GIFTS AND TALENTS
Follow Your Passion, Not Your Career Path
11.26.06
Article:
Frederick Buechner famously told us to look for our calling in the place "where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Often, we think of this as finding the right job category and then plunging into work as a business person or doctor or teacher or mechanic.
But finding joy in our work takes more than just finding a job that lets us use the knowledge or skills that we have enjoyed learning. Once we enter the working world, we quickly realize that there are many ways to use the same set of abilities.
I know two nurses. One finds great joy serving in a hospice and offering tender care to the dying. The other works in the burn ward of a children's hospital and helps little ones on the road to recovery. But neither of them can imagine how the other works where she does. "How can you work as a nurse where all your patients die?" asks the one. "How can you bear seeing little children suffer without curling up in a ball and crying all day?" asks the other. Each would be miserable in the other's job, even though they are both nurses.
So how do we find out which particular job God wants us to take? One of the most cosmically grand verses in Scripture provides some very practical help:
"All things have been created through Christ and for Christ . . . and in him all things hold together. . . . For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things."
To put it another way: any job that advances God's work in the world is a godly choice. As Martin Luther pointed out, if we pray "Give us today our daily bread," how can we say that the work of the baker is not as much God's work as is the work of the pastor? We're even given the freedom to choose which type of baker to be—the God we serve likes whole wheat as well as baguettes and matzos.
This means we can choose the particular job that we most enjoy, the one that we find energizing, not enervating.
In the Parable of the Talents, the Master wants us to make the productive use of what he gives us, but he leaves it up to us to find our own particular way to be productive. In other words, we shouldn't tie ourselves in knots over which job is "God's will."
God knows that if we are passionate and fulfilled in what we do, we will be most creatively engaged in our work as colaborers with Christ. St. Augustine put it like this: "Love, and do whatever you like." If we only took the second part of the phrase to heart, then we might think it okay to use our God-given abilities to advertise cigarettes or engineer landmines. But the first part of that phrase—"Love"—ensures that our working lives will "not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2).
We will find that we most delight in doing precisely what God most needs us to do.
READER'S COMMENTS
Thank you for sharing this article. My passion is writing, reading, and listening to music.
It is a way that I can help others as well as help myself.
shalom
Angela
This is a timely article for me. I am at a point where I don’t know where God wants me. I have been a medical provider for over 15 years and do enjoy it. Recently, some challenges have prepared me to consider other lines of work; it seemed God’s plan was that I would not be allowed to serve in this way anymore. However, now it seems that everything is working out and my career will remain intact. After I had prepared for the worst and considered everything from trash collecting to leaving the country to do missionary work. I do love medicine, but I have found a new love in sharing Christ and comforting those less fortunate. I just don’t know what to do; all I want is to do what He wants; whatever it is. If it wasn’t for the need of money to provide for my family I would be half way across the world providing medical care And ministry to gods children that need it. Pray He guides me to where He wants me, and pray I listen.
Scott McQueen
Dear Scott.. not everyone is called to serve God in missionary .. that said.. we can serve God in our workplace - afterall i look around everyday.. i see miserable faces.. and isn't is already missionary work to be just there and provide warmth for overstressed colleagues
I just discovered this site today!
I wish I had known this type of wisdom when I was first saved at 18 years old. For years I tried to figure out what God wanted me to do as my career, and I just could not figure it out.
20+ years later I have a roadmap of a resume, all administrative type jobs that I have HATED. I finally decided I couldn't take it anymore and left my job... only to be stuck here two years later, unemployed and living back with my parents.
I'd take ANY job at this point. I no longer have any hope that God even has a future for me. I really don't. Otherwise He would've answered my desperate cries (as well as searches) for work.
I just can't work up any hope at all anymore. Two years of looking is just too much.
WELL SIR THE ONLY THING THAT I CAN TELL YOU IS TO KEEP AND PRAYING, HAVE PLENTY OF FAITH, AND GET ON A VERY GOOD FAST, TITHE 10% OF INCOME THAT YOU GET AND GIVE THAT AS AN OFFERING AND GIVE GOD YOUR TIME AND IF THERES ANYTHING THAT'S HINDERING YOU LEAVE THAT ALONE AND YOU WILL SEE THAT IF YOU SEEK WITH ALL YOUR MIND,BODY, AND SOUL YOU SHALL FIND IN JESUS NAME AMEN MUCH LOVE!!!
GODS SERVANT, TO MO AND EVERYBODY ELSE