Answered Prayer Ephesians 3:20 Style
Posted on 27 May 2025
Category: Answered Prayer
Author: Steve Vail
Back in January 2019, It was 6 months until my retirement date from full-time service with the SCNG (SC National Guard), and the anxiety was beginning to mount. So, my wife Beth and I along with members of our prayer group and family and friends, we prayed. I still wanted to work and to some extent I felt like I needed to work. I put my resume out on several of the on-line job finders. I really wanted to find a job within the Charleston SC area. After several interviews, I finally landed one. It was an IT help-desk position which wasn't my first choice. My first choice was SharePoint administrator, which is what I had been doing for the last couple of years with the SCNG. But this was within the Charleston area and the pay was fair. I was grateful. Two days before my start date I got a phone call...
A recruiter from a government contract company was looking for SharePoint administrator. That excited me... until he told me where. He said I would need to relocate to Fort Gordon GA. I told him, "I am not interested in relocating to Fort Gordon. I have a job here in the Charleston area that I'm starting in two days"
"What are they paying you?" he asked. I told him the salary that they had offered me, and he responded with an offer that was more than double that.
After talking it over with my wife, Beth, we prayed. I knew that I would be miserable as an IT help-desk technician and I was confident that this offer was an answer to prayer. So, I accepted the offer. I rented a small apartment on Fort Gordon and worked and lived there through the week and drove home every weekend. It was a good experience and I learned a lot. I didn't give up on trying to find a SharePoint admin position in Charleston though, and we continued to pray for that very thing. I had been there a little over a year when I decided to put my resume back out on-line and began answering some phone calls and scheduling on-line interviews. Finally, I got an offer comparable to what I was currently making from a company in the Charleston area... but no start date. They said they had to wait for a specific contract to come through. After waiting several weeks I was becoming somewhat frustrated. As I was going through my emails one day I noticed an initial recruiting message from what appeared to me to be the same company. I figured, it couldn't hurt to have another recruiter working on my behalf, maybe this guy would actually get me a start date.
I answered the email and he responded with a phone call right away. He began telling me all about the company I would be working for, and I cut him short, "Look", I said, with no small amount of frustration, "I know all about your company. I've already been made an offer and accepted it. I've just been waiting... for weeks now on someone to give me a start date."
He responded by asking, "Who is the recruiter that's been working with you?" I told him the name and he informed me that they didn't have any recruiters with that name. Then he explained that there was another company with almost the exact same name. He asked what they had offered me. I told him, and he made a much better offer. The next day I got a call from the other recruiter. I explained what had happened and that I would be accepting the better offer from the other company. He immediately responded with yet another better offer plus 4 weeks vacation. I called the second company and explained that I was seriously considering their new offer plus the vacation time. He offered a much much better offer plus 4 weeks vacation plus being able to work from home. You can't get much closer to home than that. I had to pinch myself as I began wondering if I was dreaming.
I will have been working for this company for 5 years this August and I love what I do for them. Truly God has blessed us exceeding abundantly above all that I could ask or think
"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us," [Ephesians 3:20 KJV]