My Job, God's Plan

Since our last Prayer Bulletin we had a very fun time in the studios of KPDQ in Portland chatting with the multi-talented talk show host Georgene Rice, and sharing clips of our newest music during the 5:00pm rush hour period on Wednesday the 19th of December. On Saturday the 22nd we sang for morning services and shared an evening concert with our friends at Vancouver SDA, and on Sunday the 23rd we got up bright and early to sing for the uplifting morning services at Beaverton Foursquare. All of these events were incredible blessings and we met many wonderful saints and saw ministry happen.

Behind the scenes in the Sell family, let me share a little of what was happening in our home. Friday the 7th of December (Pearl Harbor Day) my wife called me to tell me that her employer was shutting down the sales portion of her office and that she would be laid off unless she was to move to Des Moines, Iowa. I know people are reading this from all over the world, but Des Moines is a long way away from Oregon, and it’s a LOT different. I almost dismissed the idea right away, because it would put a real crimp in the way RESCUE operates, and I didn't want RESCUE to have to make those kind of adjustments because of my location.

My wife wisely said, “Brian, we need to really look at this and seriously consider that God may want us to move.”

For any husbands who may be reading this, you know that special tone of voice that your wife gets that means business. She’s a wonderful godly woman and I get real nervous stomping around areas where she is feeling a check in her heart, so I agreed.

They wanted to bump up her salary and give her large bonuses if she moved, the cost of living is much lower and we could afford life much more easily than we can on the West coast, my mom will soon be moving back to Omaha, Nebraska and we’d only be two hours from her.

Her company paid our way to Iowa, so to make good on my promise to seriously consider moving we left on Friday the 14th and spent the weekend in Des Moines tooling around the city, looking at neighborhoods, schools, and churches. We spent time with the people she’d be working with at the office there. I am surprised to tell you that we loved what we saw. Things were definitely stacking up in favor of moving. We found a great area, we could get twice the house for less than what we were paying, the schools were the best in the state, and we found a really great church nearby that reminded us of our home church. Kim loved the people she would be working with and had already spent a week with them as part of her training earlier this year. By the end of that weekend, only three pieces of the puzzle remained. How quickly could we get our house sold, what was I going to do for work, and how would this all play out for RESCUE.

Did I mention that we got back on Sunday the 16th and her company needed an answer by the Friday 21st. Only five days to decide. On one hand we had been financially struggling to live here in the Northwest for the last decade. My job hadn’t seen a raise in over five years and 2007 had been one of the most difficult years in a long time for both of our jobs, but we also had the incredible blessing of being a part of RESCUE. On the other hand we had possibilities of a much better life for our family if we moved. The advice that I was getting from all of my elders, family, friends, and other RESCUE members, was that I needed to think of my family first. But it just seemed wrong to put such a burden on RESCUE, which has been such a gift in my life.

Jason prayed for us throughout the time we were in Des Moines. He was up late nights working on a revised business plan to make it all work if I moved. All of my RESCUE brothers were supportive of us either way and were praying for us.

Then the job offers started rolling in from Des Moines for me. Great jobs, at way better pay! On Wednesday the 19th I let the CEO of our company know that we were seriously considering a move. He said we’d have a chat on later on in the week about what he could do to keep me and that I should have a figure in mind as to what I would need if I were to stay considering the possibility that Kim would be losing out on such a great opportunity.

I have taken to heart and tried to live by Proverbs 25:6-7 where it says,

“Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”

Jesus mentioned the same concept in Luke 14:8 and I think that in this day of self promotion we need to stop and realize that God does the promoting, not man. When the time is right God will act on our behalf and good things will happen.

I was feeling more and more that we were going to be moving to Des Moines as the week went on. Thursday afternoon the CEO and I had an hour and a half phone conference. Because of the job offers and seeing what my skills were worth in the industry for the first time, I was emboldened to ask for a large raise. I wasn’t emboldened because I was being prideful and thinking more highly of myself than I ought. I was asking for a very conservative amount in light of the job offers I was getting. Let me assure you that I would never have asked for a raise had I not been through the process of looking for a job in another part of the country. I now had the position of, “walk away power” because I felt secure that my family would be taken care of either way. All I needed to do was simply ask and consider the response.

The response was incredible! Admittedly, I am not accustomed to asking for raises. I am not a savvy money guy, but rarely have I heard of an employer giving an employee more than he asked for. Normally they meet somewhere in the middle. In fact the general consensus was that I should ask for more than I needed so that he would settle on the true amount, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t posture like that. Even so, my employer gave me well over what I was asking for with the distinct possibility, through incentives, of even more than that. I started to wonder what God had in mind. Now the weight was starting to shift back to staying in Oregon.

Out of obedience to our commitment to exhaust all possibilities in Oregon and in Iowa, Kim went to a job interview on Friday the 21st. It was a long-shot, but she went anyway. She called me afterwards and told me that it went incredibly well. She didn’t have the job yet, but it was really looking good, and would be a substantial upgrade in pay, even from the job in Des Moines!

That afternoon she told her employer that we were staying in Oregon and that she was turning down the job in Des Moines!

It was a Moses-at-the-Red-Sea and Isaac-on-the-Altar all rolled into one for me! I know that everyone in RESCUE breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t broken into spontaneous dance like that since the day in late 2004 when I heard that Jason wanted to talk to me about joining the group. It would have been embarrassing but I was too joyful to think about it!

Looks like Oregonians are going to have to put up with my presence a bit longer!