VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger is a tech guy through and through, and this is why he felt torn after God called him to serve in the ministry.
He became a Christian in February 1980, and right after that, Gelsinger felt God was directing him towards the ministry. Instead of feeling honoured by the pull, Gelsinger at first felt frustrated because he's happy being a tech guy, and he's successful at it, too.
"As a very young Christian at that point, I was really quite confused by the entire sequence. So, after arguing with God about this for several months, I laid a fleece before God, kind of the Gideon's fleece experience. As soon as I did that, the answer became clear from God that the workplace is my ministry, and I'm called to be a full-time workplace minister, and that's really been the centre of my life and value system ever since then," he tells the Gospel Herald.
Gelsinger says he's delighted to have a job, and he's also delighted to be paid by the company. But ultimately, he considers Jesus Christ as his CEO.
Some Christians struggle with balancing their work life, family life, and God. When work and family lives get demanding, Gelsinger acknowledges that sometimes, God gets shoved aside.
But personally, Gelsinger has mastered the juggling act, prioritising God, then family and then work.
"You have to take very disciplined and explicit steps to keep your life in balance and realise that this month, you might be out of balance, so you have to take steps to be in balance next month. You might have a big project coming up, so you better be taking steps to date your wife, and your kids, and other things like that, knowing that work demands will ebb and flow over time," he says. "You have to put guardrails up in your life to build those elements of balance."
