My name is Steve and I’m an IT professional from Birmingham. I was working for a consultancy called Mott MacDonald within the transport planning sector. I was happy at home with my wife, our family lived locally, we were in a good church and actively involved within it. Life was generally good. Except for work.

It paid well but after redundancies I was left with a stressful amount of work. I don’t mind a certain level of stress but the work came with little satisfaction. Transport planning isn’t the first industry that comes to mind when you talk about excitement, plus getting stuck in traffic most days during my commute to work made me question what’s the point? This lead to the stress getting worse and Sunday evenings being a time of a real intense mental battle to prepare for Monday instead of a time of rest. What made this even harder to get my head around as a Christian is I believe God put me where I was, my wife and I were settled in Birmingham however my work life just felt wrong.

As a Christian I turned to the all knowing G, Google. I looked up Christian jobs and found a listing for an IT role in none other than Birmingham with an organisation called Agape. I looked further into them only to discover they were based on the same street as Motts, literally five extra minutes down the road. We met, I prayed about it, got a sense of peace, applied and got the job.

Now I’m at Agape I feel my work has a real sense of purpose, it’s feeding into things that are making a real difference. During the dark times at Motts things felt hopeless but now I’m on the other side of things I understand I wouldn’t have searched out Agape if I was settled. Ultimately God had a plan for me and had me placed where I needed to be. A sense of calling is important, some people are called to travel to different parts of the world, I was called to walk five extra minutes.