Ray Greene (Roofing Professional)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why?

Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, Right. I know this is a very different biography is what is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because, listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, et cetera, et cetera, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work. But in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page. And that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9 by filling out that form. You'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5 mereChristians. Calm and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as zoologists, pipe fitters and technical writers.

That's the question we explore every week.

And today I'm posing it to Ray Green, a roofing salesperson here in my home in the Sunshine State of Florida. Ray and I recently sat down to.

Talk about why losing your life for.

Christ is less about moving overseas and much more about losing control of your life. Today we talked about what scriptures focus on Jesus's one off miracles means for your unseen work today. And Ray and I also talked about how to practically number your days so that you may grow a heart of wisdom. Listen, Ray was having some trouble with his mic on this one. Audio quality is a little rough, but man, the substance of this is gold. Please enjoy this conversation with my friend Ray Green. Ray Green, my friend, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Jordan. I appreciate it.

This is a treat, man. I had so much fun hanging out the redeeming your time retreat back in November. Yes, you and your bride gave me the best gift I think I've ever received from a reader. We get lots of fan mail, but you guys like totally topped everybody. I'm not going to tell our lizards what it is until the end of this episode. I'm just going to dangle that out there as a teaser to everyone to.

Listen, keep them in suspense.

That's exactly right, man. Hey, you and I have been trading some emails over the last few months and we got to talk about this in Tampa. But email.

Your thinking about how your faith shapes.

Your work has evolved a lot over the years. You worked for years at a Christian school until 2018 when you left to go sell roofs, which is what you do for a living today. And you said, quote in an email to me, quote, I used to have a job that was impactful. Now I just work for the money. End quote. That's how you used to think about work.

I'm curious man, like what truths in.

God's word have helped you see that this work of selling roofs is impactful is itself ministry. What's freed you there, man?

Once I got into construction, I just felt like I made the statement many times to people that I used to have a job doing ministry and now I just work for money and so just felt like nobody really cared, especially the least of which God, you know, would care that of what I'm doing, as long as I wasn't out there doing anything dishonest, doing things that were going against scripture really didn't matter, you know, what I was doing really didn't Matter for eternity. And felt that way until I got into your teaching and started reading and looking at, kind of looking at the same scriptures that I had always known, you know, about what we do day to day, but looking at them differently and how my work and the things that I was doing from day to day, how they mattered now.

Yeah, I love it, man. And you and I, we traded emails a few maybe a couple months ago now, when I was launching the Sacredness of Secular Work and you were commenting on my rant, one of my favorite rants about the lie that the only two things that last for eternity are God's word and people. And you admitted that you have said that before.

By.

By the way, for the record, I'm sure a younger Jordan Rayner said this at some point too.

Right?

But I'm curious, man. Like, how.

How is the realization that this earth is eternal, that our work with this earth, some of it is eternal, how has that caused you to think differently about the work you do today and construction and selling roofs to people's homes?

Well, yeah, I mean, guilty is charged. I mean, I would say that Mary Ellen and I said, in fact, she just took that off of our website.

Oh, that's awesome.

The Niagara website. Yeah. I mean, it sounds so good. It sounds so right. We're only going to worry about God and his Word in people's souls. And this other stuff really doesn't matter. Just the realization, first and foremost, that in the roofing business, that I'm dealing with people's time and money, the two things the Bible has a lot to say about. This has really changed how I look at things that I before thought were very inconsequential. This has made me a better listener. This has made me try to sell help. You know what I mean? First and foremost.

Yeah, it's really good. I love that. Hey, man. But let's talk about today. How is your faith, do you think, most significantly, shaping how you do what you do selling roof? So we've talked about how you've come to this place where you understand that your work has intrinsic value to God. But how is your faith shaping how you're doing that work day in, day out?

I mean, it has brought meaning to a lot of the things that I didn't pay attention to before, like the crazy number of hours that I drive. You know, we operate all over the state. I'm not just in one little small area. So just understanding that God cares about my commute. And as I said before, it's caused me to look at people differently, not just as potential. You know, I used to make this statement, this is terrible, but it was like each person is a potential investor into my retirement, you know, which sounds like something you would say at a sales conference. But I seem to be much more intentional about listening and listening to their story. Each person, one of the main roofer that I work for caters to manufactured homes, but almost exclusively in retirement communities, 55 and up communities, so in modular homes. So I'm going out and talking to people, a lot of them that are retired, that have lived life, a lot of them enjoy conversation. So just becoming much more of a listener and sort of letting them take the lead in the conversation. And even if it wanders off in a tangent, I don't interrupt. I'm quick to listen to what they're saying and it may take a while to come back around to the roof, but I want them to lead the conversation. That's one way that my faith shapes how I, you know, we're talking about now, just the interactions that I'm having with this person. I'm really trying to sell help and I'm trying to give them a very honest evaluation of their roof situation. I do a, I go up and take a video inspection of the roof on an old school camcorder because most of these folks that I'm dealing with can't get up and look at the roof themselves. And so I talk to and come down and put it through an HDMI on the TV and let them watch it so that there's no, you know, what I'm telling them is just, they can see it.

So how do you manage that tension though? And I love this, I think this is one way that you're clearly distinct in what you're doing.

Right.

It's, it's. I'm not just having a conversation with this person because I want to get something from them. I'm having a conversation with them and learning their story because they're an image bearer. That's, that's worth knowing.

Right?

But how do you manage that tension between knowing their story and the real business need of those that you contract with the closed deals? How do you deal with that tension?

Well, I think the very first thing that, that I've come to understand is that I'm not the author of my story. I'm not even the editor. You know, God doesn't need an editor. So I'm becoming, you know, increasingly more at peace with accepting that, you know, whatever God's already decided. So I wasn't Always that way. I came from a coaching and competitive side that. Where I was totally focused on numbers and being one being. And even when I moved into sales, like that really mattered to me. It became an idol. I just almost to the point of wanting to see my cohorts fail. Not too much, but just enough where they're behind me, where they're in my rearview mirror and I'm out front. But I think that as God has worked in my heart, I've become more relaxed at how he's provided for our family. And I think really abiding in and believing in the sovereignty of God and his provision has. Has allowed me to be more relaxed. So I'm kind of killing two birds probably there because I really am relaxed when I go in. I'm not. I don't feel pressure, even though there is pressure, because I'm 100% commission, I think. You know, I read a verse the other day, the one that says that whoever tries to save his life will lose it. And I used to think that that meant. And the second part, whoever loses their life will find it. That growing up in church, I thought that meant I had to go to Africa and be a missionary, and that's how I lose my life. But I've come to find out that what that verse is really talking about is control. I'm trying to control by saving. So control the situation, even worry, a lot of worry about versus releasing that to the Lord. And as I've grown in my faith and I've gotten more comfortable with God being the author even of every interaction I have, of every home I walk into, he's in control of all that. So I've released a lot of that worry and pressure. Not saying there's not. It'd be silly for me to sit here and say that there's not pressure in the world that I live in, but God's in control of all of it. And if I show up with the right heart and mindset to help someone, whether they need our service or not, God will. I feel like God will do the rest. And he has.

That's good, man. And I like what you said. I mean, part of your ability to trust here and to show up and see that prospect, not as a prospect, but as a person, is really rooted in you meditating on God's faithfulness to you over years of not providing extravagant lifestyles, but of providing for your basic needs.

Right?

He's proven himself to be faithful there. And so you could just show up and. And serve wholeheartedly whoever is in front of you on today's sales trip, is that right?

That's exactly right, yeah. Over and over and over he has shown. We, Mary Ellen and I have been together since we were 18 years old. We met on a missions trip when we were 18 through our respective churches. We went to college, dated all four years, got married the summer we graduated. And since those early days, you know, of 20, almost 30 years ago, God has always provided for us. I've learned to trust that he's in control of all the chess pieces and he's typically trying to accomplish more than what I realize in our lives. It's not just us. He's actually. Multiple pieces are being moved and he's sort of accomplishing multiple things at once. I've learned to trust that. That's been a huge leap for me from when I was a younger man to get to the point now where I know that God has already decided these things. And so it takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of me feeling like I'm the one that's in control when I'm. When I'm really not.

Yeah, that's really good, ma'.

Am.

Hey, there's a lot of fraud in your industry, right? I mean, especially in selling roofs to seniors. I gotta imagine it's funny. Not funny, sad. Whenever my pastor preaches on integrity from the pulpit, I can almost guarantee that he's gonna go to one of his all time favorite application points, which is encouraging our congregation not to get a new roof just because a roofing salesper thinks that they could justify the insurance claim. Like, I don't know why. He just like loves harping on that one. How are you pushing back on this, man? I think you already hit on it, right? You're taking a video of the roof showing a genuine need to that customer. But talk a little bit about this.

Well, thankfully, both companies that I sell for, I'm kind of an independent contractor in that regard, are ran by Christian men who really tried to avoid this. Insurance represents a real small amount of what both of these companies do. But you're right, Florida is horrible about this. It kind of has a reputation and storms. The storms that we have here sort of exacerbate the problem because it brings in storm chasers from out of state. As I said before, I think that shooting the video, and most people love that, by the way, because they want to see the roof. They don't just want to take pictures really don't do it justice. If you can do a video and then put it on a big screen and it's high def and they can really kind of see what's going on or what isn't going on. I think it sort of puts their mind at ease. I've gotten a lot of business over the years by giving people an honest assessment of their roof and saying, hey, you probably have two to four more years. Call me in two more years and I'll come back and check it. A lot of times when those people get ready for a roof, they don't call anybody else because out of the five people they had come out, you were the only one that told them that. So you're better off in the long run in this business serving people that way and being honest and building a reputation than just going out and trying to get every single roof you look at. Because a lot of folks really don't. Some people just do really need a small repair. They don't need. They don't need a re roof. But yeah, it is. It's a scandalous industry. And I hear it all the time. Jordan. And one of the, I mean, every place I pull up to, I, when I step out of the truck, I, I'm thinking in my brain, don't be a salesman. Don't be a salesman. Don't be a salesman. Just try to be a helper to this person and try to present yourself that way, because that can really, it's the right way to do it, but it also disarms people. I don't want to be sold. I hate being sold. I don't know about you, I hate being sold. Something like, don't try to sell me. Try. You can try to help me, but don't try to sell me. So I just treat people the way I would want to be treated in that situation, or at least make an effort to.

That's good. I think the camcorder on the roof, I hope that's sticky for our listeners. I think it's a really good practical case study of what it looks like to be above reproach in your particular craft. It's like, hey, don't take my word for it. I'm going to show you something to where we could build trust so that I can help you. But yeah, like, I can imagine when you're getting out of that truck feeling like, okay, I know I'm approaching my craft with integrity. But most of your prospective customers assume that you're not like, that's just like the default position. Like, people just don't trust you. How do you, how do you deal with that? What Spiritual resources are you accessing? Deal with that assumption that you're trying to take advantage of people.

Well, I don't know what spiritual resources I might be accessing, but the golden rule is a good place to start. I mean, I'm trying to treat people the way I would want to be treated, but I think that in this industry a lot of people will pull up and they won't even shut the truck off. You know, they hello by here estimate, here's a paper, here's a folder, and I'm out. What we try to do and what I try to do is really make it an appointment to take my time to listen to their story. Why did you call us? Figure out what's going on, get up on the roof, do a thorough inspection, do the video, show them what we do, answer questions, and really, if nothing else, if even if they don't write us a check, I will feel like I gave them a lot of information and a really good opinion of whatever they have going on.

I want to talk about the relative anonymity of your job.

Right.

I mean, I can't remember the name of the guy who sold me my new roof. Right. Like you, you have a largely anonymous job, one that the world doesn't typically celebrate. But man, isn't that what we see in the example of Christ who lived the vast majority of his life in total anonymity? Have you thought about this and really dwelt on Christ's example of working in a pretty anonymous craft?

I really have. What first got me to thinking about that was God being so process oriented and 30 years of silence. And then we have this three and a half years of just unbelievable history making, earth shattering ministry. What in the world was going on those first 30 years? So I thought a great deal about it. I think it's just as important as anything. Mary Ellen and I have been reading Paul Miller's book Praying Life, which is going to be one that I recommend today. But he had a quote the other day that just almost stopped me that goes along with exactly what you're saying. And he says humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it. It's such a great quote because it's so true. Most of us are avoiding it. I think it's one of the most important traits we can have. But I thought a lot about it. You're right. I mean, I'll go see people that I've seen that I sold a roof to six months ago and they won't even recognize you or remember your name. So it's been a challenge for me because I came from a profession that was very visible and celebrated. You know, everybody's dad wanted to hang out.

Yeah.

You were a football coach.

I was a head football coach and I was in the newspaper and occasionally on the news and I was speaking at clinics. And now I talk to maybe three or four people a day in their mobile home park. And most of the time I'm just staring at my windshield. I drove seven hours yesterday, all in Florida, seven and a half hours. So I'm very. It's taught me a lot. You know, first and foremost, it's humbled me because you can really kind of fall in love with yourself when you're coming from the world that I was in, where not only do you feel like you're doing God's work, but because you can see these young men being changed before your eyes. But, you know, you're also a figure, whether you're in a public school or a private school, especially if you're winning, which we thankfully always, almost always did. Celebrated. And it swells your head up and makes you arrogant. And now I've learned more about how much God cares about the one off. You know what I mean? Because I thought about this in this question that you've asked. And all of the one offs that Jesus did in scripture with the woman at the well, with Nicodemus, with the woman with the issue of blood, the adulteress on the verge of being stoned, those are all one offs. And so I've learned to really value those conversations, but also come to an understanding that God values those conversations and that God cares deeply about me sitting in a home with a person, doing my best to serve them. And I've come to value those things. Even when we started knotting grow, I was, you know, here I'm seeing myself on, on stage, you know, and we're launching this. And I found myself, you know, in the lobby of a church in Pennsylvania talking to a man and his wife. And we, you know, we're, we, we all have tears rolling down our cheeks and we're just helping this one family or listening to this one family. So it's giving me a much different appreciation and value of the one on one.

Yeah, the world is so obsessed with one to many. I don't know that I've ever really dwelt on. On. Yeah, just the number of. I like the way you put that one offs of Jesus ministry. Yeah. There was the one of many feeding the 5,000. There's the one demanding the Sermon on the Mount. But there's a lot of just one on one encounters that we see that God smiles upon. Right. I think that's an incredible encouragement. I know. It's an encouragement to me, you know, so it's.

It's. This is a weird craft.

I think I told you this at the redeeming your time retreat. It's a very weird craft of podcasting and. And writing. Unless you do a lot of speaking, which I thankfully do, you don't get to meet your reader. You don't get to meet your listener. And so a lot of times I was. I was reading a quote by Fred Rogers, who felt this way, where he was journaling about, like, man, like, is anyone listening? Is anyone? And he saw the same data I. I saw. I mean, he saw it at a much greater scale. He had millions of kids watch him every day, but he never felt it, never saw it. And so it just felt so inconsequential. But what he took solace in was like, hey, if it's just one person, that's what matters.

Right?

The one offs are just as good as the one of many, man. That's a good word.

Yeah, they are. And I've started paying more attention to those in scripture than. There's just the ones that I just listed where Jesus took had just as much focus and just as much intentionality and just as much desire to sit and touch one person and talk to one person. And I think it's probably one of the only ways you can learn humility, which I believe is a defining characteristic of Jesus of Nazareth, his humility.

Hey, man, so you're going to have eternity to build homes. If Christ our king decides that that's the best way that you could serve him on the new earth, Right? You will not have eternity to help your daughters. Choose a life with Christ. And you and your bride, Mary Ellen created this product to help you guys. As Moses says in Psalm 90, number the days you have with your daughters. You've already mentioned the name of this product a couple of times in passing because you know that I know it. Knotting, grow. Can you tell us the origin story behind this product? Because I want every single listener to go buy this. I'm obsessed with this thing. What's the story behind Nauticro?

It's an acronym, as you said, for. From Psalms 9012, which was the. I'm pretty sure it's the only psalm that Moses authored to number our. Yeah. Number our days at nod and grows and grow a heart of wisdom. I Think the origin for it was several things, you know, because we tried to pinpoint, like I wanted to have a really cool story when people asked this question of how this sort of sparked. But the truth is that it was several stories, several things. Probably the first was when I was coaching football. I felt like I was just seeing a lot of, in such a short amount of time, an unusual loss of life. I lost about five players over the span of four or five years, from everything from gun violence to car accidents. And there was just something that hits you hard when you have to go to a 17 year old's funeral of a boy that you coached and you, you know, that you poured into and you know, you held his hand and sort of watched him make this journey. There's a lot of really cool things that happens from a ninth grader at 14 to a senior at 18. There's a lot of change that happens in us, in men. Now you're staring at this, you know, this kid that's, that's passed and man, it's like, how can I communicate this to people that we all have an appointment with this it's set, there's no changing it. We need to start living differently. You know, Mary Ellen and I would have these conversations about that and I would talk a lot about to our players and this, you know, just from a selfish perspective. I was trying to get these kids to perform at a higher level. So I'm talking to them a lot about their respect for minutes and hours and days. You know, nobody really respects days. We respect certain days, like, hey, it's the first day of the month, or hey, it's New Year's Day. But the day teaching us to number our days is not innate. That's why Moses said, teach us to number our days, because we don't do it instinctively. We don't respect days. So I was trying to teach these guys about the small pictures that make up the large picture. You know, if you want to be a doctor, and that's the huge puzzle piece on the wall. What you do this six weeks is a piece that fits to that. I've tried to get small picture focused. And I had a quote from Joe Taylor that I used to quote all the time, that what you're doing is what you're becoming, not what you're saying, it's what you're doing. What you're doing is what you're becoming. So we kind of had this ongoing conversation between the two of us about time and days and being intentional. And then we had kids And I have three daughters and a son that we recently adopted. And watching our daughters grow up so fast, especially right around 12, 13, something happens right around there that it's just they change almost overnight. Noticing the busyness of life and the choices that we make to be distracted when we're not busy, right. So we complain about being busy. Right. I'm busy. And then when we're not busy, we choose to be distracted with devices and social media and all these things. And then we're not being intentional. So we. Our word is connection, Nod and grow. We use that word a lot. Connectedness and connection and being intentional. So we started to get real intentional about time and fencing time around God's word within our family, like building a fence around it. And Mary Ellen started doing these worksheets. You know, she wrote that journal, but she started doing it first. It just worksheets. It became like a weekly check in for our family. Almost like you do in business when you have a review. Right. Like a quarterly annual or whatever. And so we started doing those check ins weekly with our kids. We talked about those four things and it just sort of evolved into that, into the grow board that you have that we gave you, that we make here. That started with just beads.

Yeah. So explain to people what this grow board is. It's hard, it's hard to describe what this is, but try to explain the board to people.

The board, it's a piece of art that's framed. We build and paint the frames and then we have the print made here in town in Lakeland. But it's the number of weeks that your child has between the. Between 0 and 20 years laid out. So you. We're literally numbering our days or numbering our weeks. And then on each week that your kid is in life, there's a marker that has their initials on it that moves magnetically so that you're literally counting the weeks. And this is the thing that we went through a lot of prototypes. I can't. It's funny, I was. Mary Ellen would have me pick up. Do you know when you go. Go to truck stops and gas stations and they have like brochures of like dinosaur land. I'm picking those up and we're making paper beads. Trying to figure out how to string beads across a. I mean, we went through a bunch of things to try to get to here. We eventually, eventually got to this board. But walking down the stairs every morning and seeing that board and being confronted with the fact that like our oldest is just turned 18 in December and she's about to move out here in just a few months. That's unbelievable. I can't believe. But it's the same story that everyone says, right? So you're trying to give families an emptiness perspective on the other side of it, on the now, versus getting to that point, having been too busy, having been too distracted. And then what does everybody say? I don't know what happened. I don't know where the time went. So it's really about being intentional. And that board is really meant to sort of slap you in the face when you walk downstairs and look at it, nearly look at the top, and, man, she's almost to the top. You know, I've got to be more intentional about my time and about being a. Being a family.

I'm obsessed with this product. And I've talked about this on the podcast before. You know, we talked a lot. We talk a lot on the podcast, just by the nature of the topic about intentionality at work and fully engaging in the work God's created us to.

Do at the office.

But, man, we also got to bring that focus to the work we do inside of our homes for those of us who are spouses and parents. And I'd been looking for a way to really visualize kind of the finitude nature of the finite nature of time that I have with my kids when they're in my house. It's not that my relationship stops at them when they leave the house. I'm sure my parenting will not stop when they leave the house. But just trying to visualize, man, how much time do I have left with them where I'm discipling them this much? And I did the whole pom pom thing, right? So I had jars for my three daughters, and each jar, I would take a pom pom out of it every week and kind of slowly see that thing come down. But when you guys gave me this nodding and grow bored, I was like, this is it. And so I've actually bought a couple of these for friends who love it. And, man, I just think Moses's prayer is so beautiful because we do need to be taught to number our days. We are naturally avoiding the obvious topic of death. We don't do a good job of looking in the face of our finite nature. I was just actually this past week, I was processing my notes from Frank. Probably one of the best books I've ever read called When Breath Becomes Air by this guy named Paul Kalanithi, who was this brilliant neurosurgeon diagnosed with cancer when he was 36 years old, which is basically my age. He just really took the time to sit with his impending death. He actually, spoiler alert, died as he was writing this book. His. His widow finished it and came back to a real. Seems like a real genuine faith in Christ throughout this process. And his widow says at the end of this book, quote, paul, that's her husband. Paul's decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude. We don't celebrate enough in our death avoidant culture. End quote. And man, like, it's part of the route. Not to get, like, too morbid, but, like, is part of what I love about your board so much. And I've showed it to some friends who like my word. That's depressing. I'm like, yeah, it is. But it teaches me to number my days, and I think it's helped me grow in heart of wisdom and to redeem the time because the days are evil. See Ephesians 5. So, man, I can't thank you. I know I've thanked you a hundred times for this gift. It's such a treasure in our household. But man would encourage anybody who's listening, who wants to redeem their time with their kids to go check this thing out. Ray, three questions we wrap up every episode with. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting or recommending most frequently? You already mentioned Paul Miller's book A Praying Life. You got anything else on the list?

I got a couple Famous At Home by Josh Grob and Intentional Father by John Tyson. We're getting ready to do some men's groups speaking and some little things with a couple of pastors that I. That I know. So I've been. Man, that book is rocking me right now. Intentional Father. But it's so good, you just want to highlight every single page. And Kindle is just. It's unbelievably good. So those would be the. Probably the three and anything that John Eldridge has ever written.

Yeah, I love John. I love John so much. We do have John back on the show. He's so great.

He actually taught us when we were at Focus on the Family. We went to that institute in between our junior and senior year in college. And that's when he was just a teacher at Focus on the Family. We got to have him in a classroom for four weeks kind of before anybody really knew who he was.

Yeah.

For.

You wrote Wild Heart and.

Yep.

All that good stuff. That's awesome.

Hey, Ray, who do you want to.

Hear on this podcast? Talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world. Your bride, Mary Ellen is on my list, by the way.

Yes, that would be my first. You got to have Mary Ellen Green, the CEO and president and co founder of Knottingroom and a physician. Yeah, she's a. She uses a physician assistant and she's been a physician assistant for a long time. She's great. So she would be my. My first option to recommend. And then Rob Young, who lives in Crystal River, Florida. He is the founder of Young Boats, strong Christian guy that owns and has started a company that builds custom boats here in Florida.

Ooh, that's very cool. I like that recommendation a lot. All right, Ray, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians, very diverse vocationally. What's one thing you want to leave them with before we sign off?

I think just circle back to what we just talked about. That each day you have is numbered. Whether it's depressing or not, here on this earth, your days are numbered. And that each conversation is numbered and each interaction is numbered. And just Psalms 9012 being a call to intentionality. I think we could do collectively, the church, all of us, family, a much better job at being intentional day to day interaction to interaction.

Yeah, it's really good, man. Ray, I want to commend you and your bride for the exceptional work you do for the glory of God and the good of others. Thank you for reminding us, just giving us a really good case study today of what it looks like to help and serve rather than sell and to truly listen and hear the stories of others. And thank you for that reminder to number our days at work and at home and to redeem our time because the days are evil. Guys, if you want to learn more about Ray and this Nod and Grow board we've been talking about, check it out at Nod and grow dot com. Ray, brother, appreciate you. So grateful for your friendship. Thanks for hanging out with us today.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Jordan, thanks so much.

Hey, if you enjoyed that episode as much as I did, do me a favor and go leave a review of the Mere Christians podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify wherever you're listening to the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.

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