David:

[0:00] Growing up, my brother often said, sometimes things go as planned,

David:

[0:03] most of the times they don't. And I've learned from experience that my plans don't always succeed, but God's plans always accomplish what he intended. So I reasoned if I could figure out what God's plans are and purposes are, I'd have more success. The problem is, how do you know what God wants you to do? And how do you know what God wants you to do in your business? And so if you're wondering how to hear God's voice, well, you're in the right place. Because today we'll be learning from Steve Meisenheimer, who is the founder of The Effective Leader, how to tackle that specific question about hearing God's voice because he's been dealing with that for a number of years now. So, Steve, welcome to the Redeeming Business today.

Steve:

[0:41] Thank you, David. Happy to be here.

David:

[0:43] Yeah. And one of the questions I like to ask my guests before we start is, what is one way that you have found you're able to honor God in your business that other people may not know about?

Steve:

[0:56] That other people may not know about. Well, I think everybody knows that if you're a Christian, that the Holy Spirit should be a central figure in the leadership of the company. He should provide the purpose of the company and really should be involved in the high level and even daily management of the company. So what we do at The Effective Leader is we really invoke the Holy Spirit from the very beginning of our relationship with the client and make sure that the leader or the owner in most cases is actually actively listening and hearing the Holy Spirit.

David:

[1:31] Okay. Very good. Yeah, and it's one thing to say, oh, I'm a Christian business. It's another thing to actually live your business, operate your business out of biblical principles too. That is a big difference.

Steve:

[1:44] It is indeed.

David:

[1:44] So tell me a little bit about your journey, where you came from, where you are today. How did you arrive at the effective leader that you're working with today?

Steve:

[1:56] Well, I will give you the high level flyover. I became passionate about business when I was just 16 years old. I'm 63. So there's been a few decades in between. And I became so enamored with business. It didn't really matter what business I was in. And I started, you know, going door to door, trimming trees and doing landscape business. But I just had such a passion to grow something that, um, over time, as many business owners do, you, you completely forsake the basic principles of, you know, we are supposed to be supernatural beings, living supernatural lifestyles, invoking the Holy Spirit. And I kind of parked all of that and, uh, just really built a business in the flesh and eventually it just became an idol. And like a lot of things, when, uh, when you start developing idols in your life, though, The Lord's primary interest is to remove those idols. And I do not know what happened to him.

Steve:

[2:50] And that's what he did. It was a very slow and painful process.

Steve:

[2:54] And when the Lord started really drawing my heart back into his presence and working on me and kind of flicking off the many idols off my altar, I developed this real passion for the Word of God. And I'm naturally a teacher. That's why I enjoy the consulting and training so much. And I just started consuming the Word of God at the expense of everything else, really. And I really wanted to merge my passion for the Word of God with my passion for business, which never diminished, even though it got reorganized in my value system.

Steve:

[3:30] But over the last few years, the Lord has granted that desire to merge the two. I've always been open with my Christian faith in business, but I've never really taught. From the Holy Spirit to clients. And now we really gear our practice towards Christian business owners. We will work with non-Christian business owners as well, but they will hear the exact same thing that Christian business owners hear. Like we open with prayer, we invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us. And now each training session is bifurcated into two components. Number one, hearing from God. How is he showing up in our business? How is he showing up in our leadership team? What sort of testimonies are we having? What do we need him to do next? And then we also transition into part two, which is the real down and dirty basics, building, blocking and tackling of building a business from the four, what I call the four fundamental disciplines of sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

David:

[4:30] So you concentrate on hearing and then doing, essentially what you're doing.

Steve:

[4:35] Exactly. Very focused on it. Even the basic building or the blocking and tackling. You know, you just can't go into a company and say, this is a really good marketing campaign, should produce great results for you. And it might, and it might not, but we really seek the Lord on, you know, what should our marketing budget be? You know, what should our marketing expectations be? Which suppliers are we going to work with which ones do we feel more comfortable with and take that to the Lord so it's very granular and it's very authentic and it's very productive

David:

[5:11] Good yeah and even I've also taught people too it's like you plant, you know and then you water and then God causes the growth kind of like with Paul and Apollos he said I plant, Apollos waters, God causes the growth it's the same way in your business you can do everything right, right and uh have your marketing customer base and product and all that but god is ultimately the one bringing in the sales and bringing in convincing people to buy and all that stuff.

Steve:

[5:41] So yeah god is very um we talked about this briefly on the phone the other day that you know the a good way to redirect a believer uh not in a negative way although it seems negative is to dry up the resources, you know, take a, take a key manager or partner out of the company or to, um, you know, dry up the customer base or dry up cashflow. And that's a very useful way for God to get our attention. It doesn't sell books, but it will, uh, but God at getting someone and he will use any method necessary to, uh, to get you focused on what, uh, Peter took his eyes off of when he was endeavoring to walk on water. And the reason he sank is he took his eyes off the Lord's face.

David:

[6:25] Sure. Yeah, it reminds me of Moses and the Israelites too, that before they were set free, Pharaoh made their lives just a little bit more miserable right before they started all the plagues and got them out of there. God uses those things for a motivator. Very good. So we talked about hearing God, hearing from God.

David:

[6:49] What are different ways that God talks to us today?

Steve:

[6:54] Well, what's awesome about serving an infinite God, he has an infinite number of ways of communicating with us.

Steve:

[7:00] And I like the reference I've learned that there's four fundamental ways. There's an infinite number of ways under these four fundamental ways, but not one way is through seeing. You know, I don't know, David, if you have visions or dreams that you wake up with or have visions throughout the day where you just see something in life, in real life action.

Steve:

[7:23] And then the Lord will give you some very often just an immediate interpretation for it that it does have meaning uh that's one way the other way is hearing I tend to hear God more very often it sounds like my own voice and uh another way is just a sensing I I can't really explain it but I just sense this is the direction we're supposed to take the path we're supposed to go on the person we're supposed to hire um and um fourth is uh oh gosh um just knowing just just having this knowing in my spirit nothing where i really sensed or saw or heard but i i just know and and what's really important when we're working with teams is to appreciate those four different ways because if you're a knower for instance and i'm a hearer i may discount the knower if you can't tell me that you heard god's voice i may say well david i appreciate your input but since you didn't hear god's voice on this uh we're just going to discount it but when we really start functioning in all four of those ways which we could and which we can which we should um then you gain greater appreciation for those who hear god's differently because you hear god by just knowing as well sure

David:

[8:33] So you have all those different four different ways how do you know that's you versus that's God speaking to you versus a shiny object syndrome that me and everybody else feels like, Ooh, I think I should do this. And it's like, is that God telling me to do that? Or am I just dreaming something else up? How do I know that difference?

Steve:

[8:55] Well, there's a couple of different ways that we want to check boxes. Number one, is it scripturally accurate? Does it violate any scripture? You know, I'm running a little short on cash, so I'm going to go rob a circle K. That seems like a very effective way to build up my cash flow, but there's something inherently scripturally errant about such a conclusion.

Steve:

[9:19] Other way, is it consistent with God's character? Is it consistent with what other people are hearing? If I have a leadership team that I've developed that actually has a spirit-led culture to it and we all are seeking God's voice and I come in as the owner and say, you know, I think we should hire Joe instead of the other choices, but everybody else, there's a dissonance in their spirit about Joe, you know, then I want to listen to that. And you can't have a my way or the highway approach when you're trying to invoke a spirit-led culture. So um it's just uh it's a it's a level of peace you know when you when you hear god's voice uh i just have a real sense of peace about it even though it flies in the face my wife and i experience this on occasion flies in the face of logic just like running out of cash you know that's that can be the greatest blessing in the world when you run out of cash because you went in a direction and made a step the Lord had planned for you all along, but the Lord saw around all the little switchbacks in the road that you couldn't see, and you made an encounter or you made a relationship that you would not have made if you had not run out of cash 60 days earlier. So anyway, it's wonderful, and I love the muscle, just like any other skill. So, I've heard it said, and I really appreciate this mindset,

Steve:

[10:45] Do this little turn from, well, it could have been God, but it was probably just me.

David:

[10:53] Okay.

Steve:

[10:53] To instead say, well, it could have been me, but it was probably God. Just by that little turn of a phrase and a different paradigm or vantage point of looking at what you're hearing, it just starts building the muscles within you. Obviously, if you're going to make a bigger decision like selling your house and uprooting your family and moving to South America, you want to get a number of validations. And the Lord is very generous about validations. And he never requires something of us on Monday and expects us to do something on Tuesday. Sometimes he tells us years in advance of things that he's planning for. So to have that patient, long vision as well is very useful. But to practice giving God credit, as long as it's consistent with his character and not inconsistent with his word, and you're getting other counsel to other people that hear from God to say, yeah, it sounds about right. Give the Lord credit. And the more you do that, the more you build that muscle of hearing his voice. And over time, you start to trust yourself, which sounds like a negative thing. But for years, I trusted God I trusted that he spoke I just didn't trust myself to hear him But now, I have Lots and lots of trust For myself, that I hear God But I still follow those other criteria I just mentioned Okay,

David:

[12:12] No, that's helpful It reminds me of Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart Lean not on your own understanding In all your ways, acknowledge him And he will direct your path You have to acknowledge him and run with it. I like what you said. It could have been God, but it's probably me, or it could have been me, but it's probably God. I like that change of thought because you're probably right. God probably does lead us more than we give him credit for. Yeah, if we second-guess ourselves.

Steve:

[12:45] We have to.

David:

[12:47] We talked about unity. We talked about unity in the group. Yeah, God works through unity. I've seen that as well. So that, yep, if not everybody's unified, yeah, think some more. So, good. So when did you first learn to hear God's voice a little bit more? I mean, it seems like now you're pretty attuned to it, but how did that start?

Steve:

[13:09] Yeah, it's been about a 20-year journey for my wife and me, maybe even a little longer now, when there was a Hearing from God class at our church, and we started attending that. And it just started off very, very slowly. and over the course of a couple of years of that class, it was only a monthly meeting, which is why it moved very slowly. But it was our favorite Thursday night of the month is to go and sit with people who heard God's voice and learn more about what it means, how to do it, how to discern it, how to qualify it, et cetera. Today, we are just so much more sophisticated than we were 25 years ago in terms of hearing God's voice. It is natural just like you have children, David, do you? Do you have children?

David:

[13:58] Yeah. I got nine children, yes.

Steve:

[14:00] Nine children. Praise God. I do. Well, each of them learned to hear God's voice or learned to hear your voice and discern your voice and became very intimate with your voice very early on. And we can do the same thing if we're just plugged in and trained to do so. You know, the Lord said in Matthew that my sheep hear my voice. It's a natural event. It's not something that is so woo-woo or inexplicable. God speaks to us. He is a relationship-oriented God. That's what he's done, everything he's done. Jesus came, lived, died, resurrected, and we resurrected with him, is that we might have a relationship with him. So to think that he doesn't speak or even speak outside of his word, which is a lot of people, some people, believe that you can only hear God in his word. But that completely eliminates one half of the way God speaks, is the rhema word of God, which is another word, and you're probably familiar with it. You have the logos in the Greek, and you have the rhema in the Greek, and the rhema is just the spoken, the breath of God. And it's exciting to have that level of intimacy.

David:

[15:15] I guess that's what I kind of wonder sometimes because I see some people are

David:

[15:19] like, yeah, God told me to do this. So I was doing this and God told me to do that. And somebody once said, be very careful when you say God told me to do something. Because if God really told you to do something, you believe it, you need to do it. You can't not do it or you're disobeying God. You're sinning. And so that, you know, to me, it puts a little restraint on me to verbally say, oh, God told me to do this. So I'm going to do this. So I'm just kind of like, I think he wants me to do this. So I just kind of protect myself kind of thing.

Steve:

[15:51] Well, we are our daddy. Our father is exceedingly patient with us as you are with your children. You know, the different levels of maturity. When we become a Christian, we are just infants. You know, we know we are way more intimate with the flesh than we are with the spiritual aspect of our lives. But like any growth continuum whether it's physical emotional mental or spiritual uh it is a continuum you might hear something but as i mentioned earlier god doesn't usually say something on monday expect to have you fully execute it by tuesday uh he is he is patient and so if we sit on something like my wife who is exceedingly um security conscious uh that's just her nature and she was, she heard that she was supposed to quit her job. And before she did over the course of the next year, she had five different, totally unrelated validations of that. So she knew that in her spirit resonated with that. I, I, I should quit my job. But, you know, six months later, eight months later, she still had the job, but the validations kept coming in. And eventually after the fifth validation, it was like, she came home and we had the conversation and we were blessed by.

David:

[17:10] Very interesting. And that's, I've experienced that too, where I feel like God wants me to do something and he shows me all these signs. And then after I make the decision, all those signs go away. I'm like, can I have one more? Yeah. And he usually does give me one, but it reminds me of, we don't experience it that much anymore because we use GPS on our phones to get everywhere. But when I was first married, I had to write all my directions down on a note card. And as I'm going, I'm looking for this highway, looking for this road and this state route. And sometimes you turn and it's like, oh, did I get that road right? And so you're looking and half mile down the road, it's like, oh, this is state road 15. Oh, yeah, it is the right road. And that's how I feel like sometimes with God is after I've turned, all the signs go away. And then there's like, here's another one because you want it, you need it. God knows our frame.

David:

[18:09] So that's really neat So what skills, what steps can we do to start validating or saying Hey, this is God speaking versus me speaking I know you kind of referenced that But what's our first step if we don't feel like we've even heard from God Other than reading the Bible?

Steve:

[18:27] Well, we have an exercise that we do in our workshops And we used to have people Let's say you and I were sitting across the table from each other in our workshops And you would say, you know, Steve, one of my most pressing issues is, you know, cash flow. And then I would go through these series of steps. We train people to go through these steps. So we are hearing in all four ways that we're hearing, we're seeing, we're sensing, and we're knowing.

Steve:

[18:54] So we have a really good 360-degree perspective of what it is we're sharing, about to share with someone that, you know, in your cases, you talk about cash flow. So I would ask the Lord for a picture. Lord, just give me a picture. It's really cool how you experience seeing God. And it's, I, I, if it's not a hundred percent, David, I don't know, but it's exceedingly high percentage of people that will just meditate for a few moments, Lord, and say, give me a picture of, of a solution for David's cashflow problem. And then they might get a picture of a butterfly flying through a blue, you know, backdrop sky has nothing to do with cashflow, right? On the surface but then we'll stop and we'll say okay lord uh that vision was pretty darn clear it could have been fuzzy but just say you know using to think it would have been me but it was probably god so i got this picture of butterfly flying to the sky and then uh the next question is do you have a sense about that and okay the sense of it is freedom you know i just got a sense of freedom you know um so then we'll go through a series of questions you ask the lord lord what is it about this butterfly against a clear blue sky and the freedom that you want me to share with with david and then he will start giving me questions and then he will start answering the questions usually pretty much right away i'll ask lord well what is the significance of a butterfly relative to um

Steve:

[20:24] You know to to david's cashflow position he might say well a moment ago he was in a cocoon he was in a completely different environment and he metamorphosed metamorphosa whatever that word is into a into a completely different anyway you just see the progression that might take place that uh but each question allows you to get more and more specific because a lot of words people will give you are so vague and you don't necessarily have an interpretation for them so You don't know the application. But so what we really train people to do is keep asking questions. As long as the Lord will give you another question, ask it. As long as the Lord will give you another answer to that question, or maybe the question is even for the recipient, not for the person, you might have the answer to the question. And then at the very end of the questions, we just summarize what we've heard in the various questions above, and we put it in first person, you know, as coming from God. So say, David, I see a complete metamorphosis coming in your cash flow situation and you're in the business overall together. What seemed to be a prison yesterday is going to be total freedom today. And just, you know, then add some of the Q&A that you add through it. And the beauty of some of the people that are receiving these words will just start crying.

Steve:

[21:40] They can be so intimate when it's coming from God himself, and he's speaking to your specific situation in a way that is so loving and so generous, so biblical, and so in the nature of character of God. It's very moving. And then very often the person giving it will start crying because of the intimacy of that word. They're so blessed by it that the Lord gave them a word for someone else for a critical issue that they don't even may not know very well. And it's an exciting way to invoke hearing God in a very practical way In a very practical setting such as business And if not a single bird falls to the ground without God knowing it And he can tell you the exact number of hairs on your head at any event moment Believe me, he's interested in your cash flow situation He's interested in which marketing channels you use He's interested in whether you hire Joe or Susan for your next sales position

David:

[22:39] I tell people God knows just as much or more about your business than you do.

David:

[22:44] The Bible is good not just for getting people to heaven and help you live a happy life. God knows about business too. I mean, you talk about systems. There's no greater system than this universe and this world. And you look at your body, all the systems in there. Organization coding. You look at coding. Think of any animal and the instinct that is in them. You know, the birds that go and learn how to fly, learn how to build a nest, learn how to feed themselves. They didn't go to school for that. God coded that in there. And yet we think our computer coding is so cool and complex. And God can figure that one out too. And he can help you with that. That's all really neat. I know in 1 John, it talks about testing the spirits. So how do you test the spirits here That they're from God or not from God When you go through this stuff Yeah.

Steve:

[23:40] The more intimate And of course there's The book of Acts early on I forget exactly the chapter and verse But it talks about four different ways That we grow in our spirit And number one is we're in the word Number two, we're in prayer And I've always found a link between that The more I'm in the word, the more I pray naturally The less I read the word, the less I pray Um, number three is fellowship, you know, good community with godly men on men and women on women. Um, and fourth communion, there's something intimate about taking communion, uh, that again, develops and furthers that relationship, whether you do it daily or as needed or whatever, uh, whatever, however the Lord leads you in that. But the, uh, the three that I really focus on with the young men that I mentor is get in the word, get in prayer, get in fellowship.

Steve:

[24:28] And just by doing that, you will develop this, this increasing, rapidly increasing intimacy with the Holy Spirit. You know all the things that come from the spirit you just know his voice you know his moving you can feel his presence and and i i said that one time and and someone responded with the the mormon's uh you know pearl of what is it uh the burning in the bosom it kind of rocked me back on my heel because i thought you know i oh i never thought about that you know should i feel guilty about you know having a a sense in my body that you know god is just giving me this warm gracious hug which i have felt you know on various occasions perhaps you have too but

Steve:

[25:05] God is very um very into revealing himself and the more you the more you uh expose yourself to the holy spirit in deeper ways you expose yourself to the holy spirit with those four ways that i just mentioned uh the more the counterfeit becomes conspicuous and it's just like a bank teller they don't train bank tellers how to how to look at counterfeit dollar um and to figure out whether it's counterfeit they just have them to become exceedingly familiar with real money and then when they're peeling out real money and all of a sudden they feel something a little bit different looks a little different whatever they take it and set it aside and go back to counting the real money and the same way in the spirit you will feel the counterfeit uh the flesh has a very distinct feeling to it and um the spirit has a has a completely opposite a feeling to it um the fruit of the spirit is another great measurement you know do i feel uh am i growing in in love or am i decreasing in love you know if you were here present with me would i just want to give you a hug um you know and the more you were just moving the spirit the more you would say yeah david is here i just i want to hug this guy just just love him so much because the love just fills you and just pours over you and the pour starts pouring on your family and then your friends and your associates and your partners and everyone else around you

Steve:

[26:27] So um and that's true down just go down all nine fruit of the spirit and it's um by the time you become that level of intimacy uh there's uh there's no demonic spirit there's no voice of my own in the flesh that trips you up Okay,

David:

[26:45] Sounds good. Well, Steve, you said a lot of good things today.

David:

[26:50] What's one thing you'd like to leave my listeners with and challenge them with today?

Steve:

[26:57] Um, get started. Um, you know, you have to be intentional. You know, the infants are exceedingly intentional, what they see, what they learn, uh, what they mimic, uh, who they trust, who they don't trust. Um, you know, become that level of, of intimacy in your relationship with the Lord. And the, the, the greater intimacy you pursue, the more he will pour himself into you. He has completely poured himself into you at salvation, but there's so much more to come. Seek it.

David:

[27:31] Yep. Very good. Just get started. Seek him and he will be found of you. Yes. Steve, thank you very much for your time and encouragement today. And next steps to put in practice what you've heard is to check the show notes. I'm going to put some links and sites and things on how to contact Steve and to get to know him with the effective leader, how to work with him. And sign up for the newsletter and for the podcast so you can get future episodes right to your Dropbox, your email. And friends, that's all we have for now. Trust you have been inspired to redeem your business, redeem your time, buy it back, and walk worthy of God's great name.