Pam Padgett ... teacher
Proverbs 21:1 The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.
Thinking about God turning the heart of kings according to His will, causing them to do or refrain from doing according to the purpose of God, I was reminded of times God turned the heart of
"kings" where I was concerned, bringing about God's will for me. In these cases, the kings were managers in secular jobs.
I was bored with the secretarial work I was doing, and turned to God
asking if there might be some type of work I could do that would be
interesting to me. Shortly after this, my manager asked me to setup some pc's for our work area.
Since I didn't know anything about computers, he agreed for me to take
two computer classes. We thought a class called "Basic" should be one
of the classes to give me a basic understanding of computers. Neither
of us understood this class was for the programming language called
"Basic". The first night of that class I knew that programming was what
I wanted to do.
After completing another class, a small company hired me to program
part-time and be a secretary part-time. When the company was having financial trouble, I prayed about what to
do, and was led to take a class in how to interview. The instructor at
that class told me about entry-level programming jobs at
FedEx. I sent my resume to the contact at FedEx given to me by the
instructor. This contact told me she would put my resume on the desk
of every manager.
Only one manager was interesting in interviewing me. Although I
didn't have a degree in programming and even answered some of the
technical questions incorrectly at the interview, he hired me.
Knowing the incorrect answers I had given to technical questions, I was
surprised. Later I also learned how unusual it is for someone without a
programming degree to be hired and that this manager had to put
together justification to hire me without such a degree. I believe God
turned this manager's heart to hire me.
Over the years I moved to different work areas with different managers, was promoted multiple times, and was beginning to be recognized by
officers of the company. With this attention, I started corrupting
myself, trying to impress these people even more. I repented and asked God to help me. One thing I was led to do was to change work groups. The manager of the new group gave me only entry-level assignments. Even after
talking with him, and receiving assurances that he would assign me more advanced work, he didn't do this. All of
the recognition I once had was gone as I did very simple assignments. This was humbling to me.
Then a decision was made that I would need to work for two officers or
take a voluntary demotion. Several things about working for these
officers concerned me, including that more travel would be
required. After praying, I chose the demotion. This was even more humbling.
Although hard for my flesh to go through at the time, I now am very
grateful to have had been humbled in these ways rather than continuing to rise in reputation and the pressures and temptations this brought.
Several times I turned to God when being humbled, and was reminded of The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. (Proverbs 21:1) This helped me submit to the will of God and not become resentful of this manager.
God turns even the heart of the "king" according to HIS will and HIS purpose.