5/16/22 - Taking Kingdom Territory: Joyce Avedisian & Cissy Watson

Intro: As a Christian working woman, you have many roles from your responsibility with family and friends to community and work. How do you connect all that you do with all that you are, and still have your face shine through. It's a challenge, but you are up to it. The, sheWorks4Him podcast at the gathering place to empower Christian working women, to live out their calling at work.

By connecting them to God resources and each other through powerful face stories from other working sisters in Christ. Welcome to sheWorks4Him.

Martha: You've tuned into, sheWorks4Him, where we connect Christian, working women to God resources and one another. I am your host today, Martha Brangenberg, and you can find us online at, sheWorks4Him.com and all of her social media, linked in. We have a YouTube channel. I hope that you will check us out and get engaged there as well. I'd love to hear from. Feel free to comment on the shows as you see about them and listen to them. We'd love to hear from you. You know, one of the things that we love to do at sheWorks4Him is connect you to resources.

And right now I'm going to share with you about an event for Christian working women called Boss Woman Getaway. This is being put on by Dr. Perdita Meeks. And you can find more by going to the link that will be in the show notes, but just real quick, this is an event for women in every area of work that you might be in.

And we include the home in that, in the categories, and they are going to be talking about topics to empower you as a Christian working woman around your management, around your professional development, your financial stability, and your walk with the Lord. So please check out Dr. Perdita Meeks.org/Boss Woman Getaway.

So that is your resource that we're bringing to you today. And if you have other events or resources that you want us to share on, sheWorks4Him. Just email me, martha@iworkforhim.com and I would love to share that with everyone.

As women, we admire leaders that show vulnerability and honesty, true leaders, never stop learning and growing, even when they're the ones teaching the material. Today's conversation will unfold the beautiful example of just this type of leadership, Joyce Avedisian-Riedinger is an author, coach and leader. Her executive round table called Faith in Action is designed to apply Matthew 6:33 seeking first, the kingdom of God.

Joyce teaches servant leadership, taking territory for the kingdom and personal mission vision. However, if you ask Joyce, she will tell you her discovery around the concept of territory was enhanced by our other guests today and her round table member, Cissy Watson. Joyce, and Cissy. I want to welcome you to, sheWorks4Him.

Joyce Avedisian: Thank you. It's a terrific honor to be here. Thank you so much.

Cissy Watson: It is Martha.

Martha: Well, thank you for taking the time to share with me and the sheWorks4Him audience. And I want to start by asking Joyce a few questions. Joyce, just tell me quickly, why did you become a follower of Jesus?

Joyce Avedisian: Well, I was feeling very lonely and very empty and there was a void in me and I wasn't quite sure what that void was all about. And at the time I was living in working in New York city. So I started wandering around kind of looking for something to fill that void. And strangely enough, I ended up in the most unusual places. I ended up in the training grounds of Jehovah witnesses and that didn't feel right. Then I met a moonie, but I wasn't sure it was a moonie because he was on the streets of Greenwich village, looking like a Paris painter with an easel.

And I got attracted, which was his whole game. And he invited me to dinner with his wife and I, when I went to the place he gave me as the address, I knew it was the moonie center. So, and then I went to a church and the church spoke about God, but never mentioned Jesus Christ is the son of God. So by the grace of God and the power of the holy spirit, I moved on.

And finally a friend referred me to a Christ centered Bible believing church, and I received Christ. Matthew 7:7 "ask, and you shall receive, seek, and you shall find: worked for me.

Martha: You know, I love that because you were seeking and you didn't settle until God actually got ahold of your heart and made that difference. So once you understood and had a relationship with Jesus Christ, did you understand that God cared about the work that you were doing?

Joyce Avedisian: It well, once I, yes, once I received Jesus Christ, then everything came into place because. I just want to give you a little of my backstory. My father was an Armenian child in Turkey during the Turkish massacres of the Armenians.

And he always told me that evil overcame good, and big business and big government trample the good little guy. And so I had in my heart, I'm going to change companies and institutions so I, I majored in organization behavior and I started working for these fortune 500 companies. And I try to bring about, you know, respecting people and giving people dignity.

But I realize these companies had a major fault line, which was God was money for them. And people were just a means to an end. So when I received Christ, I realized this dream could come true. If the company's built on kingdom principles and spirit-filled leadership, this could happen. And so it all came together for me at that time.

Martha: It did and so much so that you actually, co-authored a book called Reflecting God's Character in Your Business. And I just want to draw attention to it. We're not really going to interview on that so much today, but listeners, you can find this book, we'll put it in the show notes for you, but it's a very comprehensive manual, really.

Joyce, can you just real quickly bottom line the book for our listeners so that they know if it's one that they need to grab a hold of?

Joyce Avedisian: Well, it really demonstrates how kingdom principles and spirit filled leadership, transform industries and companies. And there are several case studies that highlight this, that they, if you want to 6:33, if, if you want to seek the Lord with all your heart that this is the way to do it.

This is the only way to bring God's kingdom on earth. And these case studies in the book mirror that, and it's beautiful to see that kingdom principles provide the best value for customers, employees, vendors the community and owners and everyone wins. And that's a beautiful thing. And because of that, you know, profits are, are righteous profits and it all comes together.

Martha: It does and say, well, we'll have that in the show notes, but Joyce, you know, we found out over the years that our lives have intersected in other events that Jim and I have been a part of and we knew about your book. And so I love just being able to share that with people today. Cissy, before we go to break, I just want to ask you the same question in less than a minute.

Just tell me why you became a follower of Jesus.

Cissy Watson: I was raised in the church. Martha, my dad was a pastor until I was about 10. And so I just grew up loving Jesus. But in 2000 I had a little bit of a an intersection with the holy spirit and. Just really took it to the next level of just wanting God to be a part of every bet of my life and including work.

But I really just really wanted everything that he had. So that was a little bit of a turning point.

Martha: Excellent. And we will hear more about that after. You're listening to, sheWorks4Him where we're talking with Joyce and Cissy, and I really want, I'm excited to talk about their connection to each other and how the Lord is using that. We'll be right back with more from, sheWorks4Him.

Break: Did you know that God has a calling on your life? It's true. He's called you to bring Jesus to the world. For some that may look like a pulpit or a foreign mission field, but for most of us, it looks like a construction site, a cubicle, a hospital, or a classroom, wherever it is that you.

With volunteering and best that is your mission field. To learn more about integrating your faith into your work and retirement. Check out our books: iWork4Him, sheWorks4Him and iRetire4Him by going to iWork4Him.com/bookstore.

Martha: Welcome back to, sheWorks4Him where I'm talking today with Joyce and Cissy as they have.... I'm just, I'm going to let them share a little bit about their relationship with each other, but I just am so excited to have them both here to share how God has used them. You know what I said at the beginning of the show about Joyce as a leader, being willing to learn from someone that she is leading in her round table.

But before we do that, Cissy, I just want to hear from you and your career, you've had plenty of opportunities to join leadership groups. So why have you joined Joyce's round table that's called Faith in Action?

You know, Martha,

Cissy Watson: it's an unusual group. And primarily because we are on zoom calls with people that are leaders and their organization, and, you know, it can be lonely at the top.

I mean, who are you going to confide in if you're struggling or even if having difficulties at home? This group gets together. We have a chance to be very vulnerable and a very safe place, and it is women really loving each other. And of course, wanting to serve the Lord in all areas of our life. So it is, it is a unique organization.

We are together. We present challenges at different times. We pray for each. So it's really a joy to get, to spend two hours a month to gather on a zoom. And then of course, emails in between. We're praying for one another and it's just a place to get godly wisdom or from other women that are, I'm just thrilled to be a part of your wall.

Martha: Give me a little bit of context. What is, what does God have you doing in the day to day? What is your work?

Cissy Watson: Oh sure. I'm a developer of affordable housing. I've focused for 30 years on new construction and the last 10 years I've been focusing more on preservations. There's not a lot of funding available for very low income and we specialize in housing for seniors. I am developing deals and they're not easy. And especially making them work with the affordable rents and especially for our seniors. So we have a lot of challenges. I need God every single day, just to get through.

Martha: Give me a practical way that you not only need him every day, but you get to incorporate your faith in your day to day. What does that look like? Besides the principle, cause just the principle of what you're doing every day is very biblical.

Cissy Watson: Well, it brings joy to our hearts to be able to do it certainly. But from a practical perspective, Martha, we hire all of the people that work with us, for instance, because I'm the developer.

I hire my general contractor. I hire my architect, our engineers, our different third party reports that we need. Every person that works on our deals, we hire, we hire our lenders, we hire investors, you know, we talk with them, we get numbers, you know, who is the best financier for this particular deal?

So that's a wonderful blessing in and of itself, but pretty much when people are on my team, they know that we are doing this for the Lord and we make no bones about it. When we're on our development team calls, we, you know, I'd say, what do we need to be praying about what problems do we have? I'm very particular about allowing people to speak what I call word curses over my deals.

So we might be on a call with our development team and someone has just said, you know, we're not going to get the approval from the city. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I break that curse in Jesus' name. Yes we will. So I had the ability and again, part of it is because of my role and to operate the development team.

But I have the ability to make sure everyone understands that we are going to be God honoring and all that we say, and we do before my GC goes onsite, I have a pre-construction conference. And I say, Hey guys, you need to make sure that not only you, but every vendor, every subcontractor, every employee of every subcontractor that walks on this property is treating our seniors like their mama.

We want kindness, respect, no cussing on our property. We're just very particular about how our seniors are treated, especially during our rehabs, because our seniors are on site. So I get to control the dialogue, if you will, that spoken about our property, which I think is very important. You know, James says the power of life and deaths in the tongue.

And we don't ignore our problems. We enjoy challenges, but we pray first and we certainly asked for wisdom and everyone knows that we're serving the Lord and truly at the end of the day for us, it is all about hearing job well done, my good and faithful servant.

Martha: Yeah. And that can mean so many things to so many different people because their jobs, you know, in, in the, in so many ways looks different, but it's all for the glory of God. So I want to talk to Joyce. Joyce, one of the many things that you do is to lead this round table Faith in Action. And you told me that it's so important for Christ followers to build their business on kingdom principles. What do you actually mean by that?

Joyce Avedisian: I actually mean. I mean, it comes right out of Matthew 6 33, right? Seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. So it means that we live every day, we align all our principles and our actions with God's word and the holy spirit so that there's this close alignment in everything we say and do. And that's what it means to to come close to God and to live God's word. And we do it in three ways, really. We do it by, I think being servant leaders and serving others in the workplace. We do it by being rulers, which we'll talk more about I'm sure. And the third way is we do it by creating a kingdom culture in our company. Yeah. And that's how we reflect Christ in everything we say and do.

Martha: You know, and I love that you have it sowell-defined and we are going to talk about this area of rulers, because one of the things I said in the beginning, when I had a conversation with you, Joyce, previously, you were sharing with me how one of your foundational ways of teaching, you actually learned a lot of it from Cissy.

And I was just very touched by that, because a lot of times in leadership we don't acknowledge or people fail to acknowledge when they've learned from, in this case, like this student. So talk to me about that for a minute. And then we'll, we'll, we'll pick up more of the conversation in the next segment, but what do you believe that it means to focus on taking the territory for the kingdom?

Joyce Avedisian: To actually take authority and speak God's word over situations and to do it with boldness and courage, the way Cissy does it. When someone in her company says something off key, she'll come right in and make it right. And I think, I think that's an area that I haven't been as aware of, or haven't been aware that God has called us.

He has given us dominion. He expects us to rule and be leaders in the workplace and wherever we are. And I never had the recognition at the level that as Cissy showed me.

Martha: You know, there's just so many things that we can dive into on that, about your servant leadership, your ability to learn in the midst of leading and so much more.

And we're going to talk about that deeper when we come back after this short break. But I think the key here for all of us to be hearing is that you said it's about taking the authority and speaking God's word. We can't speak God's word if we don't know it. So it's so important that we are getting that into our hearts and so that we can speak it and know what God has in store for us.

We'll be right back in just a moment with more from, sheWorks4Him.

Break: Hey listeners. One of the huge projects Martha and I have been working on for years is making it easy for every workplace believer to find all the voices, speaking encouragement, and equipping into the faith and work movement. Presenting the Awaken Podcast Network - online at AwakenPodcastNetwork.com with over 130 different podcast voices speaking truth into you, the workplace believer. Including over 30 podcasts, dedicated to Christian working women. Go online to Awaken Podcast Network.com that's Awakenpodcast network.com.

Martha: Welcome back to sheWorks4Him with your host here, Martha Brangenberg. We're talking today to Cissy Watson and Joyce Avedisian-Riedinger. And one of the things that we, I just wanted to go deeper into this conversation about being a ruler and taking territory for the kingdom and Cissy, Joyce has said that there's a couple of key reasons why we want to do that. What are they?

Cissy Watson: Really for the impact of our, whatever it is that we're stewarding. I mean, obviously this applies to business and that's how I apply it, but it also applies in our family or whatever it is that God's given us to steward our ministry. So it's, it's important that he has put something in our hands. And we're to steward that in a way to make him proud of us.

And the word says that, you know, that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the dark principality. So if we believe that then, and we know that things happen spiritually, then we need to interject, you know, our dominion and our authority that God has given us here on earth. He says, here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

I give you authority. You can buy in, or you can lose. And so that's why I very quickly break curses in Jesus' name. The things that are spoken against our deals or our properties, or even our seniors, and, but also loose the spirit of God. So it's important to create the atmosphere, but also basically to appropriately steward what it is that he's put in our hands.

Martha: Hm. Loose the spirit of God and to steward what he has. So Joyce, one of the things that we love to highlight on sheWorks4Him is giving people resources. And so we can't possibly have a discussion as deep as you do in your round table to discuss what this would really mean for each one of us.

But you have generously created a worksheet to help us explore this concept a little bit further about being a ruler and taking territory for the kingdom. And I want our listeners to know that you can email me martha@iworkforhim.com and I'm going to connect you to Joyce to get that worksheet. And also she's willing to set up a 10 minute session for more guidance or talk about the round table, whatever you might want to dig a little deeper into.

And so those links are going to be in our show notes, but I wanted to thank you for that resource because that is what we're here for - to give people that opportunity to go a little bit deeper into that. So, Joyce, can you highlight real quickly what they will find when they get that worksheet so that they know this is something they don't want to miss?

Joyce Avedisian: Oh, these are very practical steps to how to be most effective in declaring the word of God and taking ownership of situations. And it does two things. One. It restores the kingdom of God on earth. And the second thing is it overcomes evil. So that's why we do it.

Martha: You know, and each one of us, no matter what industry we're in, there is a need for that in our, in our work. So I just pray that each person that feels drawn to take advantage of getting that worksheet and digging a little deeper, will do so. Please don't hesitate to reach out. This is just a free thing that that is given to Joyce and Cissy, both to steward. And they've offered that for you. I want to wrap up with this ladies just really quick.

Each of you, is there a verse that is your decision helping you to guide you in your decisions in this season of your life? Joyce, you go first.

Joyce Avedisian: Yes. It's in Proverbs from chapter three. Seek the Lord with all your heart lean, not on your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.

Martha: Amen. And.Cissy, do you have a verse that is meaningful to you in this season?

Cissy Watson: My, my scripture today is Matthew 25:23. His Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. Thou has been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of the Lord.

Martha: Hmm. So applicable to the conversation we're having today. Thank you ladies both for sharing that with us, Cissy Watson and Joyce Avesdisian-Riedinger, and you've been listening to, sheWorks4Him with your host, Martha Brangenberg. We are Christian working women, helping other Christian working women to live out their calling at work, as sheWorks4Him!

As

Intro: Christian

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