Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.E.W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by my dear friend Shay Bynes. Shay is a passionate storyteller, mentor, and strategist who equips leaders to be catalysts for transformation in the marketplace. Known as Chief Fire Igniter, Shay co-founded the Kingdom-driven entrepreneur movement in 2012. Wow, has it been that long, Shay?
SPEAKER_01It has.
SPEAKER_00And she certainly is joyful, one of my favorite people in the whole world. Shay, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast. Welcome back. I think it was episode 63 you were on.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. It's been a minute. I'm really glad to be back. So thanks for having me, Darren.
SPEAKER_00Shay, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_01In a really kind of disruptive way. This would be in, gosh, this was in 2009. And I was working at IBM Corporation at the time. And I had a business on the side, but I was full-time corporate. And I was doing what I did at that time of my life and every January, uh, you know, creating my own set of goals and dreams and then asking God to bless them. Like I wasn't engaging him in the process. I was just like, hey, here's what I want to do, you know, bless this, right? And that particular year, January of 29, uh, 2009, I heard back to me, as I'm saying to him, like, here's my dreams, here's my plans, Lord, bless them. I hear you're gonna leave your job by June of 2010. And I knew that wasn't me because I'd never had that thought before. It wasn't my plan. I didn't had to have a strategy. So that was the first time through just an encounter of like an invasion of my thoughts from the Holy Spirit at that time when I wasn't even engaging God. You know, I grew up in church, but I wasn't even engaging God in my work life at all. So the invitation started with the with the with the word that that was gonna be what happened, which then created that atmosphere of wow, I'm maybe I should be paying attention because you know, I I have a plan for how, you know, I can try to create a plan for what that looks like and how that's gonna be, but I don't know how to do that, you know. So that's that was the beginning stage for me. And that was just that was a seed. I mean, it grew into a whole lot over the next couple of years, and then, you know, and forever and still growing.
SPEAKER_00So you were grinding and out back then.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I was grinding and out. I was on team no sleep, you know, because I had to work the corporate gig and then I had my business. I was uh real estate investing. So I had my real estate investing business on the side, my corporate gig, and I was on team no sleep. And I learned the world of business and entrepreneurship as the grind, like the hustle and grind and the make things happen and do you know, do what it takes, you know, do all that it takes, you know. If it's gonna be, it's it's up to you. So yeah, go be on team no sleep and make it happen.
SPEAKER_00But these days, people and probably for most of time, people have really had a lot of respect for hard work and grind it out, and I'm I'm on my grind and I'm hustling, and you know, they they don't give uh they don't give a grace award in sports to give the hustle award, right? Uh right. You know, if I was gonna get an award, that was gonna be it. It was it was not gonna be MVP, and it might be the the hustle award, though. Um that's for sure. So what's the difference? Because you talk about grace over grind. What's the difference between grinding and the hard work spoken of throughout the book of Proverbs, for example?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay, so I gotta share this part first because I shared with you that seed of when I actually started paying attention to the fact that God even wanted to be involved in my work. But the grace thing came years later. This was in 2013. So there's some years difference, where I was at church and our pastor just is giving a message. It was uh Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30. And this is most commonly known as a scripture where Jesus is saying, Come to me, all of those who are weary, you know, you'll find rest for your souls. He talks about how his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Everybody knows that scripture. But in the message, it says, and he gave it in the message, I'd never heard it before. And it says, Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you will recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me, work with me, watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you will learn to live freely and lightly. So, Darren, I heard that and my whole soul was like, yes. I don't even know what that means and what that looks like, but the answer is yes. Please show me that, Jesus. And so that began the shift from yes, I'm paying attention. I know God is interested in my work, to going from, oh, I'm doing work for God to, oh, wait a second, hold on. This is about working with God. This isn't about, you know, being on team low sleep, hustling hard for the glory of God. This is about doing business with the presence of God and finding like, what does that even look like to do business with his grace in his rest? So I want to give that context, but to answer your question, to answer your question, when I when you think about grind, it's like it's it means excessive hard work. Excessive hard work. And even hard work, you know what the Holy Spirit said to me one day? Because it was like, okay, it's not excessive hard work, but you know, oh, it's all about work hard. He's like, I got a new word for you. Try diligent work. Because he told me to go look up the word hard. And when I looked the word hard up, you know what it said, Darren? Unyielding, difficult to penetrate. And he's like, Do you want to define your work as unyielding and difficult to penetrate? I'm like, never, never again. It's like, I got a new word for you. It's diligent, careful, steady, energetic work. So I completely shifted. So I went from no grind to not even hard work, but to diligent work in the rest and at the grace and at the pace of God's grace. Like I went through this multi-stage thing, but grinding to me is excessive hard work and working primarily in your own strength, you know, as opposed to working with the presence of God. Because that's the invitation that we have available to us to do all things with Him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I love the I love what you're saying about let's not let's because terms are very important. Words matter. Words matter. And and the because the culture assigns certain meaning to those terms. And and grind, while for a lot of people it's a positive thing, it's like, you know, look at me, I'm I'm responsible, I'm I'm moving ahead in the world and so forth. But like you're saying, it when you look at the the definition of these things, it's it's unyielding, and that's the exact opposite of the Christian life, right? And uh, and I was I was thinking about what you were saying about diligence, and there's there's two words that I found for skill in the Bible, and one of them is where in Proverbs it says a man's uh gift makes a place for him and and brings him before great men, right? And and that word that word there is is for diligence. Uh and and so there's an another another translation says skill, but it's it's diligence, and that's exactly that skill. Yeah, yeah. And and so is that what what are some other examples of that in the in the scripture of diligence? So, like what is it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like it's funny because when you look at different, even in Proverbs, like if you go and look across different translations, you'll see the word diligence verses, you'll see some things that'll say hard work, and you see some things that say diligence. It's interesting how that works. But you know, it's like if you think about what it's like to do business with God, you think about the Proverbs, I can't remember the exact address where it's like submit your works unto the Lord, and He will establish, like He's gonna establish that. So it's like we can have our plans and we should make plans, but we should also submit them to God, which is that yielding that part, that that surrendering part. It's that seeking God's mind and his heart concerning what you're doing in business. It's the not being led by the experts, led by the prophet, led by all the other things, but like our friend Dr. Jim Harris, like like being led by the Holy Spirit. You know, it's like that's a different way of doing business, operating from the fact that it's like if we look at our wisdom and like, okay, so my wisdom is gained from my experiences. Maybe I've also gleaned some wisdom from other people's experiences, that's great. But godly wisdom transcends that. So then what do you do when godly wisdom actually goes counter to your experiential wisdom? What are you gonna do? Right? If you're gonna be grinding, you're gonna do the up, you're gonna be like, I'm not even sure that's the Lord. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm gonna make this happen. I got, you know, I got the goods, I'm gonna make this thing happen. But what are when are what do you what happens when these things are in conflict? And they're more in conflict than you know. But if you're never paying attention to the idea of doing business with God, you wouldn't realize how out of alignment some of your everyday decisions actually are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. It it seems like it seems like a lot of us tend to think that working for God mean it just necessarily means we're working with God, which is not not necessarily the case, right? I mean, because you can be it really comes down to what your theology is and like where is God, and and so you could probably plot out every Christian somewhere on that continuum where they're gonna um, you know, for some, you know, we we gotta say that they're waiting for God to do something, right? And they're kind of like on another the opposite end of the continuum, and then you've got the presumptuous among us who yes, I'm I'm doing this for God, whether He wants it or not.
SPEAKER_01And we wouldn't say that, right, but it's how we're functioning, yeah. And I know that because I've been I've been there just like doing just out there doing things, you know. So I and I understand I can speak to it because I actually I really do understand it. I I have gone through all of the phases, you know, yeah, doing things without any regard to God, but still in integrity, you know. I you know, in excellence and integrity to me, those are like baseline. That's baseline stuff. But I still wasn't engaging God, I was still doing things in my own strength, then, but not even thinking about God in particular. Then it's like, oh, I'm doing these things for God, you know, I'm out here, I'm doing all things unto the Lord, but I still wasn't engaging him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01To actually with him, which completely changed everything. But it started with that invitation. It's funny how I did this post on Facebook about, you know, people get into these arguments about different translations. Oh, this one's like, you know, this one you shouldn't pay attention to, this one, whatever. And I'm like, man, I gotta tell you, I am so grateful for word for word, phrase for phrase, you know, like all the things because it's interesting how God will use, like you can know a particular thing and have it memorized and you've heard it, but yet you hear it in different language and it brings a whole nother dimension to it and allows the Holy Spirit to just work something else, you know, in your heart. And so I'm so grateful for that because translations I would normally not even pay attention to yet completely change the trajectory of my entire life. Because it changed my context, my theology of what that's like from a work context. And this is about the what I call the width factor, like work with him, yeah, keep company with him. And yes, watch how he does it. But it's just that flow and that rhythm and the goodness and the grace and his rest in which you're walking in and actually accessing his mind, his thoughts, his strategies. It's it's a completely different way of being.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we're definitely not talking about presumption, like in James, where they say, you know, we're gonna we're gonna go do business here. And and and what you ought to really say is if the Lord wills, um, well, how are you gonna know what he will? You should know what he wills, right? Like, and you're only gonna know that by by being with him. And then we're not talking about uh fatalism, which is where we're just waiting for God to to do something, and I'm not gonna do anything, but you're talking about a third, a third choice, right? The third door, which is yes, the grace door, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And sometimes I do have to make that you know, that point clear to people because it's like, no, no, no, I said work by the power of his grace. I didn't just say yeah, I said work with the power of his grace, right? So there is, it's the diligence is the actual implementation of your faith through action, but it's just doing that with him, with an awareness of his presence, with a yielding and surrender of your thoughts, with the leading in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I had a whole nother perspective on delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. It's like that delight, it's about being pliable and flexible in his hands. And you only grow in that through growing in intimacy with God. And then as you do that and you're growing in that just that pliability and that flexibility with the Lord, it's like you start to be realize that your thoughts and your dreams begin to align with his thoughts and his dreams. And then there's a completely different way of flowing when you when you've established that, but you're still not running off to the races and forgetting about him. He's right there with us. And so maintaining that um, maintaining that flow of working with him is super important.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Never feeling like, oh, now I've got it.
SPEAKER_00So how do you do that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that's a loaded question. So I'm gonna start with the very, very beginning stage, uh, because otherwise people will skip the beginnings, and the beginnings are very helpful. So for me, um, what for someone who isn't really used to engaging God in the context of their work, outside of like, hey, I'm having a business problem, Lord help, you know, outside of that, right? Or God bless this business, thanks. You know, if that's pretty much your context, which would have been my context uh in the past, one of the things that I was looking to do is grow in intimacy with God, growing in confidence that I actually hear the voice of the Lord. And I say hear the voice of the Lord, but and I mean that I don't mean like audibly I hear the voice of the Lord, but I do mean it's like whether it's a thought impression or, you know, whatever that looks like or a knowing, however that shows up for you, having a confidence that you actually do hear, right, from God. And so I needed to cultivate that. And I also needed to accept the invitation to surrender my business plans to him. So what I did is I started having daily business meetings with God. And so some people are like, hey, I've got my quiet time in the morning. But I'm like, okay, we'll extend that to a business meeting with God. And so take your, take your to-do list and surrender it to him. Ask him what his thoughts are concerning your business, the people that you serve in your business, the people who are working in your business. Ask him for his mind and his heart and his thoughts concerning that. Ask him concerning his thoughts around the strategies you've written out. Like, actually engage God. And the thing is, I also tell people to have this freedom because people are like, well, I don't know. I'm not sure that what I got was from God. I'm not sure. Like, what do I do with that? And I'm like, how about if it's not counter to the scripture, you just act as if and take a small step forward and watch how things get confirmed and revealed as you go, as opposed to feeling like I'm stagnated because I need to know 100%. The very life of faith is that you probably aren't gonna have 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've been living this thing out for many, many, many, many, many years and I don't have a hundred percent. And in fact, I think if I got to the point where I think that I have a hundred percent, then I am actually deceiving myself. That's how strongly I feel about that statement, right? So I started doing that. I also started reading the scripture differently. Instead of reading for achievement, like I want to do a chapter a day or I want to do this, you know, whatever, a Bible in a year. I started sitting with the Lord, like, Holy Spirit, make this scripture come alive to me. Like, talk to me, like show me things I haven't seen before in this. And I started engaging in the scripture differently. And then I realized there were things that he was revealing to me through the scriptures that I had never seen before. So what do I say? Am I in delusion? No, I haven't, there was an enlightened that word. I've had an encounter with the living word as I was reading the written word, right? And so those types of things, these business meetings with God, engaging him on his thoughts, not making it just a one-way conversation where I just throw everything up to him and then, you know, and never sit still to listen. But those were some of those early practices that I did in a really intentional way so that I could get to the point where I'm like, okay, I am, if I'm gonna cultivate intimacy with God in a different way, then I need to create space and time to develop relationships. After you do that for a while, it begins to be a much greater flow throughout the day. And it's not like, oh, I've got this little box meeting that I have with God. But there's nothing wrong with starting there because if you weren't engaging God before on anything before, you want to show up differently. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Do you think they're the starting or one part of the starting point has to be that you have to recognize that that God is really everywhere, that he's in every aspect of the business. When you come out of that board meeting and go into now you're about to, you know, speak to one of your employees, or you're about to have to let somebody go, or that you can see Jesus in that in the room, that Jesus is on the receiving end of however you're gonna. So there is like you have to recognize that you're doing it for God, but then at the same time, it's almost like a right brain, left brain, like you're not gonna survive without the right brain, left brain. You're doing it for him, but you're doing it with him.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Right. Emmanuel, God with us all the time, all the time. As you're going into the board meeting, when you're coming out of the board meeting, when you had your that daily meeting business meeting with God in the beginning, you know, when you surrendered us a part of your day to just be really intentional around that thing and strategizing with God or hearing his heart on things. Then when you leave before you went into the meeting, like when you went to go speak with a client, when you're on the stage speaking in front of a group of people, like he's always there. And it's like, so sometimes the the proof of that in your life happens when you're like, oh, I understand. I don't know what this looks like yet, but I understand, I'm just gonna accept this by faith that he desires to be involved in all of this. And now I'm going to by practice provide opportunities for me to gain greater revelation for it to go from, you know, my head by faith to my heart by revelation, you know? And so you do that by just that willingness to just engage God and the willingness to take steps on the things that you're sensing from the Lord. You know, if you're going into that meeting and there's just something that the Lord puts on your heart around something to speak to somebody about something, or there's something or an idea that He gives you, I've got stories for days around this stuff. It's like take the risk. You know, you don't know unless you take action and faith on these things. We're not talking about, you know, faith leaps, we're talking about faith steps and just growing because the more you flex that muscle, the more you go into a place of revelation that he is with me at all times and desires to be involved in all the things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What's it what's at risk if we don't take this approach?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. To me, I think that risk, by the way, is getting greater and greater when I think about a cultural context. But so at an individual, I'll speak individually and then bigger picture. Individually, you will not experience God's best, period. Because if you're not engaging with the God on things, how will you establish his mind and heart concerning things? So you're not gonna experience his best and all the goodness that comes with operating in his grace. Okay. So there's that part at an individual level, which also, by the way, impacts all the people that you're also called to serve, you know, through whatever that kingdom assignment looks like in the marketplace, wherever you are. So you're not gonna experience God's best. But bigger picture, when we think about what God's doing, a movement wise in the marketplace. If we don't have more people doing things with God, and we have a bunch of folks doing their own thing for the glory of God, then to me, what this means is that we're gonna shift from people who, you know, there's a lot of this defecting out of church, you know, out of local churches going. On right now and deconstructing and all the things that are kind of going on in culture. To me, I'm like, we'll shift from like from people experiencing quote unquote church hurt to now we got marketplace hurt because we got all these folks that are out here like, oh, I'm doing this for the glory of God and just doing things, just doing things. But because they lack the the wisdom, the discernment, and all of that that comes with the with God aspect of things, then now you got you got folks just out here doing all kinds of stuff. So to me, it's not just the individual, it's also how we get to impact in the marketplace. So to me, that will be deficient as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I mean, I guess the alternative or one alternative to this is taking the Lord's name in vain, right? When you're when you're gonna put God's name on something that He's not in, that He that He's not He's not with you in that, um, that's that's the third commandment, right? Um so certain certainly we we shouldn't be doing that. Um But I think what a lot of people end up doing is just well I don't want to take the Lord's name in vain and I don't want to like you know tell myself this story that that God is with me, that He's that He's He's in what I'm doing, and I'm just I'm just gonna leave him out completely. And I'll I'll see him at church on Sunday morning and I'll let my pastor tell me what God is like. Um I won't actually find out for myself. And it seems like we have a lot more people doing that than are gonna say, I'm working for God, I'm doing this for God, because eventually you're gonna just your conscience is gonna get the best of you, and you realize, no, I'm I'm just pretty much doing this for me.
SPEAKER_01At some point, right? At some point, the revelation must hit you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like it just it's just it's nothing more than than a story that we're telling ourselves, yes. Um, but but but then we have I think a lot of people are just they don't want they just kind of keep God out completely.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there's a there's a trajectory in this too, right? So the reason why I said what I said, and I didn't even address what you just said, was because I do see a uh almost like just this move happening where more and more people are actually desiring or at least have a thought process. I mean, the faith and work movement's been going on for however long, like there's definitely an increase of people within with the concept of like this matters wherever I am, and that this is not a Sunday experience. There's still a whole lot of people that are in this as a Sunday experience, but there's a whole lot of people, if you think now versus 30 years ago, now versus 20 years ago, now versus 10 years ago, that have they've established that. But to me, it's it's it's it's it's almost like to me more dangerous for the for a bunch of folks who think they're seeing things in God's name, you know, to be doing stuff than the ones who were just like, hey, I'm just kind of doing my own thing and I'm just on Sunday. So so I see the the the negative repercussion uh stronger from that perspective. At an individual level, I also think it's highly destructive to be all way on the other end because you're missing out on so much goodness, a relationship, a full-on relationship with the lover of your soul. So I mean, there's that, right? But when I think about just kind of big macro, macro level picture, it's way more dangerous to me. Like I it it gives me way more angst where I have to give to the Lord to watch an increasing number of people come into the idea that my faith matters here and I want, but but and so therefore I'm gonna do this for God without revelation of the with God factor.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, because I guess prior to somebody really entering into what God is doing in the workplace, it's like, okay, well, I I know God is real, he's just sort of boxed in on Sunday morning, right? But when you actually start to to realize that no, he wants to be involved in my work too, but then stepping out in that and sort of looking around and like, I'm I'm all alone here. Like, I'm it's just this is just me grinding it out. Maybe God's not real at all. Like, and then it it just sort of like debunks all of the what we thought about Sunday morning, you know, in church and just sort of the Christmas and everything starts to come crashing down. Once you start to you you start to um recognize that well, I thought I was I was gonna see things happening like spiritually in the workplace, but but not actually doing it with him, waiting for God to guide us, it just seems like that's a big part of the risk. Like you can just sort of doubt the whole the whole thing. And I think that's what can't really gravitates a lot of people toward marketplace ministry and faith to work and you know all of this is because we want to really see is God real? Like we want to see, is the Holy Spirit truly active on the planet today? Uh it or is this just a story I'm telling myself?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, it's funny. So for me, I went from not acknowledging to just encountering him so powerfully that I just knew that I knew that I knew, even though I hadn't seen the evidence yet, I just knew that I was about to be on an adventure and that this was about to look different. And then once once once that happened, then once I began to experience and surround myself with people who were kind of thinking the same, right? Resonate, which is why I believe community is so important. Then as I'm walking that out, the the the fruit of that just increased the more I went along. That's why I was I find community, the community to be so important. Because it can be like it's it can be until you know that you know that you know, and that it is a revelation to you and that you can't be shaken from that thing, it's it is tough because it looks like around you that you know what I'm sensing is not really what's happening. That's why community is so, so important. Our relationship with God ourselves, our relationship with God, with the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, and our relationship with others of like mind and like heart. Because without that, it's it could be very easy to go back to old thought patterns, you know, old mindsets, old, old ways of being and doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I think if we don't get this grace over grind message, then eventually we will walk away from from God altogether. I mean, because what what is there? I mean, religion going to going to church, I mean, and no actual relationship.
SPEAKER_01And that's why people are walking away because they're just like, I don't, I don't get it. Like, what's going on? And so we don't want a bunch of folks without a mindset of working with God to be doing uh, they can't see me doing the air quotes marketplace ministry, and then replicating the same issues that one would have had, and you know, it's just the the lack of authenticity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We the risk is replicating that in a marketplace context, thinking that we're doing this for God.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Like that's the kind of stuff that I have dreams about.
SPEAKER_00Well, this is so critical, uh, Shay, this message, Graceover Grind. Um, kingdomdriven entrepreneur.com is the website. Also, Graceovergrind.com, correct? Is that where you want people to go?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, go to graceovergrind.com. Make sure to like get it, read it, and live it. Don't just get it and don't read it. Don't just get it and read it, but get it, read it and live it.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well said, Shay Bynes, Chief Fire Igniter of KDE, Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur, author of Graceover Grind, and many other great books people can check out. Thank you so much for sharing with our listeners and and giving us a kick in the pants today. We need it.
SPEAKER_01We died a little fire today. Thank you, Darren.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business, and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.