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Is your job fulfilling to you? Whatever you do every day, whether outside or inside your home, do you find it fulfills you and makes you feel good about yourself?
Now, here’s the next question: As a Christian, is it important that we have a job that is personally fulfilling? Is that our right? Should that have a high priority in our lives?
My answer may surprise you but think it through with me. I think the whole question of fulfilling jobs and careers is a result of the humanistic thinking that pervades our society. We have been subtly led to believe that we have a right to be fulfilled, whatever that means, and that right takes precedence over all others. So, a fulfilling job—a job we like—becomes an accepted and appropriate goal.
Our thinking has been so clouded with self-actualization, self-esteem, and self-fulfillment, that we Christians have sometimes missed a basic truth of scripture: self-denial. If there’s a self-fulfillment message in God’s Word, I’ve missed it.
Now, don’t turn me off yet. I’m not saying that we have to trudge through life hating what we do, martyrs for Jesus, sad-faced and depressed, because we can’t be self-fulfilled. It does not mean that you can’t look for a job that interest you, nor is it wrong to enjoy the job you have.
But you see, we keep getting the cart before the horse. We won’t find fulfillment in jobs. I know, because I tried for a long time to make myself feel good and worthwhile through my job. I’ve held lots of jobs in my career, some with glamorous aspects, a good bit of recognition and success. And I’m here to tell you that not one of those jobs ever made me feel fulfilled and complete. Even at their best moments, I knew inside they were missing the mark. And every job had its share of routine and drudgery.
While Jesus came to bring us life abundant, he told us clearly that: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). What did he mean exactly?