My study of the Psalms has given me a great insight to David’s personnel life. His use of the Psalms to portray his feeling without revealing the events in his life is a trait that I wish I could master. For reading the Psalms has made me look closer at David’s life as portrayed in the Old Testament.  David had many disappointments in his life both career and personal.  The dreams of my youth of serving the Lord on the mission field were given up early in my studies at Temple. These dreams turned working with the youth ministry in the church, but these dreams also had to be given up. Attending church without your spouse makes it hard to serve in the ministry of the local church. I realized that not matter how hard one works to keep a marriage together, it will fail if a couple cannot find common grounds. Sometimes it best to part ways.

This decision also led me to a different path in my walk with Christ. My walk was no longer a church orientated walk but a personnel walk.   At that time in my career we closed the books and prepared the sales and hour usage reports on Saturday night. Therefore Sunday mornings became a regular work day for me so I could make sure everything was correct before these reports would be send in to the Central Office.  I would also work Saturday night to make sure all of next week’s plans were in place.   My assistant managers loved this schedule since it would give them every other weekend off.  This was rare for a store manager to do, since most took Sunday and Wednesday  as their off days.  I guess this is where I developed the saying of “Never put off today what could have been completed tomorrow.”   So I developed the trait of staying late to make sure the daily task would be a day ahead of schedule.

I also kept up my daily studies in the Bible and continue to go to church as much as I could. However, I started looking at my career as my ministry.  I could use my career as a guide to others on how to be a believer in the workplace. My personal beliefs in Christ were not something I hid but would shared with both employees and customers. I tried to be an example for others to share their faith in the workplace.  I realized that God’s Word is our mirror to make us as Christ-like to the world.