The King and I

It began with a message on LinkedIn.

Well, that’s not true. It actually began a year ago, with a group of girls gathered in my living room.

I’d been reading a book by Jonathan Cahn called Paradigm, and I couldn’t get past the first 20 page because the truth of what he was saying was so disturbing I felt like the only solution was to pray about it, otherwise I’d just be sitting alone in my kitchen weeping and repenting on behalf of a billion people. I called a couple of friends to see if they’d be willing to join me in creating a prayer group, not only because I didn’t want to go at it alone, but also because there are countless stories of small gatherings of women coming together to pray, and God showing up in miraculous ways.

So, on February 14th of last year*, we began meeting regularly for prayer nights to seek God for help in all of the sexual brokenness our culture: divorce, infidelity, the collapse of marriage and families; confusion about sexual identity and the blurring the lines between male and female; prostitution and pornography; rampant sexual abuse, sexual violence, and sex trafficking. It’s a broad topic, we discovered.

*unpopular greeting card: Happy Valentine’s Day: sexual sin is real!

And while the specific matters we prayed about each week could be as narrow as our own personal needs, or as broad as what’s happening in the Church (capital “C”)–praying for the streets in Providence lined with strip clubs, or the detrimental effects of “liberation” in Berkley, CA–we always kept this theme in the back of our minds as the purpose for our meetings.

Months later, we were still gathering and praying on a weekly basis, but at the forefront of our prayer requests–for at least a couple of us–was the idea of jobs. Both my friend Katie and I were looking for new jobs, and had been since January, exhausting ourselves with searching for opportunities, sending in applications, hearing nothing, having interviews, facing rejections. It was a rollercoaster of built-up hopes and dashed dreams, and we found ourselves feeling lost and discouraged.

Then one week, Morgan prayed that Katie would get a lead on a job THAT VERY WEEK, and that this job would be the answer to prayer we’ve been waiting for.

TWO DAYS LATER, Katie received a message from LinkedIn, for a job that was perfect for her, allowing her to working remotely and specialize in travel to Ireland and the UK–and they reached out to her! She didn’t have to “do” anything except fill in the blanks, and it was the beginning of her journey to what is now her new job.**

**Praise God / Alleluia!

Meanwhile, a couple of weeks later at prayer group, I gave an update on my job situation: in preparation for an interview I was scheduled to have, I found out the company was under lawsuit for their treatment of international au pairs. Great. So that night the group prayed for me and my job search, asking that I’d be able to find the job that best incorporated my passions and my gifts.

Two days later I got an email from someone on LinkedIn, but I was ready to ignore it. I read it aloud to my roommate, who moonlights in my prayer group, and she convinced me it wasn’t spam because “it’s LinkedIn. Isn’t there some sort of screening process? I think it’s worth hearing more about.”

This was the email:

Dear Jennifer,

I have a rare opportunity with a company that’s Founder needs a Traveling English Teacher/Administrative Assistant. You would be creating & conducting lessons to the Founder in grammar, verbs, tense, English dialect; etc. Since teaching isn’t full-time, administrative duties will fill the other portion of time. This is an elite individual with offices in Los Angeles, Budapest, Luxembourg, & France It will require being outside the US over 50% of the time- for multiple months at a time in most of those locations. 
You would typically be traveling with a team.
Please let me know if this opportunity is feasible for your current lifestyle and of interest. If so, please provide the best phone number to reach you and when you can discuss. If you are not interested but happen to know someone- please let me know.
Note: This is a confidential search and more details will only be provided after we talk. 

The only thing missing was, “Let’s meet in a back ally late at night so I can tell you more about it…and please bring $1,000,” but since they required only a phone call, I took my roommate’s advice and set something up. I nearly forgot to tell my prayer group about it, but it came up as since the phone call with “The Founder” was the same day as my re-scheduled interview with the au pair company.

As it turned out, the job was legitimate, and The Founder happened to be a billionaire from Hungary. Here were the specifications of the position:

• determine The Founder’s English level and design a curriculum for him
• give private lessons when he’s available
• work as an admin/ personal assistant during the rest of the 40 hrs/wk
• be a part of the traveling team, jettisoning off to exotic locales whenever needed
• spend 75% overseas (they email had said 50%, but that wasn’t accurate)
• I wouldn’t need an apartment because room and board would be covered (airbnb’s or hotel rooms)
• plus I’d be given a $65/day food stipend
• and a salary of $75k, with benefits, and 4 weeks of paid vacation

It sounded too good to be true. It sounded like my dream job. Not to mention, after only a couple of years at $75K and essentially no cost of living, I’d be able to set myself up for FIVE YEARS of nothing but writing!

That’s when I asked the question weighing on everyone’s mind. “What exactly does the Founder do?”

To be fair, the recruiter didn’t lead with saying, “He’s a Porn King.” It was Google searching his name that brought that result. She, on the other hand, gave me his actual business, media technology, and told me all of the “verticals” for which his inventions have had influence. It just so happens that adult entertainment was the most successful.

Now, if you’re the average person who’s spent years living with wanderlust, who earned a TEFL certification to teach English overseas, who loves the idea of a transient lifestyle, and who couldn’t wait to write a best selling memoir, My Year(s) Traveling With the Porn King, then you might have zero reservations about moving forward with such a job opportunity.

However, if you’ve been called into praying for the sexual brokenness in our culture, and done so for 8 months with a group of friends, this seems like something else.

In fact, the exact image I received was Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, where he’s led up to the highest point of the temple and told, “All of the kingdoms of the world could be yours, if only you bow down and worship me.”

OH BUT WHYYYYYYYYYYY, I cried. This. Isn’t. Fair!

And I went back and forth with myself for a week about continuing forward with the multi-step application process (which I was doing) or getting out ASAP. I told my parents, my friends, my roommate, my prayer group, my pastor–who has openly talked about overcoming a porn addiction–thinking they would for sure say, “What are thinking?! You can’t do it!”

No one said that. Instead, they said, “We trust you’ll make the right decision.”

(Although my pastor opened with, “Well, this is a first.”)

The most telling moment, other than listening to my own head exploding, was asking my trusted friend, Lauren, to do a “blind listening prayer” for me.

Lauren was completely removed from the situation — she did not know I’d been contacted by a recruiter, that I was interested in this job, that I’d be working for a guy whose primary income resulted from making the world’s 3rd biggest pornography website. She only knew that I was in need of some direction. “Could you just pray for me and see if God tells you anything?” I asked.

She prayed and got a response.

“Let the devil know not today.”

I’m not kidding! Those were her very words!

It was so frustratingly clear: I could not keep moving forward with this job. If I got too close to getting it (say, a job offer…or going to CA for an interview), I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to turn it down, even though I knew in my heart this was not what God was inviting me to do.

So, after many conversations, prayers, and sleepless nights, I withdrew myself from the process. As soon as I sent the email, I cried. It was like watching my dreams funnel down the drain, never to return.

Which is, of course, the lie the devil wants us to believe. Because God’s way of attaining our dreams is always, always better. I may not be living out of my suitcase in Hungary right now, but I am living out my dream of being a writer, which would not have been possible otherwise.

It seems like our prayers were answered after all.

Happy Valentine’s Day ❤