I was let go from the place of my previous employment after two incidences of using company email for personal use. The first incident occurred about mid-December 2020 when I emailed an encouraging message, titled “The Gift that Keeps on Giving” to fellow employees with my Bible Resources document attached. I explained that I had compiled the document of essential principles I had acquired while attending healing meetings for almost 20 years. What I learned so impacted my life that I wanted to get the information to as many people as possible. Another motive was to honor our Lord Jesus Christ for protecting and prospering us as a company through the past year. Afterwards, I was counseled and issued a formal warning and agreed to comply with the policy.
Additional background to my first email related to some informal meetings in March 2020 with my next-cubicle neighbor, a Quality Engineer whose wife is a pastor, where I was showing him how to make declarations while sowing faith seed (cash) into his ministry. One of the declarations I made was that the Lord would keep all of us 1000+ world-wide employees safe from the Covid-19 virus. The prayer for protection also included clients, vendors, supporting vendors, and those who over the years have left the company and are now living in retirement or are now working elsewhere. I stated that, “we honor God when we pray extravagant prayers because we serve an extravagant God.”
More background regarding the first email is that when I first contemplated sending the email, I had the thought that I could wait until Spring 2021 to do it. But, that Sunday morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading Kevin Zadai’s book, “You can Hear God’s Voice” after finishing breakfast, when suddenly I felt an urgency to compose and send the email with attachment. It was like, “I have got to do this now!” I think this may have had something to do with my being let go right before the spiritual atmosphere would have changed when President Biden was inaugurated.
The second incident occurred about mid-January when I sent an email, with attached “Bible Resources” document, to a consultant (not an employee) who had started teaching weekly training classes. I reasoned that he is a consultant and probably would be accustomed to receiving emails from people in companies he consulted with. My motive was to get the gospel message to him in obedience to our Lord’s commission. I knew there may be a chance that I might transgress our company’s policy, but I figured that whatever happened would be in the Lord’s control and He would work it out for good. I reasoned that his soul’s eternal destiny is more important than trying to protect my comfortable life. A couple of weeks later, I was terminated after admitting to sending the email. Note: This incident occurred on a Monday in which I had taken a vacation day.
Looking back, I realize that over the past several years, I had felt that my status at the company seemed to have steadily deteriorated. I would talk to my wife about it and always end up thinking it is all in my head. Not wanting to abandon our post, we would always decide to stay on until we had a clear message from our Lord Jesus Christ that we should leave. I was never sure how it would actually work out.
At one point I thought this might not be a pretty situation, since I reasoned that no company in its right mind would let an employee go unless there was some kind of infraction. So, after being let go, I recognized the Lord’s hand in all this. My thought is that it may have been a worse situation if the Lord hadn’t put in my heart to send those emails, even though I didn’t intend to be let go. I think it was the Lord, since what better way to get let go than as punishment for “preaching” the gospel message!
Some have expressed that they did not think our Lord Jesus Christ would have someone violate a companies policy in “preaching the Gospel message”. However, I think that His love for the lost and desire to save souls is such that He is willing to take extreme measures to get His message to them. A passage that comes to mind is Acts 5:40-42, “They took his advice, and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them. So they went on their way from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”
I have also had the thought that, even though a company may think their email is theirs, it really ultimately belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, since He is truly the real source of all our creativity and productivity – whether we know it or not! I think it’s like in John 12:12-15 when our Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey. He only borrowed the “donkey”, in this case the email system, for a few minutes for His purposes before giving it back to the owner.
Further more, I think the owner of the donkey must have been blessed, so even though I was let go, I think the company is actually benefitting from the blessings due to the effect on everyone who read that attachment. Another thought I have had is how greatly blessed that donkey must have been! So, I feel great honor and joy for having had the privilege to be a part of the “donkey” on which our Lord Jesus Christ could use to “ride on” for the moment, even though I did not really know what I was doing.
Blessings to you, -Tony