Searching jobs by faith

It feels a bit unreal at times, yet this is actually as real as it can get: we all look for jobs, yet we’re not competitors, really!

When I say ‘we’, that includes me and other final year students from a theological college. We’re all looking for jobs in churches within the next five months or so. Humanly speaking, there are many reasons why we could (and possibly some do, at least to an extent) see each other as competitors: for example, we all share the same formal training in the last four years; there are only so many jobs out there, etc.… I’d rather spare you the details for now. And for the same reasons, humanly speaking, many of us see this time of the year as quite a stressful one, especially those with a family to feed like me.

Humanly speaking, that’s how I tend to see things, too. But if I must name only a few valuable things that I learn after spending a lot of time to get to know God (which we usually do at a theological college), then one would be this: I learn to trust him as my loving Father. If he is truly what he has shown himself to be, a God who is sovereign, powerful, loving and wise, then trusting him can only be my proper response. Although this does not save me from getting on the phone and going to job interviews, this trust alone actually has made a huge difference in my endeavour to get a job.

One of the differences it has made is that I learn to trust God to help me see things his way. Because God works in all things for my good, I don’t need to be disappointed, for example, if my class mate gets a job that I have set my heart upon. Quite the contrary. And on the other hand, if I know of a position that suits the set of skills or experience of my class mate better than mine, it would only be fitting for me to let him/her know. Not to do so would be to act as if I didn’t know this God who is sovereign, powerful, loving and wise. Not to do so would be to act as if I were more sovereign, more powerful, and wiser than the God who has created me, which would be silly.

Because of my limitations and depravity, seeing things God’s way feels a bit unreal at times, yet this is actually as real as it can get! Ultimately, we all work because of him, through him and for him.

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