I want to answer this honestly, because I asked it myself — through more than one organization, under more than one impossible leader — and the easy answers made it worse.
You’ve prayed. You’ve stayed faithful. You’ve done excellent work as unto the Lord. And the boss who wants to see you fall is still there, still promoted, still throwing spears. Why is God allowing this?
Here’s what I can tell you, with the Scripture stated as Scripture and my own inference labeled as inference.
What Scripture Doesn’t Promise
Start here, because false promises break faith. The Bible never promises that faithful people will be spared unjust bosses. Joseph was faithful and went to prison. Daniel was faithful and went to the lions. David was faithful and spent years in caves with a king hunting him. Jesus told His followers plainly, “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33).
And Scripture doesn’t promise you an explanation. Job never got one. What he got was God Himself — which turned out to be the answer under the answer. If you’re waiting for the reason before you can trust, you may wait a long time. Trust is what you do without the reason.
What Scripture Does Show
God is present in the wilderness, not just the palace. The most repeated line in Joseph’s story is this: “the LORD was with Joseph” — said of the slave’s quarters and the prison as surely as of the throne room (Genesis 39:2, 21). Presence, not exemption, is the promise. The same is said of David during the years Saul hunted him: “the LORD was with him” (1 Samuel 18:12, 14). Read that carefully — it was true while the spears were flying.
The wilderness produced the king. Here’s an inference I’ll stand behind: David didn’t become fit for the throne in the palace. He became fit in the caves. That’s where he learned to lead hurting people — four hundred distressed, indebted men who came to him at Adullam (1 Samuel 22:2). That’s where he learned restraint, sparing Saul twice when he could have ended the hunt with one stroke. And that’s where the Psalms came from — the prayers that have carried millions through their own valleys were written by a man running from his boss. The season you’re asking God to end may be the season God is using most.
Evil intent and God’s purpose can share the same event. Joseph’s brothers meant to destroy him. Twenty years later he told them: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). Notice what he did not say — he didn’t say the evil was good, or that God did it. He said God outworked it. Your boss’s jealousy is his sin, not God’s plan for your life. But it isn’t outside God’s ability to redeem, and Scripture’s testimony is that He’s very good at building futures out of other people’s malice.
Three Things This Season May Be Doing
Speculation, offered humbly, from what I’ve watched God do in these seasons — mine and others’:
Revealing what’s in you. Pressure doesn’t create character; it exposes it. This season is showing you — and everyone watching — whether you’ll throw the spear back. Every day you don’t is a day you’re becoming someone Saul could never be.
Teaching you the right audience. Some of us needed a boss who could never be pleased to finally learn to work for the One who already is. That lesson doesn’t come easily to strong performers. Sometimes it takes a leaking tank to teach it.
Preparing you to lead. The person who has survived a Saul with integrity becomes a leader who recognizes the spirit in himself and refuses it. Your future team will benefit from what your current boss is teaching you about what never to become.
What This Doesn’t Mean
It doesn’t mean you must stay. Suffering is not a mandate. David endured — and then David left the palace, wisely and on his timeline, and God’s purpose went with him. Enduring faithfully and leaving wisely are both on the table, and prayer plus honest counsel is how you tell which season you’re in. It also doesn’t mean your pain is small. God kept every one of David’s tears (Psalm 56:8). He’s keeping yours.
Go Deeper
I wrote a full book on David’s survival of Saul — the faith and the strategy together: how to recognize the pattern, understand the man behind it, and walk through the wilderness season with your character, your calling, and your future intact: The Spirit of Saul: Surviving the Boss Who Wants to See You Fall.
I can’t tell you why the season is this long. I can tell you the Lord is with you in it, that the wilderness has a history of producing kings, and that this is not the end of your story. Finish your song.
Commissioner William Epps is an author and security leadership consultant. His books are published through E.P.P.S Method Publishing Co.
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