The Trauma of Getting Fired and Knowing That God Will Provide – Purity 1814
Purity 1814 11/14/2025 Purity 1814 Audio Podcast
Purity 1814 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the sun rising over the horizon to pour its illuminating light through a thick stand of trees over the still green grass of an autumn morning comes to us from an unknown FB friend who shared this simple scene of inspirational beauty on social media back of November 18th, 2020.
Well, it Friday, thank God – always thank God, and I am surprisingly upbeat this morning as I am looking forward to being with my wife, TammyLyn, later today at our countryside home and I am continually being encouraged by the Lord in small ways that could be quite meaningful. When we seek the Lord direction for our lives, we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions, but I have discovered that, if your listening, the Lord will give you clues about where He is leading you.
The other day, despite the well-intentioned hopes and assurances of others, I had the fear that I would lose my job and sure enough the next time I reported to work I did. The official verbiage is that I am suspended for ten calendar days pending dismissal and will be removed from the payroll on November 21st. That’s legal speak for “You’re fired!”
The sudden pain of loss and rejection that comes from being summarily executed from your employment is significant. Getting fired can cause a wide range of emotions such as shock, anger, grief and sadness. A loss like this fills you with condemnation, regret, and a deep fear of the uncertainty of the future. Not only do you want to beat yourself up for your failure, but you can also have the irrational desires to somehow change the past or to negotiate a compromise that will save your job, not fully realizing that its too late. Due to legal concerns, the decision to fire an employee isn’t usually a rash one. So, when that pink slip is issued, the employer is pretty sure in their actions, and it is highly unlikely that you are going to change things.
The feeling of shock, condemnation and desperate irrational thinking that you can save your job is what the Kubler Ross stages of grief would define as the denial, anger, and bargaining stages of grief. The next stage is depression.
Because of my broken past, I am a quick study when it comes to loss. And this could be denial, but over the last 48 hours, I think I am moving beyond all these stages. The denial was taken care of with the letter I was issued. “Yup there it is. I am being removed from the payroll. I am fired! Oh boy.” The anger – that was directed at myself. I can’t really blame the company for choosing to get rid of me. I had a few accidents in the past, the “safety infraction” I committed was “egregious”. Today’s word is “egregious” – meaning outstandingly bad or shocking. Yeah, shockingly stupid.
But I am learned to get past angry thoughts about myself. Sure I will accept the blame and responsibility for the mistakes I make but after I do that. I know that any other negative is self-talk is just “condemnation” and Roman 8:1 tells us that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. So if you see that you are condemning yourself, stop it. Its not productive and if you put your faith in Jesus, all your mistakes – all your sins – are forgiven. So, tell the Lord, what you did, commit yourself to not making the same mistakes in the future, accept God’s forgiveness and move on.
As for the bargaining, I let the union do that for me. Don’t have a lot of hope for that but I’ll let them do it, because you never know, God can change the hearts and minds of men and I have seen that happen for others in the past. So, we will see if that is in the offering for me. Despite seeing that mercy given, I somehow doubt it’s going to come my way. So I am not hoping against hope here and instead am trusting the Lord to move me to the future outcome that He has for me.
Instead of praying to get my job back, (although I must admit I did offer up one of those hope against hope prayers for that contingency in the last 48 hours– if it’s the Lord’s will, of course), I started trying to give the Lord lots of possibilities for my future employment by hurriedly applying job immediately after getting fired. Some of those have already been denied. The news wasn’t even 24 hours old before I got hired for a seasonal delivery driver for UPS. So the Lord has already provided a job, but I’m not sure if that is where He is really leading me to. I get the impression it isn’t.
So, the new career search will continue today but before I could move on completely, the Lord had me come before Him in prayer to process the trauma of being fired. H. Norman Wright’s Crisis & Trauma Counseling tells us that the way we can move one from devastating losses is to get closure by saying goodbye to the people, things, and situations that will never be the same after a traumatic event. Saying goodbye to dead loved ones, lost relationships, lost routines, and our lost expectations is blessed by the Lord to help our hearts heal.
So, this morning, I said goodbye to my company, my former co-workers, my former bosses, the corporate properties and equipment, my former job functions, my past disappointments, and my future hopes. I said goodbye to the “normal” that my old job had established. I said goodbye to it all. I forgave everyone from work who ever offended me and let go of any bitterness over things done, or said, or not done, or not said. I let go of my old life as an employee to the company and I gave it all to God. I thanked Him for all the ways it taught me about life and how provided for my needs and how it helped me in difficult times. I thanked the Lord for having it but this morning I let it go and said goodbye. Today I stopped trusting in my former to meet my needs and instead chose to trust the Lord to provide for me in another way.
Speaking of the Lord providing, it just so happens that the Turning Point with David Jeremiah devotion for today speaks on that topic and I am sharing it on the blog today because I know some of this need to hear this. David Jeremiah writes:
“GOD WILL PROVIDE
And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”- Genesis 22:14
In the biblical world it was common for personal names to reflect the character or attributes of the person. The same was true of God’s name Jehovah as He revealed Himself to His people. Compound names were ascribed to Him based on His character and attributes—like Jehovah My Shepherd, Jehovah My Healer, Jehovah My Victory, Jehovah My Righteousness, and more. Jehovah My Provision was a name given to God by Abraham as a result of God’s dramatic provision at a critical moment in Abraham’s life (Genesis 22:1-19).
Because of the intense relationship God entered into with Abraham, He tested him by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac. When Abraham and Isaac approached the site of the sacrifice, Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the sacrifice was. Abraham told Isaac that God would provide—which He did at the last moment by providing a ram caught in a thicket. So, Abraham named the place The-Lord-Will-Provide.
Philippians 4:19 says that God will provide all our needs through Christ. If you have a need today, trust that God will provide. – David Jeremiah
If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes. – Alexander MacLaren
Amen. I would have to say that I suddenly find myself in one of the most desperate situations of my life. Suddenly the provision of my good paying job is gone. But as much as the enemy tried to rush in with a spirit of fear and condemnation, the Lord has equipped me for such a time as this.
Our history together tells me that the Lord will provide for all my needs. The key there is “needs”.
Although I know that God is capable of blessing us with prosperity in an instant, the examples I see in scripture tell me that God often humbles us and calls us to trust Him through hard times. God doesn’t always instantly rescue us from bad situations, especially those that we may have contributed to.
But when we are faithful to follow Him through the storm, we will see that God does provide for our needs. We may lose much in the transition from our old life to the new place God wants to bring us to but afterwards we will be able to see how God provided for us every step of the way, even in the desperate situations. It’s a lot easier to see it after we are through it, but if we look for it, we can see that God is already providing for us now.
So, open your eyes to see all the blessings that God has already given you and is continuing to give you.
When you do this, you will see how blessed you are even in the middle of the storm and be able to trust that God will provide for the things you don’t have somewhere else down the road.
We might have to endure suffering and loss for season (and it could be a long season) but if we keep walking with the Lord, we can be sure that He will work things out for our good.
So, keep on walking and talking with God.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By John G. Kruis.
(While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late author’s work. (The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling By John G. Kruis on Amazon )
This morning’s meditation verses come from the section on Persecution.
Matthew 13:1–9 (the parable of the sower)
Matthew 13:18–23 (Jesus interprets the parable.)
Matthew 13:20–21 (NIV) The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
Today’s verses fall under the twelfth point of our counseling reference guide resource section on Persecution.
12. Jesus says that some do fall away when they are persecuted.
Today’s Bible verses warn us of the danger that persecution can have on our faith. If we see the Lord as some cosmic genie in a bottle that exists only to give us all the selfish desires of our hearts, we can easily be discouraged and walk away from our faith when things go south.
I ashamedly have to admit that I didn’t really know the true gospel when I was younger and when I suffered the affliction of the loss of my infant son, I was angry and abandoned my nominal faith pretty quickly. I went into a deep depression, rejected Christianity because God didn’t save my son, and eventually began worshipping myself as a deluded Buddhist on the path of enlightenment. Thankfully the Lord was gracious enough to show me the truth and lead me to Christ even in my rebellion. But He didn’t have to. His great love brought me to Him.
However, today’s verses tell us that not everybody will come back to God. Whether this passage means that someone who received God’s word with joy but who falls away is just “unfruitful” or condemned to hell is a matter of debate. But the idea behind Christ warning about this is to prepare us for the fact that we will suffer in life and that the only true way to live is to endure with Christ.
So don’t let the hard things in life take you away the living hope that you have in Christ alone.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.com where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from “Day by Day Along the Way” By Jay E. Adams.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase Adams’ books for your own private study and to support the late author’s work. This resource is available online for less than $20 at many sites.
Day 313
But the disbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds … – Acts 14:2
This was the common pattern—Jews mainly reject; Gentiles mainly receive. The persecution that Paul and Barnabas experienced was severe. More and more the church was becoming a Gentile church, and the apostles continued to appeal to Gentiles in preaching. According to 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16, Jewish persecution continued. In this verse, Paul predicted the coming wrath upon the nation, found in Luke 21 and the early part of the book of Revelation. The persecution reached a high level here at Iconium, so much so that the believers had to escort the missionaries out of the city to keep the Jews from stoning them! The apostles barely escaped, by learning of the plot beforehand. The Jews today, who (rightly) complain about persecution, forget that they were the first at it. Of course, neither those who are persecuted today, nor the apostles preaching in Iconium, deserved it. Persecution is always wrong.[1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 321.
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