Lead the Life the Lord Assigns
The greatest single life event that has ever happened to anyone is when Christ gives the gift of faith, and the grace of God changes a man or woman from darkness to light, from dead to alive, from lost to saved. But what are we to do, then? How do we respond to this personal life-quake that rearranges everything in our hearts, and turns everything in our minds right-side up for the first time? Here’s one thing we should not do. I heard about a college coach years ago that got saved. Great! So he decided to buy a boat, leave his wife, and sail around the world, telling people about Jesus. Not great. That’s called zeal without knowledge, friends. It’s also called disobedience, not just for the obvious fact that he left his wife, but that he left the place where he was when he became a follower of Jesus. New converts often feel like the only way they can serve God is to become an evangelist, a pastor, or a career missionary. But Jesus calls people in all kinds of vocations, and he uses those whom he has called in those same places. That means of course that we are called to be Christian fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, singles, sons, and daughters. It also means that we are called to be Christian students, or homemakers, Christian business owners or teachers, Christian truckers or carpenters.
What does the Bible say? “Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him.” Literally, “walk in the way” the Lord has assigned. Christians have two vocations, if you will. We are, as Martin Luther liked to say, “genuinely bi-vocational.” The first calling is vertical, a relationship with Christ. It is paramount, and it nourishes and sustains the second. The second calling is horizontal, the vocational calling to manage our time and resources and abilities to the glory of God in a place of work. Both are necessary, and both are God-given. But, here’s an important truth: You and I do not receive our identity from what we do, but from who we belong to. Christ. That means that you are a Christian realtor, a Christian homemaker, a Christian brick mason, not a realtor or homemaker or brick mason who happens to be a Christian.
That also means your work is not meant to provide ultimate fulfillment. God gave Adam work, but it wasn’t the garden that was Adam’s treasure; God was. It was those long walks in the cool of the evening with the Lord that defined who Adam was, even as he worked to tend and to keep the garden that had been assigned to him. What happens when we flip that on its head, so that we see our job as our identity, and therefore the ultimate source of our fulfillment? We get off the rails, because we put the vertical relationship in second place. We look to our jobs, our income, our position in the company, or our status in society to fulfill us. It cannot do it, so we get frustrated. We flounder. We become anxious, or depressed. We end up hating our job, or going from one job to another. Perhaps that helps explain recent data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that 91% of millennials stay in a job less than 3 years, and will have 15-20 jobs over the course of their working lives. Of course, they are not much different from many Boomer parents who also lived for their jobs.
What is the answer? Lead the life the Lord has assigned to you. Make knowing him your first calling, and your most important job. Then, commit yourself to being the very best at your second vocation, for his glory.