Before I can share the Vision with you I have to give you some back story. I am not a writer, and I never consider what I have to say as being worthy of many listening to it. Honestly until recently I haven’t been much of a reader either. Last summer I wrote my first blog post in which I shared the idea behind our company. Why I wanted to start this company and the feelings behind it.
When my wife and I were first married I thought I had it all figured out. We graduated from college, got married, and I took over my own franchise restaurant with in a few short months. I thought I was set, I would run this small restaurant for a few years, prove myself then upgrade, and basically follow the American dream.
Five years later with four small children in tow I found myself selling my franchise back and having to start over with nothing figured out. My desire was to do something with a ministry focus but I felt I lacked the right talents to serve in this way. Even in starting this company with a ministry focus, I leaned more into the business side, focusing on growing sales, devising business plans, and fulfilling orders, without taking the proper time to read, grow, and listen to what God had to say. I’ve been struggling with what Gods will is for my life, which I feel like many people wonder about. But I was not searching for the answers, I was praying, but not reading. In the last few months I’ve had an awaking! God has smacked me in the face with a call to have a deeper intimacy with him. He’s stripped everything away and left me to cling only to him. I’ve been a consumer, asking God to bless business ventures, help me take care of my family etc, but I haven’t been setting aside real time with him to read, pray, and most of all LISTEN. As of late I’ve been obsessed with reading and its been convicting and rough and I feel like I have more questions than answers but I feel his love, and want to share it.
My Vision for Avodah was to start a business with a ministry focus, because I wanted everything to align in one act of worship. Now I find God changing my vision for the business to being a ministry first, that uses a business to support it. It all belongs to him, so the future of the business is up to him, and his leading. The most important thing to me now is true intimacy with him first, and whatever follows is secondary. I don’t want to just give him first fruits of the business but the business itself, like my wife said in her talk at the Allume conference, I hold my dreams in open hands offering them to the Lord.
We do not have a brick and mortar store yet, our store front is this website, so I want to start with this blog. This is not going to be your ordinary business blog, in fact I don’t plan on talking much about coffee. My vision for the Avodah blog is to explore God’s calling and our response, in our daily living. My desire is that the business would grow to the point that it could support our family as my full time vocation, so that as a family we can do things like travel on missions trips, and serve people in creative ways. Would you travel this road with me? How has God been speaking to you lately? What action are you going to take today because of something you have read about, or God has revealed to you in prayer recently?
