Advice for Discouraged, Unemployed College Grads
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Desree emails to ask, "Pastor John, what advice and biblical encouragement do you
00:00:10.260 | have for college graduates who are unemployed or have no certainty of a job
00:00:14.660 | in the near future?"
00:00:16.000 | Before I got really practical about strategies that they might be
00:00:23.060 | using or not using to make themselves available to employers, I would want to
00:00:29.520 | talk at a deeper level first about, do not be anxious about your life. What you
00:00:36.560 | should eat, what you should drink, what you should put on. This is Jesus directly
00:00:41.340 | talking to this issue it seems to me. Consider the birds of the air, this
00:00:45.160 | Matthew 6. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns. Your Heavenly Father
00:00:50.120 | feeds them. Consider the lilies. They don't they don't coil or spin. Yet I tell
00:00:57.600 | you, Solomon, was not arrayed like one of these. God will take care of you. Seek
00:01:02.680 | first the kingdom. So that's my first counsel. Seek first the kingdom of God
00:01:07.960 | and his righteousness. Be about kingdom things, which of course going to include
00:01:13.040 | looking for a job, but focused on God's glory. And all these things will be added
00:01:17.840 | to you. And you know one of the amazing things about that is that it's followed
00:01:23.400 | by, don't be anxious about tomorrow. This is verse 34. For tomorrow will be anxious
00:01:29.880 | for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Don't make tomorrow's
00:01:36.200 | trouble part of today's burden, because God apportions mercy for every day.
00:01:44.480 | Lamentations 3.22. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never
00:01:51.560 | come to an end. They are new, new every morning. So each day has trouble of its
00:01:59.080 | own, Jesus said. And Jeremiah said in Lamentations 3.22, every morning has
00:02:06.680 | mercy of its own. And I think Jesus has tailor-made the mercies for the miseries.
00:02:13.400 | So tomorrow you're going to have mercy for the challenge of that day. Trust him
00:02:20.520 | for this. Take promises like, "My God will supply every need of yours according to
00:02:25.920 | his riches in glory." Philippians 4.19. Or God is able to make all grace abound to
00:02:31.680 | you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you'll abound in
00:02:35.680 | every good work. So that's where I'd start. I'd start with these stunning,
00:02:39.840 | amazing, practical, precious promises of God to take care of us. And here's
00:02:47.160 | an illustration from my own life of an application of that. When I was in
00:02:51.640 | Germany, finishing up my doctoral work, I'm almost 28 years old now. In fact, I am
00:02:56.880 | 28 years old. Turned 28 just before I finished. So I've been in school for 28
00:03:01.680 | years almost. Home and school. And I haven't had a real job yet, okay? And I've
00:03:09.080 | got a wife and I've got a kid now. And I need a job. I just want to be a good
00:03:13.680 | husband, father, put bread on the table. And I'm in Germany and nobody knows me in
00:03:17.320 | America. How am I going to get a job? And I got a letter from Dan Fuller, my
00:03:21.960 | precious doctor, father, friend. Actually, not doctor, father, but just mentor from
00:03:27.200 | seminary. And he quoted to me. I've never seen this. And I've used it over and over
00:03:33.960 | again for comfort and encouragement. 2 Corinthians 4.1, which says, I'm going to
00:03:39.320 | read it literally. "Therefore, having this ministry, as we have been shown mercy, we
00:03:49.680 | do not lose heart." The "as," he said, "John, you will have a ministry." That is, you
00:03:57.120 | will have a job. "By the same mercy that you were saved." That's the way he
00:04:05.360 | understands the "as." "Therefore, having this ministry, as we have been shown mercy,
00:04:12.800 | we don't lose heart." And it gave me tremendous encouragement. And God worked a
00:04:19.680 | miracle. He brought one--I wrote 30 letters of inquiry to churches,
00:04:25.760 | denominations, and schools saying, "I'm ready to do whatever with the Bible you
00:04:30.280 | want me to do to advance the cause of the kingdom. Anybody have work for me to do,
00:04:33.480 | please? I need to support my family." And one solitary door opened up. A temporary
00:04:44.120 | sabbatical replacement at Bethel College. And I said, "I'll do anything." So I'd
00:04:50.400 | never been to Minnesota. I didn't know Bethel existed. And I took that job, and
00:04:56.200 | God, in his mercy, made it last for six years until he called me to Bethlehem.
00:05:02.120 | And so that promise was really, really crucial. And one last
00:05:07.600 | encouraging thing about closed doors, because probably the person who asked
00:05:11.120 | this question has knocked on a lot of doors, like me. 30 letters, zero
00:05:15.840 | response. Just one open door. If you read Acts 16 in particular, and see how
00:05:24.960 | Paul was being led, he wanted to minister. He wanted work to do in cities. And so
00:05:31.120 | he tried to go into Asia, and it said the Holy Spirit stopped him. Forbade him.
00:05:35.840 | Wouldn't let him go. And so they went up into Bithynia, and then it says the
00:05:39.760 | Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go into Bithynia. So they made another
00:05:44.640 | left turn and went over to Troas. And in Troas, Paul had a vision of a man in
00:05:51.240 | Macedonia, which is across the water there, over in Europe, so to speak. And the man
00:05:57.080 | said, "Come over and help us." And the gospel spread from an Eastern Asia
00:06:02.120 | religion, now penetrating into Europe because of two closed doors. So my
00:06:09.200 | concluding encouragement is God's closings are his planning. You may be
00:06:19.400 | puzzled, he's planning. You may feel delayed, God is designing. Trust him. And
00:06:27.000 | then of course we could get practical and say, "How many people have you
00:06:30.560 | written to?" and all that, but these are the kinds of things I think that
00:06:33.840 | really matter. Trust the Lord's timing, and give yourself faithfully to seeking
00:06:39.800 | to do his calling. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening. Please email
00:06:43.920 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You will find
00:06:48.120 | thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org.
00:06:51.920 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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