Dan's Story
Dan had a clear call on his life but to do it he needed to give up his sales dreams. As he pushed into money more, the less it satisfied. In his words, "I was in complete rebellion against God." With multiple things collapsing around him, Dan had no choice but to turn back. The results were eye opening.
Transcript
I was working my dream job in sales, and I was crushing it, when God called me to go to Bible college. I was doing so great in my career, and He asked me to leave it to study and become an intern and serve the church. So I went to God and said, "No. I'm not gonna leave my dream job just so that I can serve the church and make no money."
So God started to change things in my life. I started to find sales less enjoyable. My relationships at work started to change. My sales were going downhill. The more money-hungry I became, the more my sales went downhill. Other things were going wrong too, like my dad's dad, my grandfather, came down with cancer, which was awful, and my brother started to become incredibly suicidal.
My entire life had been perfect, and then within a few months it just crashed. I started to recognise the things that mattered in my life. Ultimately, it came down to God. I said, "Okay, Lord, I can't pay rent. I need to go see my parents and support my dad and support my brother."
Two weeks later, I moved back to Invercargill to study. As soon as I got there, I realised that there was a whole lot of reading that I needed to get done. Well, I had Irlens, which is this disease that you're kind of born with. Inside my eyes there are light receptors which go down this tunnel, and mine was damaged. So one eye receives and processes light faster than the other. As a result, the world is quite shaky and blurry.
Your mind can combat this, kind of like software changing everything, but it means that it uses a whole lot of brain power. So after 25 to 30 minutes of reading, it will put me to sleep. And I was trying to read all these leadership books that needed to get done so I could finish my studies. I remember one day, it was a Monday, I think it was my first week, I was sitting there crying. I was like, "I've given up my dream job. I just went through these awful few months of my life to sit here failing before I've even started." I just broke down in tears, going, "How can I? I can't do this."
We had a prayer meeting that evening and everyone was around in a circle praying for people. I said, "Oh, I kinda need my eyes healed because I can't pass my internship unless God heals my eyes." And then the young adult pastor put his hand on me and prayed. I don’t know what happened, but I just started crying, just absolutely broken in tears. I said, "Hand me a Bible,” and they put a Bible in front of me and it was the first time I could see the words clearly. I couldn't believe it.
So I went two weeks straight reading the whole New Testament. I couldn't stop. I could read fire hydrants now, the ones with small writing like, "Pull this tab." I’d never read that before. All these little signs I couldn’t read before, like ones in the office that had numbers to call, I could see those numbers now.
The strangest one was looking at carpet. Carpets are quite weird shapes and there's lots of little hairs making lots of textures, so it makes it quite shaky and blurry. For the first time, I saw carpets not move, which was unbelievable. I actually felt dizzy because it felt so normal going forward from there.
I couldn't believe it. It was such a strange moment. I was against God, in complete rebellion against Him, and He was still faithful to me. Even though I'd sworn off Him, hated Him, couldn't believe He'd put me through such a difficult trial, and for Him to show such faithfulness to me.
When you are going through such tough times, the wisest thing to do is just be honest with God and say, "I can't do this Lord. You need to be my strength to get through this."