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I hear Christians talking about being bored and unchallenged in their jobs, wanting to find a job that fulfills them. I wonder if they are looking in the wrong place for the fulfillment and joy they want.
We looked at what Jesus said in Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
What did he mean by that? He’s simply telling us that to find real fulfillment in life, knowing
that what you’re doing matters and God is pleased, you have to take a different path. It’s an upside down path but it’s the path Jesus says to take—to lose our lives for his sake, and in doing so we find life! We find the fulfillment that has eluded us.
Here’s a quote from a secular book written by Betty Friedan. She began the feminist movement in 1963, fighting for women to be able to hold any job they were qualified for, and when that happened, women would be set free from home to find their fulfillment. Twenty years later she candidly admitted that the search for fulfillment which women thought they would find in a job did not work. Quoting from her book:
Said the vice president of a large corporation: “For 17 years, all I’ve lived for is that company. Because we wanted so much to get up there, we had blinders on for everything else in life except finally making it on the board. My glamorous career! I hit some deep spiritual crisis, or something, but it wasn’t satisfying to me anymore. …It’s a real spiritual crisis, when you reach that plateau and you realize you’ve gone as far as you can go in that company, that industry, and all those trimmings and trappings you’d been working for all these years, that’s all there is.”
Can’t you hear the disappointment in her words? She learned that fulfillment does not come from a job, no matter how good it is. In the end, they are just jobs, sometimes repetitive and boring. Certainly not totally fulfilling.
But here’s the good news: No matter what job we have, as Christians we can do it to God’s glory and it therefore becomes meaningful and purposeful. I knew a woman who worked in a large bakery, doing rather repetitive work, but she viewed it as her mission field and God opened many doors for her to share the Gospel with many people, including executives in the company. She never complained about her routine job because she saw it as her opportunity to share the love of Jesus.
You can know fulfillment in the midst of a routine job if you know Jesus and you’re doing your work for his glory.
