Testimonial

I am a solicitor, 3½ years qualified and I work for one of the big firms in Birmingham’s city centre. I have always been really encouraged by how much I see God at work among the people I work with. Over the last few months though, I have seen God intervene in a particular difficultly at work in a way that has really surprised me. I have always worked almost exclusively for one person (who is now quite senior in the business) and we have had a pretty good relationship - the main difficultly I have with my boss is that he is a bit of a workaholic, and because I work so closely with him I have struggled not to become that myself.

By the end of September last year, I was struggling with a huge work load and also an inconsistent attitude from my boss - everyone was stressed and overworked. There were various issues, but the result was that I was very unhappy at work, stressed out, not sleeping, tired etc. I wanted to get out but partly because I work as part of such an amazing team of people and partly because I was too stressed and tired, I wasn't in a position to look for a move or make any decisions.

ChaplaincyPlus has been an encouragement to me when I have been struggling before so I got in touch and arranged to go round after work. I suspect I wasn't particularly coherent and I talked far too much - it was great just to get it off my chest. We prayed and discussed various ways forward, but there was one particular thing they said, which God really spoke to me through (or rather shouted to me- you know when you hear something and God reinforces it so that you can't hear or recall anything but that) . They suggested that I should try praying for my boss - not just for his attitude to me to change or for him to take the work load away, but to pray that God would support him in his work and in the challenges he is facing.

And so that is what I started to do - I prayed that God would gift my boss with abilities to manage the team and the department better, with wisdom in decision making, with efficiency to get through his own work, with sensitivity to clients and staff, etc. Over the next couple of months things changed enormously - it is difficult to pinpoint what has changed, other than to say everything except the work and the people has changed. The workload has improved (or at least my attitude to it and ability to cope) and God has taught me loads about how I can work at being different at work. I saw God very quickly transform a horrible situation into something great - the most obvious area of transformation was in my relationships with my boss, my colleagues and within our team. I also saw how God answered my prayers for my boss - I now even occasionally ask him what he wants/needs prayer for and he is very happy to say.