Finding a Job

Finding a job can be one of the most challenging, stressful, disappointing, exhilarating and enlightening experiences in life. The process feels a lot like riding an emotional roller coaster. You may get excited when you find a job posting that seems to accurately describe your skills and interests. Getting a call for an interview may add to your enthusiasm. After doing a good job in your interview, you might feel that life couldn’t be better. But then a few days later you get the sad news that you didn’t get the job and you come crashing down, only to start back up the hill of emotion again with the next promising job opportunity.

Last fall, I was on the emotional roller coaster of the job search. In pursuit of an internship for the summer ahead, I interviewed with nine different companies. With each passing interview, I got better at answering questions and felt more confident that I would get an offer. However, after a month of interviewing I had received seven consecutive rejections and was losing any hope of finding an internship that semester. What made matters worse was the fact that I could not point to any specific reason why I wasn’t getting any job offers. I felt completely helpless. All I could do was turn to God and ask for his help. It was in this humble state that God taught me some important lessons about finding a job without losing my identity.

The main thing that God taught me through the job search process was that my identity should not be defined by the people who have the power to hire me or not hire me. What they think of me should not affect my self-worth. After all, did Jesus allow human rejection to cause doubt in his purpose or identity as God’s Son? No, and neither should we.

Searching for a job will raise some difficult questions that need to be addressed in order to have peace and confidence in the midst of life’s rises and falls. Where does your happiness come from? What gives you security? What defines your identity? Perhaps your happiness comes from money or a high status. Or maybe your security is based on your ability to control your world or maintain good relationships with family and friends. Unfortunately, these foundations can come and go without warning. God’s love, on the other hand, will never change. He proved his love and showed us how much we are worth by sacrificing the life of his only Son, Jesus.

Knowing my identity as God’s child has helped me receive good and bad news without getting too proud or depressed. When recruiters “wined and dined” me and paid for me to visit their companies, it was easy to feel proud and boastful. But when the rejection letters came, I questioned my worth and became discouraged. Disappointment is inevitable in the job search, which makes it all the more necessary to have a foundation for your self-worth and identity apart from the opinions of prospective employers. Fortunately, as Christians we know that it is God’s opinion of us that matters in eternity. When we have long forgotten the rejections of companies that we wanted to work for, we will still rejoice in the unfailing love of God and his mercy toward us.

Another important lesson I learned through the job search is to trust in God’s sovereign plan for my life. Having confidence in God’s sovereignty provides the assurance we need to deal with the uncertainty of finding a job and making significant career choices.

We know that God is at work fulfilling his plan for our lives because he says so in the Bible. Most of us know Jeremiah 29:11 by heart: “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (NIV). But we fail to understand God’s greater plan for our lives by not reading the rest of the paragraph: “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (verses 12-13). God’s plan is for us to seek him and find him, to talk with him and be close to him. In other words, God is trying to get us to understand that our “God search” is far more important in his eyes than our job search.

I can clearly see God intervening in my life to bring my values and priorities into closer alignment with his. God waited to give me the internship I wanted until I got on my knees and earnestly began seeking him. Waiting for good news stretched my patience to its limit, but in the end I’m grateful for the way that God brought me back to himself through the process of looking for work.

Realizing that God is using your job search to bring you into a closer relationship with him will lead to other positive results in your life and community. First of all, placing your worth in your relationship with God will help you be less competitive and more thankful when good things happen in other people’s job searches, even as things are not working out in your own search the way you hoped they would. Be wary of rivalry and jealousy that are born out of an unhealthy competitiveness. They will kill your community and destroy intimacy with your friends.

In addition, being immersed in a job search can lead to an unhealthy preoccupation with one thing: getting a job in the future. Staying close to God while searching for a job will help you be well-rounded and fully engaged in the here and now. While planning for the future it is easy to forget the relationships we are in now and ignore the opportunities we have today to grow personally. With our thoughts constantly on tomorrow we tend to forget to thank God for the blessings we have today.

Many of those who have made the mistake of living in the future and forgetting the present come to the end of their lives and realize that they would gladly trade all the extra money they earned and promotions they received for deeper relationships with their friends and family. As Paul Tsongas (the late senator from Massachusetts) put it, “Nobody on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’” So don’t make the mistake of foregoing quality time with loved ones and God in order to achieve your career goals. Do your best to live in today, for tomorrow has enough troubles of its own (Matthew 6:34).

Work is something that God created and blessed before the fall of humanity. God intended for us to have jobs and exert effort to achieve goals. His plan is not for his children to spend the majority of their time on earth twiddling their thumbs while mindlessly watching TV. Instead, He is preparing “good works” for us to do each day (Ephesians 2:10). Some of these works will be done in jobs, but many of them will be done at home and with people we meet outside of our official workplaces. Whether or not you have a paying job, you can always work for God. “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29, NIV). As a Christian, remember that your daily vocation is to believe in Christ and consequently to obey his commandments: to love God and love others.

So as you fill out your next application and prepare for yet another interview, remember that you are God’s beloved child, the one he sent his Son Jesus to save, the one for whom he has a wonderful plan. God promises to provide for your physical needs and for most people that will likely be through a job for part or all of our adult lives. He plans to use you in your future jobs to bless many of the lives around you and draw you closer to himself. May the search for a job bring you into deeper communion with your heavenly Father and loving Creator.

—Gene Paik was on staff with InterVarsity for four years and is now a graduate student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He loves to organize things, watch movies, eat good food, acquire new gadgets, take road-trips with friends and read books by Tolkien.