May 2024 | Keynote 2 “Spiritual Calling”

[00:00:00] We’re going to go into our next keynote, and you’re looking at The next keynote, Holly and I. I want to introduce you to Holly Beatonbeau, to my right. Um, if you don’t know Holly, she is a tremendous woman of God. If you haven’t had a hug from her, you should before you leave. We call them Holly Hugs. Uh, it’s the best feeling ever.

She is led by Holy Spirit. She is a strong woman, and I am honored to be with her this afternoon. So, super excited about this time we’re going to have together. It’s so precious, Kerry Ritchie. Love you so much. Just to, because we do this, this is just how we live our lives. Just to pull back a curtain, just be transparent and real and vulnerable with you guys right now.

This is the talk that Rick and I always did together. And this is the first time That I am back [00:01:00] here doing this talk. I had planned on doing it in February and I was struggling with my health and just struggling emotionally. And, um, last minute asked my son who is not a biological son, but who is a son nonetheless, Cal’s aunt, last minute if he would step in for me and he stepped right in and did a beautiful job and completely covered me.

And I’m so grateful for that. So. Anyway, just wanted you guys to know the fullness, you know, sometimes there’s a moment and there’s a fullness to the moment. And unless we stop and look at the fullness of the moment, we don’t know that it’s happening. So we want to live in the fullness of time. Don’t we?

Thank you for that. Now, you know what I’m talking about. So I’m excited for you to hear from her in the next few minutes. I thought we should start maybe from the beginning and I want to take us back to, [00:02:00] um, Genesis, but first, okay. People often ask us, does God really care about what I do? Is He really interested in my work?

Can I serve Him in the marketplace? And we believe the answer to that is yes. And so I want to take you back into some scripture and, uh, and tell you what we think that means. So I’m going to first start in Genesis. This is Genesis 2. This is hard with me.

I got it. I got it.

I Want to read from the Bible. I have it in my notes, but I want to read straight from God’s Word So in Genesis 2 chapter, uh, I’m sorry chapter 2 verse 5 It says this when no bush the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man on the earth [00:03:00] Clearly, in the beginning, God’s original plan for us was to work.

See, there was no plant planted, there was no rain on the fields, and there was no man yet created to work it. But that was His original plan all along. So this idea of work wasn’t really a curse, right? It was a blessing. So let’s talk about that blessing. To illustrate this a little bit further, I want to introduce you to a beautiful Hebrew word.

Some of you have heard this, some of you have not. But the word is EZEKIEL. Avodah. To quote Cal, that’s our West Texas way of saying Hebrew words. Avodah, A V O D A H. And this word simultaneously means work, worship, and serve. So, we have taken the old Hebrew word, the original language to the Jewish people, and we’ve defined it in three [00:04:00] different words.

Now, if I were to say to you, if you were a singer, to come up on stage and start worshiping for us, what would you probably do? Sing, right? We think of worship as singing, right? Is that common to everybody or am I just crazy? Do we think of the same thing when we think about worship as we do work? What about serve?

Do we think the same thing about serve as we do worship or work? But see it’s not different to God. Your work truly matters to Him. Let me show you what I mean. So the first time this appears in the Bible, the word avodah, it’s actually the verb tense of that verb, that word, and it’s called avod. That verb tense appears first in the verse I’ve just read.

Which is not in my notes, but it is up here. So I’ll read it [00:05:00] again. No shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant on the field had yet sprouted. For the Lord God had not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. That word work is avod, the verb tense of avodah.

Secondly, it appears in Exodus. In Exodus it says, in Exodus it says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh and say to him, This is what the Lord says,

Worship me, that word worship. Yep. It’s the same word. Aod Avodah. And lastly, in Joshua, I’m gonna read the whole verse, Joshua, 24 15. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods of your [00:06:00] ancestors serve beyond the aph, afraid, or the gods of the Emirates whose land you are living.

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Every use of the word serve in that verse, or serving, is the word. Y’all are catching on. It’s the same word. God didn’t intend this to be different. He cares deeply. about what we do and how we go about doing it more specifically. So it’s really important to understand that God does care.

He does care about our work. Let me tell you a quick story. So back in 1992, when Beakmo Homes was started, Rick actually started Beakmo Homes. And in that process, he invited his dad to come back. And help him, um, build these homes. So his idea was, I can build them dad, you can come sell them. He’s the sales side of this.

Um, and so he proposed [00:07:00] that. Uh, in the 80s, Ron was very successful in real estate. So, in his success, he was making a lot of money. He would call it mailbox money. So he was, uh, building properties and, uh, renting them out and sitting at home. Not sitting at home. Ron never would sit at home, right? He was not sitting at home, so it wasn’t really mailbox money.

But, he was getting a paycheck every month from this rental income, right? From all the stuff that they had built up in the real estate. Well, in the mid 80s, if you remember, some of you may remember, um, there was a big crash and everything he had was leveraged. So all that leveraged real estate, then became owned by the bank.

Because that’s how that works. And so, Ron would say, I lost everything. In fact, I lost more than everything. He lost his wife, which was Rick’s mom, at the time they got divorced. And he ran off to California, where he said, The sun was shining, the people were smiling. [00:08:00] And so, as he, as he went out to California, he really uncovered through a lot of, uh, dealings with the Lord, a lot of transactions that went wrong, he didn’t understand what was happening, um, things weren’t going quite the way he was hoping they would go, and really he was losing all the money he had.

He was living off his mother’s inheritance. out in California going broke again. And so, uh, when Rick called him with his exciting new adventure to come join his son in a home building company back in Lubbock, Texas, uh, Ron, Ron agreed and he came back. Uh, I tell you the story because of this, this main point, when Ron came back, he said this to Rick, I did it wrong the first time I did it for me.

So let me propose a question to you. If we have some success, so if God actually gives us some success in this business, could we honor God with what He gives us? And Rick honestly didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what that meant. Um, [00:09:00] he was young in his faith or maybe had no faith at that moment, but honestly, he said, I could use all the help we can get.

So sure, dad, let’s go for it. Let’s honor God and what we’re doing. And so Maybe he didn’t realize it, but that was just a little mustard seed. And it was a covenant that he made with the Lord in that moment that changed the trajectory of this company over time. And it wasn’t overnight, but it was the start.

And so as we go back and look at these things, maybe, maybe Holly, could you help us understand how that started transforming the company and what that transformed in leadership of that company, of the company, and how that kind of played out? Yeah, sure. So when we first started, um, we were just looking for a way to feed our families, you know, just to put bread on the table.

And all the lies of the world about you can’t really be close to the people you work with. Um, it gets messy if you’re friends with the people you work with. They’re [00:10:00] here to do a job. Um, they need to leave their personal problems at the door and you keep everybody at arm’s length. Because if they see your weakness or they see your flaws as a leader, they won’t respect your authority.

So all of those things in the world, have y’all ever heard that? Have you ever heard all of those things? We heard them too, and they were on us, and that’s how we operated as a business for a while. And God is just amazing in how he orchestrates the perfect storms in our lives. Um, we had adopted twins.

six and a half year olds. And when our son was in high school, he just literally went off the rails. And, um, we were learning slowly about some of the things he was involved in. One of our employees had his beaten bo home shirt on during his lunch break, and he stopped into a business establishment in town, and the owner said, Oh, you work for Beaten Bow Homes.

Well, let me just tell you about their son and [00:11:00] what he has done. And so that brave young man came back to the office that afternoon and came in and sat down across from our desk. And he said, you might want to know what I heard today. And honestly, some of what he shared with us was new information. We were just learning about some of the things he was doing out there.

And it was crushing, crushing to our souls and our spirits. But we went home that night and we talked about it. We said, you know, it’s not fair. These people that we work with every day, it’s not fair for them to hear these things on the street. We felt like the Lord was telling us, you need to go in and you need to tell.

everybody what’s happening. They need to hear it from you. We had started doing a jump start at eight o’clock in the morning. It was not a requirement, but it was an invitation and people were on the clock and they were paid to be there if they wanted to be there. And so, man, every step from that parking lot into that room that morning, the lies of the enemy just pounding, you know, with [00:12:00] every step.

Man, they’re gonna say you can’t even keep your family together. How can you run a business? You know, how are you going to, how, how are they going to respect us when they see that our, our life is such a mess? You know, we, we always want to cover our mess. Don’t we? We think if people saw our mess, if they really knew us.

They wouldn’t love us and they wouldn’t respect us and they wouldn’t want to be with us. And so all of those lies of the enemy that morning pounding at us that we went in completely broken and Shared with everyone in the room about what our son was What was happening with our son and we didn’t again know everything but we shared what we did know And it was incredible what god did in that moment.

He um that invisible wall that we had actually built up You Because the enemy told us it would protect us, right? But actually what it was doing was isolating us and keeping us from authentic relationships with people. [00:13:00] And so the Lord just slammed that wall down. And all of a sudden we’re sitting there across from all these beautiful people that we’ve worked with for years, but we hadn’t known them in truth.

We hadn’t known them in realness. We hadn’t, um, Man, the love in that room. Afterwards, people lined up, and they just embraced us, and they prayed for us. And there, in the line of people, Cal’s aunt was in that line, and he said to us, That’s my story. And I’ve come to work every single day in fear that you would discover who I am.

I know y’all are Christians. You would discover who I am and you wouldn’t want me here anymore. So in that moment, God restored hope for us, for our son. We were able to see through the current storm to what our son could overcome and what he could be. And the Lord set him free. From feeling like he had to be something other than who [00:14:00] he was.

And, you know, after that time, he came up next to us and walked life with us and coached us. It was five years. Our son actually fled the country and it was five years before he came home. He’s home now. Praise God. And it’s a work in progress. We’re not there, but, um, you know, we’re closer, one step closer all the time.

Um, but Cal came up next to us and coached us and said, you know, this is what your son needs. He needs for you to never stop praying for him. He needs for you to see him how God created him and not see his behavior and his choices. Don’t let his choices define him. And when he does come home, don’t remind him.

of these choices and hold him in that place. And, whoo, that was invaluable information for us. We needed that and it strengthened us and it prepared us for when he did come home. And, you know, I think about we would have missed all of that, [00:15:00] um, if we hadn’t been willing in those moments to be real and vulnerable and transparent with the people that we worked with every day.

But the thing was the Lord was after our pride. You know, um, that couldn’t go with us where he wanted to take us and we had to be willing to lay that down as leaders and be willing to be exposed, you know, and the truth of our lives and the truth of the situation we were in. Um, so in, in the business, we, we always kind of felt like, Second class citizens as business people.

The ministers were the first class citizens in the kingdom of God, and we were second class. And the Lord had to deal with us in that too, and he had to show us that We were uniquely called and equipped, and that what He’s asking us to do is sacred. What He’s offering us, He’s offering all of us. It’s, it’s not a bench seat.

We’re not on the bench in the game. We’re in the [00:16:00] game, playing the game. And He had to just change this metaneo word. He had to change the way we thought about all of it. You know, we thought the only way we could be a part as a business was make the money over here and give the money over here to the people doing ministry.

And that’s how we operated for a really long time. And that was my role, meeting with ministry partners around the world and seeing what they were doing and bringing those opportunities to our group to invest in. And that is part of what God might be calling us to do. At one point, the Lord tapped us on the shoulder and said, That’s really awesome.

I love that. But what about the people around you? You know, what do they know? Yeah. about my love for them and my generosity in their lives through your example? Are you loving them well? Do you see them the way I see them? Do you see that they are a masterpiece and they are created in my image for my purpose?

And are you [00:17:00] seeing that and are you speaking that into them and are you calling them up into that? Even if it means they leave you and go pursue what God has for them somewhere else? You know, that’s the kingdom. So that is the journey that he Started leading us on. Yeah, that’s that’s really good But what I heard you say was that the leader has to be vulnerable, right?

And the leader goes first and when you do then God can change everything He can lead others down a path that wasn’t even possible until you actually stepped out in faith And and it’s so true, right? Satan is gonna attack You Right? All the way up to the doors, you said. All the way up to the door. He’s still reminding you of all the flaws and all the weaknesses.

But what did we just learn about our weaknesses? [00:18:00] They become our strengths. And so because you were honoring and Rick was obedient and y’all came in front of the company and told us that story, it changed everything. Well, and you know, let me tell you, it opened up all the things and then there’s all the people.

With all the problems and what do we do as leaders, you know, we think oh How are we gonna solve all these problems in the Lord in his grace said, you know, I’m not asking you to be me It’s not your responsibility to solve all the problems All I want you to do is be a splint which by the way is exactly what my brother Carrie is doing for me today He’s standing next to me.

He’s lending me his strength And he’s pointing us to the Lord, and that’s what a splint does. You know, we can stand next to each other. We can say, I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I know the one who does. [00:19:00] And we can point people to him, and we can just stand next to people and be a splint.

So as leaders, I just want to say to us, resist that urge, resist that pull, that push to solve the problems for everybody. Um, it can be real. We can be open, we can be vulnerable and we can live life and truth next to each other with everything out in the open, everything on display. And, you know, what it really makes us do is love each other more.

That’s the biggest lie of the enemy. The biggest lie is if they really knew me, if they really knew all of my problems, they wouldn’t love me. They wouldn’t accept me, you know. But the truth is, as we share more in realness, in life with each other, it actually increases our capacity to love one another.

Because we can relate to each other in the struggles that we have, more than we can relate to [00:20:00] perfection. Right? So good. You know, the world would say, you have a lot of baggage, and we don’t want it in this place. When you come to work, right? Leave that stuff at the door. That’s really what she’s saying.

Just leave it off the door. We don’t want any of that. But I think a Kingdom view of that, your spiritual calling for that, is to invite that in. Does that make it easier? I’m gonna go with no. It makes it much more difficult. Because now you have to actually really care about somebody, right? Have you ever thought about saying, hey, hey Brad, good morning, how are you?

And then waiting for them to, like, answer, not like, I’m fine, no really, how are you today? I really want to know. [00:21:00] That would change everything, wouldn’t it? To actually care about them? That’s crazy. That’s crazy talk. Okay. There’s a scripture in Romans. It’s Romans 12 and it says take, it says, don’t just pretend to love others, but really love them.

Take delight in honoring them. You know, and that is the culture of the kingdom. Um, taking delight and honoring one another. I can remember so many times in our board meetings, we had, all of our guys were so strong and they knew finances. They might be in this deep financial conversation and I’m, you know, I’m listening and I’m learning, but they would say something about another employee.

They’re like how they performed really well in a certain circumstance or a situation. And that was my opportunity. I immediately got my phone and started texting, you know, I’m sitting in a board meeting and these guys just said that [00:22:00] you handled that situation marvelously. Like how many times when we hear something good about someone, do we let them know that?

Do we repeat that? Do we tell them that in front of others? How many times y’all those are all incredible opportunities to honor each other and build each other up. And we just shouldn’t walk past those. I just want to encourage all in those moments when that happens, reach out and let them know and share that and just.

That’s how you build a culture of honor. And another way of building a culture of honor, I remember on Fridays, our production team, Corey Lesk led this team, and we would sit around a table, and he would go around the room asking everyone for their Friday positives. And he wanted to hear two things. He wanted to hear their personal positive, and he wanted to hear their professional positive.

Those were some of my favorite meetings. You got to really know people. You got to understand what they value in life. You got to see what’s happening in their [00:23:00] family, what they’re celebrating. And you know, if you’re looking for a positive all week long, doesn’t that shift your mindset? You’re actually looking for the positive.

You know, you’re going to report that on Friday to your team and you get to share in all of that together. So there’s just some simple ways to shift culture in your company, to shift the atmosphere, to be positive, to focus on the positive and to honor each other. That’s well said. I’ll say a side effect to that is when Holly did that for us, if she did that to somebody that reported to me, And that was honoring to me.

Because she didn’t say, I did this or that was me. She said, Carrie said this about you and I wanted you to know. And I’m not real good about that. But that honored me because [00:24:00] she took the responsibility and her giftings and actually did something about it. We have to know each other. Um, Maybe let’s change a little bit.

Ready? Ready. How do you approach working alongside God rather than merely working for God, leading with purpose? What does that look like? Well, I think there’s a shift, there was a shift for each one of us as well in this process of our own identity, understanding that we are sons and daughters. of the Most High King.

You know, we’re not slaves. We’re sons and daughters. And having that intimacy with the Lord and that relationship with the Lord and living so closely next to Him, He wants a partnership. He doesn’t need us. He wants us. And so, we’re not working for Him. We’re working alongside Him. And that changes everything too.[00:25:00]

Um, you know, I’m in a whole new season of life right now, and I’m learning this in a whole new level. Because I’m managing things that once my husband managed, and it was his wheelhouse, they were his strengths. I watched him and marveled, but they weren’t really areas that I operated in very well. And I keep telling the Lord, I have no idea what I’m doing.

And he keeps telling me that that’s his gift to me, because if I did know, I would just go on my way, and do things my way, and as it is, I get to come to him about every single decision, and he gets to make that decision with me, and have input into that. It’s a partnership with us that he’s looking for.

He wants to do things with us, alongside us. And that’s his, that’s his primary desire. Like it’s, we are the ones that have to come into that way of thinking. [00:26:00] He’s already there.

So, as we, as we work alongside God, um, in Genesis we’re reminded that, that God was a, I mean, work was a gift from God, and it wasn’t a curse, and it was, it was plan A, right? But he put man and woman in the garden to work it. That’s, that’s that verse that also is, Um, in that, how can my work be for God’s purposes through that?

What, maybe do you have some stories that you could share, um, that illustrate how this played out in, in our realm? Yeah. So, um, when the tornado hit in Joplin, Missouri, it destroyed one third of the housing. in that community. And Rick happened to be serving on a board of a ministry in Joplin and independently of each other, two guys called Rick and said, you know, [00:27:00] we need affordable homes here.

Um, Would you guys come and set up an operation and build homes to replace all the homes that got destroyed by the tornado? So Rick and Ron went, they felt like it was going to be a branch of Beaten Bow Homes. Um, but while they were there, the Lord spoke to Rick and said, I thought that, This was my business and Rick said, well, it is your business.

And he said, well, it’s not going to bear your name. You’re going to give it all away. And wow, that is one of the biggest examples I can think of. God’s kingdom purposes. He wanted to rebuild Joplin, but he wanted to use these two guys to do it Not Rick and Ron and so for the next two years for a week every month Rick would go and help them He gave them floor plans He gave them purchase orders Which our purchase orders have down to the stick the brick and the nail of what is needed for each of the [00:28:00] floor plans It’s part of the efficiency model that God had given Rick.

And so I mean it was you know years You of building a business and he just gave it all away because the Lord said to do that. So there are going to be times in our businesses when the Lord might ask us to do something that makes no earthly sense. And it’s most assuredly not how the world does things, but the blessing of that has been incredible.

And Gina shared the story this morning with the CEOs, um, that home building company is called Schuber Mitchell homes. And they actually made the list for like their number 78 and the top 100 builders in the nation, which is incredible. And, you know, Beaton Bow Holmes is in the top 50, and so her point this morning was so good.

His, he wasn’t taking anything from us. You know, that’s the thing about the kingdom. There’s abundance in the kingdom. There’s [00:29:00] plenty for everyone. There is more than enough to go around. You know, we’ll, we’ll never give something away. and lack anything. And that’s, you know, this whole thing with, if your hand is open before the Lord, I’m a child development specialist by education there.

Um, there’s a series of little tests when a child is first born. If you’ve had a new baby, it’s the Apgar scale and they test for reflexes. And so when you put something in the infant’s hand, if the hand closes around it, they get a good score on that. So our instinct is to close our hand. when God gives us something.

But what God wants us to learn is a totally different behavior. And it is a learned behavior, because this is a reflex. So we have to learn to keep our hands open, because if we do close our hand around what God puts there, we’ve restricted his ability to put anything else in our hand. But if we keep it open, what we’ve learned is it’s always full.

Now, it might be [00:30:00] full of something different. I mean, we started out as a home building company, and now there are eight companies here. So, he’s put eight different companies in this hand. But, our fingers are open, and the abundance is so full that the excess runs through our fingers and drips on everyone around.

And that’s how it is in the kingdom. Your hand can never get full. It never, I mean, it never gets empty. It’s always full and it, the excess is, is, um, a blessing to everyone around. Yeah, that is, that’s so good. It, and it is a learned trait and it is difficult. Sounds easy, right? Just be open handed with everything, right?

Freely, freely give it. Freely give your website away, right, Gina? It’s, it’s harder than you think. The real test comes when God asks you to give Him, give Him [00:31:00] everything. And that meant everything. Holly’s right. PO’s our website that we paid lots of money for everything. Our finances, how we think about things.

Rick spent two years once a week. I mean, once a month for a week going up there. How much, how much did that cost? There’s no telling, right? But it wasn’t about the cost. It was a kingdom investment. There’s a difference here. Your purpose, your work matters. And changing your purpose to be a kingdom purpose is critical in the way you think about your organization.

And it’s a spiritual calling that he’s inviting us into. You know, we get to go to work every day. We don’t have to go to work every day, but we get to go to work. It’s a privilege and an honor. [00:32:00] And it’s just an invitation to us for something far bigger than ourselves. It’s abundant life. That’s what he’s inviting us into.

You give this over to him, and you let him lead you, and you let him guide you, make decisions, involve him in every aspect of it. It changes everything. And it will grow. wildly. It will thrive. It will flourish. Ask me how I know. I’ve watched it far beyond anything we could have ever imagined. So Father, I thank you for these precious, precious ones here today.

Lord, they’re all seeking your face. Their hands are open. You have entrusted much to them. You’ve blessed them with much. Father, I just pray, um, for close, intimate relationship with you. Open our hearts. Help us hear your [00:33:00] voice. Help us feel your leading Lord. Break down the walls. Break down every stronghold that is keeping us from the knowledge of who you are in truth.

We want to know you. We want to understand this invitation that you have given to each one of us in your kingdom to advance it, to grow it, to be a part of it. We want the abundant life that you are offering us. And so we say yes to the spiritual calling. that you have on our lives. And we ask you to help us unpack it and understand it and put it all in its place and put our hearts in alignment with you.

And we love you and we give you all the glory in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you, Holly.