The job was great . The project and the work were rewarding. A couple of the co-workers were my closest friends. The organization, widely acclaimed, hummed with the camaraderie that makes for contented and productive employees.

So, why was I miserable? Because my relationship with the president, the owner of the company, was a disaster. He was the one who had hired me, but within just a few weeks, things started to deteriorate. Communication between us grew strained, then almost nonexistent. All the trust we'd originally placed in each other disappeared. And despite repeated attempts, I just couldn't get on the same page with him.

These troubles came to a head after I was about three months into the job. I accidentally overheard a conversation between him and my immediate supervisor. The president was verbally running me into the dirt. The list of negatives went on and on. By then, none of his complaints was new to me. The outburst had, in fact, been building for a while. And frankly, my confidence had eroded to the point where some of what he was saying was probably true—I felt I had become an indecisive, ineffectual worker, riddled with self-doubt. Still, overhearing that harangue made for a stinging moment. Did I find it unfair? Yes. Did that make any difference? Not a bit. He ran the organization. He owned it. I knew my days there were numbered. And I was powerless to do anything about it.

Or was I? On dark days, even small glimmers of light stand out, just as slight hints of power look especially bright during times of weakness. Perhaps that's why a passage from the book of Isaiah in the Bible is one of my favorites: "He [God] giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength" (40:29). At the time, I found that verse both promising and puzzling. On the one hand, who wouldn't want the gifts of power and increased strength, especially when those gifts come from the Almighty? But I asked myself, Then why were these gifts specifically intended just for the faint and those with no might? I saw nothing especially deserving about those conditions.

I looked at my own life. I realized that the times I'd felt "faint" were the times I'd been readiest to turn to God as the source of all strength. So, maybe being faint wasn't the key to receiving God's strength and power as much as having the willingness to be less self-reliant and more God-reliant.

I often think of God as infinite Mind, the governing Principle and overriding Truth of the universe. From the standpoint of this concept, God is the source not just of power but also of all wisdom, inspiration, and creativity. Because He is omnipresent, no circumstance can put me out of His reach. No wrong turn that I might make can conceal me from His view. So, the situation does not exist where receiving His gifts is impossible. He is always close. So is His strength.

That passage in Isaiah continues, "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (40:30, 31). Although these promises refer to physical power, I see that the strength and power God promises also apply to emotional, mental, and, most of all, spiritual strength. I've learned that by "waiting on the Lord," I am taking an energizing and empowering stance.

When the president and my supervisor finished their critical conversation, I stood there a while, still unseen by them. I wasn't stunned so much as more resolved fiercely to commit to prayer. Not prayer to hang on to the job—I figured that was gone. But I thought, Even if I'm with this organization for only 20 more minutes, I want it to be 20 minutes of not trying to please another person, but 20 minutes of witnessing to God's good and complete control of the situation. I wanted this to be a time of spiritual authority on my part.

As I stood there, I thought, God has chosen me to be one of His beloved children, just as He's chosen everyone. I took some comfort in that. And it seemed logical that if He'd chosen me as His child, then He knew what He was doing. Circumstances were not out of His control, and I was not powerless to know this. And at that point my confidence and self-respect, which had been ebbing for months, suddenly seemed to catch a rising tide.

In her book Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable" (p. 192). Maybe learning this was what that job was really about for me: I needed to learn how to do good and embody good—no matter what. I needed to learn how to recognize my actions for good as evoking the only true power, God.

Four or five days passed. Then, one afternoon, my supervisor said the president needed to see me in his office. This is it, I thought, I'm fired. But somehow, I felt at peace. There was no bitterness at the prospect. There wasn't even any feeling of defeat. By then, I'd gotten enough glimpses of what God's control of my life means that I knew I'd be OK.

As I entered his office, the president looked up from his desk and offered me a promotion. It was something much better than anything up to that point in my career. It came so abruptly that I hadn't even gotten to sit down with him. I was speechless for several moments. But I did end up accepting the promotion, and from there forward my boss and I shared a genuinely warm, transformed relationship.

A final detail. The same day as the promotion I went back to my immediate supervisor—a close friend—and asked him what was going on. He wondered the same thing. When the president reviewed with him who should be promoted, apparently I topped the list. My supervisor had asked about the salvo of criticism the president had launched my way a few days earlier. Apparently the president drew a blank. He had no recollection of it. All those thunder-heads that had loomed so ominously had suddenly dissipated to the calmest, clearest of skies. It wasn't as if the criticism had no power. It was as if it had never been.

I know the problem of feeling powerless in the workplace is widespread. But I also know that the availability of divine power is even more widespread. God's empowering of each of us as His loved, capable, triumphantly successful sons and daughters continues unabated. These days, I find myself returning to that verse in Isaiah in which God promises to give power to "the faint" and to increase the strength of those who have "no might." Ahhh. Those are promises big enough to transform an entire workplace—and maybe even a whole life.