[00:00:07.370] – Kathy English
Hello. I’m Kathy English, and I want to welcome you to Profiles in Stewardship, where my husband, Bill English, has conversations with business leaders about how they integrate their work with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Bill is talking with Doctor Dr. Ralph Angwald, a Christian who has been working with professional athletes and business leaders for over 30 years. He teaches business leaders how to hear the voice of God and partner with God in their marketplace work. If you want to learn how to hear the voice of God in decision-making, in business, and in life, then this podcast will be helpful to you. So sit back and learn as Bill and Ralph talk about how to hear the voice of God in this Profiles in Stewardship episode.
[00:00:59.410] – Bill English
Good morning. I’m your host, Bill English, and I’m the publisher here at Bible and Business. Today I’m kicking off a new series for business owners and leaders that are titled Profiles in Stewardship. The Profiles and Stewardship series is intended to provide ongoing support and education for those who own and lead businesses. If you’re a business owner or a business leader and you’re serious about integrating your faith into your role as a leader in the business, then this series will be of interest to you. In this series, I’m going to feature business owners and business leaders and entrepreneurs who love the Lord. And the topics we’ll discuss will help all of us who own or lead businesses of any size to live out our Christian stewardship role in the marketplace. Sometimes I’ll interview topic experts like we’re going to do today, but other times we’ll talk with business owners who are willing to talk about how they live out their stewardship role as an owner of a business. Today we’re going to focus on the topic of hearing God’s voice and decision-making in business. But before we get started, I want to let you know that we are live streaming on both Facebook and YouTube.
[00:02:13.380] – Bill English
You can participate by asking a question or making a comment via the chat services in your browser. There will be a delay at our end before we see your comment or questions, so please be patient with that. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to get to all the comments or questions today, but we’ll certainly do the best we can. Also, this topic of hearing God’s voice and decision-making is covered in chapter seven in my book, The Christian Theology of Business Ownership. You can purchase my book in either electronic or print format from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Nobles, Kobo, Scribd, or Scribed I should say, and other online bookstores. So let’s go ahead and get started. I’d like to introduce today Dr. Ralphingwall, who is a good friend of mine and has been a mentor of mine in the past. Ralph, thanks for joining us today. Why don’t we start by having you tell us a bit about your person and your work, your background in business, and your experience in teaching others about hearing the voice of God.
[00:03:13.630] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Well, thanks, Bill. It’s great to be here. First, I do have to qualify a relationship. I’ve mentored Bill in some areas, and Bill’s mentored me. We are truly the example of Proverbs as iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another. And I’ve learned immense things from this man, and he’s been a precious friend. And we partnered for a number of years at a large evangelical church as the teaching team. And his gifting is just one of the most amazing I’ve seen. My background is I’m a missionary pastor. Kid grew up overseas, came back to America, got a call to go into the ministry, went to a number of evangelical seminaries before I graduated at Trinity, which is where Bill also got his degree.
[00:03:57.770] – Bill English
We’re Ted’s Grads, aren’t we?
[00:03:59.460] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Yeah, we are. And then I went and earned a PhD. What drove me into this business, which is I’m a consultant. It’s partnership principles is the name of my business. I do no advertising because God has enough people like Bill who send me people that I’m busier than I need to be or want to be. I’m as busy as I want to be. But the core of my business is that I work with business, Christian business owners, and then on the other side, I work with people are having substantial problems, and they’ve taken traditional Christian approaches, cognitive approaches, and just not found a solution. And so I’ve regularly gotten calls saying I was about to give up, but a friend of mine said I needed to call you. And then what I do is I help them with the partnership of the Holy Spirit and the principles of the Word of God to work through whatever issues they are. And then I develop this into a small business for relational reasons. The relational reasons is my wife is a general surgeon, and general surgeons are not able with three children if an issue comes up to say, I’ll be right back.
[00:05:10.150] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
So one of us had to have a flexible lifestyle, and consulting was the perfect fit for me. And it took my hobbies, which I mentor young men of. My other calling is I mentor young men. I have three daughters physically and 100 sons spiritually. What got me into this, I hit some issues from working through junk in my childhood that traditional memorizing, Scripture, all this other stuff wasn’t enough. I knew there was something missing, and it led me to a search to find out how the Holy Spirit actually operates in our life and what the basis of our relationship with God is really all about.
[00:05:55.730] – Bill English
So based on that, let’s dive into this topic, because today our topic is really hearing the voice of God ultimately in decision making and business. But let’s start with a biblical foundation. Ralph, what do you consider to be some of the core passages in the Bible that teach us that we can even hear the voice of God.
[00:06:19.370] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Let me start philosophically and then give Scripture to support it. Sure. Philosophically is that God, when he sent Jesus Christ, did not send Him to save us from help to remove our sins and to get us into the kingdom of God. That was not his purpose. That’s the benefit. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. In John 14, no one comes to the Father except through me. It was about a relationship. We’re designed according to Scripture to have an intimate relationship with God. And he chose as our primary role with Him as father to son and brother to brother. So the neat thing about being in the kingdom of God is that we our family is our status and our role as servant. And so if you look at our design and I’ll talk about it more scriptually in a second, we were designed for the highest single purpose, was to have an intimate relationship with God. And some of you don’t know. Bill’s background is counseling before he got into business. And the key to any relationship for it to work is communication. And so God designed us by design because he wants to have a relationship.
[00:07:36.150] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
So it’s by our nature to be able to communicate with Him and Him with us. The word is one of the ways, but it’s not the only way. The ideal and highest way is that God, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, made it possible so that we can directly go to Him and have intimacy and conversation. So some of the verses your verses are great. I’ll just throw a few of my foundational verses. One Corinthians 214 says something that is beyond our understanding, but it’s truth, but we have the mind of Christ. And in One Corinthians 316, don’t you know that you yourself are the temple, god’s temple, and God’s Spirit lives in you? And then I’m going to do Romans 814 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And then my favorite verse is Romans 816. He says, we know we are sons of God because it says God’s Spirit bears witness with our human spirit that we are sons of God. It’s impossible to be a Christian without hearing from God. It’s impossible. I’m going to knock some people that says God was to speak today.
[00:08:54.460] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
He stopped speaking since the Bible was closed. He would quote Scripture, and that’s a school of Christians. And some are my friends that believe that. But the Bible says that the only reason we’re saved is we hear God say to our Spirit, you are a son of mine. And that spirit then calls God of a father. It’s impossible to be saved without hearing from God according to the Bible. Let’s see if I have Romans 14 and seven, and I will ask the father, and he will send you another counselor to be with you forever. The spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him because he is neither. They neither see or know Him. But you know Him, for he lives in you and will be with you. And then act 1728 paul quotes a poet, unnamed poet. He says about God, for in Him we live and move and have our being. I got into this because I teach two models. I ask when I open with business groups and I’ve spoken to many, many, and I asked, what is your definition of success? And there are lots of great definitions of success, but the one I like most is simply doing the will of God.
[00:10:08.130] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Yeah, so how do you do that? Well, there’s two models out there that I teach that are vital to this. The first is what I call the wisdom model, which is if you do not have a good knowledge, working knowledge of the word of God, you are exceptionally vulnerable to be deceived by the evil one or be deceived by yourself. God assumes we’re going to know his basic truths. And those truths are profound and they’re designed to give us direction to live a Godly life and avoid sin. But what I found, and so many people I work with have found, is that there’s something missing in that and that’s intimacy. And if you look at John 14, jesus says, I’m going to my Father’s house to prepare a place for you. And when I do that, I will come back for you. And every Jew in that audience understood that was a bridegroom’s conversation. That it’s interesting in the three times that the Bible says that a man and a woman are to get married and the man is to always says the man is to leave his mother and father and join his wife.
[00:11:22.250] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
And the reason is that is true most of human history, 90% of people were aggressive. And when a man got married, he went and got a wife and moved back in with his parents. So the main issues and people who have done counseling I have with mother in laws is rarely the wife’s mother, it’s usually the son’s mother because there’s an assumption that we’re moving back in with God and that we’re going to have a family relationship. The experience in my life that best explains or emotionally captures what this is all about. Is there’s a difference between having a general relationship where you’re given an assignment and your corporations? And corporations I work with, they delegate authority and people go out and do their own thing is that the marriage image is just different. It’s about a relational I call it a relational model that God chooses to want to work with us intimately and that we interact with Him. In the example I use most often that taught me what this was all about, why we need healthy, ongoing communication with God and why he wants it so badly is the first year I got married, I got married to about 30 and I was one of those guys that was happy, single.
[00:12:44.050] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Single means you can do whatever you want all of the time and it’s self centered, but it’s kind of nice. But then I got married because I wanted to and I found myself I took a year off, according to Deuteronomy, and took a position over at our church as an internal pastor doing a lot of things. I found this as long before cell phones and other things. In 1985, I found myself at 04:00 in the afternoon reaching for a phone because I was thinking of either going golfing or playing basketball. And I didn’t like the feeling because the feeling was like, I’m going to call this woman to get permission to do what I’ve been doing freely for years. But as I thought about it, I realized I’m not doing it out of obligation, that somehow I am packed or that type of thing. I’m doing that at consideration because my decisions impact her.
[00:13:42.070] – Bill English
Yeah.
[00:13:43.190] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
And that’s what God says our choices do impact him. He has a plan and purpose and design for our life. He has a relationship with us when we’re going to do something, especially with my business owners and with my family, wife and children, we always pray because our decision, if we choose to do this, has an impact on God’s larger design because we’re family. And so that’s my best summary of biblical basis for it and why our hearts and our spirits yearn for it. We’re designed those that follow or hear the Holy Spirit are truly the children of God.
[00:14:21.890] – Bill English
And I would add to that for those who are listening and watching, I would add to that that in Isaiah 31, Isaiah wrote, although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more. With your own eyes you will see them. And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it Christ. I remember talked about that. My sheep know my voice. And even though it’s not an audible, this is the thing, it’s not an audible voice, right. It is a voice that is very discernible and it’s understandable. And I think that’s what is met in that Romans passage, or at least in the Psalm 19 passage where it talks about the heavens and the stars pouring forth speech night after night and it is discernible speech, but it’s not audible speech. And so I want to pivot Ralph a little bit here to just talking about how do we hear what is the voice of God sound like? And I use the word sound in an inaudible sense because I don’t hear voices, I’m not hallucinating, I don’t hear a male voice, like the low, booming voice from the Ten Commandments.
[00:15:49.230] – Bill English
What does God’s voice sound like? And really what I want to focus on in this next segment here is how does one learn to hear the voice of God? What would you say to those two questions?
[00:16:00.210] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
What’s so fascinating, Bill, is if we get a rank pagan and get him to commit his life to the Lord, he hears from God in a great way, because what he goes is, oh, I recognize this new stream of thought and consciousness in my life. But those that of us have been raised in the church and gone to Bible studies, that’s normal. And then, like you said in the Old Testament, god most regularly spoke out loud from external positions. So his voice in the sky, he only did it three times in the New Testament, too, that I’m aware of Jesus’s baptism and the transfiguration where he spoke. And Jesus said, that voice wasn’t for me, it was for you. Because I see it says in here no, the point of why I started with where the temple, the Holy Spirit is god Spirit lives in us and he becomes it says in one Corinthians 617 that God and us become one in spirit. There’s a unity that’s even only intimacy in marriage can match the intimacy compared to the intimacy that we have of oneness with God. So, yes, what is different spiritual giftings? I work with people that actually hear the voice of God.
[00:17:22.330] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
I was praying with a young man working through an issue in his life, and all of sudden a he broke down. He just wept. He’d come from a divorced family, everything else what happened? He says, I heard Jesus tell me he loves me.
[00:17:34.210] – Bill English
Isn’t that something?
[00:17:35.410] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
I was a little envious because that’s not how God has spoken. I’ve heard his voice vaguely in my head. But when I work with people who have voices in their head, 99% of the time, it’s not the Holy Spirit. They can hear these loud thoughts. I was working with a young man once, and he said, there’s a voice in my head screaming, get up and tell him you’ll come back tomorrow. Because we had to break that’s not.
[00:18:01.550] – Bill English
The Holy Spirit, right?
[00:18:02.960] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
We had to break some demonic strongholds. We were praying with my daughter Abby, who you guys know real well, with a gal who had been to Occult Church in Arkansas that had a counterfeit Jesus. He was a charismatic leader, and basically they got driven out of the church when her brother died in a car accident. Not his fault, was going to the mission field. And after three months, they hadn’t just accepted God’s will and the joy of the Lord, so they got excommunicated. And so we’re praying with her. And I turn to Abby because the biggest point of this how do you hear God’s voice? It’s much more profound than that. It’s God’s presence in our life. The Holy Spirit actually lives in us. There are things the Bible says that we agree with but don’t understand. Paul says, I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live the life I live in the body. I live by faith in the Son of God. It’s Christ that lives in me. There is some sort of unity that’s different. So I was sitting on our sofa downstairs praying with this wonderful young gal, and I turned to Abby and I said, what is your connection with God right now?
[00:19:10.030] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Her eyes opened up. She says, I have none. I said, that’s the demonic presence on her that blocks our intimacy doesn’t remove God’s presence, but blocks our spirit’s ability to connect with God. We prayed through it, and it was just like all of a sudden she started hearing from God very clearly. But the first voice she heard, I said, Ask God what he thinks of you. He says he’s very disappointed with me. He thinks I’m a failure. And I said to Abby, I said, you want to tell her? Do I? She jumped. She says, I do. He says, that’s not Jesus. That’s the counterfeit Jesus that you had been allowed into your life. And when we broke that apart, she then had this intimacy, this awareness of God, a connection, a sense of his following. Let me finish this thought real quick. The main way God guides us is by presence, that we just feel better about something. We have peace about something, or we don’t have peace about something because God’s communicating with us at a deeper level into our spirit rather than lower level, which is our head or brain.
[00:20:18.870] – Bill English
You make an interesting observation there. Or actually, well, I’ll just stick with observation there. It just seems to me that when people who don’t really listen to the voice of God very often, or they’re kind of getting into it for the first time, they’re very tepid and scared about listening to counterfeit voices. And they’re afraid that they’re going to hear counterfeit voices and follow those, and then they’re going to sin or disobey God or get outside of God’s will. And what I try to tell them is that it is a learned skill. But there are ways to learn his voice without putting yourself in danger or in harm’s way, so to speak.
[00:21:04.460] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Absolutely.
[00:21:04.920] – Bill English
And so I like how you’re talking about the presence of God. It’s impressions in our spirit. We recognize what comes from God and what doesn’t come from God. And that is not only because we learn what God’s spirit and his presence feel like, but it’s also because we know the word of God well. It’s really, at least to my way of thinking, Ralph, it’s a combination of that wisdom model and the presence model. I think those without any wisdom or very low biblical literacy are going to be easily misled in the presence area. But for those who are just starting out, how do they learn to discern between God’s voice and the voice of the enemy?
[00:21:52.630] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
That’s great. One of the things God has me is I’ve worked with a number of Christians who came to me because someone said they knew me and they said, I pray and I don’t hear. And like you said, a lot of it’s based on false expectations that somehow God will speak. Like he spoke to Moses or he spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus, a voice from the sky. But that’s not where God is speaking to us. From now, the Holy Spirit abides in us. The mind of Christ is part of our thoughts, so we have to start them out. So I do a little exercise to help them learn. I’ll sit there and I say, we’re going to ask a prayer that Satan probably isn’t going to get involved with because it’s a no win scenario. We’re going to ask God to give you a name of someone he wants you to pray with. And so we just pray. And I say, what name came to your hand? There’s just a thought. It’s like it wasn’t a voice, it was a thought. Well, the mind of Christ is a thought. It’s not a voice.
[00:22:50.310] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
It doesn’t say, the voice of Christ lives in us. It says, the mind of Christ lives in us. And then we’ll ask, how do you want me to pray? And they’ll pray, and we’ll do that three or four times. And the other thing I learned that was fascinating, I started this with a friend who’s got discernment gifts. And about the first six or ten times I prayed with people who really wanted to hear from God. It went really well. Sure. In fact, I came home and I told Sandy I was really amazed at how chatty our God is. So another friend was having an issue, and I said, well, this is what we’re doing. He says, Great, this is what I need. He got in there, and I kind of promised Him he’d hear from God. And we asked the question. Dead noise. The crickets were even dead. And I remember my first impression, this is making me look bad. It was all about rule.
[00:23:45.110] – Bill English
Hey, that’s interesting.
[00:23:46.820] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
And then the Holy Spirit spoke to me, and it wasn’t a clear thought that I could sense his presence was Him, not me. But it was just a thought. And the thought was more of a download of an epiphany where a download of what? An epiphany, which is where you realize the truth. One sentence. It was like a lecture that could have taken 30 minutes and a moment in your mind into your spirit and the illumination. And here’s what God said to me. Says who has a larger stake in this relationship, him or me? Who sent his son to die to have a communication? And I thought, okay. And he said, So if he’s not hearing, is it because this Holy Spirit, the Father, doesn’t want a relationship? I said, okay, great, so what do I do? And he and I got this clear sense and I said, Pray. Ask this question, Father. Why aren’t I hearing? And also in his eyes opened up and he says, well, there’s this issue. We prayed to that issue, and then he prayed and he heard in the sense that it comes the way God speaks. Now, let’s talk about his voice explicitly.
[00:25:01.130] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
It’s either something we hear, see, or sense, right? And it’s downloaded into our spirit man, not into our soul man. And then our spirit man shares it with our soul men. There are occasions where God skips the spirit and speaks to the soul because it’s so dire or important. And I had one occasion where I was driving down the road in early spring where the snow had melted and the oils were coming up from the ground and a guy in front of me chickened out and slammed the brakes at a yellow. Some people think that he’s right and I’m of the school. That that’s annoying. But I’m not saying I’m right. And I hit the brakes and I started the hydroplane on the grease. And I knew if I this was rush hour. I knew if I put the accelerator back on, I would be able to get traction and pass him and go through the intersection. And Audibly god said don’t. And then I got a sense that something really bad will happen if you do that. But, I mean, it was like a life or death situation. And I put the brakes on and slid for about felt like an hour, about 20 seconds at about 15 miles an hour into the back of the guy’s car.
[00:26:19.370] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
But that’s the exception. Most of the times, it’s simply a relational situation where we have a sense. We sense that this is the right thing to do or sense it’s not. And that’s our spirit communion with God’s spirit. Or when I pray with guys, I find the more intelligent and more competent my business leaders are, the more likely they are to get a picture. They’ll close their eyes and they’ll see an image, and then we do the question, okay, God, what does that mean? And then we go to another one and they get another image. And we might end up spending 15 or 20 minutes. And in some way, God is making them warp to prepare for the answer. It’s also, I think, male pride, because my wife never gets images. She’s a humble, godly woman. When we pray, she goes, yeah, I got a sense of peace, or I got a yes, I got a no, or this is what God says. But it’s very common for men to get images or pictures so they see something. Sense something is the most common way. Most of us here, we just kind of sense that this is right, this is wrong.
[00:27:21.870] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
We hear the thought of yes or no comes into our head, but it’s not this profound experience like Paul and the Damascus wrote, because it’s supposed to be normal, it’s not supposed to be unusual. And earlier he said, I’m just throwing this about being deceived. That’s a very fair and fearful question. I consider the most important part of what I do is I have a very strong biblical based model to confirm messages. Because everyone who has had a pentecostal, charismatic friend or family member who has come to you and said, God told me this and we know it’s wrong, are then kind of sheepish or skittish about doing it because that person never confirmed what they thought they heard. But it’s easy to confirm. The other thing that I’m amused by is people that are reluctant to do this because they say, well, Satan, it’s going to interfere. And it’s like that image of Satan to me has God cower and saying, oh, I really wanted to talk to Ralph, but that big, bad Satan, he just too tough. I’m sorry, there’s no match in that contest.
[00:28:37.430] – Bill English
Yeah.
[00:28:38.710] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Satan has already lost. So if we’re not hearing, there’s always a reason. And I worked with a number of people, and it took sometimes five minutes and it took sometimes 30 minutes to figure out what was going on inside them emotionally or spiritually that was blocking their natural God given ability that you mentioned. John, chapter ten. Jesus says, my sheep know my voice, and they will not listen to a stranger.
[00:29:05.950] – Bill English
Right.
[00:29:06.800] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Our true born again spirit man, spirit woman knows Jesus voices intimately as a husband knows his wife voice when they pick up the answer phone call.
[00:29:17.730] – Bill English
Sure, yeah. I’ve met some people who and in my own life too, sometimes I ask God direct questions and I get nothing but noise. It’s almost like static on a radio. Right. And so then my next default question is, why am I not hearing? And it’s interesting that when you ask the question, Why am I not hearing? Suddenly the noise goes away. God tells you because you have to deal with the reason that you’re not hearing before you can actually start to hear direction from God. The other thing that I have found is in times of prayer, when I’ve said, okay, God, I’m going to kind of stop talking now and what do you want to say to me today? And I would say 90% of the time he starts out with, I love you. He just wants us to know that he loves us. Are there other things? Yeah, but where I find this really gets difficult for me in hearing the voice of God is when I say to God during prayer, my prayer times, okay, Lord, what sin do I need to confess? I also find that there’s no static on that one.
[00:30:33.370] – Bill English
Either God will. Gently but directly point out sin in my life. And the reason that I don’t like doing that so much is because I know how truthful and unvarnished his messages are to me. He doesn’t mince words. And yet, as we ask God, what other sin do I need to confess? God will, over time, help us really clean out our lives in ways where we can overcome bondage to sin, we can overcome negative attitudes and really overcome bad theology. Hearing the voice of God is essential in understanding the Scriptures. If you’re reading something and you don’t understand it or if you want a deeper understanding, our first teacher is the Holy Spirit. That’s the whole point of the counselor will come to you in John 16, and he will not speak on his own. He will only speak what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. And what he is saying there is, I’m going to talk to you through the Holy Spirit. And if you want to know the Bible better, you got to hear the voice of God. If you want to know what sins to confess, you need to hear the voice of God.
[00:31:44.270] – Bill English
If you want to know how I want you to conduct the affairs in your business, you need to hear the voice of God. And so all of those things.
[00:31:54.150] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Are.
[00:31:55.060] – Bill English
Just really visceral now to how I live my life and how I run the business that I’ve been running right now. Maybe you want to interact with that?
[00:32:07.610] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
No, I completely agree. Remember, Bill, the Holy Spirit’s first calling and highest purpose in our life is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:32:16.960] – Bill English
Exactly.
[00:32:17.880] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
That’s his agenda. And the cool thing is, the more successful he’s at doing that, the richer and better our lives become.
[00:32:27.150] – Bill English
Very true. Very true. Well, let’s pivot here then and talk about how this works. Pragmatically in business. I’m a business owner, you’re a business consultant. I also do business consulting. We’re sitting there, we’re having to deal with budgets and marketing and HR issues and kind of the day to day warp and woof of life in running a business. Why don’t you talk to us or kind of fill us in on how this would work for a business owner or a business leader in their day to day activities?
[00:33:04.180] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
That’s mine. The primary thing I do, I own parts of four businesses, own my own business, a consulting business, but I own parts of four businesses because I’ve been trading equity for counseling for years. And when we get together and I only work with guys that say I come alongside guys and have lunch and meet with them that say I want to know the Lord and grow in it. But I only work with guys that say my business belongs to Jesus, and I’m here today to find out what my Lord wants me to do. And so I’ve worked through a bunch of stuff. This is where soul and spirit have a partnership and we flipped them. We’ve asked the soul to do what the spirit is designed to do. The human spirit, the part of us that’s fused and used. And like I said, in one Corinthians 617 is one with God. The two are one. As we ask the soul to figure out what God is saying rather than the spirit. The soul’s job is to do all of the groundwork. Like, for example, you’re thinking about doing something well, the soul is supposed to go out and research whether you’re going to acquire another company, what its fundamentals are, everything else, and do that type of stuff.
[00:34:21.940] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Because the principle behind all of this is that we’re in partnership with God and he’s a perfect parent and he wants us and expects us to do what we can and then he does what we can’t. So after they do their due diligence, we’ll sit down with a meeting and they’re thinking about hiring someone and they’re down to a couple of sources and we’ll just simply pray and ask God, now, Father God, is this the person you want for me to hire to run this department or this area of your business? And then we either get a clear yes or we get static. And then we ask, Why aren’t I hearing? And God will usually then bring whatever the issue is that’s most important in that moment for us to deal with. But that’s the big issues we pray over is we just pray over every major decision because we just want to make sure. And here’s the key. The story of Gideon has been misunderstood and misthought. I’ve heard people say they were very high placed. Respected pastors say they’re shocked that God didn’t kill Gideon when he asked for confirmation. No, but the principle of Gideon is that the higher the cost, the higher the risk, the stronger the confirmation will be.
[00:35:36.190] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Gideon was asked ralph, just for those.
[00:35:39.480] – Bill English
That don’t know the story of Gideon, why don’t you recap that very quickly?
[00:35:44.240] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
I was about to go there. Gideon was asked by God to fight the Midianites. They had an army of about 110,000, which ironically was about the size of Grant’s army toward the end of of world the civil war. And the Israelites had an army about 30,000, which was the size of Lee’s army toward the end of the civil war. And then God goes to Gideon and he says, I want you to take this army and par it down. And when he was done, he had 300 people, 300 soldiers left to take on over 100,000. And at that point Gideon said, now is that really you? Can I get a test? I want a supernatural you’re going to ask me to do something supernatural? I want a supernatural confirmation. And God had no problem doing it. And he did it actually three times. He took up a burning sacrifice and then twice with the fleece, first he had it dry under wet ground and then under dry ground, or it might have been reversed and people were saying, well, that’s disrespectful of God. No, he says, think of it as a loving parent. Jesus says, if you as fathers, give good things to your children, how much more you have in the father.
[00:36:48.540] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Well, my daughter, my oldest daughter was 16 or 17. She called me and said, dad, what time do you want me in? I don’t just cross my arms and say, I told you once, dear, you’re on your own. Good luck. No, I’d say, honey, school nights we want you in at ten, and then weekends it’s eleven, so please be home by ten. A loving father wants to confirm a loving father wants to make sure that we’re aligned. And so that’s where confirmation is so important. And that’s why praying with others and I say, in marriage, praying. I heard a new analogy. A friend of mine once said that he called his wife the Junior Holy Spirit. And that never worked well with me. I don’t think anyone, even though my wife would be one of the best candidates, I heard another guy say, no, wives are God’s hearing AIDS, especially for men that aren’t very good at hearing. And I’ve never had a situation in business where a man I’ve recommended this went home to his wife and said, let’s pray about a decision. And heard her hearing one thing and him hearing another and going against her will.
[00:37:59.760] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
And it worked out well. Our wife is there to protect us. A very good friend of mine who owned a very large business told me once I was teaching these are closer, and now I was teaching a group of business leaders and how wives are so important. And he came up to me after the meeting and I thought he was going to say, well, you know, I run a large business, son, and you just don’t understand business. And he said, I have a big company, I have a trucking company, and my wife’s greatest stay home mother, and she does her thing and I do mine. And I told her that I was thinking about acquiring a new company that had 100 trucks in it. And my accountant did all the numbers and everything looked good. And she says to her husband, says, you know, I got my stuff and you got your stuff, but for some reason I have no peace about this. I just, you know, I just don’t think you should do it. So he went back to his account and did the numbers again and they really look good. So he acquired the business in 2007, this is 2009.
[00:39:03.060] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
He came up to me, he says, I’m underwater already about 50 million on this business and I have 80 million left that I owe on it from the trucks. He says, tell your young men to listen to their wives. You know, only God knew that 2008 was coming, but he knows it and wants us to know what’s right. So that’s part of the confirmation is that two or three need to hear. It says, everything of significance three times in Scripture needs to be confirmed by two or more witnesses. And so on the relational side, when you and I are having devotions, we can pray in a intimacy and ask God, if we want to work on this. What area of his life does he want to change? That’s fine. But when it comes to significant decisions that have any kingdom impact, god wants us to be praying with another believer, ideally our wife or our partner in business. And the reason why they’re so high is they’re stakeholders. The thing goes bad, they suffer with their husband and so they’re the most reliable source to pray with. But business partners are equally liable.
[00:40:17.110] – Bill English
During the day when I walk into the office, I’ll use myself as an example. I walk into the office in the morning. I’m usually there around 830. And I walk in and it isn’t ten minutes before I’ve had two or three people in my office. And it starts out bad. There’s this problem. Did you know that this happened? Oh, by the way, I need to let you know about. And then sometimes the day just gets worse and worse and worse and you’re kind of going from element to element to element to decision to situation to problem, and it’s tough to find time to actually sit down and pray. How do you advise business owners to deal with that, to say, how do you advise them to slow down and hear? Or do we just kind of develop that ability to receive impressions from the Lord quickly enough that we can keep up a fairly rapid pace during the day?
[00:41:18.150] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
It’s a combination when you look at your life and go, this is what you do for a living. In an ideal world, you start your day if you’re driving in and praying and connecting with God and asking Him to deal with the situations ahead of time and get in front of it. And that’s why what the meetings I most enjoy praying with stuff is when we’re getting in front of it. So then if God says, yes, hire this person or acquire this company or do this deal if things go sideways, well, you know that God is involved in this. We’re not going back and say, oh God, I made this decision. Help. I was talking to a fairly wealthy man once and he was trying to understand this. I’ll get back to you specifically to your question, but I was saying, now imagine your son let’s think about this relationship. Imagine your son came one day and said, dad, I bought a house. I love you to come over and see it. You see it. And then he loses his job and comes back and says, I’m going to kind of vine for a little while, could you help me out?
[00:42:24.830] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
I says, you’re a loving father, you probably would. But imagine if he came to me and says, dad, I’m thinking about a house, here’s what I make. What do you think payments should be? And then he says, I think he could handle 2000 a month but I don’t think he can handle 2500. Great. Then he comes back and says, dad, I found three houses that fit that profile. Come out and look at them, which one do you think? And he says which one do you like? And he says, I like this one. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would recommend that. Then he buys the house, then he loses his job and when he comes back to his father, his father no longer is a consultant, he’s a stakeholder. He’s going to be very at that point he says outside of it to my friend, I said, you understand? He says that’s why when we get got involved he’s a stakeholder. He’s not just a loving father that’s coming in to help us stakeholder. But back to your second one. It is both praying in advance as much as you can, especially driving in or Monday mornings, getting up earlier or something before the week is a very good model.
[00:43:30.310] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
But yes, the Holy Spirit is there to live in a dynamic world and yes, sometimes it’s messy, sometimes we just say I’ll need to get back to you on that. I’ll need to pray about it or think about it. But more often than not God is there. If we’ve invited him into our life and have a good relationship with Him to guide and direct in those situations.
[00:43:53.850] – Bill English
Okay, well good. Well I think we’re going to start to wrap up. If you’re listening and you have a question or comment you’re welcome to enter that in the chat. So far I haven’t seen anything come through in terms of a comment or a question. Ralph, one final thing here. How does a mid level manager use this to manage up? And I have an idea on this but I want to see if our spirits are aligned on this. Let’s say I’m a mid level manager at a three M or a GM or Chrysler or Honeywell, something like that. And I’ve got a boss who doesn’t know the Lord doesn’t care about God. Boss is just a regular guy who just doesn’t know God. And I’m trying to incorporate praying and hearing God’s voice and my decision making. How does that impact me as I manage up and I try to manage my boss?
[00:44:54.830] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
The reason I prefer I do work with executives but the reason I prefer working with owners, because owners are the only ones that have the authority to throw in Jesus is lord over their business. But we all have authority to enthrone Jesus as Lord over our job and know that he’ll come and work with us. But in those situations, you just prayfully, work through your situations, and trust that God will work in the heart of your supervisor or boss to be inclined. Now, an interesting situation was I was working with a couple of young men who had actually taken on a larger workload and were producing more than the original deal was. And so we talked about it, I was meeting with them. And being an executive doesn’t mean you can’t find someone to pray with through your decisions and get God’s guidance. And it works the same way, because even owners of business are servants to their clients. And some of them, they have a main client that if they were ever to lose them, they might lose their whole business. In fact, one of the guys I’m working with in the paper business, and they cut up the large paper rolls into cargo boxes for Tide and General Mills and stuff like that.
[00:46:12.790] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
They had a big customer down in Iowa and a plant of 27 people working at it. And a big customer said, we looked at the cost and realized we could do it in house. And so he shut down that part of his business. So even the owner is a servant to his client. And so we get ahead of things and we just sit down and we pray about them. And so this situation, I’ll give you an example. So they realized that they merited better compensation for what they were producing, and we prayed about it. And God literally said, meet with them 11:00 on Tuesday. And they prayed, and that worked for him. And my friend said, I came in at 09:00, and the owner was just out of his mind. He was ranting about this and ranting about that, and he’s thinking like, lord, what are you doing? This is about the worst day I’ve seen to meet with this guy and ask for more money. And at 11:00 he knew the meeting was eleven. They got in the office at 11:00. He walked in a completely different person. Tom said, what’s wrong? Said, well, this is what we think is the proper compensation.
[00:47:23.210] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
He said, Sounds good to me, let’s do it. And walked out. That’s how we work with God. And the thing is, when we hear from God and follow Him, we can’t lose. Because even if things go sideways, god was already involved with that. That’s his problem. Sure. My problem is to follow Him. His problem is outcomes. In fact, very quick thing when we talk about what does success in the Bible mean? It means being faithful, doing his will. And I love it. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel versus Jonah. Which one of those and I’ll answer this rhetorical, which one of those in world leads or external measurements of successful ministry? Jonah greatest revival in human history and he’s got four little pages buried in the in the minor prophets where Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah faithfully followed. God went to his room, begged for them to repent, and repent got thrown in wells and abused and rejected. And yet they get 66, 55 and 50 chapters. Because God is much more impressed with faithfulness, outcomes are his problem.
[00:48:35.030] – Bill English
That’s a good point. Let’s pivot for just a moment. We do have one comment or question in the chat services and a listener writes this my name is Malcolm from South Africa, and I’m struggling to hear God’s voice as to whether I should study programming to develop my app, but all I hear is silence. Ralph, what advice might you have for Malcolm?
[00:49:02.270] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
First, pray with some other Christian. Because when we’re doing Kingdom business, god says of two or three gather that there’s a different presence and authority. The other thing is, we’ve talked about my key piece is confirmation, and that means that there must be agreement. So I would tell Malcolm if he has a good Christian friend or a wife, pray with them to start with, and then, as we said, if he’s not hear anything, ask God, Why aren’t I hearing? Because we know God wants to communicate with Him sometimes, too. We have to be a little patient. Sometimes we go to God and ask things. And I’ve got to the point now where everything feels in a good place and I don’t get an answer. I know it’s going to take another day or two or something, and then I’ll wait a week and something changes. And then now everything makes sense. So I can hear from him. But the council on that one is pray with a strong Christian friend. Ask God, why aren’t I hearing? And just listen. And whatever thought or impression or feeling you get, pursue that. And God is faithful. He wants Malcolm to deal with you.
[00:50:14.360] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
He wants to speak with you. He wants to partner with you.
[00:50:19.030] – Bill English
And Malcolm writes back, okay, I will pray with my wife. Thanks. So good advice. Thank you very much.
[00:50:25.480] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
She’s the biggest stakeholder. Her life will be most impacted of anyone on this planet by your decision.
[00:50:32.330] – Bill English
So let’s start to wrap up here. Our core learning points that we went over today is that there’s plenty of scripture that talks about how to hear the voice of God and provides a foundation for it. You can also read chapter seven in my book, a Christian Theology of Business Ownership, that will also give you a strong, really biblical foundation for believing that God does want to speak with us and that we can hear his voice. Ralph, if somebody wanted to read something other than my book, which I know is shocking, that somebody might want to read something other than what I’ve written, what one to two to three books might you recommend that people check out and read?
[00:51:13.770] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
I’m going to give you a cheat sheet you can buy. The book by Derek Prince, who was a brilliant scholar, passed away a couple about 20 years ago called Hearing God’s Voice. But here’s the cheat sheet. You can go to YouTube. Derek Prince hearing God’s voice. He had a radio program. It’s about a two hour YouTube thing, but it’s about six or 810 minutes lessons. And it is the best teaching I have ever read on Hearing God’s Voice from and he’s a brilliant scholar and intellectual and a really developed believer. Another really good one that changed my life at the beginning is by Joy Dobson from YWAM, and it’s called Being Forever Destroyed. That’s one of those certain things that I have in front of me. Destroyed forever for the ordinary.
[00:52:06.390] – Bill English
Destroyed. I couldn’t hear you there. Destroyed.
[00:52:08.720] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
Why? Forever for the ordinary. For the ordinary. Okay, for the ordinary. And she talks about her experiences of growing to hearing God’s Voice and how it transformed her life. And then there’s another brilliant scholar, Jack Deere, who was at Dallas Theological Seminary for years, wrote a book called Surprised by the Voice of God. And that’s academic and practical. But I really derek Prince, the YouTube or the book, it will give you just about everything you need and really is solid curating God’s voice.
[00:52:44.790] – Bill English
And Ralph, if folks wanted to get a hold of you, how would they do that?
[00:52:50.630] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
That’s an interesting question. My email is Ralph W. Ingwall at gmail, and that’s probably the best way to contact me.
[00:53:00.970] – Bill English
And Ingwall is spelled E-N-G-W-A-L-L.
[00:53:04.560] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
It is? Okay.
[00:53:06.350] – Bill English
All right. So, Ralph, w Ingwall? What’s the w for? Just out of curiosity.
[00:53:10.350] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
William. It’s my middle name.
[00:53:12.160] – Bill English
That’s a great name. I heard it not a great name. So, Ralph W. Ingwall@gmail.com, I’m just going to ask that if you want to learn more or if you’d like to connect with me, you can do so@bibleandandbusiness.com. Happy to have you go out and visit. We have podcasts, we have articles. I have some surveys I’d like you to participate in. And of course, there’s plenty of posts out there that talk about various aspects not only of hearing God’s voice, but other aspects of being a steward of a business which God has entrusted to you. So I want to thank you all for joining us today. Ralph, thank you for your time today. It’s good to reconnect with you. We should go grab some coffee sometime. So listen, everybody, go out and make it a day, a great day, and take care.
[00:54:07.700] – Dr. Rolf Engwall
God bless.
[00:54:11.710] – Kathy English
Thank you for joining Ralph and Bill today. I hope you found their conversation to be helpful to you as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to talk with Bill, just email him at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. That’s a n dbusiness.com. I think you’ll find, as I have, that he’s a good guy to talk to, Bill, and I hope you’ll join us again for another Bible and business profiled in Stewardship podcast. So until then, please go out and make it a great day. Take care.