Using God’s Executive Playbook

JOY MORAI – SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR

Please tell us who you are, what it is that you do and why?
First, my identity is in God. I represent a reality of God in the marketplace, and that has brought me an understanding that, my responsibility in God is to become the way of God established in the marketplace. The interesting thing is that the way of God is unseen, yet it is manifested and established through a willing life. So there has to be somebody who is willing to have their lives establish His way in the marketplace. And so I say, “Lord, I am here.”

The ways of man have already been established. We read about them in Business journals, we read about them in all these other places, but there is a way that is unseen that is established by God and I want to become the one that will then present the way of God in the marketplace for people. So that’s my number one identity.

Then my physical identity, I’ve held various positions in the marketplace. My current position is director level. God has taught me ways He operates in men without the conventional educational qualifications. Just seeing the results that God has manifested through my life, I get to understand that God’s ability catapults beyond what human or book wisdom can comprehend. He sent me to marketplaces that were dead, without business and used me to bring life to these places by just hearing what the Holy Spirit says, and that has been the pattern of my work life.  He shows me how He is taking me to a place where He says – “you’re going to bring life.” So God ensures that in the interview process same words He has used are used by the interviewers stating – We want you to come and bring life here…

People take jobs because of various reasons such as: 1) the paycheck is good, or 2) it’s an upgrade from where they’ve been, or 3) all their physical needs are met by that job. But, in my case, I transitioned because God gave me an instruction whose end point was God showing up as the life giver in Business. So the determinant factor for my move was that: let the place not have life, so that then as I step into that place, then God begins to bring life in that space. And that’s basically the sort of thinking or mindset that I have in relation to becoming the way of God in the marketplace. I walk in the word He has spoken as the activation of my transition. And life may mean lots of things beyond business thriving. It touches on people, systems etc then God gives wisdom to shift to new spaces that reflect Him as He defines them. But the starting point for me has been a choice between what is the norm and expectation of men and what the Holy Spirit desires.

The thing I went to school for is not what I do. I undertook a Masters’ Degree till it was clear that it was my own desire that wanted an identity apart from Him. In the beginning I went to three different colleges and they all got closed. And Innocent [her husband] was like, “Ok, maybe God doesn’t want you to take this Masters’.” There was lots of peer pressure for an MBA, I enrolled again later. God shifted things. By this time, God had allowed me to connect with my father, Chigbo, and I had just begun to understand and live out truth and begun to see how identities shift when you connect to the unseen identity/reality as opposed to what is seen. In the third year of the MBA, in my final exam and God jolts me and says, “What if I really don’t want you to do a Masters’ degree?” And I’m like, Lord, I have labored for 3 years, I have spent about a million shillings (USD 10,000) on this degree and You want me to drop it?! And then He says, “So, why is it that you want a Masters’ degree?” And when I went back I realized I just needed an MBA tag on my title, which is again a part of identity and I dropped it because it was an identity that He hadn’t allowed me in. But God brings you to a place where the identities that define men in society then don’t mean much to you, because what you’re consumed by is just your identity in Him.

So that became my turning point.  I just began to see acceleration in my becoming His Way. The Holy Spirit shows me strategy, names, figures, ideas that bring life to the marketplace in the area of operation. He is my differentiator because His wisdom is beyond google. But He has taught me to be still in tight deadlines and pressure and that’s how He comes through with solutions that have not been seen before. I am sometimes branded as one who googles too much yet it is actually the Him by His mercy that just gives me ideas, ways to do things that is beyond human understanding. What He gives is beyond description. It is life.

So there’s a way that God wants to connect with man so that He finds a place of dwelling in the marketplace through men. But then He calls for us to sort of shift from what we’ve known before to begin to then ask Him, what’s Your way Lord? How do I become what you want, your standard in the marketplace? He then shows me the position /posture to take and then He establishes it through me.

Have you seen Him give you specific Wisdom and knowledge concerning Sales and Marketing?
Yes. The definition that He gave me of sales is “An exchange of value for God”, that’s how He defines it for me. How can I become His channel in the marketplace so that men can see Him and then acknowledge or connect with Him by my life in the marketplace. So I sort of become a God salesperson for people. And people get attracted to connect with Him or just acknowledge; that’s for me what defines sales.

And for marketing He gave me a scripture in Isaiah that talks about branding and beauty (Isaiah 3:24 NKJV) And He said “I’m going to use you to re-define Sales and Marketing. Marketing is connected with branding; I will use you to bring out beauty in the place of branding.”  And so initially there was pressure for me do certain things by the wisdom of men so I could become a brand in the market, and connect with networks. I couldn’t walk in that path. I had a mandate to live a specific way, that contradicted with the profile. As I lived it, God accelerated my performance beyond the the expected result. And that would be my vindication. So the definition of God for me for Sales and Marketing has been just live as He tells you to live so that His unseen Value can be established through your life as He draws people to Himself. So that you’re presenting a different picture of what it is to be in the marketplace as a platform for God to show Himself in your space.

Where is the place of God in what you do, teams, management, colleagues, those who you report to, planning and forecasting, day to day?
I think for me, the beginning is God. I have dealt with teams of 20-25 and my relationship with them first of all is to bring life. If you don’t have life, you can’t produce.

The corporate market space that demands that you produce. But the approach God gave me was a ‘be this’ because when you ‘be this’, then you can produce this. So my relationship with my team is not from the foundation of: produce this target or do this so that you can produce. It’s from a place of ‘be this’ because when you are this, this flows out of you because of who you are. You won’t have to struggle.

The corporate marketplace is a depleting environment. It takes away from people. The marketplace environment uses people to ‘do’ and so you can produce, gives you an identity in a title and so you miss who you really are in God. It builds your image in the title but the inside of likeness or being is a vacuum. And so there’s an image to keep. So when you can’t produce anymore because the ‘what you do’ is depleted you are branded a non-performer and eventually kicked out. And at this point most people get into depression because they no longer have the image they had and don’t know who they are. God gives me a different sort of shift, to focus on ‘be this’. Be a tree that is planted by the rivers of water so that fruit can flow out of you in season, This is how you can be. And when you become, then whatever comes out from you can never be depleted. This is an environment that enables you to become like a tree that grows by the rivers and bears fruit in its season that He gave me as a model to my team. So that’s the switch that God has allowed me to have is this, building blocks for the teams is ‘be’. But the ‘be’ is tied to God because they can see God at work in my life. And it’s beautiful. It has been said that I develop the strongest teams in the market in my portfolio. And I bless God for His establishment.

And with colleagues?
God allows me to approach things from a vantage point, so when I look at things, God allows me to see things that people can’t see, to bring in perspectives that have not been. I think the beginning really just starts with finding your identity in God and then standing on that identity and allowing the Spirit of God to make you grow in it. It forms the basis of your interaction with colleagues and everyone else.

I had a really dry spell and I remember God telling me that He would make rivers flow for me in the desert and streams of water in dry places. This became my consciousness of the choices that I’d make between desert and green places. Many times I am faced with the Amazon forest choice and a desert choice. It’s like Abraham and Lot. But that thing kept coming to me; it kept reminding me I will make rivers flow in the desert and streams of water in dry places, so I’d choose the desert. There are many times I got international offers to go and do what I do here. The perks were good, they were going to take care of the kids’ education and everything, but I’d look at it and see the Amazon forest. So what would come to my spirit would be, so how do I take this and then short circuit the rivers that God wants to flow in the desert? I cannot do that. I cannot become the one who will cut off God. So that then became the thing that was foundational to my choices, and it still is till now. I choose places by the leading of the Spirit of God that may not look so rosy because I understand that in that space God wants to manifest Him. There’s a way that God wants to do His thing. Let Him BE the source of who you are and what you’re doing.

How do you manage it all?

When you have your identity in God – God is big – so the space in God for you to manage things is broad. God’s hard disk capacity is unlimited, so when I take it from the identity I have in God, I don’t burn out. But when I look at it from myself in terms of all of these things laid before me and then begin to operate in them by my strength, then I burn out. That’s why I say, what has helped me is understanding my identity in God and knowing that because I am in Him and He is in me there’s nothing too hard, all things are possible.

We now have 2 ½ ‘teenage’ children. Raising them up in the way of God has been our greatest joy. God allowed them to be exposed to Truth through our father. They have understanding of Truth as a lifestyle and live it. They know that when Christ was thirteen He knew what His Father’s will was. But when you look at the narrative of teenagers, the way the world says, is that when they are thirteen and above, that’s when they begin to get rebellious and destroyed. But yet at that age is when Christ got into His Father’s business.  He began to live for God, not to run away from God. It was interesting because we kept saying these children will tell a different narrative of what the world calls teenagers. They will tell a God narrative of what it means to be thirteen years and loving God. And so God is doing that.

God allows us to bring in the thinking of God, and just push out the thinking of men so that transformation can begin and growth comes. The foundation of it is, ‘do not conform to the patterns of this world’, meaning there are patterns that we conform to that affect our thinking. ‘But be transformed by the renewal of your mind’, transformation only comes when our mind is renewed. ‘That you may know what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God’. Meaning, there is an acceptable will of God which is you’ll just go by, and there’s a good will of God which is okay, you can just continue like that, but is it perfect? But there’s a perfect will of God. Now, the place of my thinking and walking in perfection with God is my highest place with Him. That’s why for me the transformation of my mind, my thinking, my understanding, my seeing of things then is geared towards, Lord, then how can I get into the place of Your perfect will? Not just Your acceptable will, not just Your good will, but Your perfect will. And that’s really the basis of everything I am.

So that’s basically what God’s executive playbook is for you and your life. Would you say that everybody has the same playbook? How would you guide others to access their playbook?
I think the beginning really just starts with finding your identity in God and then standing on that identity and allowing the Spirit of God to make you grow in it. Understand that it is higher than where I have been and what I have known and there’s no end in learning by the Holy Spirit. And as you walk in it you become it.

I understood that there were things that I could probably have come with from my past that I equate with the king’s delicacies (as in the book of Daniel) that then would block my understanding of Who God Is. So I just said Lord, I want my life to be like the Way of the Lord so that I’ll show a side of God that is not common to man that people may begin to walk in it and become it .That’s when the shift happened. He’s saying, “Connect with me in a bigger dimension. I want you to become My Way. Don’t connect to My acts, connect to the way that I’m showing you I Am.” And that then just began to create the divergence and I decided to walk a different way from celebrating the acts of God to becoming the Way of God and that is amazing. So, I’m still learning.

See Also

Aburi Hills

So that’s how others can connect?
Yes. Identity. And just become the Way, live truth. Truth sets you free in God. This then gives you an identity by the Holy Spirit. Because there’s a way the corporate market is but why can’t you become the Way and Truth of God and that Way of God is different from the normal way of the marketplace?

If there’s a physical trait that someone sees instantly when they meet you, it’s your smile. Is it a reflection of state of mind?
I don’t even realize it until people say it. I guess that’s how I am. I think I just became the embodiment of joy for God.  But people stop me and say ‘your smile has made me…’ and I’m thinking, ok. I didn’t even realize I’m smiling. When I look at my life I see that God wanted to say something through my life and I’m going back to the time I was born.

My life from birth as a premature baby at 7 months with no incubator, to the preservation of my Mum’s life with Malaria, to my naming, my growth and my entire life is all an indicator of the strength of God at work in and through my life. And so I see The Joy of the Lord as His strength resting on the platform of my life. And that’s how I live. So my prayer is that I won’t miss it. I keep telling God, Father for the reason You preserved me at seven months … under the influence of quinine and malaria from my mum to show your strength, that I would not miss it.

What would you say to the people out there?

You are God’s platform of manifestation on the earth. Be it. My biggest learning in this journey has been just pay attention to what the Spirit of God is telling you and take responsibility to walk in it so He can establish it through your life. Because there’s the voice that comes that is my own voice, there’s the voice of the Spirit that is subtle and there are the voices of men that want to define who you are and then there’s the voices from the environment that want to dictate how you should be. The choice that you make is the voice of the Spirit of God and it’s very easy to lose that voice because sometimes, many times, I’ve missed it but then God is faithful, by His mercy He brings it to you and says “You know this thing that you missed? That was me.” So you go back and you begin to learn and you learn to listen to the Spirit of God. The other thing is to just know that when you have God, you’re sorted. You have God as your identity? You’re sorted. There’s nothing that can happen to you that He has not permitted and if He has permitted it, it’s for your good because there’s something that He’s working out in and through you. Understanding that God is depending on your life to produce a way on the earth that has not been seen before. So that has been my consciousness that I’m not just living my life but I’m living my life to display the way of God, so that connects my consciousness to what God wants to establish in every moment of my being.

There are rules, there are regulations, when God tells you, like Daniel, don’t walk that path, it doesn’t matter that there are consequences in the physical, just don’t walk that path. You know, like Daniel and the boys? Even if you’re thrown in the fire it’s ok, God will be pleased.

Then because the market space is really about doing, focus on being more than doing, let the Spirit of God enable you to become what He wants you to become in the marketplace so that what flows out of you is far beyond what they expect because the source of it is God. Just be His River of Life, or how ever else The Lord chooses to define you. Get your identity from Him and just BE it.

MEDITATE ON THIS

Did you know that everything on this earth that man has built in the flesh belongs to this worldly system of Babylon and will be destroyed by God to make way for the new? (See Revelation 18)
With this in mind, how then must you build your life, business, family, relationships etc. Build with eternity in your heart. See what the Lord Jesus said in Mat 6:19-21
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

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