this is part of also why I'm like, I just love

entrepreneurs and business people because there often is such a.

An internal drive to say, I'm, I'm trying something new.

I'm going in a new direction.

I'm not actually willing to just accept the status quo.

And they're often just a little bit more interesting, right?

Oh,

Are you ready to unlock the power of prayer in every Aspect of your

life, including the workplace today on seat, go create the leadership journey.

We welcome Amy Lykos, the executive director of workplace prayer.

She has a passion for intertwining prayer and leadership.

After reconnecting with prayer and experiencing its transformative

power firsthand, Amy has dedicated her life to guiding others in

nurturing their spiritual journeys.

From overseeing a dynamic workplace prayer movement to managing complexities of cool

stuff like homeschooling and homeopathy, Amy's story is a testament to the enduring

strength and guidance that prayer brings.

Before I bring her on though, I wanted to give a big thank you to

some of our financial supporters here.

We recently added a place where some listeners could contribute financially

to what we're doing here at SEAT.

Go create.

com forward slash support.

And I want to thank geo geo contributed 33.

And this was the comment said, God bless.

Thank you for your testimony, Tim.

And just in the last few days, we've received anonymous tips or gifts, whatever

they want to call it of 10, 57 and 85.

So I want to thank everyone for supporting us.

Before I brought our guest on.

So Amy, welcome to Seek, Go, Create.

Thank you, that was a beautiful introduction.

So, Amy, we have just met, we've got a great connector

in Sabrina that connected us.

I always honor and love whoever Sabrina connects me with.

But, Let's do a little bit of a pretend.

I don't know.

I was trying to say where we are, maybe an airport.

We sort of bumping each other in an airport.

I just recently flew this last week and we're just chit chatting.

And you know, I find out you're in Virginia.

You find out something.

I say, Amy, do you do, what's your answer when someone asks you that question?

I say, I pray for businesses and there's usually a little bit of a

pause and then people are like, wait.

Wait, what?

So I pray for businesses.

That is my privilege.

My joy.

And my full time job.

so, all right, good.

That's cool.

Because we can kind of dive into that right away because my followup would be.

Oh, okay.

You know, I'm a prayer guy.

I believe in prayer.

I'm also a business guy praying

for businesses.

I've never really heard that.

Tell me more.

Oh, yeah, thank you.

So, probably the best place to start is my own journey, which my parents were

on missions, they were involved with the missions movement on staff with

the missions agency in the late 1980s.

And so every day they had staff meeting and they would pray.

And at some point they realized that the second reason why people

went home from the mission field was because, they, didn't know what to

do with their children for education.

And so my parents thought, well, we can help with that.

The number one reason was because they didn't get along with their team members.

Not much you can do about that one.

But in terms of educating, they said we can help with that.

So they developed a homeschool curriculum and that did allow missionaries to stay

on the field one more day, one more year.

But the great thing was they thought we really liked having prayer.

And so let's do that with our own business.

And so they always allowed space for the staff to come together

and have morning prayer time.

And so for 30 years, that was their thing.

They started in 1990.

And then by 2020, there were certain things that when I looked

at the business, I thought we are just not getting breakthrough.

We've seen so many beautiful Answers to prayer over the years,

miracles, just the Lord's provision.

So precious, but there were places where I just thought, Oh, if

I knew better how to pray more effectively, I feel like I would have.

Just maybe these places would get breakthrough more quickly.

I felt a little bit like I was trying to water a football field with a garden hose.

And I thought I either need something more like a fireman's hose, or I need

a sprinkler system, or I need some rain from heaven, but I just need

something that's a little stronger.

And so at that point, I went looking for people to help either

teach me how to pray better.

That was kind of my first option.

Let me find out more how to do it effectively.

But then I also thought if there was actually somebody out there

who knows more and would just pray, I would really like that too.

That proved to be.

Surprisingly difficult to find people.

And so when I finally found someone, I was like, well, hallelujah, let's try this.

And so my parents hired him.

And the third day I sent him a text at 11 PM and I said, We have

had 10 answered prayers today.

I could not even believe it.

And it wasn't like I had sent him the list of my top 1, 000, It was

more just things that I had been watching for and paying attention.

And so, When I said that we've had 10 answered pros today, I was expecting

a response like that's fantastic.

And instead I got an answer back that said, let's go for a dozen.

And I remember looking at my phone, like, who is this person?

Like, he's not content with 10.

He wants a dozen.

And it's 11 PM at night and he clearly really believes that prayer works.

And so that was my initial introduction day three to, Bob Perry.

And by the middle of the month, I was like, I've got to do this with you.

This is the most exciting thing.

Cause we did hit a dozen that day and we never hit less than a

dozen for the rest of the month.

There were days we had two dozen.

I mean, I truly was like.

This is incredible.

And I already thought that prayer worked.

So it became, now I was like a very, very committed to this idea.

that is pretty awesome.

I'm sitting here.

This is what's going through my mind.

I want to keep going down that path, but I also like to get

people's background and story.

So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a comma right there

at what you just said, and we're going to come back to that shortly.

But I kind of first want to ask like a bigger picture question.

And, and that

in your opinion,

Thank

why do we not spend time In prayer.

I mean, for those that are believers, I mean, listen, and someone's

probably gotten this far, even in this episode, it's not like they're

trying to figure out, you know, what are they talking about right now?

It's probably even the title and stuff is probably going to be okay.

This has something to do, but, but what would be, what would be

some reasons why we don't do this?

Because what you just said, it seems like, well, why wouldn't we, but why don't we?

Yeah, that's a beautiful question and it's one that I would

say my mom who founded the business, and she said at one point, she's like,

Amy, I was the head of the prayer committee, or not the committee, but

like the small group that met at church.

She said, I did that for years and we would meet every Wednesday and I had my

list of things I wanted to pray about.

And she said, but business was never on the list.

Like I was praying for the single moms and the homeschooling moms and the

children as they went off to school.

And I was praying for the pastors and like there was, we felt

like we covered everything.

But she also said, you know, when I'm praying at the front of the

church during, you know, after service, sometimes churches have

people who can come up for prayer.

She said, I never had anybody come and ask me for prayer for

their business except once.

And he was trying to sell.

And so when we bought the name for our URL, workplaceprayer.

com.

It was the minimum bid and it, I mean, that was a gift to us, you know,

like, Oh, hooray, we saved money.

But there was another part of us that like, I literally cried about this for

a month because I thought, Lord, that means that nobody is looking for that.

You know, I had gone looking for a name for a reading program for

the homeschool curriculum and they're like the top thousand that

I looked for, it worked all taken.

And so I, the way, the best way I can describe it is that it feels a

little bit like there's a black hole.

Around business and prayer that there's, that there's just actually,

nobody is really thinking about this.

It's almost like here's this place where business owners

are so precious to God's heart.

they're the ones who are creating, they're not just business owners,

but people who are in business, they're offering something to the

world that is solving a problem and they're creating value for people.

And it's so precious.

Like this is so much a part of God's heart.

And yet, I don't know if there's a part where we're just maybe a little

bit embarrassed, like probably God doesn't really care about that.

but I think for whatever reason, we just really don't think about it as

something that is worthy of prayer.

And so I don't know if I have a better answer for you than it's

kind of a mystery to me too.

it's interesting.

And I may not be the right guy to bring up the paradigms because I

was saved in a business setting.

out in church world and I've always been business guy, partially because

of of greed and pursuit of money.

We won't get into that here.

That's a whole nother story.

But truthfully, I think that might be why there may not be prayer in business.

We've kind of in our first world christian americanized culture We've

sort of I think programmed people and i'm going to say this and then you could

comment I think we've programmed people to Not bring that filthy mammon talk

Into our church Which then also says well probably I don't need to bring it

into my prayer time thoughts on that

yeah, I think that's a really good observation.

I mean, it's interesting because obviously Jesus does say, you

cannot serve both God and mammon.

On the other hand, you know, when you think about it, if the Bible begins in

a garden and it ends in a city, which in some ways there's a lot of organized

gardens, there's a lot of organization and administration and building

things and creating that is necessary.

And so there's an element where I'm like, no, we, we actually want to

be praying for our cities, for our businesses, for all of the things

that are producing and that, that, that the Lord actually has solutions.

So I guess one of the ways that.

For me, maybe, like, this is probably one of the most deeply convicting

moments that I've had as an adult.

I was going to a conference and I ended up, the Uber was driving me through the

streets of the Bronx at like 1am because the flight had been really delayed.

And we were driving through the projects and it was just, Not, you

know, it was just not my favorite environment and we passed a little

strip mall and it had a bunch of, how would I put this chain restaurants?

So I don't remember what it was, but you can imagine Taco

Bell or Pizza Hut or something.

And I know enough about nutrition and such that I had this kind of internal reviling,

like, Whoa, Lord, it's not even food.

And basically what the Lord said to me was, Do not ever condemn

those again, because there were children who went to bed with

full stomachs because those exist.

And there's this part where I was like, we need to actually be bringing solutions.

Like the world brings solutions and it actually does feed children.

But we, as people who love Jesus, should be solving problems that are large, and so

there's an element even with that where I don't know that that's exactly answering

your question, but it's like if we could combine the beauty of business and problem

solving and bring kingdom solutions, God's solutions to those places, I think

what an amazing transformation process.

No, I think that ties Together.

Well, because it goes to something, I'll bring this up and

get your thoughts on this too.

I've been doing a lot of study into Middle Eastern culture that

most of our scriptures and our Bible and everything comes from.

And many times I'm wondering if we're missing it because we don't understand

that culture because we're really products of what I call the Greco Roman culture and

we segment and compartmentalize everything and we judge and all that kind of stuff.

but I do wonder.

If, because we're so compartmentalized, we've compartmentalized our business life

so far away from our walk with the Lord, that it becomes more uncomfortable to have

a conversation like you and I are having than to someone were to say, we would be

shocked if they said they didn't pray.

For their business.

You know what I mean?

That would be like, if we were in the Jewish

culture or the Middle Eastern culture, they would probably be wondering why

the heck are y'all having a podcast episode about praying in the workplace.

Yeah.

No, that's a really good question.

You know, I've heard that the word in Hebrew for work

is the same as for worship.

And so there's such a beautiful connection, I guess, that yeah, in

the Hebrew mind, I think that would be, there's not really a divide.

Yeah.

I mean, it's all together.

It's one.

and I think we still try to segment off our Sunday life, our

Monday life, our work finances and all types of things like that.

And you know what?

I just had this vision

of.

Jesus in a statement that, and this is to me a business answer to probably a prayer.

It's cast your nets on the other side of the boat.

I,

I just got off the phone with a client where we were talking

their strategies and all, which is kind of what I do with people.

And, you know, should we cast it on this side of the net

or the other side of the net?

And that's could have been a direct answer to prayer.

So anyway, all right.

So those are some big picture things, but Amy, you've got so many things

that popped up like about Amy.

I'm going to mention a few and then I'm going to kind of do rapid fire.

And then you could respond to any of these.

Homeschooling.

We homeschooled our kids.

They're grown.

Homeschooling is obviously a big deal.

If it's written on your bio, it's got to be a passion.

Homeopathy.

I can't show the camera right now, but I haven't taken any type of

pharmaceutical in a long time.

My wife, I don't understand it all, but she gives me things when I say I've got

a little bit of congestion, whatever.

So homeopathy is big deal for us.

But probably the biggest one that was kind of like a little exclamation point

at the end of your bio was that for four and a half years, you lived in

200 and something square feet, which my wife and I, for the last five and

a half have lived in this motor coach.

Tell me more about Amy

Oh, well, thank you.

yeah, so I did grow up in a homeschooling family and then of course, my parents

started the homeschooling business.

homeschooling was kind of a non negotiable when we got married

and then, so we have five boys.

They're not entirely grown, but my oldest is 22 and my youngest is 10.

So I feel like I've been doing homeschooling for a long time

and I have some years yet to go.

I love homeschooling.

I also love homeopathy because I also felt like, when my children were young,

I remember when they would get sick, the only option that I had to feed them was.

You know, like cherry syrup NyQuil, and I thought, you know, I never give them

artificial colors or flavors at all in their normal life, so why, why am I doing

this when they're sick, and so around that time, I was probably preparing

for a home birth, and the midwife said something like, homeopathy has no side

effects, and you can take it from before the child is born all the way until

your dying day, and it's just wonderful.

And I, the, it's a little more nuanced than that.

That's kind of like a very basic level understanding, but

I thought, okay, that's amazing.

And so I did actually go to school and get my two year, certificate.

I did not ever go through,

sitting for the boards.

Instead had kind of a hard right turn into prayer, even before praying for

business, I felt like, Oh, there's, there's other things I'm supposed to do

in the realm of prayer, but I had really asked the Lord to make me a healer.

And so I thought, you know, I'm not going to go to med school.

I don't want to be that kind of a healer.

So homeopathy seemed like a reasonable way to be a healer in other ways.

But yeah, in terms of living in 224 square feet, we lived in a construction trailer,

eight by 28 for four and a half years.

And the story behind that is that we were very normal, very

happy people living in Boulder.

My husband was a forensic structural engineer, somebody who is a building

doctor, basically, he would go and design repairs for that.

And I was happily working with my parents and doing homeschooling.

And there was a day I was walking down the street with all of my boys, probably

dog on the leash around my waist.

And, I felt like the Lord said, go start a farm.

And I was not in the habit of hearing from the Lord.

That was a very unusual event.

So I thought, oh, well, that was kind of unusual.

Went about my day, didn't particularly think a whole lot more of it other

than just like, oh, interesting.

And then my husband came home and he had been on an engineering job up in

the mountains and he walked in and he said, I think the Lord said that

we're supposed to move to a farm.

And I was like, Oh, well, I heard that today too.

So I guess we better do it.

So then we ended up looking around the country for places where there was land

and water, because although Boulder is very beautiful, it is also very

dry and very pricey if you want land.

And so we ended up.

Settling in central Virginia and it was unimproved land.

We opted to get as much land as possible, which I will just say, I believe that

was the Lord's guidance, but it was not necessarily the easier option.

And so we lived in a construction trailer for 4.

5 years and tried to start a farm.

Tried to, anyway.

we were faithful to the call . So thank you for asking.

Maybe my thought that comes to my mind is how did that end?

How did you transition because I don't think you're still there

What was the transition because you're still in Virginia, correct?

Yeah, so that's also a beautiful question.

So we did not move off the land.

Part of what happened is that we, we were both very capable, very

energetic people, and so when we moved to land and everything died.

It's like not just the first year, everything died like year after year.

And finally I went to my husband, I said, I can't live under the curse this much.

Like I, or like this close to the curse.

So in Genesis, when Adam and Eve fell, like there's just a curse and things die.

And I just said, I, Emotionally, I cannot handle this.

And after another year or two of kind of valiantly going on by himself, he's just

not somebody who likes working alone.

So he's like, okay, maybe I will be done too.

So we still live on the land.

I think for me, part of what that did is really press into prayer.

Like, Lord, why did you call us to do that?

If.

It was all just going to fail.

That wasn't very nice.

and I think for my husband, he kind of got a new direction.

He does still do some engineering work on the side, but he has a tree service

business now that he runs with some friends and employs several of our sons.

So if all that it was, was that the Lord moved us to central

Virginia, that would have been okay.

On my birthday this year, the Lord gave me a gift.

So this is now 14 years after we moved to the land.

And, I periodically, I just kind of ask him like that

really wasn't very nice Lord.

You know, why, why did you invite us to move to land?

But it was really not going to be very good.

And, he is so funny.

He said to me, Hey, Amy, what was the call?

And I was like, you asked us to like, you, you asked me to start a farm and

you told Phil to move to a farm and Lord was like, well, did you do it?

And I was like, yeah, and he was kind of like, okay, so you had it built up in

your mind that it was going to be like successful farm and really profitable.

And that just wasn't my invitation.

So, anyway, I'm very, very thankful for where we are.

It was not the easiest road to get.

I mean, yeah some of that stuff is it's it's hard work

I mean my wife we're in an RV But yet she has a garden because where

we hang out some in the summer.

There's a community garden here You And, I'm the laborer and I

water and, but man, it's hard work.

And it's just a little patch that's barely, I mean, we're over to my left

right here, there's one, two, three, four, five stacks of things where

she's been canning here in our RV and harvesting her crops But it's interesting.

I want to go back to something.

Cause this is, I think this is a problem.

Prayer question or a listening question or a hearing question or something like that.

Isn't it interesting how we try to fill in the gaps.

you got an instruction and it seemed like it was a very clear instruction.

Go live on the land, start a farm or something to that effect.

But then you started filling in all the gaps of what you expected it to look like.

And this is how it ends.

And part of our underlying theme here is redefining success.

And a lot of it goes back to that.

you probably had success and your husband had success and maybe even

the kids and the way you even said it.

almost is like you feel as if it wasn't a success, but God's got

you right where He wanted you.

It's just maybe it looked a little different.

Yes.

Redefining success.

That, that would be a conversation I have had with the Lord regularly because.

And, you know, he's very kind, right?

But there will be times where I'm like, I am an efficient person.

I like things to get done.

Can we please just go straight and stop all of this curving?

And, so we were having this conversation because I also know that Just because

it's the shortest distance that sometimes if you're going up a mountain,

you actually want the switchbacks.

It makes it easier.

And I was like, okay, I can receive that Lord.

That's fine.

You know, I'm still maybe not like the most, like I'm

loving this conversation Lord.

And all of a sudden he was like, yeah, but also sometimes there are quantum leaps.

And I was like, touché touché.

Yes.

And so just that sense of like, You think that this is the shortest

distance, but the Lord has actually sometimes these just like, I'm not

going to say magical, but things at the quantum level kind of are magical.

So, anyway, I like the idea of redefining success because it is, It isn't

exactly what you would always think.

So,

so,

so one would hear, and again, my lifestyle is, is similar.

We have similar story.

One, one might hear things like homeschool, homeopathy, living

in small space, you know, hearing from the Lord, things like that.

And they might use the word.

That's not very traditional or normal.

They could also use the word weird.

They could say that because a lot of, I mean, I remember in the nineties,

having both my parents who were educators and we decided to homeschool.

It was a very heated conversation.

It sounds like you came, you were in that environment anyway, but.

If someone, this is, I'm sort of egging you a little bit.

If someone were to say, yeah, that's some weird stuff.

Homeschooling and non pharmaceutical homeopathy healing and prayer and

business, it's like, man, you got some weird stuff going on, Amy.

How, I just said it.

So how do you respond to me?

Well, this is so funny that you asked me that.

I was actually having a conversation with the Lord about this pretty

recently also, because I was like, Lord, your servants are very odd.

They're just weird people.

And he said, yeah, I mean, it's true.

And I said, well, does it have to be like that?

I mean, at some point can we, be like just on the normal end of

weird and not like super weird?

I would be okay with that.

and he said the beautiful thing about people who are weird is

that, the beautiful thing about my followers is that they are willing

to do things that most people don't.

They're willing to push into new territories in different ways.

And when I think if you look at the scriptures, the people who were really

following the Lord were not necessarily the ones who would have fit in.

I think he just has a lot of pleasure in the people who are a little bit more

on the fringe, we could say, but it's also, I just feel like he has such a

heart of compassion really for everyone.

But this is part of also why I'm like, I just love entrepreneurs and business

people because there often is such a.

An internal drive to say, I'm, I'm trying something new.

I'm going in a new direction.

I'm not actually willing to just accept the status quo.

And they're often just a little bit more interesting, right?

I love that sense of always after the next thing or pursuing

something else that's interesting.

again, this is.

From one weird to another weird.

I mean,

we live in it.

We live, yeah.

And it's like, which then means, are we that weird?

If there's multiples that can talk about similar topics that we'll call it culture.

The word I use is Babylon, just so you know.

Okay, that's

and kingdom is

another word I'll use is where I, I reside

or spend most of my time, even though that we're still operating in and

around a Babylonian structure also.

But I, I do sort of embrace it.

And at times I wonder

if I embrace it with a little bit too much glee and pride.

I would say I try not to think about me too much because that's

kind of like a never ending rabbit hole.

So I probably am more like, I really just want to be where the Lord has me.

And I think it's, I'm probably in a season right now where the verse that

comes to mind again and again, speaking of Babylon, is when Jeremiah writes to

the early exiles, because in the book of Jeremiah the Babylonians come and kind

of take away the cream of the crop, but they leave some semblance of a structure.

And then, Foolishly, they rebel and then the Babylonians are like, your time

is done and they wipe everybody out.

But in that interim period, the people who had already been carried off to Babylon

were kind of like, why are we here?

We want to go back to Jerusalem.

That's where our home is.

And Jeremiah writes to them.

And he was like, no, like you're going to be there a while, stay there, settle down.

Plant your fields and crops.

And then he says, pray for the peace of the city and the word

peace, it's the word Shalom.

So it's like, pray for the wellbeing, pray for the wholeness of the city,

because in its peace and its wholeness and its wellbeing, you find your peace,

your wholeness or your wellbeing.

And so I, for me, that sits really well because it allows me to be like, kind of

like the people of Judah who were carried into, captivity and are living in Babylon.

They get to be the odd ones, but they're also, they're not

hating on the Babylonians.

They're not like, these are awful people, stay away.

It's like, no, I'm actually wanting really good things for you too.

So I don't know if that's exactly answering your question, but I would

say that for me is the helpful place of both being in the Babylonian

culture, but also saying that I get to merge to my own drummer.

The reason I love that response is that the Lord was speaking

something similar to me a few days ago in my quiet time out behind the RV.

We've got a sitting area out back and I'll go out early in the morning and like

we're apt to do, we'll ask questions like, Lord, what would you have me to do today?

What would different things like that?

And, and I felt as if this was the way it was worded to me.

And it sounds similar to what you said was that you are pursuing after my piece.

And, and I'm, I've been exposed recently.

There's a lot of new clients and businesses that I'm going in by the way.

I'm an engineer from Georgia tech.

So maybe it, it, it helps.

I don't know.

and, and I felt that the Lord said, you're going into places

and you're bringing my peace.

And, and, I received that.

I don't understand totally.

And I'm, you know, I'm just, I know that I'm supposed to go in

and, you know, maybe pray more.

Is what I'm probably going to be learning in this conversation or, or,

you know, introducing prayer more.

and so that really leads to a couple of things before we kind of go deep into

how are you praying within businesses?

And you notice, I

notice, I continue teasing people that we're going to probably

do that towards the end here.

I, I have noticed.

I have a personality.

I don't want to say it makes it difficult for me to pray.

That doesn't sound good, but I'm wired to be an entrepreneur.

I'm a business guy and usually go is my mode.

There's a reason that we're titled seek go create.

There's a reason for that.

Do you find that a lot of people, I don't want to say they aren't wired to

just sit down and be quiet and still and commune or talk or listen or whatever.

Tell me more about that.

And then I'm going to go ahead and telegraph.

My follow up question is how have you developed.

That or have you always been that way?

So However, you want to address that that's where i'd like

for us to go for a few minutes

So first of all, you're not odd.

I was reading C.

Peter Wagner's book, Prayer Shield and C.

Peter Wagner, probably he was a professor.

I think he was at Fuller in Southern California and he

basically studied how people prayed.

And what he found was that in any given church body, somewhere between five

and 10 percent were the praying people.

And everybody else was.

just kind of like normal people.

And then he did a survey of, you know, like, how many minutes a day do you pray?

I think maybe he just surveyed pastors actually.

So it could be like the highest level of holiness here.

said very tongue in cheek, but basically most of the people were like, maybe

18 minutes was kind of the average.

And which meant that there were some people who are praying longer and a

lot who are not praying even 18 minutes and basically what he said was, he

made a very beautiful argument for why prayer or intercession is probably

one of the gifts of the spirit.

His basic argument was.

because Paul has a list of different spiritual gifts in different locations

in the scriptures and they don't always overlap and they're kind of some places

there is some overlap and there is not it was kind of like there's just gifts and so

prayer certainly could be one of the gifts of the spirit so if you're not willing

to go there that is extra scriptural so it's You don't have to follow

Peter Wagner in that line of thought, but basically, he was like, we don't try to

make everybody be pastors, you know, there is a pastoral gift, and so then to say,

well, if there's a prayer gift, it doesn't mean that we don't all pray, just like if

a pastor's thing is to shepherd and guide.

Like we are, as parents, we want to be shepherding and guiding and pastoring.

And that way our children, but it doesn't mean that that's our

role in the larger body of Christ.

Just like, you know, there's some people evangelists, they will

go and like the sky cap, who's helping them with their luggage.

Like they lead them to the Lord.

It takes them 15 seconds.

And you're like, well, that would be amazing.

That just isn't my gift.

And so to be able to say, you know what, It doesn't mean that we

don't ever talk about our faith.

It just means we don't have the gift of evangelism.

So with prayer, I feel like Oh no, like everybody should, we should pray.

We should talk to the Lord.

That's part of what we're supposed to do, but to say, I just actually

don't feel compelled to spend an hour with him every day that like,

please be at peace with that.

That's actually pretty normal.

And

it was for me as a prayer person, like an hour a day by

myself is kind of my minimum.

if I don't get that, I start to get a little bit edgy It

was hilarious to me to read C.

Peter Wagner's description of his first time trying to pray for an hour, you

know, where it was like, I was really in it as, as deeply as I could be.

And then, you know, he maybe even said that it was like worse than watching

his wife in labor, just like, woe is me.

This is really, really hard.

So I guess.

Anybody who finds it difficult to pray, especially for a

long time, just be at peace.

So that's the first thing.

And then you also asked, how did I develop my own prayer capability?

And that's a really beautiful question.

I would say there's a very long backstory because I did step away

from prayer for eight years because it completely freaked me out.

but once the Lord called me back to prayer, I basically just said,

I'm going to, my goal is to pray more this month than last month.

And so if I was praying, you know, a few minutes a day, then I wanted to

just pray like a few more minutes a day.

And then at some point I kind of just like fell into the pool and

was like, well, here I just am.

But, it really started with just saying, I'm going to be

intentional and just start praying.

Slow and a little bit and be okay with even a little bit and not beat

myself up that it's not an hour that I'm not on a silent retreat all day.

Like I was a nun like that's okay.

Well, what's interesting about it?

Just there's a name that came to my mind john michael talbot that we interviewed

Mm hmm.

A number of months

back.

Yeah, and he's

um, he lives he's not a monk, but he lives a monastic Life is what he

talks about and he just Literally slight exaggeration, but he talked

about just being days You in prayer.

And, I appreciated it.

I just couldn't quite imagine it.

I mean, he invited me, he said, Hey, you got your RV come hang out with us here

at our, you know, our, our place here.

And, you know, you could, you know, join up and everything.

I'm like going, yeah, okay.

Like it was a beautiful conversation just about being still and quiet for long.

Periods of time.

I, one more sort of background ish question, Amy, you'd mentioned

kind of missionary growing up.

You had mentioned, I think your parents had business and all of that.

When, when were you trying to think of exactly how I want to

drill down on this question?

When did you become aware of You mentioned it at the beginning, but give me an

age or a, or a situation or something that you sort of became aware of, like,

okay, there's something bigger than me.

And, and, you know, I joke with people, you weren't saved at birth because

you were a missionary, were you?

That's pathology, by the way, I'm not.

It is bad theology

So because I did grow up in a very beautiful godly family and I guess

I For me, what I would say is when I was five, I went up to the upper bunk

and I just laid on the bunk and said, God, I can't do it by myself anymore.

Please help.

And so for me, that was kind of my moment, I guess, of coming to the Lord.

But of course, the walk with God is not ever a moment.

It's like, that's the beginning.

And then you just walk with the Lord.

So, I've had very beautiful mentors along the way who've helped guide

and, shape and inform my life,

I guess I feel like the fact that I even thought to ask that at 5

shows that I had some awareness.

the thing that I like about that response, I, I know that

there are people that have an event, but I look at life more as a process.

Maybe it's my engineering.

I don't know.

It's just like, there's a process and we're going through this process for our

time here and it's got moments, it's got maybe some stops and starts and forward

and backwards and things like that.

As we were talking about prayer, the word intercessor came to mind and I served

on the board of a ministry, I actually still do, that for a season this, this

ministry had some intercessors and weekly there was an email that went to

the intercessors to be praying for this or doing that So as we kind of moved

Back towards the business conversation.

Tell me if there's a difference, if that's just nomenclature, what, how does

intercessor fit in with the conversation that we're having here about prayer?

And then in a little moment, you know, in a moment, prayer in the workplace.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So, part of the challenge of prayer is that I don't feel like

the church necessarily has a super great definition of even what it is.

And so that's been a big part of my journey for the last six years is saying

like, what am I even talking about here?

And then you add on a word like intercessor, which is

like about as churchy of a word as you could possibly get.

And so, yes, big sigh here, but.

Okay.

So the beautiful thing of what you just shared about your, the organization

with which you're on the board where they had people who would pray and you

would send out emails to me, I would describe those that as a prayer shield.

They're serving as like, we are praying for this organization or for the needs

of this organization as it Like we are locking our shields together in

order to offer protection in many ways.

That's what I would say.

We, that's how we seek to serve for our clients, that we are a prayer shield,

that they don't have to try to go out and find the intercessors or find the people

of prayer to do that on their behalf.

It's like, no, this is, we've been trained.

This is what we do.

And we love it.

So,

kind of like we're the people who are like signing up, like we're on, we're praying

for an hour a day just because we love it.

Let us do that for you.

So, that would be just a little side note, but an intercessor,

by definition, an intercessor is somebody who's standing in the gap.

And so, an advocate is a, another word that, we sometimes can see, or it's a

synonym when you look at the definition.

And so, if you think about legally, the advocate is like the

lawyer who's arguing the case.

Between the person who's guilty or hopefully not guilty and the judge.

And then, for in the realm of prayer, the intercessor is the one who's like, Hey, I

can see that there is stability in heaven and that there's shakiness on earth.

And I want to bring that stability of heaven to the shakiness of earth.

I want to stand there in the gap and say, Hey God, are you

looking at this situation?

We need you to come and change this situation.

So that's, it's just basically somebody who's there to pray

on behalf of somebody else.

So, we do plenty of prayer.

That is, there's a whole bunch of different ways of praying.

So there's, that's not the only form of prayer that we do, but I would

define intercession as specifically that kind of standing in the gap

where you're not asking for yourself.

You're asking on somebody else's behalf,

Right.

So, this is going to back up to the things you said at the beginning, At

some point, you became connected to what is called now Workplace Prayer.

And I think you mentioned, Bob, that was maybe already doing something somewhere.

I saw Perry Marshall's name and Perry Marshall.

Yeah, Perry was a guest on our podcast back in.

I actually pulled it up before this August of 2020, August 10th.

For anybody who wants to circle back in Perry and I.

Have interacted with each other.

I mean, not always in a strong way, but like 20 years ago, he came to my home

back in Georgia and also, I'm familiar

with Perry and his, memos from the main home office and,

head office.

Yeah.

Things like that.

Let's let's.

Go back or let's start and talk about kind of how, you know, again, you

got involved with what we're calling workplace prayer and give any of the

background or origins of the organization that you feel like you need to.

So someone can kind of understand that.

So I felt like the Lord called me out of my mostly

prayerless state in intercession.

July of 2018 and that was when I started saying, like, I'm just going to pray a

little bit more and a little bit more.

And then in, March of 2019, I was driving up to drop off my homeopathy

final, getting ready to keep going.

And I felt like Lord said, start a prayer challenge.

And I was like, okay, like that's kind of like an email sequence where

you can get, emails about prayer.

So I went and for probably six months I researched all of the materials

that I already had on prayer.

Trying to find.

Basically what it ended up being single sentence prayers to

pray as you go about your day.

And I was like, that's awesome.

Let's get these out there.

That will be great.

And so I launched it.

And the first round I had five people go through, it was my mom, my sister,

one friend and two people I bribed.

And every one of them sent me beautiful messages at some point in the next 21 days

where they were like, this is actually changing my life, which that's fantastic.

But then there's like that weeping of like,

And so I actually, I met Perry Marshall, I went to an event of his in September

of 2019 and I had a question for him.

I mean, I was there not, this was like a over dinner asking it, you

know, after hours kind of question.

And so I said, how do I market something as unpopular as prayer?

And he had this amazing off the cuff, hilarious response because

this is the kind of person he is.

But his more serious answer was.

Find somebody to pray for your business.

And I was like, well, that is a non traditional, very out

of the box thing to ask about.

So that's when I actually went, started looking for prayer.

So it was kind of, yes, it was for my parents business, but it

was also for my own business.

And so Bob had, Bob Perry had been praying for businesses, for

maybe a few months at that point.

And it took me a while.

So I didn't actually meet him until, May of 2020 and then he started praying

for my parents business and just like our family and such in June of 2020 and

it was Kind of midway through the month where I was like, I want to join you.

This needs to be bigger.

Partially I had been looking for per coverage for nine months.

Like I just am wanting this so much.

And so when I finally found somebody who not only was willing, but it

was actually super good at it.

No, I was like, everybody in the world should want this.

Let's do this.

And so when I found out it was just him, I was like, well, that no,

I have administrative giftings.

I am.

very passionate about this.

I have a lot of energy, like let's go for it.

I don't actually even remember what the name of his business was.

It was not as memorable as workplace prayer.

So we formed workplace prayer together.

And then, it was actually right around four years ago.

Labor Day weekend of 2020, we had enough, we actually got one big

client who was enough for me to step away from working as I had been.

So, yeah, thank you for asking.

Yeah, very good.

So there's, I want to go down that path, but there's one thing I want to kind

of Connect the dot you've mentioned your parents business a few times.

Give me just a real quick.

So, and you, and you mentioned in homeschool, I believe is that still exist?

Tell me about it.

Cause it seems like it's not a small operation.

Am I picking up on something

Oh, that is, that's true.

So they started sunlight curriculum, which is a literature rich homeschool company.

And so, yeah, it's, it is definitely still around.

very thankful for that because that's how we educate our own children.

So, a lot of books and so, yeah, I love sunlight.

Very good.

And you've been associated, you've done some stuff for that organization.

are you still associated?

Yeah.

So, no, I worked very happily with them from the time I graduated.

I mean, summers and part time at different times, but, no, I mean, from 2001, when

I graduated from college up until 2020, and I truly never thought I would leave.

I had no idea.

Just, I loved working with them and, you know, family business, it's very fun.

So having a shift to praying for business was, that was a

very hard right turn in my life.

Family business is fun.

That's one word.

There's a lot of challenges with family businesses.

It is true.

I read children's books as part of my job.

Like that's pretty amazing.

Oh my gosh.

That's like one of these jobs, like Testing chocolate or something like that.

It's like,

Oh, this is what I know.

So for me to change away and prayer, it was truly like, wow, did not see that one

uh, So thank you for allowing me to backtrack slightly, but yeah, that

is, I've actually heard of that company.

So that's awesome.

All right.

So you started and you mentioned this, so I'm going to go here now.

That is that you started the business of Workplace Prayer.

And you got a client that allowed you to leave your job.

So all of that implies that there is money changing hands.

true.

is that an accurate statement?

That is an accurate statement, indeed.

All right.

Tell me more about how that

works.

well, so practically, we pretty much just say, if you would

like to partner with us, we can figure out how to make that happen.

So this is not like a, we want to price gouge or anything else.

I guess I don't think though you were just asking practically.

I think there was probably like, ethically,

how do you handle

there, yeah, I, I'm, I'm, I'm going to see how far you

go and I may dig a little more.

you go as far as you want I'll see if it satisfies me.

And

Okay.

So basically, when I was asking people to pray for, pray for me, for my

business, I had said, like, I would really like to hire you to do this.

And the first response I got was, you know, the scripture says freely,

you've received, really give.

I'm really not comfortable with that.

My parents have been paying their staff on the clock for 30 years to

pray for business, their business.

And the Lord has completely blessed it.

It was not an part of that, you know, for them, it was an ethical issue.

Like we're asking our, our, employees to come in and spend some of their time.

Why would we ask them to volunteer?

Like, first of all, who's going to pick them up?

They might volunteer for a week, but this is not going to be something

ongoing, Like I actually, this is, I'm asking them to pray for my benefit.

Let me actually compensate them for their time.

And one of my friends said something like, we're not asking

people to pay for the gift.

Like the gift of God is the gift of God, but this is actually

what we do in order to live.

And so there is, financially, that actually just makes sense.

But as I also thought, even about that passage, freely you've received,

freely give, that's in the context of Jesus sending out his disciples in

order to go and spread the good news.

And so part of the instructions when they went out is, he said, When you

go into somebody's house, stay with them as long as they're willing

to host you and then bless them.

And I was thinking about this because I was like, okay, so

they're getting lodging and food.

So they're getting their, their needs are being supplied.

If you were traveling, that would be like your hotel and your restaurant

meals, or, just, you know, as a, as a person, it's going to be your

mortgage and your food, your bills.

But then what they were offering, I was like, do I think that a blessing from the

disciples who had walked with Jesus would be more valuable than the cost of like

sharing a bed and giving them some food?

And it was kind of like a no brainer, like, of course, that's

going to be more valuable.

So even the idea of freely receive, freely give, There is, on some level, even

though it would not have necessarily been like, here's some coins, it's, there is

an exchange of value that's happening.

So, in that passage, exchange of value.

It also kind of blows my mind, when you look in the Old Testament, I realize

that Old Testament prophecy is not going to be exactly the same as like,

Now in current day, paying for prayer, but there is at least a bit of a

correlation because when Saul's donkeys had gone missing, he was like, okay,

where, where can we find the donkeys?

You know, he and his servant had looked all over and then they're like, well,

we're getting close to the community.

We're so close.

Samuel lives and Saul was like, well, we can't go to him

cause I don't have any money.

And his servant was like, well, I have some money.

We can go and get a prophetic word from Samuel.

So there actually is like in the scriptures, there's at least a

little hint that people in order to get prophetic words from Samuel

just like paid him some money.

So that's, that's maybe a little bit unexpected.

I would say.

as a modern evangelical, probably part of the reason why paying for prayer can

be a little bit dicey is we can think about Martin Luther and his 95 theses.

And part of the challenge of that entire era of Christian history is that you had

the Catholics who are kind of like, I'm going to just sell you some indulgences.

So I think we have this kind of like paying for prayer is like deeply

embedded in our ethics and our mindset sort of like, well, we so I

would agree with tha get to buy your way out o by the blood of Jesus.

So pay from an indulgent stan actually going to work.

B Just the time that is spent.

We recognize that this is the thing we pay our janitors at the church.

We pay our pastors and part of pastoral care is usually praying for the people

if they're in the hospital or pay praying during a sermon, you know,

no, we're not like, well, that part of your sermon, we're going to make

sure that we don't cover that one, you know, that that would be nonsensical.

So, okay.

That would be my initial answer.

all of that is extremely valuable as, as you were talking, I'm

just sitting here going, you know, I, at the heart, I call myself a coach.

I believe that's what I was created for.

Yeah.

and there are times that I'll communicate and interact with

people and there will not be any.

We'll call it a transaction.

But then there are other times that I do it.

And I mean, I've been working with organizations for a long period of time,

and there's money that changes hands.

Part of the thing that I have told people before is like, do you want to

just interact with me from time to time?

Or do you want dedicated?

Do you want a sliver of my time that's dedicated to you?

Because I do think that there's something that goes with that.

And I sort of think of this in the same way.

Would that be a way to think about it?

If I'm like business owners, like I want Amy blank dedicated per week, per

month or whatever, does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So that, that's one of the ways that Bob talks about it, where he said everybody

would love to have prayer, right?

Like everybody would like that.

How do we know where it, where the Lord is even inviting us to

focus our attention in this season?

And part of that is like, Oh, the people who are willing to say like, I would be

happy to partner with you financially.

So it allows us actually to focus in a little bit on where.

Like, where are we even supposed to be focusing?

So yes, that's a huge part of it.

It's also just like, one of our clients and friends, he's like, no,

you want the person who spent the time and figured out how to do it and

put in their 10, 000 hours, that's the person you want praying for you.

So let's bless the person who has actually spent that time and allow them

to do what they're excellent at doing.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'm guessing there's some skills, there's some muscle, sister

Susie, she prays loud at church.

I don't think I want her necessarily coming in my business and, you know,

casting out, plucking up, you know, throwing things around, running

around the maybe, I don't know.

But, I'm guessing there's a skillset.

There's probably some knowing how to handle things within a

business setting, that's important.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

So part of what I really appreciate that Bob brought from the very

beginning, because at this point, Bob and I are the only ones who are

full time in the business, but we have a team of over 20 at this point.

So we have people who pray for at least an hour a day.

Bob and I pray together over the phone every day as well.

And so there's, there's like multiple levels of prayer, but we also have, a

prophetic team so we just, we have a lot of people who work with us who also

help to carry the businesses in prayer.

And so part of that is just saying, we value all of this and we want to

release that more into the businesses.

All right, we're, I'm sitting here watching time going,

man, there's a couple of things I'd really love to go deeper in, but

there's at least a few things I want us to get in before we finish up.

the the first thing is I would like for you to tell me what

an engagement might look like.

and if there's geography involved, y'all do it virtually.

what practically does

it look

a thing.

you know, and I did look around at like, you know,

how much you charge and it sounds like y'all just do it by proposal.

And there's some discussion there, but give me a practical.

And then I've got another question before we might wrap up.

Okay.

So practically we recognize that people are busy.

So our ideal is when people partner with us, we send them an intake

form and we're like, what is it that you would like prayer for?

And then our clients are welcome to update as often as possible.

So I'm personally a client.

So I make sure that I'm.

Emailing every week.

I'm like, these are the requests that I have.

These are the praises that I had last week, but a lot of

our clients don't do that.

In fact, we've had clients who have never, actually submitted an intake

form, but we asked them and they're like, no, no, we're seeing answers.

You know, there's a sense of like, somebody has our back,

which I think is fantastic.

We do have corporate calls that we do twice a week.

Initially had that just for our team.

we call them advocates, our advocate team, but then after a while, our

clients were kind of like, we want more.

And so now we have any, any clients who want to be on, it's not a requirement,

but it's more like Bob especially has trained for over 40 years and

really how to be excellent in prayer.

And so it's almost, I view it as a tremendous privilege to be able to be

on a call with him and hear what, He's thinking and hear how he's praying.

And he has a very simple format that he, invites that is very easy.

Any people for their first time can come on and feel like I can pray

maybe not with complete confidence, but at least somewhat confident.

And then, depending on what level people partner with us, they get

a monthly prophetic word because ideally, we think about that as like.

Our business owners are like the kings, if we could be serving more like priests,

but then the prophets are important too.

So kind of, just like David at the height of his, kingdom, his

ideal was when he had prophet, priest, king, all working together.

So, practically, I guess that's probably the basics there.

Very good.

And then the other, this is, going to be an extremely crass

question, but business people

love ROI.

so I'm not going to ask an ROI question, but I'm going to ask maybe

just for a story or two that might be,

I don't know, success or a result.

And some of this, you may or may not be able to share details.

give me an example of how this has played out.

Yeah.

So I would say, I would love to be able to say like every client we've

ever prayed for has an amazing ROI.

That would not be true.

And so really what we say is like, we pray and we are faithful in prayer.

And then like, that's, that's all that we can guarantee, obviously.

a couple of favorite stories, one of our clients is in real estate and

he had a deal that was about to go through and then it completely died.

Like, Completely died.

And he was like, what just happened?

So we prayed about it.

And not only did the Lord resurrect the deal, which truly like, it

literally was like a resurrection.

but then it also closed in a week, which was way faster

than anybody had been thinking.

And what was going to be, I think it was going to be 125, 000 tax bill.

At the last minute, somebody found this tremendous loophole and save them 85, 000.

So, you know, it's kind of like, well, that would pay our fee for

like many, many years, maybe decades.

So hallelujah for that.

That's fantastic.

But then another one of my, this is probably for me, one of my favorites,

just because it's so outside the box.

one of our clients had, Large scale organic farm and so they with our own

farming experience, not large scale but small, but I was there was a day I

was down praying and I was like, Lord, I know that there are issues anytime

there's heavy equipment, there's just.

Things can happen.

And I probably recorded a message for our clients like, Hey, this is what

I'm thinking about you right now.

This is what I'm praying for.

Sent it off.

Didn't really think much of it because again, you know, if you're

farming, it's kind of like every day you're using big equipment.

It just is a thing.

Well, I found out later.

that day, maybe even around that time, their very beloved

farm manager, who is amazing.

He had been somehow working with the potato digger and got caught in

the chain and was being pulled like where his body was off the ground.

And people like some of the other staff are watching this, like

there were witnesses to this.

And he said, and then somehow I came loose and it should have

taken my head off, which is like, literally he, he should have had a

very gruesome death, but he didn't.

And so the farm, like is not only preserved of the trauma

of losing an employee, but also a very critical employee.

And so that was, that's not really like a specific ROI, but that's

maybe more like, it was a person, a person is still alive on this earth.

It was very

Yeah, I think what it tells me is that ROI is not always

a spreadsheet or a financial return.

Amy, If someone wants.

More if they want more information or they want to ask questions or they want

to check up on you or or find out more Tell people where to go give them website

or wherever they need to connect with you And and what we'll do is we will

make sure we include all that down in the notes So where does someone need to go?

Oh, so just workplacepro.

com would be fantastic.

That's going to be the easiest.

Thank you.

If you want to get the 21 day single sentence prayers to pray as you go

about your day, that is available.

It's at praybig.

me slash refresh because it was a prayer refresh.

So praybig.

me slash refresh.

Excellent.

And that's where someone would go if they just want to, get more information.

All right, great.

We are seek, go create Amy, those three words.

So with my final question here, I'm going to allow you to pick one of those.

Seek, go or create, which one do you choose and why?

Oh, thank you.

So I love the word create because as a writer, primarily, I started journaling

about my experience living on the land.

And then, at this point, I just try to write some every day.

If I'm not traveling, so creating, answering questions, trying to really

figure out what it is that I'm thinking, mostly in the realm of prayer, but

sometimes in other directions as well.

I just think the Lord is a creator God, and so we get to

partner with Him in creativity because we are made in His image.

Amy, thank you, man.

What a great conversation.

I've loved all this weird stuff we've talked about.

And, I think it's been a lot of fun.

Make sure if you've listened in and you're just intrigued or concerned or

whatever it is, just go, go check it out.

I've actually, I've got the website pulled up here, Workplace Prayer, dot

com make sure you go check that out.

I appreciate this conversation we have here at Seat.

Go create new episodes every Monday.

We're on YouTube, we're on all the platforms.

Continue listening in, commenting.

I'd love to hear some comments on this conversation, comment and share and do all

that you can to help us get the word out.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.