Jesus leads professional on challenging journey to humility
F is an established professional with decades of work experience who was unceremoniously released from her last job. She subsequently took a year off to review her career and was led on a journey to know God on a deeper level, grow in humility, and understand His crucifixion in a very personal way. Praise God!
(简体中文 > 耶稣引领职业女士踏上谦卑之旅 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌引領職業女士踏上謙卑之旅)
Last year, I was forced out of my job after enduring a couple of years of attacks from various colleagues at work.
As a result of all the work politics, work was awfully stressful. I thought I was doing my best to maintain good relationships at work. However, God showed me my sins of gossip, arrogance, and pride, which led to some of these work relationships being broken. I confessed and repented of these sins to God. With all these challenges and my repentance, I thought I had done my best but it still led to me being asked to promptly leave my job. So that came as a shock. The humiliation of being let go so ungraciously was quite traumatic. It took me some time to process what had happened. During my time off from working, I was able to spend time with God and I reflected a lot on what happened. I could see that after the ordeal, I was a lot more humble. So I could see the good spiritual fruit that came out of the work ordeal.
During the rest period, I was reading the book of Isaiah. God also spoke to me a lot through this book.
When I read about how Israel was attacked by neighbouring nations, I found myself in awe that there are so many uncanny similarities in my life, especially with what I went through at my workplace. God allowed Israel to be attacked and that He had even orchestrated it. He used surrounding nations to discipline Israel. The goal of these attacks was to “prune” the nation, destroying the “proud” and “wicked” so that a “holy seed” would remain.
I could see the resemblance to what was happening to my life during that period. I realised that behind the attack at work was also God’s hand trying to discipline me for my own sins.
Initially, when I dealt with the attack, I was focused more on how to deal with my enemies, as in how to learn to forgive them, and I wasn’t able to see that God was behind the hands of those who persecuted me through office bullying and politics.
When I later realised that God’s hands were involved, I was initially able to rationalise it.
When I saw the good spiritual fruit that came out of the ordeal, I was initially able to praise God that His ways and thoughts are much higher than mine. I knew He allowed all things to happen for the purpose of humbling me, leading me into repentance of all my sins and to pull down all the “high places” in me. However, what I didn’t realise was that whilst I was able to rationalise God’s involvement in all the pain I went through, I had buried emotions – which only surfaced later.
One weekend, whilst I was interacting with a sister-in-Christ, I found myself reacting quite badly to things she said. When this sister was giving me prophetic words which had elements of correction, I was not able to receive it well. I was extremely discouraged and felt a voice which kept saying to me that “You don’t do anything well in God’s eyes.”
I was plunged into despondency and was so discouraged.
When I inquired with the Holy Spirit why I was so despondent and so discouraged, and why I was so mad with the sister-in-Christ who gave me the prophetic words, He showed me that the reason was because I was angry with God.
When I was crying out to God about why He had to punish me so harshly and had to push me out of my job, I saw the image of His hands over a knife held by the hands that attacked me at work. I felt the Holy Spirit said to me, “you had to “die” in order for your purpose to be accomplished, just like how Jesus had to die for His purpose to be accomplished, but Jesus is without sin and you are with sin.”
As I processed this, I realised I had judged God and felt hurt by Him.
I then had to repent for judging God and I had to symbolically forgive God, even though I knew God didn’t do anything wrong. As I kept conversing with the Holy Spirit and allowing my tears to be poured out, the Holy Spirit showed me an enlarged vision. I saw that whilst God’s hands were holding the hands of my enemies who held the knife against me, God had tears in His eyes. So whilst I was being wounded and attacked, He had tears flowing down His face.
I felt consoled when I knew that He was hurt as well when I was hurt. Then the Holy Spirit directed me to mull through what happened to Jesus.
Jesus was sent by God to suffer crucifixion on the cross for our sins.
Whilst God orchestrated all of this and His son had to die, God was also crying when Jesus had to suffer and die. He turned His face away. This pain and suffering had to happen for God’s purpose to be accomplished. Whilst Jesus had to go through the awful pain of being crucified to save mankind, I had to go through the pain of being attacked and losing my job for God’s ways in me to be accomplished and to bring me to a more humble and repentant state.
I was very much comforted to feel the Holy Spirit’s guidance to show me I had all these buried emotions against God. I was so glad that after I repented for judging God and after I heard what the Holy Spirit revealed to me, all the peace was restored in me and the condemning voice of the enemy was also silenced.
I praise God for helping me align my heart to my mind and to process what my heart was feeling deep down inside.
One year has passed and I have found another job with a team of wonderful colleagues, this is something I could not have planned or imagined. The salary is not as high as what I earned before but in my more humble state, I am able to thank God for all His blessings and provision.
As I went through this season of discipline and deep repentance, I took joy in the verse in Proverbs 3:11 which says “…the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, as a Father a son He delights in.” I sing praise to God that although His discipline was “oh so painful”, but I praise God for such is very much needed in order for me to come into a greater measure of humility.
Another verse which I was also particularly touched by was the verse in Isaiah 55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts”. I praise Him for this experience for although it was painful, His ways are really higher than my ways and He did all these so that I can be transformed and pruned, and I was made to be more beautiful in His Kingdom.