It is not at all unusual to find people who don’t like their job. They find them boring, demeaning, lacking challenge, oppressive, stressful, providing no recognition, physically and emotionally draining, not providing enough compensation, having bad working conditions, full of bad co-workers, and the complaints go on and on.
So why do these people stay in them? Why don’t they just leave and find something else? Well, there are a lot of reasons people stay at jobs they don’t like. They are not qualified to do something else, they can’t make themselves walk away from the money, they are afraid of disappointing someone, they are too lazy to search for something else, they don’t like learning new things, they are afraid to risk something new, they like the prestige of their present situation, and on and on.
It’s a fact that a lot of people don’t like their job, but they keep it because they think of it as a necessary evil. So what do they do? They just endure it and seek their joy in other parts of life.
But, why does that happen? Almost without exception, it happens because people look at their job from the wrong perspective. When they think of going into a career, their motives are based on a wrong purpose. Some are looking for excitement, recognition, growth opportunities, a particular location, money, certain working hours, or a particular working environment. Of course there is nothing wrong with having any of these desires, but these things should never be a person’s purpose. Beyond that, many people don’t really choose a career at all – they just “fall into it.” An opportunity opens up and they just take it because it came easy. There was never even any thought about other possibilities.
Well, if those are not good reasons, just what is the right perspective? To tell the truth, for people who are not Christians, those are probably the best they can do. But for a Christian, it should be entirely different.
The right perspective is, from the very get go, start with trying to discern God’s purpose for your life. Many Christians believe that God really isn’t concerned with their vocation – that His calling on people’s vocational life only applies to those He wants to lead into Christian leadership ministry – Christian vocations. But that is simply not true. God has a plan for every person’s life, and that plan includes their vocation. God created the world to operate in a way that requires people in every walk of life.
When an individual becomes a Christian, they not only accept Christ as their Savior, but also as their Lord. The idea is that we give up our own will and turn it over to Him for the purpose of accomplishing His purpose for our lives.
At this point, we need to understand that God’s purpose for humanity involves a lot of different things. When we think of the routine parts of life, we can affirm that it involves taking care of our family, our emotions, our body, our material possessions, and so on. But in thinking about this, we also need to remember that all of these things are not actually ours. If we are sincere about Christ being the Lord of our lives, we must also understand what that really means. It means that all of those things no longer belong to us, they belong to Him. We move from considering ourselves to be the owner, to being God’s steward (manager) over them. Our job in life, then, is to manage the different areas of our lives according to His purpose and His will. We need to spend time and effort every day discerning what that looks like, then live it out in life.
And what exactly is that purpose? It is to accomplish the work of God’s kingdom through our lives. God has a purpose for our family, our emotions, our body, our material possessions, and so on. And in relation to the people in the world, His will is that all people come to know Him. We are stewards (managers) of every part of our life, with the purpose of bringing them under His lordship.
So what does that mean for our vocation? It means that it, too, is something that needs to be under Christ’s lordship.
At this point, it is important to understand God’s purpose for people having a vocation. God has revealed some things about that in His revelation to us:
- God created people with an internal need to do productive work. We find fulfillment in it.
- God commanded people to do productive work.
- God made the world to operate in such a way that work is a necessary part of life.
- God has a purpose he wants to accomplish through each person’s work.
So what happens when we live life, including our vocational life, outside of God’s purpose? For people who don’t know Christ, that’s really the only choice they have. They are not connected to God. So, since they have a need to do productive work (which is a built-in element of their personhood), they have to find a personal purpose in it – and it is certainly possible to do that. They may enjoy the money they make, the friendships they create, and the goods they accumulate. They may find great satisfaction in accomplishing goals related to their work. On the other hand, they may not like their work at all and the personal purpose they create in their lives must be found outside their job. The job becomes merely a necessary evil that provides a way for them to get their satisfaction somewhere else. This is a non-Christian’s perspective on work.
But sadly, there are many Christians who look at work in the same way. They don’t recognize God’s calling on their vocation, so they manage their work strictly for themselves – not to accomplish God’s purpose. And those who do that will have the exact same result as the non-believer – they will look at work as something that is their own, and will receive certain kinds of temporal satisfaction, but it will have nothing to do with God’s purpose for their life.
When work is done under Christ’s lordship, however, not only do we find personal fulfillment from the temporal side, but also from the eternal side. We have a sense of closeness to God because we are in His will. We are able to experience not only temporal satisfaction from accomplishing productive work, but true joy knowing it is accomplishing something greater; something beyond ourselves that further’s God’s purpose. We not only have the pleasure of reaping monetary rewards from doing productive work, but also experiencing the satisfaction of being faithful stewards of the resources He has placed in our hands. We not only enjoy our work relationships at the friendship level, but experience the satisfaction of knowing that God is using our lives to touch other people’s lives for His kingdom’s work.
This does not mean you are always going to enjoy what you do on a surface level. I don’t care who you are or what kind of work you do, there are going to be parts of it that you enjoy, and parts you don’t enjoy. But that’s not the point. That’s just life in our fallen world. But it is so much easier to find purpose in the parts we don’t enjoy when we know that our lives are connected to God and are accomplishing something greater than ourselves.
God created you for a purpose. He has called you to know Him in a personal relationship, and to serve Him in every part of your life. He has equipped you spiritually to meet all of the challenges this life brings. And He has laid before you an opportunity to live the most fulfilling life it is possible for a person to live. All that is left is for you to live out that calling.
When it comes to your vocation, there are several possibilities. It is possible that you have consulted God and followed His leading into the vocation he wants you in. It is possible that you have just fallen into something that came along when it was time for you to enter the working world and you never even thought about God’s purpose – and you are miserable. Another possibility is that you never thought about God’s calling on your life, but in spite of that, He still guided you into something He wants to use you in – and you love it. Or, it is possible that you knew God was leading you into some vocation, but you ran from Him and pursued your own choice.
Regardless of your situation, God has not given up on you. If you want to be a faithful steward of God in your life, it is time to take a serious look at where you are in relation to God’s calling. If you are where you are supposed to be, keep on trucking. If you are where you are supposed to be but your heart is not in the right place, get yourself right. If you are running from God, quit running.
A person who holds a biblical worldview is going to live out every part of life based on the teachings of the Bible. It’s time! Get it right!
© 2024 Freddy Davis