Have you decided it’s finally time to (spiritually) grow up? If you have, then it’s time to get a job. God has work for you to do. It may never add up to a full-time career in ministry, but the work is still real and still vitally important to your spiritual maturity. Understanding why you need a (spiritual) job and how to find one can make all the difference in your journey towards spiritual adulting.
Why You Need a Job
Let’s say you decide to get up every morning to read your Bible and say your prayers. You join a small group and start going to church on Sunday morning. You start listening to Christian radio and even start reading a book from some famous pastor. You may learn a lot if you do all of these things, but you could also become spiritually selfish. Nothing in this list does anything for anyone but you.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. You will need to take good care of yourself, spiritually speaking, and the list above are things you should start doing. But maturity requires that you begin to take care of others, as well. You will need to expand your worldview to include people beyond yourself. This is true both in terms of your relationship with God and other people.
God did not save you just because he cares about you. He does indeed care about you. But he also saved you because he has a job for you. As Paul said in the book of Ephesians, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” This means there are people with needs that God designed you to meet. There is work for you to do!
How to Find Your Job
It’s possible that God will pop out of the sky and tell you exactly what he wants you to do. But, that’s not God’s usual process. Instead, God expects you to get to know him well enough that you start to figure things out for yourself. Once you know what he likes, you can just go and do those things. He’ll give you more information or guidance (or a visit from heaven) if you really need it.
This is how all normal relationships work. For example, I’ve been married for 17 years to a woman I love very much. Over these years, I have learned a lot about her. I know she likes it when I make the bed and help the kids with their math homework. She likes that I do the grocery shopping and daily clean-up. She doesn’t have to ask me to do these things. In fact, if I told her I needed her to ask me every time, then she would be annoyed or even offended.
The same is true for God. When you read the Bible and study the stories of God’s interactions with people, you get a clear picture of the sorts of things he likes for his people to be doing. There are even quite a few passages that provide simple lists of the work he wants you to do. A few of the more famous lists are Matthew 25, Micah 6 and Matthew 28. When you hang around with other believers and see how God has used them throughout their lives, you’ll see he keeps calling people to do the same type of work again and again.
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But remember, you are not the only one that God has called to work. He has a very large family business that you’ve been added into. So don’t work alone. Ask a pastor how you can serve your church. Talk to a local Christian non-profit about ways you can help. Or even just talk with a few of your friends and discuss ways you can do something together.
Whatever you end up doing, do it believing that you are working for God. He created you for the purpose of doing good work. You’ll find work can sometimes be, well, work. But you’ll also learn the pure joy of doing the very thing you were designed to do.
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