According to Wikipedia, being born in 1982 puts me as one the early Millennials, a generation so identified with internet, social media and a personality with sometimes too many questions.
I taught myself to build websites at 23, not long after Jesus came to my life at 21. Since then, I always have a “presence” on the internet. Today outside of work, I fund a small team running few innovation projects, one of which is Kuisalkitab, an Indonesian modern Bible quiz products, which God has allowed to influence over 15K people on Instagram and nearly 1 million annual web page views.
Few youngsters once joked that I was more millennial than the actual millennials. Sometimes I also wonder why God wired me this way.
My Day Job, My Calling
My workplace calling is in the stock market as a trader. I intentionally use the word “calling” because I know for certain God was the one who instructed and opened the door into this industry. My job is to digest fast moving information to buy and sell stocks of companies in the Indonesian capital market for global institutional investors (fund managers).
Before all this, I was a junior banker who left his career in 2005 to follow Jesus, my newly found Savior. I joined a full time ministry staff role, mistakenly thinking I was to be a pastor or ministry worker, only to find later the Almighty was sending me back even deeper into Mammon’s nest, with a new heart and mission.
In the span of over 20 years, I’ve worked in few different global companies under many different bosses – the good, the bad and the ugly – and sharing desks with multinational colleagues. The company I work for today is one the world’s biggest financial company, but they didn’t hire me because I’m smart or anything, mainly because I have a reputation of integrity among clients, tech-savvy and I fight hard for results.
QUESTIONING TOO MUCH, STAYING REAL
God wired me to question things a lot, even of Himself. There was a point not so long ago where I question the authenticity of Christianity because of the fake things I see in churches.
But despite that, so many unexplainable things had happened in my life that could only have one explanation: God is real. My faith was never shaken, it found sun and bursted through the thorns. He allowed me to question, but at the same time gave hard evidence of His existence. In the end result, my trust in humans came down and my faith in God grew exponentially.
In the end I think I understand why He wired me like this: so I can STAY REAL in my walk with Him and not easily fall into what Paul referred in Romans 16 as “smooth talk and glowing words”.
And I also get it. I get it why young people like the millennials or the future Gen-Z have doubts about Christianity or the church. I was there and I’m still here. The journey is real, yes there is more than just this and the reward is worth going for!
CALLED TO HELP THOSE IN THE WORKPLACE
After few seasons of “wrestling it with God”, I came to the full realization that I’m not called into church ministry, rather into the trenches of workplace battles where daily Christians fight in the areas of work, money and balancing family/marriage commitments.
Faith is often depicted in churches as that life where work is good, family are okay, future planned, problems solved and disasters averted. Unsure how it came to be, but I think this image of faith life is fake! It makes you feel guilty when your own life looks like a train wreck or an MMA cage fight. That kind of projected faith life is phony, making it toxic and dangerous.
Fake spiritual life does not lead to thriving family and workplace life.
Real faith living is brutal, full of questions, struggle and daily temptations. If you’re someone who’s happy with just small security in life, you might find my statement excessive. But if you’re someone who wants to really move forward in life, to be someone of great capacity and ability to bless others, to bless society and really shines the light of Christ in the world, you will surely meet some serious challenges within youself and outside yourself. I’ve come to understand that from first hand experiences.
In the past 20 years, God has allowed me to “taste” all kinds of real life situations, and they’re still ongoing. I’ve experienced bankrupcty as a teenager when my dad’s business went under, I fell into the tempation of money and made a bad investment decision which plunged my household into crisis. I experienced running out of money, withdrawing my last cash from the ATM, stuck in credit card debt, made a wrong career move. Even already a believer, I used to be a very self-centered and workaholic man, my wife nearly left me at one stage because I was so self-absorbed.
But I’ve also experienced giving money and got 100x fold back. I’ve had moment where I was stuck in a bad job with a bad boss and God miraculously gave me a new and better job in just 2 weeks time. Me and my wife also had property miracles where God enabled us to buy the apartment we thought we could never afford. I’ve gone through periods where job offers came uninvited and periods where I had to go out and find myself a job interview opportunity. I understand the difficulty of navigating through the tricky career path, office politics and building a reputation in an industry from scratch.
WHAT I SHARE AND DON’T SHARE
I share personal stories about what I know deeply well and what I think is within my area of calling. I don’t think it’s fair or beneficial for anyone if I comment on things I don’t know well or called into.
I personally believe Christians should have other competencies than just speaking on spritiual matters, especially Christians called to the workplace. So I will try to share a Christian’s perspective on topics I follow, such as global workplace trends, job trends, skill developments, personal life tech, workplace tech and other information I think important for workplace Christians to know.
I hope to somewhat be a filter of workplace news for other believers, a better (not perfect) source of workplace information with a balanced perspective between workplace reality and the truth in the Bible.
I’m not a pastor or bible teacher, don’t take my personal stories and opinions as gospel. I see my presence as “filling the gap” of what’s often missing in churches, like a finger coming to make the body of Christ more complete. I don’t intend to replace any of the pastoral functions or the church’s role. Always reflect my posts with your personal situation. You should always take it into your prayers and discuss with pastors or mentors who know you personally well.
I DON’T share stock recommendations or give investment advices. Firstly, because I am restricted by work agreements which I highly honor. Secondly, after holding multiple church financial planning seminars in the past, I think handing a straight recommendation of what investment to buy to a fellow Christian is reckless and may mislead people into darkness. I will try instead, to write more about the danger of money seduction to our spirit, which relates a lot with making a safe and sober money decision.
More about me
I’m married to a beautiful wife called Trisya for more than a decade now, since 2008. We’re raising two young children in our birth city, Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, home to 15 million people by the way! I love freestyle jump rope as an exercise and stress release, I post them on a separate instagram and I’m part of a growing global community of jumpers. I play acoustic guitar, I listen to many CCM musics, including Christian Rock! I own a Martin DX1 Rae guitar at home and my wife has one of the most beautiful singing voice I’ve ever heard in my life!
Me and my wife are incredibly different and opposite of each other. I’m logical she’s abstract. I studied economy, she studied art. She’s very tidy, I’m messy, you can imagine our early years living together. She’s has a dominant personality and I’m less dominant, one day I’ll write how it works nicely for us, why a dominant female is also God’s creation and you can definitely learn to dance and have so much fun together!
If you encounter foreign language articles on this blog, don’t be alarmed. Those are my old native Indonesian language posts, mostly about Christian dating, finding your soul mate from God and starting a married life. Before I switched to workplace writing, I had been blogging to young Indonesian Christians for 10 years (2009-2019). In 2019, I felt everything that needed to be shared on that young life topic had been shared and it’s time to move on. After a year of another “wrestling it with God”, I followed God’s leading to start writing on workplace theme in January 2021, while keeping those old archives online for young people in my country to find.
I’d love to connect. I share short burst of thoughts, answer question, share infos and new post alert on Twitter, I give casual family update on Instagram or you can join the free newsletter to keep up with the latest posts on this blog.
God bless,
Jerry.