Latest / Prayer Before Work / The Ultimatum That Set Me Free - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- Sean Graver: Your boss just said word for word, deal with it or find another job. And you're standing there realizing, well, he actually just made this decision a lot simpler than he meant to. Well, hey, this is Sean, and welcome back to Prayer Before Work. Now, you'd ask for something pretty reasonable. And maybe it was help dividing up a huge workload or a schedule that just didn't require you to be reachable seven days per week. Or maybe just some acknowledgement that what's being asked of you has gotten a little bit out of hand. And instead of an actual conversation, you got an ultimatum. And it was delivered like it was supposed to intimidate you right back into silence. Now sometimes this works. Sometimes people go quiet and they absorb it because leaving feels too risky. But sometimes they The ultimatum like that is the exact moment where the fog starts to clear and the choice stops feeling complicated. Now, the Apostle Paul writes something in the book of Galatians that's easy to read as being only about religious approval, but I think it stretches further than that. Like in Galatians 1, verse 10, he asks, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. So Paul's addressing something pretty real here. there's a version of pleasing people that's just kindness and cooperation, and that's good. But there's another version that's really about fear, staying quiet, staying small, staying put, because you're afraid of what happens if you don't. When someone hands you a deal with it or leave ultimatum, they're often betting on that fear. They're betting that you'll pick the smaller, more painful option because it feels a lot safer than the unknown. And it doesn't always work out that a door opens the moment you need it to. I mean, leaving a job, that can be a hard decision to deal with. There's real consequences, and I'm not telling you to walk out today without thinking it through. But if you're in a spot where staying means accepting treatment that you know just isn't right, and the only thing keeping you there is fear of what happens next, you might want to reconsider whether that fear is actually protecting you or just controlling you. Because sometimes the ultimatum someone's hands you as a threat turns out to be the clearest permission you'll ever get. Let's pray. Well, God, decisions like this are heavy and and and we don't want to make them out of pure fear in either direction, staying or leaving. Give us the wisdom to see the situation clearly and and and the courage to act on what we actually see instead of what we're afraid of. And if it's time to walk away, give us the provision and the peace to do it well. And if it's not yet time, Help us stand firm without losing ourselves in the meantime. In Jesus' name, amen. Now go make today count.