letters to a modern-day Job

Dear friend,

Thanks for visiting this site. It’s been a while since I got so many visitors. 🙂

This site is still a work in progress. It functions as a repository of ideas for a book that I am writing.

Know that God has a purpose and plan for you, and the resources to get you there.

I know it doesn’t seem like it today.

But why is this book called “Letters to a Modern-day Job”? (As in the Job of the Bible)

I lost almost everything – health, career and social circle through an “Abyss” period of more than 10 years, triggered primarily by a debilitating incurable autoimmune disease (acute eczema) that left me imprisoned in pain within my bedroom for weeks at a time over that period. Even though I had no career and many people gave up on me, God helped me through wisdom and serendipitous opportunities become the person I am today. The restoration was not just only in health, but everything else. The restoration came in natural and supernatural means. It consisted from everything from the unexpected recovery when 30 years medical treatments couldn’t to a long series divine meetings and opportunities to restore my finances and career. My close friend with an MBA from Oxford remarked that the statistics of all this happening by chance is indeed close to zero.

When I attended Bible college in 2009, my seminary mates labelled me “the Modern-day Job”.

The label stuck.

As I exit this Abyss today, I want to:

1. Elucidate important things you might miss as you go through your own dark journey. We are all recovering from something, it could be addiction to drugs or porn, a broken family, a history of rejection by others. As I went through my own journey, I discovered very quickly that what we truly need during this time is a friend and to see purpose in the midst of what seemed like insurmountable odds. I want to give you a flashlight so that we can see the Abyss more clearly – to see purpose and beauty in all the ugliness. This flashlight is something I have today that I wished someone could have given to me back then.
2. Share with you the sobering yet hope-filled journey of losing it all and the subsequent and unexpected restoration after committing my purpose in God. When I lost it all, many assumed I deserved it, or that God was punishing me. Remember the story of the man who traded his paperclip all the way to a house? This was a great analogy of how I got the many aspects of my life back. It wasn’t just a unexpected medical recovery, it’s how I was forced into a direction in my career and it has turned out better than what it was before. God can turn negatives into a positive. Even if the church turns its back on you.
3. Share with you a Jesus I never knew, and unpack biblical truths that I couldn’t commonly find that changed the direction in my spirit. As your spirit changes, you’ll see that your direction and reality on Earth will change over time as to reflect your spirit.

Why call it “Letters to a Modern-day Job”?

In short, the most difficult part of the Abyss was not the physical or emotional pains, though they were massive. The most difficult part was the existential crisis because no one could understand what I was going through and the best of medical doctors couldn’t quite help me either. I cared for, and sought to understand others, yet I did not receive in kind. Because I was misunderstood by both friends and professionals, I soon became a pariah of sorts, a Boo Radley.

I remember during the most difficult days, when the cocktail of the burning physical pains and the emotional anguish of being a “has-been” would soul-crush even the best of them, I would yearn for hope. I would yearn to not go through this alone. Maybe a letter. Maybe a series of letters from someone has successfully traveled this impossible path before me and cared enough to share his insights.

I thought to myself, that during my incarceration, what if my future self could have written letters to my past self? To tell me that I actually did have a future and that it could really turn out better than I could imagine at that time. To tell me what I have to do to get there, and what to expect along the way? That would have been … a lifeline.

Hence, the book “Letters to a Modern-day Job”.

This book would consist of 1) the unfolding story of how God lead me through the Abyss from “paperclip to house” fashion, and 2) a series of letters that sought to teach, encourage, and unpack powerful spiritual truths that unlock significant breakthroughs in that journey. One tells you what is to come, the other tells us spiritual truths that helps us today. Together, they paint a picture of how the sovereign God in his new economy of Grace, interacts with my own challenges and development using the Abyss in order to complete a meaningful story. Your meaningful story.

This book is written for the other Jobs out there who are suffering unfairly and unceasingly to guide them to their destiny. These are Letters to those other modern-day Jobs, you, and to my past self.

Isn’t it great that God is past-present-future and sees the end from the beginning?

When God changed Abram’s destiny, Abram saw it as a specific point in time. God saw it all along, from the beginning. In order words, even when Abram (meaning: high father) was far from being actualized, God already saw him as Abraham, the father of nations. Young’s Literal Translation states:

” … and thy name is no more called Abram, but thy name hath been Abraham, for father of a multitude of nations have I made thee” (Gen 17:5). 

God sees us differently than how we see ourselves.

Eventually, all the good things and bad things in life will shape us into what God already sees. And what He sees is good. We must do our part, and that is learning to see what God sees, and in the process being humbled we see new dimensions of His transforming love.

Hence, Letters to a Modern-day Job is my real life story of hope and the series of letters I would write to my former self knowing what I know now.

A sample of my testimony is here.

Sample of the letters are here and here.

I hope when this book project is done, you can be encouraged by what I have seen God do for me and others.

In the mean time,

X