When God speaks.............

My experience has been that sometimes God's calling or direction comes through in a very clear, direct and personal way. I have usually been blessed by these special times of clarity during prolonged and intense periods of worship.

On one occasion, in 1990, I was in a time of uncertainty and disquiet about my job. I had survived the downturn in the oil industry, but had been forced to move twice due to office closings and transfers. We had ended up in Tyler, Texas, a beautiful small town that seemed to be a great place to raise a family. As my employer was in the midst of a merger with a larger entity, I was looking at a near-certain transfer later in the year, probably to Houston.

One day while checking the Dallas Classified ads in the Sunday newspaper, I saw an ad for an oil & gas Engineering position. I responded to the ad that week and discovered that it was for a privately-owned independent whose only Operations office was in Tyler! I was a good match for their needs, and I made the switch, even though it meant a significant pay cut, since it seemed to assure me the ability to remain in Tyler.

After three years of essentially running my own small company, without the financial risk of going without a paycheck, my relationship with the absentee owner soured and I planned to branch out on my own. I couldn’t actually make the “leap”, however, as I was trying to reduce the risks. One weekend Dana and I were attending an intensely uplifting worship conference Ken Young was leading in Irving, Texas, and I was perusing the Dallas newspaper classifieds at breakfast. I saw a “blind ad” for an engineer, and I knew immediately that it was for my replacement! The ad listed no company or person's name, and the response address was to a UPS Store box. This was the only day I read those ads, and this was the only day that the ad appeared in the newspaper! This was God saying to me, “Get out of this situation, now!” It took a week of investigating to confirm (I actually saw the newspaper's invoice for running the ad), but it was true that the owner was preparing to fire me as soon as he found a replacement. I quit the job that week and became an independent oilman with lots of ideas, but no income. Talk about significant pay cuts! More later.......

Thank you, LORD, for your steadfast love!