Finding Your Calling, Without Changing Your JobSample

As I decided to stick it out in my boring job, I started to ask more specific questions.

“What’s my purpose here, God?”

“What specifically do you want me to do for you at this job?”

Some of the answers to these questions can be found in the Bible. After God calls people to belong to Jesus, God calls people to participate in what is often called the “ministry of reconciliation.” Reconciliation means seeing things that are broken in the world and making them more like God wants them to be.

In every job, there are things that need fixing. These might be problems in your company, in the day-to-day processes of your work. Or they could be problems in relationships with the people around you at work.

As I started to look at my job with new eyes, I started to see that there was a lot I could do for God.

For starters, I was hired to run marketing campaigns using an email list that was ten years old and filled with useless entries. We were selling clients on a delivery capacity that just wasn’t there. I had to judiciously bring these issues to light, so that the people I worked under could understand the problem and fix it.

Secondly, because our product was being oversold, it was difficult to deliver on marketing campaigns. This made the sales manager angry, and he expressed this by yelling at his salespeople. In those moments, it was my job to be a calm, peaceful model of communication.

It turns out I didn’t need to change jobs to work for God. I just needed to understand my purpose there in light of God’s biblical calling.

If you have a job you hope God will call you out of, ask yourself, “What is my true calling?” Maybe you’re meant to go, or maybe you’re meant to stay.

Wherever you work, remember the core of your calling is the same: to belong to Jesus and to seek reconciliation on God’s behalf.

Prayer: God, wherever you bring me to work today, help me understand my true calling. May I work with you and for you, God. Thank you for calling me. Amen.

If you enjoyed this plan, find additional plans from the Theology of Work Project at https://www.theologyofwork.org/devotions