Will God Call Me to a Career I Don’t Enjoy?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, yesterday we talked about living in hope
00:00:08.080 | when life seems aimless,
00:00:10.760 | and specifically when a job is hard
00:00:13.240 | or it's just difficult to get excited about.
00:00:16.320 | We're gonna talk about work more today
00:00:18.540 | because jobs for many are scarce,
00:00:21.100 | and many people just take the jobs that they can get.
00:00:24.120 | And a long-time listener to the podcast,
00:00:26.080 | Joshua in Vancouver, asks this,
00:00:28.840 | "Pastor John, can a believer ever be called
00:00:30.960 | to a lifelong career for which they do not enjoy?"
00:00:35.960 | Pastor John, what would you say to Joshua?
00:00:38.200 | - It's not an easy question to answer
00:00:41.480 | the way it's formulated.
00:00:43.160 | The main reason is that there is another question,
00:00:48.160 | which I think needs to be answered first.
00:00:52.740 | Namely, would God ever call a person
00:00:56.020 | to a lifelong vocation in which He does not enable
00:01:00.780 | the person to have joy?
00:01:02.560 | Would He call you to a work you can't enjoy?
00:01:07.560 | That's one question.
00:01:09.120 | Is there a work He calls you to
00:01:11.880 | that He won't enable you to enjoy?
00:01:13.900 | The way the question is posed seems to assume
00:01:19.960 | that some tasks that God, God, might call a person to
00:01:25.940 | simply cannot be enjoyed.
00:01:29.780 | God doesn't have the capacity or the will
00:01:34.340 | to give the person He just called into that
00:01:37.460 | the joy to do it.
00:01:38.740 | And my question is, is that true?
00:01:41.020 | Is there anything in the Bible that would incline us
00:01:44.760 | to believe that if God, God,
00:01:49.300 | the good, loving, Christ-sending God,
00:01:53.140 | calls us to something,
00:01:56.020 | He would give us the grace to find it rewarding
00:01:59.180 | and to find joy in it?
00:02:01.540 | Is that not the way the Bible reads?
00:02:04.960 | So here's the way I would go about answering it.
00:02:07.840 | Joshua is right to assume that God cares
00:02:13.000 | about whether we do what we do with joy.
00:02:15.920 | Psalm 100, "Serve the Lord with gladness."
00:02:19.780 | That's clear.
00:02:20.680 | God does not like begrudging, joyless service.
00:02:25.040 | And in one sense, all of our lives,
00:02:27.440 | including our vocations, are service to God.
00:02:30.640 | Paul says, Romans 12, eight,
00:02:32.540 | "Let the one who does acts of mercy do so cheerfully."
00:02:36.880 | And he says in 2 Corinthians 9, seven,
00:02:39.060 | "God loves a cheerful giver."
00:02:40.960 | And all of our work should be giving.
00:02:43.240 | All of our work should be merciful.
00:02:45.540 | And he says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 18,
00:02:48.200 | "That we should give thanks in every circumstance."
00:02:51.280 | And he ups the ante in Ephesians 5, 20,
00:02:54.420 | "Give thanks for everything."
00:02:56.760 | Amazing.
00:02:57.960 | And then Ecclesiastes 9, 10,
00:03:00.280 | "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."
00:03:04.340 | And chapter three, verse 22, Ecclesiastes,
00:03:07.880 | "There's nothing better than that a man should rejoice
00:03:10.760 | in his work."
00:03:12.460 | So for all those reasons,
00:03:15.200 | I would say that Joshua is on the right track here
00:03:17.640 | for believing that God wants us to find joy
00:03:21.960 | in the work of our hands, in our vocational labors.
00:03:26.520 | But I think the implication in the Bible is not mainly
00:03:31.520 | that we should refuse to work until we find the work
00:03:36.240 | that we think we can enjoy,
00:03:37.680 | but that we should take the work that we can
00:03:42.680 | for the good of the family, the good of the community,
00:03:45.100 | the glory of God, and then pray our way
00:03:48.720 | into the enjoyment of it and shape it
00:03:52.180 | in whatever way we can so that it becomes more fruitful
00:03:55.700 | and more enjoyable.
00:03:58.300 | I say that because, for example, in the early church,
00:04:02.360 | many slaves were converted to Christianity
00:04:05.540 | in the first century in the Roman Empire.
00:04:08.080 | And it's clear from the way 1 Peter 2, 18 to 25
00:04:13.620 | talks about these slaves is that for them,
00:04:17.020 | it was often terrible.
00:04:19.500 | They were mistreated, and Peter was helping them
00:04:22.940 | to know what to do about that.
00:04:25.300 | It was not an enjoyable vocation by and large.
00:04:29.060 | To be sure, in 1 Corinthians 7, 21,
00:04:32.580 | Paul says that if a slave can obtain his freedom,
00:04:37.060 | he should do so, which shows that Paul did not consider it
00:04:41.260 | ideal that we labor in a role that's miserable.
00:04:44.780 | Nevertheless, the main counsel that Paul and Peter
00:04:49.580 | gave to slaves and to the rest of us
00:04:53.380 | in 1 Corinthians 7, 24 is this.
00:04:57.460 | So brothers, in whatever condition each was called,
00:05:01.460 | let him there remain with God.
00:05:05.060 | And the key words are with God.
00:05:07.300 | In other words, whatever work we have,
00:05:09.700 | the greatest joy about the job is that we get to be there
00:05:13.140 | with God, he's come to us, he's with us every day.
00:05:16.820 | Whatever we're doing, he's there, he'll help us,
00:05:19.320 | he'll turn it for our good.
00:05:21.940 | One last observation.
00:05:23.980 | Those of us in the prosperous West should keep in mind
00:05:28.980 | that one of the most surprising features of our culture,
00:05:32.660 | which visitors from the two-thirds world
00:05:34.820 | are amazed at when they come,
00:05:37.300 | is the stunning number of choices we have.
00:05:41.220 | Choices in hundreds of kinds of cereals and fruits
00:05:44.700 | and vegetables and cars and houses and theaters
00:05:48.620 | and every manner of appliance and device.
00:05:52.440 | And we tend to take all these choices for granted.
00:05:56.220 | Most places in the world, people do not have 100 possibilities
00:06:00.980 | in front of them for how to make a living.
00:06:03.380 | They may have one or two or three options,
00:06:07.380 | given their village and the family they're in
00:06:10.660 | and the society they're in, and therefore the question
00:06:15.300 | that was asked represents a very Western question.
00:06:20.220 | And so I return to my original reconstruction
00:06:24.180 | of the question, which I think applies globally.
00:06:28.400 | Would God ever call a person to a lifelong work
00:06:33.400 | in which he does not enable the person to have joy?
00:06:38.760 | And I think the answer to that is this.
00:06:41.920 | God intends to give his people joy and thankfulness
00:06:46.800 | and a sense of usefulness, whatever he calls them to.
00:06:51.600 | Paul knew how to be content in every circumstance.
00:06:57.680 | This is the essence of the Christian life,
00:07:00.160 | finding contentment in Christ and turning every circumstance
00:07:04.560 | in all of our work into living worship.
00:07:08.040 | Yeah, such a helpful perspective, Pastor John, thank you.
00:07:10.680 | We must get that question right.
00:07:12.520 | Thank you, Joshua, for prompting this discussion
00:07:15.140 | in the first place.
00:07:16.160 | And Monday we're gonna talk about spiritual leadership
00:07:20.200 | in the home.
00:07:21.040 | What does it look like for a husband to lead his wife
00:07:23.660 | and family well?
00:07:25.720 | And as we break for the weekend,
00:07:27.400 | be sure to check out our podcast homepage
00:07:30.040 | to search our archive of questions
00:07:31.680 | or to send us a concise question of your own.
00:07:34.920 | Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:07:39.440 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:40.680 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:07:42.960 | with John Piper and have a great weekend
00:07:45.200 | and we'll see you back here on Monday.
00:07:47.100 | (upbeat music)
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