Career Choices

Will I be missing out on this?

Taking up a Masters Course 
- Wise or Foolish?
Recently I decided that I should pursue a part-time Masters course (what? 4 kids, one under 6 months, a full time job - I must be a masochist of sorts). I asked my company if they were willing to sponsor my studies. "Sure," they said, "anything you want." The course I chose was somewhat niche so the company wanted to know if I wanted to consider a good MBA instead. "It'll come in useful some day if you become a CEO or COO."

Wow, talk about an ego booster! As we say locally I "can feel my head grow big already". As I prayed over my options, God reminded me that my career has not been a journey of pursuing higher positions and job titles. So far, as I pursued my passions at work with God's guidance, He has been providing me with career opportunities. If God wanted me to be a CEO or COO, then it would happen whether I had a MBA or not. There was no need to go pursuing one just for the sake of career opportunities.

So I informed my company that I was sticking to my choice. "I trust God to take care of my career." I said. While that sounded really good, God knew that I spoke this with a certain amount of pride. It was more important that I really believed this in my heart regardless of what happened.

God's Test
I believe God gave me a little test. Overnight and inexplicably I felt irrelevant to the company. Several key and important projects went ahead without the need for my input. At meetings when I gave my opinion, it came out wrong, sounding like criticism of my colleagues rather than constructive suggestions. I wasn't making significant progress with the projects assigned to me. It was as if I was once a major part of the river flow that was the life and work of the company. Now I was a pebble left on the river bank while the river flowed on without me.

I rationalised to myself that as much of my work involved writing policies, people came to me when the organisation was new to find out how to do this or that. Now that the organisation was more established, this need had diminished significantly. While this sounded logical, it felt hollow.

In this season of Lent, the 40 days before Easter when Christians ponder the significance of Jesus dying for us on the cross, God was asking me "do I really believe that my significance was fully based on my relationship with God?" My pastor said in a recent sermon "Walk before work" that we should always consider cultivating a relationship with God rather than merely 'doing' work for Him in His name. In Matthew 20: 1-16, Jesus tells a parable of workers hired to work in a vineyard. Each was promised a coin for the work regardless of when they started work. The workers who started work at the beginning of the day were unhappy that they got paid the same as those who started work only late in the day. From a HR perspective, indeed the remuneration in this parable made no sense. But when work is an opportunity to work with and know God more intimately, then pay will not weigh in so significantly.

Paul and Jesus - Career Role Models
In the Apostle Paul I have a good role model - "What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Philippians 3: 8-9. Paul had all the right credentials in Jewish circles in his time but gave them up and became unpopular in those circles to pursue what he considered an unbeatable opportunity.

Even Jesus made career choices. Choose to be a carpenter; live an ordinary life. Choose to be the Messiah; be tortured and crucified on a cross. If you think that Jesus jumped at the chance to be the Messiah, you would be wrong. The attraction of any accolade pales when one knows that extreme physical pain is involved. Jesus agonised over what God called him to do as we see in His prayer in the hours before He was arrested:

Luke 22: 42-44: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

And if you thought that Jesus was a passive and powerless victim of the situation, think again. At the point of His arrest, He chose restraint and submission when He could have razed the place with Heavenly power. He said at the point of his arrest:
"Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" Matthew 26:53

I would say a choice that ends in sure death is not a smart career move. Jesus chose to be Messiah not because He would benefit from it but only because His entire life was based on being in a loving, obedient relationship with God.

Yet the irony is that we are never short changed by God even when we make choices the way Jesus did. In His case, ultimate obedience and sacrifice was rewarded with resurrection from death and an eternal, heavenly accolade:

"And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!

 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
   and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,"
                                                             Philippians 2: 8-11

Fight, Flight or Peace? Learning God's Ways

I learnt one thing in this episode - when I perceive I'm in a disadvantaged position, my natural tendency is to argue even more for my point, to fight even more to establish my position. I would also have become a more obnoxious character in the work place - like a child in a sandbox crying, screaming and kicking my legs because nobody wanted to play according to my 'rules' (policies) anymore.


What God wanted for me was exactly the opposite. If my opinions were not needed then I should be silent. If policies were no longer the top concern of the organisation, then find other ways to add value to the work. The funny thing was when I kept quiet, people started coming around to ask me what I thought; and that included my CEO who popped into my room one day saying he was sorry that he had to cut short a meeting as he had really wanted to know what I thought at that meeting (that made my day :)

Trusting God sometimes seem like a bad career choice. It goes counter to what career guidance books teach. These books create fear of missed opportunities and unrecognised talents and drive us to actions to ensure our own superior positions at work.


God does not promise that. He promises a different certainty - a certainty that rests in Himself, the One who created and is in control of everything in this universe. Faith in Him is being willing to hold His hand and walk instep with Him into a future that is unknown to me but fully known to Him.

40 days by Matt Maher

This interesting YouTube video depicts Jesus' 40 Days of fasting in the desert and how He finds a greater sense of Himself and His destiny when every physical comfort is taken from Him.

Words worth pondering over again:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

   and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord
                                                             Philippians 2: 5-11