4/17/24 - 2038: Make Each Day Sacred

Bill Hollis: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Marketplace, A Kingdom Perspective. Tonight we have a wonderful guest all the way from America, and they have a ministry called iWork4Him. And I'm sure Jim and Martha Brangenberg will be able to share a wonderful testimony and to bring revelation to the listeners about how, when we go to the marketplace, God wants us to work with him.

Welcome Jim and Martha.

Jim: Thanks Bill. Glad to be here.

Martha: Thanks for having us.

Bill Hollis: It's wonderful to be with you and maybe we can just share a little bit of your journey, how to get you a small short testimony, and then we'll ask you a little bit about the more important thing about how do we work for the Lord when we go to work.

Jim: Our story, Bill, comes together as 13 year olds where we both committed our lives to full time Christian ministry at a youth conference three years before we met. We met at 16 at our youth group at church and quickly became friends and at 17, almost 18, we started dating and got married between our 20th birthdays.

So we've been married almost 38 years. We both had an entrepreneurial spirit. Martha grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I was an entrepreneur, but we had that commitment to full time Christian ministry. And in that commitment, we thought that meant we were going to work in a church or we were going to be on the foreign mission field. That's what Martha thought.

But yet we both loved business. And so we had this struggle. Twice we tried enrolling in seminary. Twice God said, no, It was embarrassing because he sent the senior pastors of our church twice to tell us no. But they couldn't then make the connection: hey, your ministry calling is really your mission field

Martha: Yeah, so after we wrestled with that and actually through some devotions of Os Hillman's started to understand what the scripture actually talks about our work, right?

It talks about, so many times we compartmentalize what we read in scripture and say this is, I'm going to apply this to my family, or I'm going to apply this to my neighborhood, or maybe some youth work that I'm going to do. But in our nine to five, how are we applying the scripture?

 If Jesus really transform me, he transforms all 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so with that realization came some adjustments that we needed to make in our own thinking that we actually were in full time Christian ministry. As entrepreneurs that God gave us a mission field that no one else has and how are we going to handle that?

Jim: And so at about 40, that's when that realization came. That's when Os Hillman invaded our lives with his daily today got his first devotionals And we started studying this, started working this, and started recognizing our workplace as our mission field, our place of ministry, assigned place of ministry, The guilt was gone that we needed to quit our jobs to go work at a church, but we kept running into Christians who were in business.

And we just said, we just started telling people, please don't tell people, Jesus, if you're going to act that way. But of course the problem wasn't the people. It was that they'd never, ever had heard a sermon that said that their work mattered to God. They'd never, ever heard the truth that their workplace was their ministry place that God gave them those skills on purpose.

And so we started just trying to teach people. Five ways incorporate your faith into your work. We now call that the iWork4Him nation. And one day I was speaking about that and sat down in the room next to the only person I didn't know and she goes, Jim, you need to talk about that on the radio. And I'm like, no.

And she goes, yes. Long story short, we had asked the Lord several years earlier for a job where our success could never be attributed to our natural gifts, talents and abilities. And that was radio because we'd never have done radio. It wasn't on our bucket list. So we started going on the radio 11 years ago, almost 11 years ago.

Just Covering people's stories of living out their faith at work, covering authors, ministries, and just really encouraging people that their work really is their mission field. And that's where iWork4Him came from. It was birthed out of a networking group where some lady said, you need to talk about that on the radio.

And now today, 2700 plus podcasts later, interviews of over 4, 000 different people. We, you know, have influence over a lot of people and we're always just trying to get our listeners to connect the ministries that will disciple them deeper on how to connect their faith to their work.

Bill Hollis: I have a similar story where I was also waiting to go into the ministry and God put a DVD in my hands about the late Brian Power, who had started the World Day of Prayer, and his testimony of work.

And I'll never forget that night, I got on my knees in front of the TV, repented, and asked God to forgive me. Because I was waiting to go into ministry, and He was waiting for me to minister where I was. So it's a wonderful testimony. I think God is speaking to Christians all over the world in the marketplace and bringing together a lot of voices to build the kingdom and to - and the other night I was praying and the Lord just said - to unlock, I'm just going to get the words right... the sleeping giant.

Jim: And the way we put it in our really in how we talk about is unlocking God's purpose for your work or unlocking God's purpose in your retirement because that's another problem. I don't know anything about South Africa, but in America, American Christians think that when they retire their calling retires, that when they retire they're done. They get the next 30 years for vacation instead of recognizing the fact that retirement's just a different phase of life and that if when you retire, Martha, what happens?

Martha: Yeah, your calling keeps on going. And it may be refined. It may look different. You may get an opportunity to make some new choices, but all of those years of hardship, of learning, of training, of wisdom that we've gleaned in our work should not be wasted, especially for the kingdom.

Jim: You want me to say it? When you retired, your calling didn't retire. If you got a pulse, you have a purpose. If you're not dead, God's not done with you.

Bill Hollis: The interesting thing, I'm not sure how accurate I am, but I heard in Hebrew, there's no word for retire because God has no plan for us to retire. He just wants us to refire and fulfill the plan and the destiny He has for us.

So let's just chat a little bit about how people can find purpose in the marketplace, because I think that's the issue that really people lack. They don't realize that they have a purpose in the marketplace, for God to use them and that they are, which I call ministers for God.

Martha: I think first people have to recognize where they got the abilities to do their work and God gave me a specific set of gifts, talents and abilities to do a work, not just - a lot of people think it's a ministry work, but actual work. Like to do accounting, to do projects, to keep or things organized, to speak well into the people that I lead.

All of those things God has equipped me with. Number one is understanding that we have a purpose for why God gave us all of those abilities, right? And sometimes we're not in a job that's actually even using those abilities. And so it's a little harder to feel like there's purpose in our work. But it goes way beyond just that, because we may be providing for our family. We may be helping our community to meet a certain resource or need or a service that is a bigger purpose than beyond ourselves. So I think there's so many different layers and levels to that conversation. And then, in that work, wherever God has us for this season, it may be a three month job or it may be a 30 year job.

What is my purpose in being there beyond doing really good work? How am I touching the lives of the people that God brings to me? In our work, we don't even have to go find them a lot of times. They're either another employee or they're a customer or they're a vendor. What is my purpose with each and every one of those people and how am I fulfilling it every day when I get up and go to work?

Jim: I was just going to say, we used to open up the show with: Your workplace, it's your mission field. And in that mission field, you and me, we may be the only Jesus our coworkers and employees, vendors, clients may ever meet. The job that you hold, the work that you do, and the people to work with - none of that is by chance. The people that you work with, they need to meet Jesus and you may be their only chance.

But it's so much more than evangelism. It's being Jesus, wherever you go. When God gave us the clear vision for iWork4Him,, it was purposefully equipping Christ followers at work to be vibrantly effective at living out their faith. And that vibrancy is the kingdom. Everybody around us should be benefiting from our faith, whether they believe in Jesus or not.

And that's how we impact. We do good work. We are a blessing to our, to the business we're in or the organization we're in, we're a blessing to the community. Everybody around us should be benefiting from the work that God is doing in our lives because of Jesus, whether they believe in Jesus or not. They'll come to ask a question about why are you so different, Bill?

They're going to want to know but it's going to be because of the excellence of your work, your attitude. The transparency of you living out your life. That's why God has us in the marketplace. If you're not in the marketplace, if everybody that's a Jesus follower worked in a church, how is anybody that doesn't know Jesus going to meet Jesus?

Bill Hollis: Absolutely. I love the way you framed that, you framed it fantastically well. Because I remember when I first got this vision, I used to go to work and beat everyone up with a Bible. And I must probably chased more people out of the kingdom than I brought people into the kingdom. And I think you're framing it that it's we just need to live out a kingdom lifestyle and people will be drawn. So maybe you can share maybe your gift thing with us, Jim.

Jim: My gifting. Wow, okay, so Martha and I have a joint gifting that is incredible. Most couples don't have this but we have a joint gifting of cleaning up messes. Spiritual gifting that we literally can walk into a room, walk into a business, walk into an event, see a mess and know how to clean it up. That's our spiritual gifting. We share that one.

For me, it's really I'm a truth teller. But I'm a black and white, maybe velvet brick truth teller. I can walk in, I could sense a problem. I could see the solution, but I lack the mercy to present that solution gently to people. My gifting is,, we walked in and bought into an insurance agency that was a hundred, it was 98 years old when we bought it back in the late nineties.

And I'm like, I see the vision for how to make it successful, but I had to unravel 50 years of why do you do it this way? That's what we've always done it, but I could see the future. So my gifting is really speaking, it's speaking the truth. It's uncovering the truth when people don't necessarily - if you really were to summarize all my, wow, I'm sorry, Bill, this is a longer answer than meant to be.

My spiritual gifting is asking the right questions, even when I don't have the right to ask those questions, even though I shouldn't even know that I should be asking those questions. That's my prophetic gift. It's almost in reverse, instead of telling, it's asking a question that nobody wants asked. But I'm asking it and I didn't know I should be asking that question.

Bill Hollis: In Jewish, they would say, you've got chutzpah.

 (laughter)

Martha: this is true.

Jim: In Italian, they say, I got a whole lot more than chutzpah. Yes, . So I got Italian background and yes, I have a boldness that has been tempered by Jesus, but I'm still working on my mercy gift.

Bill Hollis: Between Janet and I when we minister to people, I think it's very similar to what you two do. I think one said to me I'm like a surgeon. I cut them up and then Jesus comes like the nurse and helps them bandage them back.

Martha: Yes. Yes. But what's really neat is so we've worked most of our career, we've worked together in business that we own and have developed or doing different things. And, but what Jim is describing works in all areas of life. So yes, he sees it in the business realm, but he also sees it in people's marriages or in people's relationships or in their finances, or in whatever area where there's a mess. Just how can we come in and help bring order that can then give them the ability to have a peace that surpasses all understanding?

Because in the chaos, it is really hard to see God's plan and God's purpose. And it's funny because over the years we've started to realize that it's not in just one area of life that God's given us the ability to clean up that mess, but to do it in, whatever area he sees as a pain point for people.

Bill Hollis: Now, I think that's such a fantastic thing to be like that as a couple. I don't know if you have a prophetic gifting?

Martha: Who, me?

Bill Hollis: Yes.

Martha: Oh he definitely does. And so I've learned to listen to that because sometimes he'll say something that seems quite random and I'll be why is that important? Why is that what we need to be focusing on right now? And or why did you even say that? And sometimes he says I don't know, but I felt like it needed to be said. And so then, we are like learning how to pay attention to that. And sometimes it's bad pizza or good pizza that didn't sit well, but not often.

Jim: So it is, it's important for your listeners to understand. So in, in America, in the United States of America, we grew up in white evangelical churches. Which means the Holy Spirit really wasn't talked about much and the supernatural wasn't talked about very much. So everything we've learned about the Holy Spirit, we had to learn outside of the four walls of the church, which is sad.

And so we've got good friends that we've met from all over the world that have really helped us to understand more about the kingdom. The first book I read about the kingdom - was not the Bible, even though I know Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom, but I didn't get it - was a book I was reading in preparation for the show and God's just revealed different things to us.

Martha's gift with people is when she walks into a room, and I don't know how to describe this yet, but she's a mother to people and she is a peacemaker to people. And when people, when she walks in a room full of women, they're all attracted to her because they want to hear her wisdom. She doesn't like to say stuff like that.

As a team, we've done marriage mentoring for a lot of entrepreneurial couples over the last 25 years, and we often end up with couples that are the opposite of us, where the woman is more like me and the man is more like Martha. And so we can speak truth into them in a way that people haven't heard before.

And it's, God just uses us in interesting ways. We're now planted in a small city in a small midwestern state in the middle of the country and God is using us to really bring back a heartbeat to this little town that was dying slowly. And he pulled us out of Fort Myers, Florida, a town of millions to a little town of 2200 in a town on, it's on a rail line, but it's in a town that had been forgotten many years ago.

Bill Hollis: And the name of the town, if I may ask?

Jim: The name of the town is Marionville, Missouri.

Bill Hollis: Yeah. That's an absolutely wonderful story. And maybe, I think the thing is that if you can just share a few nuggets here on about, on your journey, what you've learned and share with the viewers, what you've learned about God using us in our ministry, what you shared is God using your gifting. Each one of our gifting for his purpose. And maybe you can expand a little bit more on it in terms of work.

Jim: You want to go first?

Martha: Okay. I'm thinking of a couple things that God has just told us in the process - is that he doesn't want us to reinvent the wheel. He's not looking for us to waste our time and our resources on something that, that has already been created by someone else living out their purpose.

And so we really have a heart for collaboration. And it's just important in our work, applying this every day is actually easy if we are willing to lay down our pride and to lay down our own agenda, because maybe you work alongside somebody who does something better than you.

Let's work together on this rather than trying to be in our own lanes and wasting energy trying to do something you maybe don't do well, and the person next to you does really well, and working together, seeing them as your neighbor, again, using just biblical principles to say, you're my neighbor, I am by you eight hours a day.

How can we get to know each other better, work together and have a better result as a, as part of that process?

Jim: So I hinted earlier that I was speaking about five ways to incorporate your faith into your work. And God really developed this for me in a 90 mile commute that I got introduced to Oz Hillman's Daily Devotionals.

I was driving 90 miles each way to work from Tampa Bay to Orlando. So everybody knows where Orlando is because they think Mickey actually lives there. He does not, however, live there. No, he lives in Kissimmee, but it's right near Orlando. So to make a long story short, what God laid on my heart was this is the five step plan on how everybody can start their ministry at work.

It starts with pray every day for the people that you work with by name. Just start praying for them. At first, you're not going to know how to pray for them. You're just going to pray for them. You're praying for them. Learn the names of their spouses, if they've got them. Learn the name of their kids, if they've got them. And just start praying for them.

And then after a while, you could say, I've been praying for them. Is there anything specific I can pray about for you? Just keep it at random. The second step. And when you start to pray for people, God starts to change your heart towards those people. You can't look at them as problems anymore because when you pray for people, you start to see people the way God does, as his children, as people created in his image.

So that's the first step. Second step is serve the people that you work with over and above what your job requires you to do. So look for ways where your job says you got to do X, but look for Y and Z. If your job says do A, do B, and C, I don't know if the alphabet's the same in South Africa or not, I'm just kidding. I know you say Zed, you don't say Z, whatever that is, that's okay, we'll let you go with that.

But look for ways to serve people over and above. Don't just do the bare minimum, do what Jesus did. Jesus didn't just heal people. He forgave their sins. Jesus was always busy, but he was never in a hurry. He didn't miss the people that God placed in front of him. So serve people over and above what your job requires you to do. The third thing is befriend people. Everybody's got work relationships with people, that only goes so far. You just only know so much because what people know at work. Look for ways to befriend them outside of work in an appropriate fashion.

That'll depend on what your situation is. But Martha and I invited people that we work with into our home as a couple to have a meal together, because over a meal, you can have incredible conversations. And this isn't appropriate for everybody. Cause if you're a single woman, don't invite single guys into your house for a meal.

That's not a great thing, but you can go out for dinner or whatever as a group, but get to know people outside of work. Befriend them, because that's how they can get to know your story, your Jesus story. Then, the fourth step is look for ways to pray with people. Because when we work with people every day, Bill, we recognize, we know what their regular daily demeanor is.

We know this is what Jim is like every day. So when Jim is out like this, and Jim comes in, and I'm more like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Oh, bother. All of a sudden people are gonna go, Jim, what's wrong? Because you're going to know because I'm not being like me. And you say, Jim, how are you doing today?

And when Jim responds, I'm fine. Really - from The Italian Job- freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional? Really, Jim, how are you doing today? Really, I want to know. And then Jim shares from his heart and shares whatever has got him down for the day. You knew this because Jim wasn't the same when he walked through the door.

When Jim is done sharing, you say, can I pray about that for you right now? Never had anybody tell me no, because when people are hurting, they're open to the power of prayer. Never had anybody tell me no, never. I have prayed with Jews and atheists and Muslims and Buddhists. Never had anybody tell me no.

But the fifth step is what is the most important step. Everything about your work needs to be defined by excellence because we represent the King, and our work needs to be designed like Colossians 3 23 says, do your work heartily as if you're working directly for the Lord, because we are, we're serving him.

When our work is defined by excellence, all of those other things make an exponentially greater, larger impact. Praying for people, befriending people, serving people, praying with people - all of that is allowed because you're defined by excellence. Your attitude is different and everybody can feel the Holy Spirit of God inside of you. They don't know that's what it is but they can feel the vibrancy of the living God of the universe inside of you, whether they believe in Jesus or not. And that's how you transform any workplace, ANY workplace into a mission field.

Bill Hollis: Jim, that is absolutely fantastic. I couldn't have summarized it better than you. However, Janet and I have a prophetic ministry so there's one little addition that I would add, is that sometimes the Holy Spirit would give us a word of knowledge about a person's situation, and obviously when you speak to them and they would say how did you know that? Then you can share that.

It's only the Lord that showing us because he loves you so much and that he cares about you. That's why I would reveal it. And then also gives us an opportunity to pray for them as well. So I think that it's just fantastic the way you've put it. It's better than I ever expected and maybe you can also share some of the other things that you've encountered with working with sharing this message that will help the listeners to, to pick up what you're calling about, going out there and being I call a marketplace minister. Cause that's a good name to give it because they're waiting to go into ministry. So we call them marketplace ministers so they know they're working for God.

Jim: I would just put a little plug in there that we wrote a series of books. We wrote a trilogy of books: iWork4Him, iRetire4Him, and sheWorks4Him for the Christian working woman. All of those are available on PDF. I know that it's way too expensive to buy a book from here and have it shipped to there, but they're available PDF on the website and it really goes into detail on how to put those things into practice.

Martha, what's one marketplace idea that we've heard or do you want me to go first with one? All right. So generosity, we need to understand the business, the marketplace is about blessing other people. As a business owner, the business is supposed to be a blessing to you and your family. It's supposed to be a blessing to your employees and their families. It's supposed to be a blessing to your vendors and your clients. And it's supposed to be a blessing to the community that you operate within.

When it is not operating as a blessing in all of those areas, you've got something wrong. And if you have a great prophetic guy on your team, he can help you figure that out faster than not. But what we're seeing, is that business owners are not getting discipled to that effect. They've been taught like I was taught. Martha and I had two entrepreneurial couples in our lives as young people, as young marrieds. And this is what we were taught: business is business and church is church. They have nothing to do with each other.

\So make a lot of money in business and give it to the church. And maybe you could start a building committee one day. That was what we were told was the epitome of the business owner's experience. Instead of the fact - this is the truth - your Savior was a business guy. He knew a lot about business because he operated in the marketplace as a carpenter - whatever that meant in his day. Could have been a stonemason. Could have been actually working with wood. Could have been a furniture guy. We don't know. But he was a carpenter and when his dad died, he took over the family business.

So your Savior gets small business woes. Recognize that. And they're business owners and business leaders throughout the Bible. Yet growing up, as I said, in a white evangelical world, I'd never have ever heard a sermon about Jesus being a business guy. And likely Bill, 99 and a half percent of the people listening to your podcast also have not heard that sermon yet.

We've never heard that sermon. We've never met somebody who heard it.

Martha: I've heard you preach it.

Jim: Yeah, I've never heard anybody that's ever heard that sermon. So in the marketplace though, Bill, it's about generosity because as God created the marketplace, I mean, it goes back to the cultural mandate in Genesis: cultivate the earth and cause it to be a blessing to everybody. Be fruitful and multiply.

Everything that we've got above ground started off underground. Everything in this remote control came from underground. Everything that we're wearing came from underground. It grew up in a tree, whatever. We need to recognize that we as business owners and marketplace leaders have been given the ability to multiply dollars. Not so that we can increase our status of living, but that we can increase our status of giving. All of the problems of the world that the governments are trying to fix were meant to be fixed by Christ following business owners.

Because the government - doesn't matter what government, whether it's your south african government or my united states government or the new zealand government the australian government any of the 180 countries across the planet- they're trying to solve problems that the church was meant to solve. And the money is floated to business people's coffers and they get stuck there and then they invest into a boat or a bigger house or a bigger building or whatever it may be but it was meant to solve poverty. It was meant to, you give people jobs and give people worth.

Martha says I'm pointing too much. What do you want to add to that?

Martha: No no, I want to know what Bill wants to hear. What is it that, in this whole conversation of purpose and work, what is it that we can help with?

Bill Hollis: Yeah, I think the biggest place, and I think you've addressed a lot of it with the giving, because one of the thing is when you grow up in Africa with a poverty mentality, it's very hard to give.

So without realizing it, you're addressing it already. And maybe you can just from your side, maybe you've been on a practical basis of how you've had to deal with maybe with people and sharing about them receiving it because part of giving, the message is one thing. It's the other thing is how people receive it.

Martha: So I think as far as that goes, a lot of it goes back to this whole building relationships and being a real person in your workplace, being authentic. People are going to be receptive to who you are, and they can't dispute what God has done in your life. So being transparent, being authentic allows people that opportunity to lean in, to ask questions, and then to hear the truth and the truth behind why you are the way you are.

And so I think that is one way that people respond is through the authenticity and the transparency. And, you never know. I think a lot of people have some interaction with church that has either hurt them or has caused them to drift away and you may be like Jim said earlier, the only Jesus that these people, the people that you work with and interact with on a daily basis are going to encounter in the flesh, being the hands and feet of Jesus, doing that in a way that doesn't push them away, but draws them in because you're loving on them and caring for them.

Jim: One of the things I think that really grades on Christian, Christ-following business people is that ministries just want them to give them cash. Business people don't like to give cash because they see the cash just go, it's gone.

What we need to encourage is business investment. We need to encourage more business owners to create recurring revenue streams that funnel money to ministries to be done, but without diminishing returns, because that's creativity in the kingdom. And that's something you don't see a lot of. That's what we're trying to do with iWork4Him.

I hate raising money because it, you have to beg for it. Kingdom dollars are scarce because so many people are sitting on trillions of dollars, but let's engage business owners to say, let's create a business model that creates an ongoing revenue stream for Christian nonprofits. Because in the States, I don't know what it's like in South Africa, but in the States, a nonprofit can own. A for profit can't own a nonprofit but a nonprofit that runs a for profit to fund the ministries that they've been called to do. That's an incredible thing. But Bill, I think really the biggest thing and we've neglected, and I apologize. We're 30 some minutes into this and we haven't said it yet. One of the biggest things we realized here in the States, and I don't know anything about South Africa, is that Christian working women are not celebrated.

Christian working women, no matter what their title is, they can be a CEO of a fortune 100 company, but when they come into church on Sunday morning, somebody asks them to serve in the nursery. Instead of recognizing that God has given Christian women the same spiritual giftings that God has given Christian men, yet we celebrate this in the States.

I can't speak to that culture, but in the United States, we celebrate 99 and a half percent the giftings of men and not the giftings of women yet. God has spread gifts out to all of us who became believers. And so we created a sub brand called sheWorks4Him to celebrate what God is doing in Christian working women, because God has put a gifting and a calling on the majority of Christian women to work outside of the home, and we need to celebrate that and recognize what they're doing in the marketplace.

Bill Hollis: I can attest to that because when I married Janet, she had an international prophetic ministry. And so I had quickly somebody put a book in my hand by an author called Skip Moyim calling The Guardian Angel. And in it, God opened my eyes that we had this whole concept of women are called men's help mate.

Okay. And that's where this whole thing is derived from that the church teaches because they have the wrong concept of what that word means. So I don't want to elaborate it too much so Martha can carry on. The fact is they've got the whole wrong concept of what that word means. And when you go and look it up in Hebrew, okay it's called Ezra Kanachdu.

I don't know how my Hebrew is, but it's pretty close to what it is. And that, when you look that word up, Ezra Kanachdu, you'll find out what God's original intention was for women.

Jim: Which was?

Bill Hollis: Yes. Okay. You want the definition? She's called to be the spiritual guide. Okay. She's called to be the boundary set of the relationship. She's called to be our greatest encourager as well. And the one thing she will do is if you're not for God, whenever you are not with God, she will oppose you the most than anybody else.

Jim: I like that. That's fantastic. I'd love to have you write a book about that. But here's what I say :every woman on the planet has been given what we call women's intuition. Non spiritual people can't describe it, but spiritually women on this planet can hear the voice of God way more clearly than men can. And a man who doesn't listen to the women in his life are headed for disaster. That's why the church in America is heading for irrelevancy because we've ignored what the women in the church have been saying for hundreds of years. And we just have to be cautious.

I think one other word that's really misunderstood - then I want Martha to talk - is in Matthew, the great commission. In english, it's it's interpreted go. But in Greek, it means as you go. And that's huge. Instead of we call people to go to the foreign mission field, to go to the ministry, to go to the pulpit. But that's not what Jesus said. He said, as you go in what you're doing, as you're already doing it, as you go, disciple the nations, teach them what I taught you, baptize them in my name. As you go, that's a game changer. In English. I can't do it in other languages, but that's again, the difference between go, which we've been told the highest callings, the two tiers, pastor, missionary, and everybody else.

No. It gets wiped out because it doesn't exist. It's as you go. Martha, when we've run into Christian working women though, when we start to celebrate their giftings, what happens?

Martha: I want to comment on as you go, but I will comment on this first. Just that when women are really living in their calling, in their gifts, in the place that God has them, they come alive. They're vibrant, they're attractive to the world and the world wants to know why. There's just so many things that when a woman is truly living out what he's called her to do, and for a season that may look different. And that's why I wanted to comment on as you go, because in a season where you are raising babies, whether you're working outside the home or inside the home or a combination of both or working in the home with a side hustle or whatever that combination may look like, as you go about your day, living out what God is calling you to do that is huge because we have learning opportunities.

We have constant conversations around us, whether we're going to the post office to mail something or whether we're writing a contract with our biggest customer. It's as we go about that, what are we, how are we living out our faith?

Bill Hollis: That's wonderfully put because I have a great friend, or we have a great friend, a guy called Brian Blount, who has a great healing ministry and that's his ministry: As You Go. So wherever he goes, he's been on sidroth and he's been on the one of the new movies that they made, wherever he goes he's praying for people for healing. And God sees, I mean I've been on the township with him everywhere and miracle after miracle, because he says as we go. So his healing ministry is that's his gift.

Jim: That's awesome. And we've interviewed people that have, they've experienced the supernatural as they go in their marketplace job at all. We've interviewed people from all over the world. God is on the move in the marketplace. Supernatural things are happening. The gifting that God gave you is not just to be used in the four walls of the church.

The gifting that God gave you is to be used where you, as you go. Including your work, whether you're digging ditches or crawling, climbing poles or selling used cars, or you sell insurance, or you're a nurse or a doctor, a teacher, wherever you go, you maybe run a restaurant, or you work at a restaurant, or you're a cook, or you're a janitor, or it doesn't matter.

God's given you that on purpose.

Bill Hollis: One of the prophetic words that I received from Dr. Bill Hammond was to bring kingdom reality and power to people. So in my book, I'm busy writing it. It's just a composition of all the supernatural experiences that I've received in all the years. And there's so many I can't, you, you only ever remember the highlights.

And so I've just gone by memory to write about the highlights. And it's going to be quite a supernatural story because I've seen God move many supernatural things, and we need to expect the supernatural because God is a supernatural, Jesus is supernatural, Holy Spirit is supernatural, and if we go to the marketplace, we take Him, all three of them with us, and we need to see the supernatural every day in our workplace.

Jim: Amen to that. And when we do- in this country, according to data and research, 36 percent of the population claim to be born again believers. That would represent about 50 million people in the workforce or slightly larger, of which 47 percent are women. And the other 53 percent are men. If all of those people were activated, if everybody in the United States of America recognized that their work was their mission field, their place of ministry our country and therefore the entire globe because of the positive and negative influence our country has on the globe, think of the transformative processes across the entire globe if people in this country would just wake up to the fact that they don't need to quit their jobs to go into ministry.

They are already in ministry. They just need to shift their thinking.

Bill Hollis: Fantastic because they say my figures at six percent, would at six percent they started to pinpoint. So your 15%, if it would get hold of it, could change the whole of America.

Jim: Yeah. And that's what we want.

Bill Hollis: Yes thank you so much for spending time with me. It's just been absolutely a blessing. You've got a lovely sense of humor. And really what you had to share, what you and Martha had to share, has really been inspiring and thank you so much. This message will go to Africa and we trust that it will reach as many as it can because that is an absolute wonderful message that you two shared tonight.

Jim: We're grateful to be here. And as it goes across all Africa, just know brothers and sisters, God has you where you are on purpose for a purpose. Don't miss it. Don't think that if you just were somewhere else, it could just be better. Just let him use you right where you're at.

Bill Hollis: Thank you so much.

Jim: Thank you.