Latest / Prayer Before Work / Your Old Bully Just Started Reporting to You - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- Sean Graver: The person who used to make your life miserable just joined your team. Except now he reports to you. Hey, this is Sean, and welcome back to Prayer Before Work. Now you know exactly who I mean if this has ever happened to you. years ago this person made your work life really uncomfortable. Maybe it was constant pressure or taking credit for what you built or or saying things to make you feel small in front of other people. And you would leave work carrying it with you. And it took a long time to feel normal again. And now through some strange turn that nobody could have planned, this person is sitting in a meeting with you running it. And parts of you want to be gracious. Another part of you is Kind of thinking through every tedious task you could subtly hand their way and and honestly you'd have plenty of reasons to do that. But there's a story in Genesis that ends in almost this exact place. Joseph's own brothers sold him into slavery out of jealousy. years later, after everything Joseph went through, he ends up with real power, a kind of power where he could do whatever he wanted. With the very people who heard him. And when his brothers finally stand in front of him, terrified, waiting for what they assume is coming, Joseph says something that still catches me every time I read it. Now this is in Genesis chapter fifty, verses nineteen and twenty. He tells them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good. So Joseph here, he doesn't pretend it didn't happen and and he doesn't say it was fine, no problem. He just calls it out. I mean they meant evil, and then he refuses to become the thing that was done to him. Now that's not the same as forgetting about it, and it's the it's certainly not the same as trusting them right away either. Joseph still tested his brothers earlier in the story. Grace and wisdom, they're not opposites. And if you're standing where Joseph stood, even in a much smaller way, here's the here's the real honest question that's worth sitting with today. Can you lead this person with real fairness? The same fairness you'd give anyone else on your team, without either pretending the past didn't happen. or using your position to settle a score. So you don't have to feel warm toward them yet. You just have to decide not to become like them. So let's pray. Well God, this situation is complicated and we don't want to just fake our way through it. You know exactly what this person put us through and you know we haven't fully worked through all of it yet. But give us the strength to lead fairly instead of with vengeance and And the honesty to admit if we're struggling to do that, because we don't want to let what happened to us turn us into something we wouldn't recognize. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Go make today count.