this a an important part of our daily prayers life going forward. So thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Kim Avery: Thanks for having me.