Praying God's Word For Your Business with Author Logan Bloom

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean. Hello, my friends and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm your host, Pamela Jean. Thank you so much, my friends, for being here today. I know know that your time is so, so valuable and I just want you to know how much it means to me that you are spending some of your time with me. I really appreciate it and thank you so much, friends. We are in for a very special treat today. I'm super, super excited to share with you who my guest is today. I have a guest for us today. Your life will be changed after listening to this episode which going to change your business. We're going to level things to a completely different level. And I'm so excited to have an author with us today. His name is Logan Bloom. And I fell in love with Logan's book about a year ago and it's called Praying God's word for your business. 50 prayers that will transfer your company, transform your company. And I'm not kidding you, friends, when I tell you if you follow this step by step process, it really transforms your business. So, Logan, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Welcome to A New Life podcast. Let the audience know a little bit about yourself.

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It's my honor to be here and thank you for your kind words about my book. It's really amazing to see see how God has used it and how it's taken on even more of a life of its own than I ever expected. But it's just a beautiful thing that God's done with that. But my name is Logan Bloom. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas with my wife and two kids and two really rambunctious golden doodles. And what I do stems from a moment of really stepping out in faith. If you're a follower of Jesus, you probably experienced a pivotal moment where you knew God was calling you to step out. Maybe it felt like Peter getting out of the boat to walk on the water, but if you're like me, you might have felt even a little pushed out of the boat. I never imagined that I'd be doing particularly what I do now, but I'm so grateful because I found God's plans to be so much better than mine. So. So what I do is I write material to help leaders like all of you experience the fulfillment of working With Jesus. I'm not particularly a coach and I don't sell any programs. I use a nonprofit, a donor funded model to make my material available for free for anyone to use without copyright. And so what I've seen is that it doesn't matter where you've been, where you work, what your background is, where you live, but when leaders experience the fulfillment of working with Jesus, transformation is the natural byproduct through ordinary people like you and me. So many people are overworked, you're over scheduled, overextending yourself to reach a breakthrough point. But Jesus is on the sideline and we weren't made for that. It doesn't have to be that way. And so if we'll slow down and take a moment to orient ourselves to work with Jesus and that book is a helpful tool for doing that, then the outcome is so much better. And it transforms our lives, our work, our relationships and our communities. And I think it's ultimately this movement of leaders who are working with Jesus that are going to be used for the restoration of the world. So that's what I hope to help leaders experience.

Logan, thank you so much for that. And I just have to point out, I have to say something. You said you were kind of pushed out of the boat a little. I think if we're honest, we have to be shoved out of the boat. Sometimes we've got to be shoved out of the boat because we're resistant to letting go of what we think we need and so resistant to what God knows we need. It's, it's thy way, not my way. And I'm, I was definitely shoved out of the boat. I wasn't just, you know, nudged a teeny bit. It was like, okay, you're not listening. So here you go. And he shoved me out of the boat. And you know, I've, I've not always been a follower of Jesus. I made that choice when I was in my late teens, early twenties, that the Lord was going to be my guide. And it has been an incredible journey for me to step into that and to have the confidence to lock arms with God and bring him into my work and into my coaching. And I'm just so grateful that I'm at the point I have, I'm at. And your book was introduced to me when it was. Because it gave me affirmation and reassurance that yes, it is okay to do it and this is how you can do it. So Logan, I'm curious, were you raised in the church? Have you always been a follower.

Yeah, well, being raised in the church and always being a follower might be two different things.

I think you're right about that.

I was born and raised in the Kansas City area as a pastor's kid.

Oh, gotcha.

So if you know pastor's kids, if you followed the life of a pastor's kid, well, they're.

You were a PK, we called you PKs.

They typically have their struggles and I often felt that church was just my parents job. So eventually the summer before my senior year of high school had a moment where my faith really became a personal relationship with Jesus and became something that I didn't just have through my parents growing. Because growing up.

Yeah. You created your own identity with, in your own relationship with the Lord that was outside of your parents.

Right. And the model as a pastor's kid, it's easy to fall into the thinking that you just start to assume serving Jesus means working in a ministry like my parents did. So I felt called to ministry. I went to Bible school and I fully expected to become a pastor. I acted like Jesus only cared about what happened inside the four walls of a church and everything else in the workplace or wherever else was just secular or even incompatible with ministry. But come to find out, I couldn't have been more wrong. It's an amazing transformation that I've even had the opportunity to write that book because God really had to intervene for me to learn that ministry is not just for the vocational minister. Jesus cares about your work so much more even than we do. And he makes the resources of heaven available to us. He calls us into a partnership with him that I think sometimes goes ignored. Because if you're like me, like nobody told me, but maybe I was hard headed, maybe people did tell me and I didn't listen. But I hadn't heard somebody talk about ministry in the practical terms of the workplace or in government or or in healthcare or education or even homemaking. So in other words, anywhere outside those four walls of the church.

Oh, that's so interesting and well said. I do have a question for you. We get to make an impact every single day. Who made the biggest impact on you? Who inspired you to become who you are today and to follow the path of writing your book and realizing and maybe you're in ministry, a ministry now. I don't know that about you yet, but how did you become who you are today? Who impacted you the most?

Yeah. Oh, there's so many people that I need to give credit to. But I do want to explain too that I'm the kind of person that I don't apply someone else's conclusions unless I can personally come to those conclusions myself. And so I had seen examples of people trying to use faith in the workplace in a real strong kind of hyper prosperity gospel that I really had a bad relationship with, and I really didn't want anything to do with that. And I may have overcorrected in the other direction early on, but back in about 2015, there was a group of business owners who approached me with the idea of praying together regularly for their business. And at first I just thought I would dismiss them outright. I thought we should be praying for the poor or for missions or for the persecuted church. Honestly, I had these, like, beauty pageant prayers. They sounded so ethereal and distant, but they said, you know, that's great. We can pray for those things. But shouldn't we also ask God for wisdom and direction for our everyday life? This is what we do. This is what we wake up to every day. And since they were my friends, I figured, well, we'd give it a shot. So I asked them, I said, well, when do we start? And they said, let's do Mondays at 6am and when they said that, it about killed me. I had little kids at home. It was already November, so it was dark and damp and cold. And I just thought, boy, you picked a time to have a dead prayer meeting. But we showed up.

Does that.

We showed up. And as we got started, we were really a mess. One guy was obviously really too excited to pray for his business, just thinking all the riches of the world were going to come his way. And the other guys felt guilty asking God to bless their business. We were like a bunch of children trying to cook an elaborate meal without a recipe, and we made a huge mess. And we upset each other in the process.

Wow, that's so interesting. That's so good.

But we eventually decided to look for some Bible verses that we could use to pray just so we could find some agreement in our prayers. So we started to ask the question, you know, does the Bible really say anything about God's heart for our work? And of course, we found so much. We found so much more than we had ever heard taught from the pulpit. We realized not only does God care about our work, not only does he have ambitions and wisdom and direction for us, but he's so passionate about partnering with us. And so as we learned to pray and orient ourselves into agreement with God's word, then that's where the fireworks really began to happen. And we began to see these undeniable answers to prayer that had no other explanation. There were these happenstance divine appointments that would result in millions of dollars of sales, or God giving people divine ideas or solutions that they would have never thought of. One guy told me it had been years since he had closed a year with a profit in his business. He said, man, if I can just close this year $20,000 ahead. And I said, well, I'll pray that with you, but you got to agree to these three conditions. You got to agree that God's going to be the ultimate owner of your business. Not in a legal sense, but in that ultimate, hey, we got to submit what we're doing ultimately to God's leadership. I said, God's got to be your ultimate purpose giver. He's not just giving you money for no good reason, but you got to actually seek him for what his purposes are for the growth of your business. And if you'll submit to his process, then even if it's not the most expedient way, well, let's see what God will do. And he did all three of those. He corrected some areas where he was cutting corners, where he might have been cheating a little bit in this area or that area, because he's just trying to do anything he can to get ahead. But he straightened up. He sought the Lord, and he finished that year with more than $200,000.

Oh, my gosh.

And he finished next year with. With 1.2 million ahead. And God healed him of chronic pain from an old injury for good measure. And he became one of those guys who would often give away more money in a month than he needed to live on. And many times we had stories like that of answered prayer that just so, so encouraged us. I think what we realized is, you know, prayer is one of the best resources available for any business leader, and it's not something you would want to go without in your business.

Right? And I think as a business owner, I've been an entrepreneur and business owner for 34 years. I think when you have abundance, when I have abundance, I can abundantly give. And through that abundant giving, that's where the big impact and change happens in the world. It's not for me, it's for the impact. So when I pray for abundance, it's not so I can buy a different car, I can get a bigger house. It's not about that. It's like, you know, lord, provide me with the abundance so I can abundantly give. And if you work business from that perspective and from that vantage point, the decisions you make for your business are good, solid, healthy financial decisions, but they're also decisions based on who I want to abundantly give to. What is my philanthropy, what is my why behind my why? And that just, it's just hard to explain if you haven't jumped on that train, that it actually works that way. When you pray for the abundance so you can abundantly give, God provides.

Yes. And it attracts the attention of heaven. When we orient ourselves in a humble way and we do look to bless others, the Lord notices that and he loves to partner with those people. It doesn't matter if it's big or small, what place or part of work you find yourself in, but as we posture ourselves in that way, like God is excited and eager. He finds people there that he can use.

Oh, that's. That's so awesome. That's so awesome. So the person that impacted you the most, would you say it was that group of business owners that. That convinced you to get up at 6am in the dark, cold time of November to start praying over business? Do you feel that they're the ones who impacted you the most?

I think that that was one of the biggest impacts. I think the other thing was just a conference that I got invited to about faith in the workplace. Somebody, people were starting to hear about what was happening in our group and it started to grow to the point where we actually started splitting the group up. But one of the people that we ended up connecting with said, hey, come with me to this conference. And while I was there, it was one of my first opportunities to connect with groups like C12 or Convene and these groups that have, you know, a much greater wealth of insight than what I had at the time. And there were so many faith at work, content creators, and they, I mean, just what was shared at that conference was such an eye opening moment for me. And I went around to all these different content creators and I asked each of them, I said, do you guys have any material on prayer for business leaders? And let me buy one. Like, I went to each one of them and none of them had anything specific for like prayer for business. Some of them even gave me, they gave me that answer, like what I gave at the beginning. They were like, why would you, why would anybody write that?

Nobody's gonna want that.

So I figured that might be the one thing that I could contribute. And so I walked away from that conference thinking, you know, I'm gonna start taking some of these scriptures and some of these prayers that we've prayed in this group on Monday Mornings, and I'll just start writing them down and sending them out in a weekly email. And that weekly email has gone out for all these years. It still goes out to this day where business leaders can find a prayer for their business context, because at the. At the time, there really weren't any. And so I worked on those emails for several years until eventually a publisher asked if they could compile them into a book. And so now that's how that book kind of came about. But that email list still goes out. Anybody's welcome to jump onto that. And. And I find they encourage a lot of people the same way the book does.

Oh, excellent. So if someone listening Logan would like to get on that email list to be touched by those daily prayers, how would they find. How can they hop on that mailing list?

Yeah, all of the stuff. If you like the book, then you'll love the stuff that is being put onto our ministry website. It's called ServantleAderNetwork.org ServantleAderNetwork.org and you'll find the links to that weekly prayer email. But many, many, many more tools. Another thing that we did was to create a little small group study that we used to help launch new prayer groups. So it's designed for you to find a group of friends and kind of work through some of the same questions that we asked and walk through the same process that really brought us the results that we experienced. We found it to be a faithful way to orient ourselves to pray for our business and really cooperate with heaven in what we're doing with our work. So that small group study, fully available online for free. And sometimes I host that study personally, and I'll be hosting that this summer for anybody that wants to join. You're all invited, and there's no cost for that. But all that stuff is on servantleadernetwork.org oh, excellent.

Thank you for that. I didn't realize you were. That you had a small group study. Thank you for sharing that. So, Logan, how long. How long have you been doing this? How long have you been in this type of ministry?

Yeah, we founded our nonprofit back in 2016, and it was very much building the ship at sea and kind of figuring it out as we went. But it was one of those things where God had pushed us out of the boat.

Yeah, you got shoved out, didn't you?

Yeah. So there we are, figuring out, well, what are we going to do with this?

We can sink or swim.

Right. And it did feel like that a little bit, but we ended up in the. In that journey Connecting with so much more of what God is doing in our generation, in the workplace and in other leadership spheres. Like right now, since we started, I look around our community and I look to see where God is doing things. And I really see a lot. There's a lot that gives me hope. And if I can help be an encourager of where God is, encouraging leaders to work with him and be that conduit of transformation in their community, then that's what we're really all about. That's why we make those. Every bit of research we do and material we create up on our website for anybody that is encouraged by it, because I really believe it. It's a dynamic thing that God is doing in our day to do an awakening among leaders in the workplace and in education and in many different spheres. But as they are awakening to integrating their faith into what they're doing and working with God, it's. It's becoming the conduit for the restoration of the world. It's really integral part of his redemptive plan for everything that we do. So getting to be part of that is what keeps me super excited and seeing that continue to expand and broaden. Like the. The market for this material is just continuing to explode. So we just try to keep up and follow where God is opening doors.

Oh, that's fantastic. So I know that this is an incredible mission that you've kind of been dropped into. Not something you necessarily planned or thought, but it was God's plan, clearly. He introduced your business owner friends and it kind of was birthed from there. And then you recognized a missing component in the world when you went to that conference and there were no resources for business owners. What do you feel, Logan, is your life's mission and where do you want to make the biggest impact in the world?

Yeah, it's really interesting. Back when I was young, and this goes the same for my wife as well, we both felt the Lord called us to specific things. Just gave us little hints in our early years of our faith, of what our life was to be about. And that was, of course, before we knew each other. Once we found each other and eventually shared those things with each other, we had really similar lists. And it was really, really remarkable. But it wasn't until just recently that we got connected with a group of global missionary leaders. They're leaders in the body of Christ from many different denominations who are working together on can we show the love of Jesus to every human being on earth in our generation? What would that take? What's stopping us from doing that. And one of the greatest barriers in that effort are things like Bible translation, things like that that have been kind of the classic barriers for the Great Commission. But another part is, are there some prayer driven resources that are connecting leaders together and connecting them toward this mission, this transformation that we can experience together that are contextualized for the workplace and for government and for health care and for these different spheres. And there are like, there are people who are working on that, but there's not a lot of it that's prayer driven. And so we thought, well, we're going to continue to invest in that and try to continue to contribute that to this global movement that's happening now. So that we could see imagining that in our lifetime every person on the planet can be shown the love of Jesus in some relational, supernaturally natural way in their own language. That's actually doable right now for the first time in history. And that's caught the attention of many leaders across many different spheres of leadership who are coming together to work on that effort. And so that's something that my wife and I have really connected with and are hoping we can pass that baton in a real strong way to our children and our grandchildren.

That's fantastic. That is so awesome. So, Logan, I'm going to ask you a few rapid fire questions and I think these are always kind of fun and, and I never know what answers I'm going to get, so they're always kind of interesting for me as well. So what is one thing that no one in the world knows about you?

Oh, I actually struggled with this question because I forget things about myself. All those little things that nobody else knows, I just tuck away and I alternate version of myself. But I did think of one, anyone, somebody might have known this about me long time ago, but they would have long forgotten by now. But when I was young I took a gymnastics class and I actually really was excited about it. But I was terrible. I had no flexibility or balance. Like that just was not built into me. And so everybody can be thankful that I didn't have a future in gymnastics because I would have just been this stiff, clanky robot. But I took that into my pocket of alternate Logans in another universe somewhere.

That sounds like a really good trivia question at a banquet or something. That's fantastic. So what advice would you give the eight year old you?

You know, the eight year old me was a lot cuter than I am today. But I would say I life is really not going to go how you expect when you're 8 years old, there's no 8 year old that's ready for the world. But you can trust that God enjoys you even when you don't have everything figured out. And as a pastor's kid, you know, I had a really mixed relationship with church and God. But my breakthrough really came when I learned that God doesn't withhold his love for a time when I eventually get myself all together. But once I learned that God enjoys me, he enjoys my time in prayer, even when my prayers are sloppy and imperfect and I'm disheveled and messy. But that's when I actually started to enjoy prayer. And it was that process of taking talking to someone who enjoys talking with me. And for a season of my life, probably in those early years, maybe God might have been the only one who would have enjoyed talking with me and having those conversations.

He was the only one willing to listen.

But he does. He truly does. And that. That really changed my perspective on prayer.

Oh, that's fantastic. I. I'm assuming since you are a dad and a husband, you what do. What's your favorite thing to do in your downtime? I'm imagining it has something to do with your family.

It does. Yes. We have plenty of fun to have with our two kids that are middle school age now and our two dogs that we just got in the last year. So we've taken a big plunge. But that's been a lot of fun. We're always finding stuff to do together as a family. We love to get outside, especially when the weather is nice in the spring like it is right now. And another thing that's just kind of like a personal kind of funny. Another trivia point. Point is I love coming across random podcasts and random YouTube videos of someone just like this who can be a business leader or an artist or a nutritionist or a movie reviewer who just overflow with enthusiasm and nuggets about what they do. Like, I love learning new things from people that are passionate in fields that I'm unfamiliar with. So I. I'm kind of a podcast junkie in that way as well. So I'm super glad to have you on my podcast list.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. So basically, you have two pre adolescents and you have two toddlers in your doodles, because they're like, having toddlers. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, yes. And they're so, so sweet. They came into our family right at the perfect time, so that's been a huge blessing.

Oh, isn't that the truth? I've always been an animal lover and I've always had pets. And I tell you, they just, they rescue me more than I rescue them, that is for sure. But they're always, the timing is always just perfect. That's so great. That's so great. So we're going to wrap it up with one more question. Logan, what advice would you give business owners who are hesitant to bring Jesus into their businesses that they're driving to the office, they're driving to the shop, whatever their business is, and they're tempted to leave Jesus in the car? Tell me some, what are some practical tips or advice that you would give that business owner that really wants to take that leap, that, that take that step and bring the Lord into their business and inviting God to be their business partner and lock arms with them daily? What advice do you have for them?

Yeah, it's a wonderful question. And I know that there are a myriad of possible underlying reasons why someone might feel hesitant about this. And even for that scenario that you described, I think that there is a moment where we realize, or maybe we'll just accept that God understands all of the nuances and intricacies and he understands those underlying fears even more than you do. And at there comes a point where we learn and we maybe, maybe it's just step by step of building up a history. You know, David didn't show up to his battle with Goliath, and that was not his first rodeo. When he showed up, he told Goliath and he told the Saul and the armies of Israel. He said, the same God who was with me in the pasture is going to be with me here today against Goliath. And there really is something to be said for taking the time to build a history in your faith and your walk with God and inviting him even in little steps into areas of your work, that he really will show up. And he really does know the best way to bring about the most redemptive outcome, and that's something you really learn to trust, is that even if God's way, it doesn't seem like the most expedient or convenient or familiar way, but his outcomes are so better, so much more redemptive. He can redeem any situation. And so as we start to invite him into that, beautiful things begin to take place. And I know that sometimes there are practical concerns or legal concerns or relationally, how do I do that? How do I go about, you know, operating in a particular way that the way my business operates. So I love discussing those kind of, you know, thoughts and concerns. That people have. So I'm happy if anybody wants to reach out. I'd love to talk about that. But generally I do challenge people. I say try this for six months. Maybe you pick up a copy of the book or you get on that email list and go through it and just for six months, see what God will do. Maybe get a couple of friends who will pray with you, pray for you for six months. If nothing happens, then you have my blessing to move on.

Give it a try.

I've issued this challenge for years and God always shows up. And if you want to talk about it with another group of leaders, then that'd be a great place to come to. One of the small groups that I'm going to be hosting this summer. We're going to have business leaders from across the country, many different industries that are going to be talking through these kind of questions that would be like a six week version of that challenge. But we regularly see God meet us in miraculous ways whenever we do those groups.

That's such a great answer. And just to share a little something in my biography on my social media, my first bullet point is I'm a Christian and then I go through what I, what else I am in the world. You know, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, all of those things. What was interesting is someone reached out and they were helping me with my biography and said, I think you should kind of lay off the Jesus stuff a little. And I thought, oh, okay. But of course I didn't do that. But it was interesting how someone else's perspective was to lay off of that. But when God lays on your heart what your mission in the world is, what your job is, what your business is, and how it's meant to impact the world, that's just simply not an option. And my hope and my conversation with Michelle Hammons, who actually introduced me to your book, was I want to be able to bring God into my business with more intention, with more ferocity, with more impact. And truly, God is my business partner. It's not, you know, what do I have to do today? It's God, what do we have to do today? What do you have for me to do today? And working in my business. So I'm grateful to have been introduced to your book Praying God's word for your business because it really does work. It keeps you focused. It, it showed such great results after the first year of doing it. It was phenomenal. And I've referred it to several of my clients and friends as well. So. So it just, it really makes Such a huge difference. Logan, I just can't thank you enough for spending your time here because I know you are a busy person. You have a lot to do in the world and I appreciate you spending some time, if you will, one more share that website for, for the audience to get into contact with you.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Please, anybody who would like to you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or by email at loganervantleadernetwork.org and again, that website, servantleadernetwork.org it's all spelled out. I know it's kind of long, but sometimes beggars can't be choosers. When you got that name.

Yep, it is what it is.

If there's anything I can do to be a help or an encouragement, then I'm always eager to connect. And we do have on there opportunities where people who share that vision and enthusiasm for what's happening in the missions movement. We have kind of a core group that we pray with and share some behind the scenes info on kind of what we're working on in the Great Commission in the broader sense. And so if anybody's interested in that, then you can find that information there and get some of those kind of behind the scenes updates on the website too. But this is just such a huge treat to be on this podcast. I just want to say again, huge thank you for, for having me and for this conversation. It's been so encouraging.

Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure, Logan. Thank you so much. Well, friends, thank you for listening to A New Life podcast. I know that this has impacted you. I know that you will find areas in your business and even if you don't own a business as an employee, you can bring Jesus into the workplace as an employee as well. You don't have to be a business owner. I know that there's a nugget here today that has impacted and thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next week. Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.