by Os Hillman
This principle became real to me when I was seeking to publish my first TGIF devotional book. I knew many publishers from working with them through my advertising agency, and I figured getting published would be a simple matter of picking up the phone. So that’s what I did. I called a few publishers and immediately got some interest in my book idea. One even gave me a letter of intent to publish, but after a year it finally got dropped, and I was no closer to publishing the book.
I was frustrated. I called other publishers only to become more frustrated. I lamented to Angie almost every day about it. According to her, I talked about publishing the book to everything that breathed—which is a bit of an exaggeration, but not far from the truth. I even considered self-publishing until she threatened my life (we were still very much in a financial crisis). One day, as she was walking out the door to go to work, I brought up my frustration again. She had finally had it. She turned and asked, “Os, have you finished writing the book?”
“No, I have about 60 more devotionals to write” I replied.
With a hint of irritation in her voice, she said, “When you finish writing the book, God will give you a publisher.” Her words were not what I wanted to hear, but the firmness with which she shut the door made me stop and think. I took her advice and stopped pursuing publishers, and then simply began working on finishing the book.
A short while after, I began doing business with a few publishers on another matter. Eventually, an acquisitions editor proposed that we meet in a few months. On the day of the meeting, the publishing company offered me a two-book contract. Amazingly, that was the day I wrote the 365th devotional! On my way home, I remembered the words Angie had spoken to me a few months earlier. Now I had to admit that Angie was the prophet in the family!
What I learned from this experience was that God did indeed want to have my work published, but that He wanted to guide me in the process in such a way that He would receive glory from the process itself.
Laying Down Natural Gifts to Witness God’s Power
Crystal Alman is a businesswoman who manufactures designer clothing in Colombia, South America. Her designs are known for their elaborate detail and the accessories sewn onto the clothing. A major retail chain agreed to carry her clothing line based on the merits of its unique and original styling and requested four designs to consider for the next season. She was given a particular deadline, which was going to be very difficult to meet.
When the deadline came, Crystal had not had the time to finish the elaborate final detailing work on two of the pieces. She called the retailer and said she had two pieces ready to ship, but that she needed more time to complete the other two pieces. The retailer argued with her, however, and said, “Send them to us anyway.”
Now, Crystal is a perfectionist. It made her uncomfortable to send something to the retailer that did not display her high level of creativity and quality. Then she recalled the idea of withholding our natural ability in order to depend on God’s power. So, in total opposition to her natural inclination, she sent the two “unfinished” pieces of clothing to the retailer along with the other two “finished” pieces.
After a little time had passed, Crystal received a phone call from the retailer. To her amazement, he chose the two pieces of clothing that she had considered to be unfinished and declined the other two.
This was a great lesson for Crystal. She knew that God was demonstrating His power through this principle of withholding her natural gifting to show her it was by His hand that she was being successful in her business. This did not take away her need to be creative or skillful, but enabled her to come to a new understanding of the need to place greater dependence upon obedience to God than on her own natural reasoning.
Paul Cuny has a similar story. Paul was a builder in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1980, he believed that he was being led by God to work with a large ministry to help direct several significant construction projects for them. This became a time of severe testing for Paul, and even though he wanted to leave hundreds of times, the Lord would not release him.
As the projects for the ministry began to wind down, Paul was asked to stay on for future projects. To keep him busy, he was given a number of jobs, one of which was cleaning toilets. Morning after morning, he would go into the men’s room, lock the door, get down on his knees and complain to the Lord, “I’m a college graduate! How can You have me cleaning these toilets? Remember me?”
Though Paul knew that the Lord had called him to work with this ministry, he realized one morning that he could not go on like this. He finally told the Lord, “I will not leave here until You promote me. I ask only one thing—that You give me contentment with my circumstance, or I cannot go on another day.” Each morning, he would ask the Lord to give him this contentment with his circumstance, and each morning, heavenly manna would come down to him. The manna only lasted 24 hours, at which time Paul would have to go back to the Lord and ask for it again.
In spite of this new contentment from the Lord, Paul still felt totally forgotten by God and that he could be of no use to Him. This went on for almost a year, until one morning the Lord spoke to him during his quiet time and said, “You have been promoted!” Paul turned in his resignation that morning.
A few months later, Paul received a phone call from a man in the Midwest who owned five successful businesses. He wanted to interview Paul for a position that involved running a construction and development company for his investment group. The call came as a total surprise to Paul. As he drove to the interview, he told the Lord, “I only want your will in my life, nothing else. I am content to remain obscure for the rest of my life if I have You. I am not going to promote myself to this man. I will give this man no reason to hire me. You must override my lack of experience for me to get this job.’”
As the meeting got underway, the businessman, without looking up from his notepad, asked Paul the first question of the interview: “If I asked you to clean a toilet, what would you do?”
Paul sat there, stunned. He recalls, “Inside, I was trying to control myself, as I wanted to burst out laughing.” Paul assured him that he would simply pick up a sponge and start cleaning.
To everyone’s amazement, Paul was hired. From his perspective, he was a nobody and the least likely to be given this coveted and cherished position. “I didn’t deserve it or earn it,” Paul states. “I was not qualified for it and if I tried, I could not possibly have orchestrated those events. In spite of all this, the hand of God was on me and everything I did was mightily blessed.”
The projects were an astounding success. After several months of what Paul considered his dream job, he asked his boss why he hired him instead of all the others. His boss replied, “Paul, I still have a large stack of applications from people who wanted this job. Do you remember the first question I asked you in the interview? I asked every one of them the same question and you were the only one who said he would clean the toilet. Paul, I am a wealthy man, but I grew up dirt poor. I clean my own toilets at home. I can’t have people running my businesses who are too proud to clean a toilet.”
This is an amazing story of God’s faithfulness to a man who was willing to lay down his own natural ability in order to receive God’s power in his life. It took a year of cleaning toilets to get to that point, but when Paul finally got to the place where nothing mattered to him except pleasing God, he was promoted.
God wants to show us that He is involved in all aspects of our lives. But He also wants us to know that it is by His hand. This requires relinquishing control at times and stepping back and waiting for his timing. If you are going to be a leader in the kingdom of God like Gideon or Joshua or David, you must learn how to withhold your natural gifting at times to insure that God is your source. God will receive greater glory and the fruit will last longer.
The Temptation of Pride
When we begin to accumulate wealth, manage other people or become known for our workplace expertise, we are most susceptible to
falling to the most devious sin in God’s eyes—pride. Pride is the greatest temptation to a successful workplace minister. As soon as we move into the place where we begin to think more highly of ourselves than we should, God says he will take action—sometimes strong action!
You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me”… If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God (Deut. 8:17,19-20).
God’s strong words to the Israelites demonstrate His utter impatience toward those who are too proud of what they have accomplished. God gives us the skill, the intelligence, the resources, the energy, the drive and the opportunities to accomplish something. Yet when we become prideful, He will begin a process of reproof in our lives. In King David, we see a man who had a mature understanding of God’s activity in his life. He was totally sold out to the purposes of God for his life and his resources. He wanted to honor God by building a temple for Him. However, God said he would not build it; instead, he told David, “Your son, whom I will put on the throne in your place will build the temple for my Name” (1 Kings 5:5).
At the end of David’s life, he makes a profound statement as he is about to give millions of dollars worth of gold and other precious items for the new temple: “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chron. 29:14-15, emphasis added). David had learned this important principle of receiving only what God gave him. He gave out of a humble heart that knew the source of his wealth and power.
Examine your heart today to see whether you have fallen victim to pride. Are you sharing what God has entrusted to you with God’s people or to the needy? Are you being an instrument of God’s blessing to others? What areas of pride may have crept into your life? Ask the Lord to show you today.
Avoid being put on the shelf or cast aside because of your own pride. Make a decision to commit your way to the Lord and ask Him to guide you in achieving your goals. To be successful in your life—including your 9 to 5 life—you need to stop relying on your own efforts and ask God to keep you humbly reliant upon Him.
How About You?
1. Can you describe the difference between using your natural skill and waiting for God’s timing to orchestrate an outcome? How have you seen this in your own life?
2. What is the greatest challenge for you to live out this principle?
CHAPTER 12
MIRACLES AT WORK
The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.
ACTS 5 : 12
In chapter 1, we noted that God wanted to use Moses’ staff to perform miracles. When God told Moses, “Take this staff in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it” (Exod. 4:17, emphasis added), He was really telling Moses that He was going to use Moses’ vocation and perform miracles through it. I want to remind you that God also wants to use your staff—your vocation—to perform miracles. This is not only so that you will know the power of God, but also so that others around you will know it as well.
As I travel around the world, I see a new breed of believer—those who experience the power of Christ in their workplace callings. These individuals are experiencing miracles that manifest the kingdom of God in their workplaces. As you read each of the following true stories, remember that God also wants to use your work to perform miracles, so that it too will bring glory to Him and others will come to understand His power.
The Miracle of Faith
Several years ago, God performed a miracle for Gunnar Olson in his business. Gunnar owns a plastics company in Sweden, called Alfapac, which makes huge plastic bags that are used to cover bales of hay in the farmlands across Europe.
It was the harvest season, and Alfapac was getting ready to ship thousands of pallets of these bags to its customers. Then an alarming discovery was made. Gunnar arrived at his office and was greeted by his younger brother, who was in charge of running the daily operations. “Well, I guess we have come to the end of Alfapac,” he said.
“What in the world are you talking about?” asked Gunnar.
“Every bag on the warehouse floor has been sealed shut from top to bottom,” his brother lamented. “We have already had scientists come to inspect them. They say some type of molecular breakdown has occurred that allowed the bags to seal into a solid sheet of plastic. They say our entire stock is trash. Nothing can be done.” They both knew that this would mean the end of their company.
Gunnar went home and shared this catastrophe with his family, and they sought the Lord in prayer. After they prayed, they took turns speaking up about the things they felt that the Lord had put on their hearts. His wife said, “If God can turn water into wine, what are plastics?” His daughter said, “I don’t believe this is from the Lord. We should stand against it.”
But it has already happened, Gunnar thought to himself. At that moment, a Scripture came into his mind: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20). So, Gunnar felt the Lord was leading them to take a stand against the enemy and to expect some sort of miracle. After his family sensed this leading, the burden of the situation was released from them and they decided to go to the factory on Sunday to pray.
In the meantime, Gunnar called his brother and told him to take the weekend off to play golf. His brother’s response was understandable: “How can you say that when you’re ruined?”
“Well, there’s no problem anymore,” Gunnar replied. He had complete peace that the Lord would come through.
On Sunday afternoon, Gunnar went to the factory with his family. He stood outside the factory and in a very loud voice declared, “Listen heaven! Listen Earth! Who is the Lord over Alfapac? His name is Jesus! In the name of Jesus, we command that the molecules migrate back!” He and the family then proceeded to lay hands on each of the pallets to pray for restoration of the plastic bags. It took them three hours.
The next morning, when the employees began to inspect the bags, they discovered that every single bag had been restored to its original condition! Scientists were called in to validate this incredible miracle at the plastic bag factory, and the story spread all over Europe to the glory of God.
The Miracle of God’s Love
I show a video clip of Gunnar’s plastic bag story as part of my one-day Called to the Workplace workshop. Gunnar’s testimony was moving and memorable to Donny Godsey, a small business owner who was in the audience one day. Later, when he had his own crisis in his business, he remembered Gunnar’s testimony and decided to exercise a similar kind of faith. He wrote me the following letter about the miracle in his work-place that God gave to him:
I own a video company that shoots a variety of projects. One day, my editor discovered a videographer’s worst nightmare—a garbled mess of video picture and little or no audio on tapes that I had shot the weekend before. Four tapes of raw footage from two separate events were ruined. There was no recourse except to explain to the clients what happened, offer them their money back and find another line of work.
Then I remembered how Gunnar Olson prayed over an impossible situation and God delivered him. My situation was very similar. So I got my editor and my family together and we prayed that God would alter the digital tapes. I got an odd sense of peace and knew God had answered my prayer. I relayed to the group that I believed God had told me that the tapes would be fine in a day.
“You have got to be kidding me,” my editor laughed. “God doesn’t need time to fix something. Put a tape in!” So I put a tape in the editing deck, and right before our eyes, the tape now had a perfectly clear picture and audio where there had been no sound moments before.
I let out a joyful shout that drew my wife back into the room to see the miracle as well.
Excitedly, I popped another tape, but it was still damaged. I decided to check the others the next day. Later that night, God seemed to be drawing me to the tapes once again, so I played one. Sure enough, it was fixed as well. I went absolutely crazy with excitement. The other two tapes, however, remained damaged.
The next morning, I entered my editing room with great anticipation. I put in one of the remaining damaged tapes that contained footage from a wedding, but the video was still scrambled and there was no audio. My wife heard me and came in to look over my shoulder. I prayed out loud over the ruined footage and reassured my wife that God loves us and would take care of things. She reminded me that He fixed two out of four tapes, and that may be all He does. Yet I remembered that God said the tapes would be fixed in a day, so I kept praying as I watched the screen.
The bride was now coming down the aisle and the footage was still useless. Then suddenly, before our eyes, the tape began to clear up. Everything got set right, just as the pastor announced how good God is and how much He intimately loves us. I forwarded through the tape to see if the signal remained clear. It did. I turned to look at my wife, who had tears streaming down her face. Apparently, God had rigged this moment to touch her deeply on issues that only the two of them knew about. Not only did God save my business, but He also ministered to my family through this crisis-fixing miracle.
