Timothy Bowling in our fellowship was talking about his work tuning pianos (I posted yesterday), and the Holy Spirit turned a light bulb on this morning in my heart. (in the future, God willing, some amazing longer God work stories in how He has moved in my life in that area. His leading and my career since late 80s and how it meshed with street evangelism (see Acts 18:3-4), and maybe if I really get courageous, to write briefly (stop laughing) about my wife and I- this month is our 35th wedding anniversary). I work at home now since COVID, and now like it that way.
I’m an engineering contractor for a larger multi-national corporation. Here’s my email to this man, with [ ] for some little explanation:
[His name],
I just wanted to say how much I appreciated your zzzzz talk.
[For the first time I ever could remember in communication on a meeting he led with about 30 of us engineers, engineering supervisors, his boss (a nice lady that made a rotation through our group when I was new there), etc listening on that software (I frankly don’t care much for any zoom meetings etc- not my cup of tea)- I’m old school, and he gave us a run down of how to do a new procedure that he had been working on for a couple of years. At one point in the message I heard a personal sentence that caught me TOTALLY off guard from this man who was all business, no personal interaction at all with me]
My email:
“I know it was a technical talk, but there’s one thing you said that God used to minister to me.
You said when you 1st started working zzzz
[when he first started in our group, I think about 4 years before me and was at my level then reporting to the same boss]
you had fears about your work- you were transparent.
[He actually said in just 1 sentence he was scared when he first started working that he would lose the job, my mouth dropped to the floor! Note: this man was not following Jesus as His Lord and Savior, he did not believe and didn’t want anything to do with that. The job is that demanding in detail. He basically approves about 95% of my work in that specific area with no need for further signatures, but some special things require a higher up engineer- Program Managers/ what some of you might know as “chief engineers” at other companies]
and frankly, hadn’t thought about it, but that was my fear too when I started-
[He knew much about my work since I started, several emails a day for “approve” or “fix this text, need more this or that”- the standards and rigor of what is demanded have been rapidly increasing due to his standards and driving that work, and frankly God has greatly humbled me through him. The Bible says the Lord disciplines those He loves. Years earlier at the previous job I managed others, including some foreigners and 1 younger guy in Phoenix for security material that couldn’t go overseas, and I liked everything by email to be as efficient as possible- (plus accents hard to understand)! For the last 2 years God has given me a taste of my own medicine! (see Hebrews 12:4-13) I had transferred from one industry to another, and from manufacturing engineer to design engineer- for some of you that doesn’t mean anything, that’s ok, if you want to talk about engineering and Jesus, be glad to chat or meet up with me and ministry partner(s) in the area you know I minister?]
I was afraid starting working at zzzz
[my work the last ~10+ years]
that I’d be let go once they found out (in my thinking) who I really was and how incompetent I felt I was and lacking of intelligence, having forgotten all that book stuff I had learned in college
[ok, just a bit of an exaggeration, almost all?]
and having been a manufacturing and then prototype engineer at
[previous very large corporation I worked at directly, not contract, before this current corporation since late 80s]-
that surely I would be found out and sooner or later would get the axe. I still am in awe of so many smart people in design at xxxx.
When I was 16+, my pastor gave in a sermon a real life story that us engineers could relate to: (I had just become a Christian, having been an atheist who didn’t believe in God and hadn’t even gone to a church service till 16 except a large youth group in the evenings to check out girls starting at 14):
The pastor said in the sermon that they had (I think this was just months earlier as we had just started services there) built a new church building and contractors were working finishing things up with final touches. It was a huge church (I’m not impressed any more with such use of funds on buildings, a side note).
One of the elders got out a huge search light, plugged it in and was slowly looking at everything up on the ceiling in the auditorium for any defects. (To me, I was that ceiling, full of defects, if God was to shine His perfect searchlight toward me, I was toast). The contractor cut the power and had an immediate talk with the pastor and staff and said something like, “No contractor can live up to that kind of scrutiny.” The pastor went on to talk about our failures and Jesus who lived a perfect life and paid our debts in our place- like He walked into our courtroom and paid our fine, took the electric chair in our place and invited us to take hold of this gift of forgiveness and eternal life in relationship with Him and others- through trusting in Him, who we stand in awe of and can never fully comprehend His infinite wisdom, knowledge, holiness and love- we respond to Him as our new boss, with a godly fear, awe and trembling- and He amazingly responds to us with forgiveness, relationship and love and becomes our manager, our boss and our Lord.
I’ve struggled ever since trying to keep up with a lot of brilliant people, especially yourself, at work, admiring your great knowledge, wisdom and logical thinking.
Thanks for sharing a little peek into your first days in xxx, it meant a lot to me.
[autosignature in email as required]
[Note to any engineer types reading this: clearly: I’m not interested in resumes and am a street evangelist, don’t have time for that and not interested in replying to many facebook posts- I want face to face contact, I minister in a rough hood, you want to talk, be prepared to meet me there- engineering does not drive me, Jesus does, I’ll listen to your testimony, your journey in life, not much interested in your engineering abilities and I’m not at all involved in hiring, I share my faith journey, but not interested in talking a lot about my work other than how it relates to faith in Christ. I minister in the hood- I can see right through what the latest drug dealer, prostitute or snake salesman is selling! You’re no match for them! These people listen, much better than people where I live in general. Jesus warned a rich young ruler about this (Mark 10:17-27). Jesus said, “Be as wise as serpents, innocent as doves”- only by His power can I be either of those, but He leads me and 23 years of street evangelism (10 of which were leading a street evangelism ministry, the largest in Indiana if you are specifically referring to “street evangelism”- I’ve seen it all)
God bless you! One of my ministry partners who lives farther away is also an engineer- he designs gospel tracts in Michigan and I may be his biggest customer, over 2 million gospel tracts, mainly 2002- 2010- great guy, and no, he’s not hiring either, and he asks me for prayers for his family and specifically his wife- rough health issues, he’s a construction engineer, such a wonderful brother, love him! And I have a dear friend that lives near me that has led Bible studies that works in the same group as this man- he’s got a gift of pastoring.
My website is www.RedeemedScoundrels.com
I’m no I.T. whiz like I said, leave that to those smart young kids- an I.T. fellow believer who has received some evangelism training has been loading up a bunch of recent writings after this was dormant for a long while.
God bless you,