Abide

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

Welcome to the City Lights Church Podcast. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing today, we hope this message inspires you to follow Jesus. You can find out more about City Lights Church at city-lights.church.

Danielle Pentony (0:26)

Good morning, church.

I am continuing with the series, Thriving in Babylon. And over the past few weeks, Pastor Andrew has been reminding us about what it takes to thrive in Babylon. So I'm just going to give you a quick recap. In week one, we learned about purpose, purpose of life, purpose of life, purpose of life, purpose of life, about purpose, pressure, and prayer from the life of Daniel. In week two, we learned about living our convictions through the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Today I'm going to continue with that journey through the book and life of Daniel. But first, City Lights has been my home church for about five years now. Time has certainly flown. I'm also part of the leadership team here at City Lights and part of the board as well. But one thing that I count very important is being Tilly's auntie. Every ounce of self-control right now, not to look at that little face, or I would crack up. But what do I do in my day job? I work in the federal government. I am the chief information security officer. I look after the cyber security for one of the portfolios in government. If you've known me for a while, you will know that any questions about my work I usually met with, yes, I've had a busy week and nothing else. My days are spent fighting fires or meeting with policy and decision makers in the country about all things cyber security. Most days, if you walked into my office, you will find me with a cup of tea or coffee probably doing this. But I love where God has placed me and I love what I do.

Some of you have heard part of my testimony before. So several years ago, my mum worked as a teacher in a school run by Youth with a Mission, shout out to all the YYMSE and the audience.

They had a staff retreat, and the staff were allowed to bring their kids. I wasn't exactly a kid back then. I was 18 years old, so not exactly a child. There was one of the leaders who was visiting from the US. And basically, the staff had their own training program. But that day, he just looked at me, gave me a prophetic word. Now, this is an 18-year-old. I have no idea what prophetic words or words of knowledge are like. So it was very strange. I hadn't crossed the border of my state. And here was a man telling me that I was going to go off to far off lands, that I was going to take light into dark places. It was a long prophetic word. My dad got it typed out, printed it off for me, and it stayed in my Bible for many years. So fast forward to a few years later, I graduated from university and had done my master's in business administration by then. All of my classmates had job offers in hand or jobs in hand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not land a job. I remember my dad praying over me and saying, you will be the head and not the tail. Now, if you've spent a few minutes in the presence of my dad, you know that my dad really loves Jesus. So I looked at my dad and I'm thinking, I don't have a job, dad, let's get that sorted first before I become the head. But let's just get to that part. The Lord had plans and he knew where I needed to be, and where I needed to start my career, and the trajectory that my career was going to look like. So I finally got a job in a large global and banking financial services firm, and I started off as a management trainee. Now I did core banking stuff, nothing remotely related to cybersecurity. And during that time, he kind of expanded my experience. I learned about banking rules, regulations across the world, technology that was taking, you know, was happening across the globe. As I got to work with branches across the come, across the globe, to be honest, the lot's favor was no doubt on me. And there was no way that this girl had overnight success. I had to put in the hard work too. So fast forward to 2011, and the bank I'd worked for had gone through a transition. We'd been bought out by a bank in Scotland, and the regulators were knocking on our doors to make changes to our systems that would improve the security of the high-risk applications that the bank used. I thought before that that I was being passed over for a promotion because at that point another friend of mine got a different role, and I was stuck in a different position. And that's what I thought. But God had different plans. I was picked to lead a team that would have to implement the recommendations from this audit over the next five years. And those five years went really quick. The Lord blessed the work of my hands, but also the teams that I led. And when I left the bank in 2015, I had become one of the youngest assistant vice presidents at the bank. And this is 2015, right? And during those five years of working in cyber security and doing different things across the bank, I found myself at a crossroad in life. I could stand all day and talk to you about the goodness of God in my life and the things that He's taken me through. But I chose to trust God at that point in time. And I started to pray into what God wanted me to do next. And so in 2013, I sensed that God was calling me to move to Australia. So I started the visa process to come out on a skilled visa. It was a long wait of about three years. I finally moved to Brisbane in 2016 It's been 10 years now. And you would think that coming in on this skilled visa, as soon as I landed, I would have gotten a job, given my past experience. But as months progressed, interview after interview, I found myself questioning the plan of God in my life and whether I'd made that right decision to actually move to Australia.