How does marketing Pizza Rolls matter for eternity?
Jordan Raynor sits down with Danielle Andrews, Director of Global Impact for General Mills, to talk about how God uses our work as a crucible to form us into the image of Christ, why sharing the gospel with your co-workers serves your employer, and how to preach the gospel to yourself daily and uncover respectable sins.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, everybody. 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 but who work as marketers and carpenters or customer service reps? That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Danielle Andrews, the Director of Global Impact for General Mills, who, of course, makes everything from pizza rolls to Toaster Strudels to, I don't know, crescent rolls. We've talked about a lot of great General Mills products on the podcast.
But Danielle and I had a terrific conversation about how God often uses our work as a crucible for forming us into the image of Christ. We talked about Danielle's fascinating perspective about why sharing the gospel with your co-workers actually serves your employer well. We talked about how to preach the gospel to ourselves daily to uncover and repent from “respectable sins.” You're going to love this terrific conversation with Danielle Andrews.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:24] JR: Hey, Danielle. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:26] DC: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:28] JR: So I think most people recognize the General Mills brand, but I don't think a lot of people know the full scope of this consumer goods powerhouse. So what are some of the brands that fall under this General Mills umbrella, just to give some context to our listeners?
[00:01:46] DA: Yeah, absolutely. It's a global house of brands. So we have brands like Honey Nut Cheerios or Annie's Mac and Cheese, Betty Crocker Brownie Mix, or even Pillsbury refrigerated crescent rolls. Then actually, one of my favorite smaller brands is called Larabar, which is just a delicious fruit and nut bar. So there's all sorts of brands, big and small.
[00:02:06] JR: I forgot about Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. This is one of the five main food groups for my seven and five-year-old, is Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. I think, Lord willing, this is going to be considered the glory of the nations that are brought into the New Jerusalem, Toaster Strudels and crescent rolls, so a blessing on you at General Mills. All right. So we know what General Mills does. You guys make all these consumer brands. Tell us a little bit about your role within the company.
[00:02:33] DA: Yeah, sure. Over – I’ve been there for many years, and I've had several roles at the company, where most of them were managing different brands to really create and market products. Then today, my role is not one on a brand but actually in support of the whole General Mills enterprise. So our whole house of brands and my work focuses on enabling General Mills to advance and achieve all of our sustainability goals and our global impact ambitions. So more, I'm on a central team now.
[00:03:02] JR: Got it. So what are some of those sustainability goals? Like what's that work look like at a company like General Mills?
[00:03:08] DA: Yeah, absolutely. So it's pretty amazing. The company is really committed to fulfilling and achieving a lot of ambitious goals. So about a year ago, I had the privilege of leading a team to craft our enterprise human rights strategy to ensure that our corporate values of doing the right thing are represented all the way in the way we do business. Not just in our four walls, but beyond our own operations and in our supplier relationships and so forth.
So I got to partner with industry subject matter experts and then also partnered internally with various really smart subject matter expertise in different functions to — how do you develop the framework to strengthen our approach to respecting human rights across the value chain. Some of our commitments are around people, and many of them are around the environment. So our commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to protect the planet or our commitment to helping reshape the way agriculture is done by moving from conventional practices to regenerative and restorative. There's a lot of ambitions the company has set.
Now, my role has evolved and expanded, given that the sincerity of intent of our ambitious global impact goals. So my work is really has been around creating the case for change, the case for accelerating progress on our company's key sustainability initiatives. Then alongside some really incredible teammates, we've secured our CEO and senior leadership team alignment that we are going to have to embed these global impact considerations and these commitments into the way we do business into our business planning and processes, where in the past, it might have been a small but really mighty sustainability team carrying the weight of much of the work. Now, we really have senior leadership team alignment that it's going to be further embedded into the just the way we do business. So that's a big part of my role is actually working to how do we do that.
[00:04:57] JR: Yeah, I love that. That sounds like a really fun job. You're in this Redeeming Your Time Coaching Community that I run, and you sent me a text message saying that you are “So,” in all caps, “THANKFUL” for this job you get to do. Not a lot of people feel like that. Why do you feel so privileged to be working at General Mills and doing this work?
[00:05:18] DA: Yeah. Well, I love food. That's like – personally, there's an interest there.
[00:05:22] JR: I mean, crescent rolls, right? Like we kind of already answered this question. Yeah.
[00:05:25] DA: Yeah, yeah. Then I do love our products. Then I actually have this insider knowledge to know how much care and attention we are taking to use our scale as a big food company to influence positive change. Not everyone knows that, and so it's a really cool position. Because in this role, I get to use skills, gifts, talents God has given me and has grown in me to be able to influence and inspire and enable General Mills to accelerate the progress on the commitments it's had.
Ideally, we also find ways of making it relevant to be able to tell others. So it's not just some of us on the inside who see the commitment and the intention and the action.
[00:06:04] JR: Yeah. I love that so much. So Danielle, you know this podcast is all about how in the world does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians in the world? So really broad brush, really broad strokes, high level to start. How does the gospel influence your work at General Mills?
[00:06:24] DA: It absolutely does. To start, you got to have to – I mean, I feel like I definitely have to preach the gospel to myself often because it's really good news, right? Especially because we live in a world that we see brokenness, and we see war and heartache and mental illness and injustice. We see all this, and we can experience the glimpse of what God's original design was for us. The fact that our decision to believe that He sent Christ to forgive us of those sins and to give us this forgiveness so that we don't have to carry the burdens of our consequences of our sins, right?
So like that gospel, it's good news that we actually can be in friendship with God, and we can ask Him for all the fruits of the Spirit and the promises that He offers to get us through, even in the harder time. So I have to start answering that question by sharing the gospel because it's important. But I do think the gospel influences my work because I can then turn my agenda and my own goals in my own way over to God each day, and submit my time that I'm going to be committing to General Mills and committing to my team and committing to the work and just ask God to help me accomplish that in the most effective way I can.
I rely on my faith in God so much, both to give me wisdom. When deliverables at work seems so big, and I feel so small, I can rely on the good news that God offers, where He can equip me with peace when I need to make hard decisions. He can give me kindness and patience when I normally would be frustrated in a work situation, when it's not going the way I had planned. He promises that He can calm our fears. He can take our anxieties when we start going down a spiral. So I think the gospel and the good news and just the faith that I have of what Jesus did allows me to do my work in a way that's honoring God each day.
[00:08:23] JR: And probably a lot more peaceful than colleagues that don't have that access. You touched on something that I talk a lot about, this idea of preaching the gospel to ourselves, right? Because I think a lot of Christians view the gospel as something that you get once and you kind of move past and move on to the other things of the Christian life.
But I'm a big believer. Tim Keller has written a lot about this. You never move past the gospel. The gospel is everything. It's not just our one-time salvation. It is the source of our daily functional salvation. So for you, what does it look like practically to be preaching the gospel to yourself on a regular basis?
[00:08:59] DA: As my roles expanded to work that I can’t have full control over, and I can't have all the information before a decision has to be made, and you don't know how it's going to play out, I find that my natural self, kind of be idle of like control, will creep in. So I have to preach the gospel many times to myself in the mornings on certain days that I know like, “Oh, there's going to be some challenges that like my job is calling me to work through and to help people work through and to bring different points of view together and to push forward, and I know it's going to be hard.” Like that's why work is work, right? You get paid for a reason.
So like practically speaking, there's a few pieces. I have a little mantra where I say no Bible, no bike. So I love peloton. I love riding my bike. In order to have the privilege of getting a workout in in the morning before the kids wake up, I have a little rule where it's like I have to do Bible time. So I just set the ground in the word. That's like a very practical for me.
Then during a season that I was really being challenged with work, I spent a lot of time studying different work-related verses in the Bible. I literally read, I would say, at least three to five times every week, a list of verses that remind me that I'm committing my career and work to the Lord. I'm going to depend on him to establish my plans. Different verses that I've kind of re-scripted to be a new path in my mind to remind me that I don't have to fear being chosen or esteemed highly by my colleagues because I've been chosen by God. Just a lot of Bible verses that I feel like God can speak to me through just remembering what His word says.
[00:10:38] JR: It's so good. What are one or two that you think about the most throughout the workday?
[00:10:45] DA: “Work as if you're working for the Lord and not for the praise of man.” I think it's Colossians. I'm not good at –
[00:10:50] JR: Yeah, Colossians 3.
[00:10:51] DA: I’ve never been great at memorizing where –
[00:10:52] JR: Yeah, yeah. Me neither.
[00:10:53] DA: I know the books.
[00:10:53] JR: Me neither, but I've written about this one a million times. Yeah, Colossians 3:23 and 24. Yeah.
[00:10:58] DA: Yeah. That one is so helpful to me because it addresses the sneaky kind of respectable sin that could sneak in around doing work for the praise of man, kind of that pride, that self-seeking, that searching for accolades piece. It reminds me that the work will be hard, and the work will be challenging, and I can give it my absolute 110% and go to bed at night, knowing that I work diligently for the Lord of full integrity, of the approach that I think would honor Him, even if no one else knows, or if I don't get that gold star.
[00:11:33] JR: Yeah. It's really good. You mentioned to me before, when we exchanged a few text messages, you said, “I have a testimony I need to share so that others can see how Christ transforms the lives not just of wayward drug addicts, but even high performing leaders.” So here you are, Danielle. Preach. What's your testament? I can't wait to hear the story and how God has worked and moved and your life, Danielle.
[00:12:02] DA: Yeah. I'm happy to share. But it is funny because when I texted that, I guess I didn't translate it to podcast, so it's a little –
[00:12:08] JR: Well, no. We were just having a conversation, right? Yeah.
[00:12:10] DA: Yeah. So that text is a bit extreme because I haven't personally been addicted to drugs, but I have felt the strong pull of other addictive behaviors that could be deemed more respectable but the same idle like control in my life that causes me to sacrifice good things to feed that idol.
The good news, as we talked a moment ago, is that Jesus does change everything. The Christian walk is about becoming more like Jesus as the model. Often, even when we don't have those big or obvious sins that others might point out as bad, then we might be thinking we're a pretty good person, and we don't have any work to do. But the Bible gives us examples that we need to constantly be asking God to search and know our hearts and see if there's anything that needs changing.
I feel like that's been happening for me, and I've been sensing and seeing God pushing me to change. Like this specific example that I can share, because that's what I was referencing when I texted, is a few months ago, we had a challenge at church to fast from something that was distracting us from deepening our faith or obedience to God. They gave examples of – Everyone kind of knows what might that be for them, whether it's social media or maybe it's food or whatnot. I felt called to fast from logging into work after I put my kids to bed.
[00:13:25] JR: I love this.
[00:13:26] DA: The thought of giving that up for the week was actually so powerful. I didn't even want to tell my husband for the accountability. It took me a few days to actually like be willing to say it out loud and tell them like, “Hey, I think I'm going to try this.” Just realizing how hard it was showed me what a grasp that me having this time to get my work done, it’s – There’s this element that I was realizing, wow, it has a pretty big grip on me.
[00:13:56] JR: You're enslaved to it.
[00:13:57] DA: Yeah. It was so hard. So I said, “Okay, I'm going to use that time to pray and ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit so that I can love others, instead of using that time to be over delivering and accomplishing more work to do. It’s like above and beyond, right?” So that was probably the hardest week of my full year because I didn't realize how much value I had placed, having more time to advance my goals or doing extra studying on various sustainability topics to feel more equipped for my job. Like those are good things. I don't think there's actually anything wrong with like trying to master that and doing great work.
But the why I was doing it was when I realized that was really not God honoring. So fasting that week from like evening, a second shift and at night, taught me that I was actually sacrificing rest and connections with others out of my self-focused addiction to kind of searching for a fix and working for the next accolade or something to quench my desire. So that was just really transformational for me to just realize what the stronghold that had.
[00:14:59] JR: Oh, this is the story of my life. I think it's a story of the lives of a lot of our listeners, right? Like we know that our work is good. That's what we talk about so much here on the podcast. But any good thing that we elevate to an ultimate thing, that's an idol that eventually sucks the life out of us and those around us, right?
[00:15:24] DA: It kind of puts your blinders on that during this period, it wasn't the same week of fasting. But this fasting helped me expand this learning throughout the last few months. Our church is involved with this ministry called The Timothy Initiative, which is a global ministry, but we're doing kind of a US version, where it's almost like a weekly training workshop for Christ followers who want accountability to better live out God's commission, to be kind of held accountable to love God and love people by sharing how Jesus changes everything.
During one of the nights that I was like really being intentional to not just automatically log on and do a few more hours of work, I felt led to go to a prayer walk at a local grocery store, which I really wanted to get some work done. But I just felt this nudge. So I went in. I was like, “Okay, God. I guess I – Who am I to say I can't give you an hour of my life to go pray for people that I might see at the grocery store?”
So I did that. After the kids went to bed, I went to the store. I can't even like begin to share the full story of all the different random connections that I made with strangers that night. But there was one in which I've met a woman who has no local family, and we've developed a friendship over the last several months, who now joins our family for church each week. We pick her up. We go. She's part of a community now that, one, I would have never – she's a stranger, right? I would have never met her if I didn't – be obedient to God and create this pathway for her to start being part of a church community.
I share that because it's a little gift that God gave me to see how obedience produces fruit. I think most of the time, we might not get that gift of seeing it. We don't know how those seeds that we plant ever grow. But God gave me that glimpse, and it shows the potential impact of giving up my idol and what it can have.
[00:17:11] JR: Yeah. It's so good. There's a tension here, right? Because you're still fully engaged, highly engaged, maybe even more so in the work you're doing at General Mills. It's not that the work is bad. It's that making it an idol is bad, anything. We make our families’ ultimate idols, our kids idols. This my temptation, right? It's not that those things are bad. It's that they are ultimate things, and nothing but Christ can be the ultimate thing.
I think when the idols chipped away, you're actually more ambitious to do the work because you're free from the slavery of the work. You know what I mean? You're not enslaved to your email inbox because I don't need it to provide me a sense of self-worth and value, because that's found in Christ alone. Now that I'm freed from that, though, man, I want to be ambitious for the work to make Christ known to others and to do the work of advancing his kingdom in the present. Does that make sense?
[00:18:07] DA: Yeah. There's a lot of even just realizing that I was sacrificing rest, I think, by not having an automatic start to work again 7:00 to 10:00 at night, by recognizing that only is required when it's urgent. Then you actually build in a season of rest so that you – I feel like I am a better manager. I am a better employee. I actually can accelerate the work better during the working hours where I am working at my best versus the evening shift.
[00:18:40] JR: Yeah, exactly. You said to me before that you feel like you're advancing the Lord's work through your role at General Mills. How? How do you see your work at a big consumer brand like General Mills advancing God's work in the world?
[00:18:56] DA: Yeah. I think no matter what the work is, you can do it in a way that honors God. Where in my current role, I feel privileged, you could call it, or excited and thankful that I can do both the how I get work done in a way that's pleasing to God. Because He created the world, He showed us how you can create organization and fruit and order out of craziness, right? He sent us to the garden to actually do work. So I do feel like working is a way to honor Him. I feel like that can happen no matter what your job is.
Then right now, in my current role, I also feel this sense of this really cool purpose where I'm like, “And the work I'm doing is actually the scale of an $18 billion company working to do more good through their business.” That is like stewarding the creation, stewarding the garden in a way that God gave us.
[00:19:58] JR: Yeah. It's a really helpful distinction. Everyone listening, regardless of role, can do their work unto the Lord. The gospel can shape how we do the work. But for others, it's easier to see how the work itself in what we do contributes to the advancement of the kingdom, right? So for you, yeah, like before this role, you served as the director of sustainability. You're still focused on this a little bit it sounds like. That's directly connected to your faith, right?
[00:20:27] DA: Absolutely.
[00:20:28] JR: Yeah. I think so many Christians believe that. I've talked about this recently in some devotionals. But this kind of false Christian assumption that the earth is going to burn up in the end really rooted in this misinterpretation of 2nd Peter Chapter 3. God's not going to destroy this earth. He's going to redeem it and purify it and create a new earth that's like new but not a replacement of this one. That has radical implications for how we treat the environment, and that connects directly to what you're doing at General Mills, right?
[00:20:59] DA: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:00] JR: Yeah. I love that so much. All right. So go back to not just sustainability, but you’re a brand manager for Toaster Strudels and Totino’s Pizza Rolls. How does that work matter to God in your eyes, Danielle?
[00:21:15] DA: Okay, two things come to mind. One is how He can sanctify us to become more like Him through work. Another is like how we approach work. So like in regards to why work matters, no matter what the job is, like I'll just give an example of like how He is helping me become more like Christ through work.
So I think we all bring strengths to work, and one of mine is like a sense of responsibility and focus for delivering what I say I'll do. But however, as you stay in corporate America, you no longer are always an individual contributor role, where you get to control everything. Like right now, I'm in this like highly ambiguous role where the landscape of food and sustainability is like constantly transforming, and it's no longer possible to be able to know how everything's going to pan out.
I've found that my relationship with God through my work is even more critical of being at work than if I wasn't at work. Because I find that instead of walking down the straight path, I naturally fall into one of two ditches that I think are different idols for me. I share this in case any listeners feel similarly because I do feel that God can transform this. So I either want to fall into one, which is where I like freeze or fear. Or I want to quit because the task seems so big.
Or on the opposite side of the road, I want to either double down with like all my focus. Control and account for all the variables and just use my might to over deliver expectations. Like both of those ditches, call them, are like heavy. So that is where my faith and where Jesus changes everything is because God has been teaching me through promises in the Bible, how do you find that middle path? When you want to flee or give up, God can remind me that I'm God's masterpiece, created in Christ to do good works that God has planned. I can be encouraged in – I think it’s like 2nd Timothy, where He reminds us, “Fan into flames the spiritual gifts God has given you, and that God does not give you a spirit of fear or timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.”
When I want to give up, I can be reminded that I am fully equipped, and I can ask God to strengthen my faith in His promises. So that's like how I come back when I feel like, “Oh, this work is hard. I'm not good enough for it.” Then if I fall into the other ditch, like seeking control, over preparation to the point of burnout, candidly, I can combat that, or I've been combating that with being reminded that I should work with all my heart as if working for the Lord. That verse like matters so much to me because it provides some boundaries and guidance on my approach.
Then candidly, it's like, every day, those moments come, both sides, that I have to recommit my work and my day to God and ask Him to strengthen my faith so that I can depend on Him to establish my plans. I can do my best work in a way that is not so heavy, but instead I can ask Him to equip me to do my best work.
[00:24:19] JR: Yeah. The burden is light, right? Cast your cares – He’s going to carry the yoke. We're just moving in lockstep with Him, and His burden is light. I love that. I've been thinking a lot about lately. Just work being one of the primary crucibles through which God forms us in this life and conforms us to the image of a son. I've also been thinking about just this very simple idea that just working unto the Lord, working in line with His commands, doing that even if you're making Toaster Strudels and pizza rolls, that brings God pleasure, right? That ought to be enough for us.
Psalm 37 says “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” So if you're doing your work in a godly manner, even if it's making something seemingly as insignificant as making a Toaster Strudel, He delights in just watching His children just go about life and doing their work in accordance with His commands. Amen.
[00:25:24] DA: Yeah. I think that's so true. Because, I mean, in the Bible, God demonstrated that He worked. He created the world. He also – I remember reading about Paul being a tentmaker, and he used that job to connect with people and to share his faith with people. So I believe my work, whether it was when I created with the team a new flavor of pizza rolls that made it easy for an 11-year-old to find a quick, tasty, after-school snack, and that was his bright spot, like that's kind of a modern day form of working in the garden in a way, right?
So regardless of the role, I think it's our approach to work that does matter and how does my faith influence how I serve my teammates, how I can invest to get to know them. So if I'm the only Christian that they ever know well, that they will get to see, hopefully. I mean, I have a lot of work to do, too. But hopefully, through me, they will get to see a taste of what Jesus role modeled, right? That serving others, loving others, and how my faith does bring me joy and does allow for peace.
[00:26:25] JR: Yeah. Have you ever had an opportunity to share your faith in an explicit way with somebody at work?
[00:26:32] DA: Yeah, yeah. I feel like whenever I get the chance, I take it. It comes up mostly in different one-on-one settings, where when someone is going through a harder time, I can respectfully share with them if I have a related situation and how my faith allowed me to persevere through it. Or when we talk about our weekends, I try to explicitly give examples of situations where I'm putting my faith into action, not just words.
I do try to share, and I do hope that at the end of my working career, if there's ever a retirement party or whatever, if people ever remember working with me, that I'm trying to be more and more bold and vocal. So that if there's ever an opportunity where someone has an interest to learn more, they can remember like, “Oh, yeah. I feel like this was important to Danielle, and maybe I should chat with her about it.”
[00:27:29] JR: So you work at this huge company, where it’s becoming – for the outside looking in, right? For a lot of people, harder to share your faith at work. You're doing this, or you've done this at least once or twice. In the context of a one-on-one meeting, how do you get comfortable doing that? How do you think about, “Yeah, this is an okay safe space that's going to serve my employer well, but also going to more importantly serve King Jesus well by talking about my faith in a more explicit way.”? How do you get there mentally?
[00:28:00] DA: I think it starts with the desire to serve or encourage the person you're with.
[00:28:09] JR: A desire to serve them, rather than to preach to them.
[00:28:11] DA: Yeah, yeah. Because even one of our company values, and I guess like I can't speak for all companies, but one of ours is put people first and do the right thing all the time. So naturally, there's a sense of like respect and I feel like tenderness when building relationships with different teammates. So the way that I can feel comfortable is that when I feel that the moment is right to kind of share that relationship and build that relationship, where I share a little bit of me, a vulnerability about me and what my belief is, and be very curious and open to learn about them, that feels right to me because it's actually strengthening relationships.
It’s not about enforcing or even preaching. But it's just connecting so that if God stirs in their heart, and they want to learn more later, I've made myself available, and someone knows that I'm someone that wants to talk about this if they ever want.
[00:29:13] JR: Yeah. It's really good. I've never thought about in the context of that of just explaining your perspective and how your faith informs the decisions and the actions you take at work. That is a method of strengthening relationships with team members, right? Because they have a fuller picture of who you are and what you're bringing to the job and how you're making decisions as you go about the job, right?
[00:29:39] DA: Yeah. I think one of my employees, even though we have very different kind of world views, she had a comment just even a few weeks ago how like she really appreciated how I was living so aligned to my values. So I think you can build respect and appreciation for different team members with very diverse perspectives by just creating that honest and open relationship, even if you don't agree exactly on the beliefs.
[00:30:08] JR: Yes. So well said. I love that so much, Danielle. All right, Danielle, three questions we wrap up every episode with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[00:30:22] DA: I will call out Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges. I think it's an older book, if I remembered. But at least that would cover mine. But it confronts Christians to pause and reflect on how we've been so preoccupied with those big, major, obvious sins, that we've lost our way of needing to deal with some more subtle ways that we’re disobeying God, like pride and anger and impatience, simply because they're not regarded as the big bad ones. So I've re-read that book so many times because it's so easy to think that we're great, and we're doing all the right things, and we are doing really good things.
But God still has more to teach us. I think by kind of looking at those respectable sins, He can continue to grow us to be more like Christ.
[00:31:14] JR: Yeah. It goes back to preaching the gospel ourselves, right? I think the temptation is to believe that the gospel is for those other people, right? I've moved paths. It's not for me, but there are those respectable sins, those idols in my heart that God still needs to chip away, and preaching the gospel to myself, and working in ways that force myself to be conformed to the image of Christ. It's a way to uncover those and battle those. That's a great recommendation. I've never heard of that. But I'm going to check out that book. That's great.
All right, who would you most like to hear on this podcast, Danielle, talking about how the gospel shapes the work they do in the world?
[00:31:50] DA: I do really value when I hear from people in a large corporation because, as we talked about in the beginning, all people have a tendency to disobey God or sin or we're just kind of – there’s brokenness because of the world we live in. To be able to advance good, impactful work in the midst of a large organization where people are doing their best, but it's hard and challenging because we're all people with different points of view, I love those examples.
Recently, the Bible App has different speakers kind of filtering through sharing the verse of the day. There was a woman that has shared a few that caught my attention. I think her name was Nona Jones. I think she works for –
[00:32:33] JR: I love Nona.
[00:32:34] DA: Yeah. Oh great! That's great. I just started. I looked her up on LinkedIn after because I was like, “Okay, it sounds like she worked at Meta or, previously, Facebook.” I have a lot of friends that worked at Facebook too, and I just think bridging the Christian faith into the corporate organization is very interesting for me.
[00:32:54] JR: Yeah, totally. Me, too. I love that so much. All right, Danielle, what's one thing from our conversation do you want to reiterate to listeners before we sign off?
[00:33:02] DA: I guess just the encouragement that if you feel heaviness from the work that you're doing because your responsibilities are growing or just, candidly, because the work is hard, that we all can be encouraged to the good news that God's love for us and the sacrifice of Jesus. So we can have a friendship and be in right relationship with God that can transform us. Like that is good news.
I would dare say like I have seen transformation in my heart and my life when I started asking God to search me and to like know my thoughts and help me identify like is there an idol keeping me from honoring God in the work I do. Then I would say, as that unfolds for you, what I found really helpful is find some scriptures and write them out in a way that you can relate to them and kind of repeat it and create new pathways in your brain so that the gospel can influence your daily work. You can commit your day and career to God.
I just wanted to offer that encouragement. Because even when there's not a big, ugly, obvious, major sin in our lives, and it might be a smaller version, but an idol that still is like keeping you from doing all God has in store for you, like God can transform that, and God can use that to be able to make you more like Christ and do such – I don't know. It’s just so encouraging to me.
[00:34:28] JR: Amen. Me, too and I think a lot of our listeners. Danielle, I want to commend you and every mere Christian who's listening for the important Kingdom work you do every day. Thank you for following the Lord's command to steward this earth and steward its resources and just loving your neighbors as yourself by making excellent Toaster Strudels and crescent rolls and pizza rolls. Thank you for reminding us of those respectable sins that the workplace helps us uncover. Thanks so much for joining us, Danielle.
[00:34:59] DA: Thanks for having me.
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[00:35:01] JR: Hey, do you like Danielle work in a big company? If so, I want you to recommend yourself as a guest for the Mere Christians podcast. How do you do that? Go to jordanraynor.com/contact. That's J-O-R-D-A-N-R-A-Y-N-O-R.com/contact. You see a drop down right there. Select that you are recommending a guest for the Mere Christians podcast and fill out the form. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.
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