Cell Phones & Work Trips: A Testimony

When work and faith conflict, it's hard to proceed forward. You don't want to jeopardize your career, but you don't want to turn your back on God. I stepped out on faith, and God showed up to fight the battle.

I decided to revive the testimony section by participating in #TestimonyTuesday on instagram. When I had to create a Vimeo account for something I'm helping with at church, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to share short testimonies on a weekly basis.

Cell Phones

So Tuesday came and I recorded the testimony (see below), but I couldn't post to instagram. My phone kept complaining, then froze. So I did a soft reset—no worries right? I still couldn't post the video to instagram, but I was able to share a graphic letting people know if was coming. I thought I could figure out the video at work. While at work, all the apps kept crashing. I ended up having to do a hard reset of the phone. I was sure that would fix it, only that just got it stuck on the spinning wheel. For two hours, my phone stayed on this screen. At this point, I knew two things had happened: 1) the amount of time for ignoring updates had expired and Apple had sent the kill command to my phone (they really should have waited to make me buy the new phone in the fall, but hey, I'm just a software engineer, not a business consultant)[1] and 2) the devil did not want me to share this testimony.

I wasn't going to let the devil win, so I bought a new phone. I wasn't planning on spending money on a phone any time soon, but I wanted to make sure I followed through with what God was leading me to do (#testimonytuesday). Well, God showed up for that. Not only did I get a new phone with more GBs of memory, I now have an unlimited data plan, a WiFi hotspot that may replace my current router (still testing it out), and I got it all at a discounted rate because they were having a Mother's Day Special (apparently it's discrimination to deny non-mother's the special, so I qualified).

Work Trip

Text Summary

Hey guys! So I’m coming with #TestimonyTuesday So the testimony that I want to share this week happened around the end of last week—I think Friday. So my boss came in—it’s actually my boss’ boss—and he wanted me to go on a trip for the company, which is all well and good. I was totally cool to go, except I was worried about the logistics. I was worried that it would require me to travel during the Sabbath,[2] and as a Sabbath keeper I didn't want to have to get into it with my boss about this. I was kind of nervous ‘cause religion is not something you typically bring up at work. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, what he was going to say, how this was going to look—you know what I mean? And so… And then there are a lot of Christians who don’t keep the Sabbath, so I didn’t really think, even if he was a Christian or if he was familiar with Christianity, he wouldn’t necessarily be like “Yeah that’s normal.” So I was really hesitant, but I did it. Because I was like “OK, if you’re going to go you have to get this cleared.” And so I took a leap of faith and I went ahead and I brought up it up to my boss’ boss. I was like “Yeah, I can go on this trip. I’m totally fine to go, but I don’t travel during the Sabbath. I just need to be able to keep the Sabbath during this time window.[3] And lo and behold! He was completely cool with it. He was like “Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s great. Whatever you need to do, that's fine. If you want to leave early, if you want to stay late, I'm fine. The company will work with you. It's good.” And I was like “Oh, so all I had to do was verbalize it? That’s really cool.” It reminded me that when you take that leap of faith, that God will walk with you, and that He will make sure that what needs to happen happens. So, that is my testimony from last week. Drop your testimony in the comments section below

References and Footnotes

1. This is a half joke. As a software engineer, I understand the life cycle of phones. I also know that all company want you to buy new products, so...
2. "⁸Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: ⁹You are to labor six days and do all your work, ¹⁰but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. ¹¹For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy." Exodus 20:8-11 CSB
3. The Sabbath by Biblical definition is the 7th day, and since Biblically days are counted from sunset to sunset, this time period is from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.