Do you currently feel stressed out at your job? Are you facing problems that you have no idea how to fix? Every job has its challenges, but it can be easy to get overwhelmed when you don’t have solutions to the obstacles you’re facing, yet you’re still responsible for the outcome. The pressure can feel like a heavy weight on your shoulders and seems to sit in the back of your mind, even when you try and give it up to God.
Could it be that God is so good that He wants to show up in your job? I’m not talking about only a ministry job. And I’m not even talking about praying for healing for your coworkers.
All of that is great, but I think we often stop our hopes right there. But what if God could help you with the parts of your job that you consider “secular”?
WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE IN BUSINESS
Many many years ago, when my kids were still little, I was a businessman and Kathy and I owned several auto repair shops in Northern California. We weren’t working for a church but I remember learning about Holy Spirit on Sunday and then putting what I learned into practice in my job. One time God even gave me a word of knowledge on how to fix a car.
But it didn’t stop there! Check out this week’s Flashback Friday video to hear one of my favorite stories about God showing up to help me with a work problem:
In a nutshell:
• Many many years ago when we lived in Weaverville, Kathy and I opened an auto part shop. I bought an old DOS computer and a generic retail program to do our invoicing, that had three price levels: cost, retail and a discounted price. The only problem is that auto parts had five price levels.
• We went along for six months with these three price levels and the program was working okay for us, but we started to get repair shops stocking our parts. This was a problem because the system didn’t have a price level for this.
• Every time the part went out the door my guys had to remember to override the system to fix the pricing. Of course, they often forgot because it was often one part out of five hundred of them.This resulted in customers thinking we were stealing from them.
• In the midst of this mess I called the software program company, and the engineer said there was no way to fix it because the program was written to only have three price levels. He worked on it for a week and said he couldn’t fix it.
• My friend came in one day and saw a customer scream at me over his invoice being wrong. My friend said he knew someone from Redding who could rewrite our software program for free. This guy tried for three days and said there was nothing he could do.
• He said specialized software would cost $35,000, which I didn’t have.
• Six months had then passed and several times a week our main customers were screaming at us. I showed them the computer problem and promised that Kathy would review the invoices every month to make sure they were reimbursed properly.
• I was really bothered and went home one night and right before I went to bed I prayed and asked God for an answer. I said, “God, You know everything and I need an answer here.”
• You have to understand that I knew nothing about computers, to the point that I needed the store manager to even turn the computer on every day!
• I went to bed after praying and had a dream. In the dream I saw four or five lines of letters (which I now know is program code.) I woke up and it was burned in my memory. I grabbed my journal and wrote it down.
• I woke Kathy up (it was 3am) because I knew she knew how to turn the computer on, and I told her the Lord gave me the code to fix the computer.
• We went to the shop, she turned on the computer, and I gave her the code. She entered it and the computer made funny noises and the screen went black and came back on. Kathy said, “I think we’re in the backend of the computer”
• She said to give her the rest of the code and the computer rebooted and turned itself back on. I didn’t even know what rebooting meant!
• So we made up a fake customer to test it out. We went to build out a part in the system and it had 5 price levels, which was exactly what we needed!
HE’S NOT IN A BOX
I want to encourage you today that just as God gave me a dream to help me fix a computer program that two people who are experts in programming couldn’t fix, then He can most definitely show up in your job! I challenge you to break down the mental line of secular vs. sacred
(because the truth is when you’re a Believer, all things are sacred).
What impossibilities are you facing that you haven’t yet thought to take to God? How can you invite Holy Spirit to speak to you about your job? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
