A future not my own

Losing a job is never an easy thing, and yet I find myself strangely at ease concerning my recent unemployment. I am not so stupid as to think that money will just rain down from heaven now that I have no income, nor so naïve as to think that if I just sit on my duff then the Lord will have someone call me out of the blue and offer me a better job. (Of course, Lord, I would not refuse either of those things!) No, the reason I am at ease is because for the first time in my life, I am finally in a position to let the Lord take control of my future. You see, the job from which I just got fired was one where I had worked for ten years, and it was just five years ago that I first came to the Lord. I was already in a steady job that paid the bills, and so even as I felt called to do more for the Lord, I stayed put. Yes, I basically sat on my duff and expected the Lord to work around my job to provide a way for me to serve Him. I never gave Him the chance to shape my future. Well, now He has that chance, and frankly, I find it quite exciting.

I know that not everyone who was fired from a job they liked would be so excited by the prospect of finding a new job. And to be perfectly honest, there is still a part of me that is terrified at the prospect of not finding a good-paying job right away, scared at having to struggle to provide for myself and my kids, downright daunted by the undertaking before me. And what undertaking is that? My task is to work with the Lord to find a job that allows me to continue in His calling on my life.

Now, I am not necessarily talking about becoming a pastor right now. The Lord knows that doesn’t pay squat to a newcomer like me. Nor is it necessarily about finding a job that will allow me to continue attending church or Bible studies. I see it more as seeking out a job that will, in no particular order:

• Allow me to continue to share the gospel without reprimand or rebuke,
• Enable me to pay off most of my outstanding debt,
• Enable me to start saving toward further education at a seminary,
• Allow me the flexibility to seek other ministry opportunities,
• And leave me time and energy to be with my family.

 
One thing I liked about my last job (besides the great people and great benefits) was that I actually had many opportunities to speak with people openly about Jesus Christ, and that my bosses were quite understanding about the calling I was pursuing on the side. I made some small sacrifices of time at work in order to attend church every Sunday and take over leadership of a Friday morning Bible study, and in return I continued to work well at my job. Unfortunately, there was a small problem that grew into a big problem: I had no joy in my work there. I had more joy in doing the Lord’s work.

When I first felt this calling from the Lord on my life, I figured I could just hang tight right where I was. At the time, I had just met my second wife, and we got quite excited about the possibilities of future ministry together. She was a social worker and college professor, and when we thought about the future, it invariably involved combining my pastoral work with her social justice work. But it was all contingent upon us staying in the jobs we had until we could afford to break loose and pursue that future. When she died suddenly two years ago, that future in ministry seemed even further away, and staying where I was seemed to me like the best course.

In a way, it kind of reminded me of when my first wife and I were contemplating having children. When people asked when we might have our first child, we answered, “When we can afford it.” And the response was almost always, “If you wait until you can ‘afford’ it, you’ll never have kids.” And that is absolutely true. We can never really afford children. They are expensive to birth, expensive to raise, and expensive to turn loose when they are grown up. But we wouldn’t trade them for anything, and they so enrich our lives that we cannot imagine how we might have continued living in that “when we can afford them” zone.

The same is true of our calling in the Lord. I am certain that if I had stayed where I was, if I had kept marking time at that store, then I would never have broken out of there to do what God is calling me to do. I know that in some not-so-distant time, I will look back at this week as the turning point in my answering the calling of the Lord. And now that I am free to seek a new job and a new future, I have even more hope that the Lord will shape my future more to His liking. It will be difficult, and it will seem like a desert at times, but I know that He will take me to the place where He needs me to be.

And so, here I am at a place where I have never been in my life, a place where the Lord is in control. Behind me lays the road I myself have chosen up to this point, and before me lay new roads that the Lord will choose for me. It is an exciting and frightening and hopeful time for me. I can’t wait to see where the Lord leads me next!