It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.
Sometimes we need guidance over tough terrain, and other times all we really need is some company.
Vinita Hampton Wright
It’s been said that up to 80% of working men and women hate their jobs. I believe it. From where I sit, this statistic is one of the saddest commentaries in life. To think that the setting where most people spend the bulk of their hours and days is a place they despise is, well, unthinkable. But oh so common.
Reflecting back in my own life to my early twenties, I remember lamenting daily to my longsuffering mother about how I felt impatient and so full of angst to find the right vocational fit for myself. I tried retail, restaurants, accounting…nothing made my heart sing. In all honesty, it wasn’t until I had given birth to my eldest daughter and was a stay-at-home-mom that I discovered my love for writing. That’s when the vocational clicking happened to me. Looking back, I can see how God open and closed doors for me along the way (and I was finding out a lot about my strengths and weaknesses every step of the way.)
Vocational Mistakes Are Teaching Tools
Still, I recall keenly the emotional distress I felt at that young age and I remember praying that God would help me figure out what He wanted me to do given how He created me. Eventually, He answered that prayer. But it wasn’t until I’d experienced lots of bumps and bruises and even more vocational mishaps, mistakes and setbacks during those early years.
Of course, I now understand that God was wanting me first to trust Him and to submit myself to His timing and plans for me. But it was hard. Longsuffering comes to mind again as I then believed that particular season of waiting would never come to an end.
All Of Life’s Experiences Grow Us
The fact is (and always will be), God is always more interested in making me more like Jesus than He is with my shortsighted pleading prayers to make my life one big, happy, happy, happy adventure. And I realize something now, I wouldn’t be able to accomplish the work God has given me today if I hadn’t endured those rough patches through the years.
Our experiences give us the opportunity and the voice to speak into others’ lives with a keen effectiveness that comes only after we’ve dug some trenches and emptied stinky garbage cans with our blood, sweat, and tears. Only then, can God use our gifts and talents to shine bright in the workplace because character always comes first.
We Can Trust God To Use Even The Hardest Seasons
Author Jerry Bridges writes in his excellent book, Trusting God, that so many folks are unhappy in their workplaces primarily because they use the wrong tools to select their career. Bridges believes that the majority of people struggle against who God made them to be and rather than try to discover their talents, gifts, and natural bents, they rail against their God-given design and choose careers where they won’t succeed.
Makes sense to me. I would guess that we’ve all observed men and women who pursued certain career paths because they blindly followed in their parents’ footsteps. Others chose their colleges and subsequent careers because they felt pressured by peers to do so. Still more select vocations solely based on the how much monetary return they’ll receive. None of these reasons alone are good parameters for making career choices.
Others Can Often Recognize Our Gifts Before We Do
I’ve always been a fan of those gifts and talents testing services where individuals can fill out the forms to find out what types of workplace scenarios they’ll be most likely to succeed at and be happy doing. Another good way to discern what areas might be worth pursuing is to listen to others’ assessments of what you excel at…we often don’t see ourselves clearly, but onlookers do. When a person consistently hears others telling them they excel at leading…take note. When someone tells me I’ve encouraged them, I take note. When I observe an individual handling money expertly and I tell them so, they take note. There are clues all around us that God uses to direct our paths and some of those can be unveiled through the comments and observations of people we trust most.
Another key principle to workplace success is embracing the truth that God uses even the most unlikely work situations and people to bring out our best (and worst) so that we do grow strong in character. If you have a wonderful boss, thank God for him. If you are dealing with an unreasonable boss, then thank God for the opportunity to evidence unconditional love toward that person and perhaps be used as the instrument to bring that difficult one to saving faith in Christ. That scenario happens every day…a strong-hearted, hardworking employee who submits first to God and then to his unreasonable employer…what better way to shine bright?
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