Finding Fulfillment in Work

Christian Working Woman Transcript

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - Finding Fulfillment in Work

Is your job fulfilling to you? Whatever you do everyday, whether outside or inside your home, do you find it fulfills you and makes you feel good about yourself?

Now, here's the next question: As a Christian, is it important that we have a job that is personally fulfilling? Is that our right? Should that have a high priority in our lives?

My answer may surprise you, but think it through with me. I think the whole question of fulfilling jobs and careers is a result of the humanistic thinking that pervades our society. We have been subtly led to believe that we have a right to be fulfilled, whatever that means, and that right takes precedence over everything else. So, a fulfilling job becomes an accepted and appropriate goal.

Our thinking has been so clouded with self-actualization, self-esteem, and self-fulfillment, that we Christians have missed a basic truth of Scripture: Self-denial. If there's a self-fulfillment message in God's Word, I've missed it.

Now, I'm NOT saying that we have to trudge through life hating what we do, martyrs for Jesus, sad-faced and depressed, because we can't be self-fulfilled. It does not mean that we can't look for jobs that interest us, nor is it wrong to enjoy the job we have.

But you see, we keep getting the cart before the horse. We won't find fulfillment in jobs. I know, because I tried for a long time to make myself feel good and worthwhile through my job. I've held lots of jobs in my career, some with glamorous aspects, a good bit of recognition and success. And I want to tell you that not one of those jobs ever succeeded at making me feel fulfilled and complete. Even at their best moments, I knew inside they were missing the mark. And every job had its share of routine and drudgery.

While Jesus came to bring us life abundant, He told us clearly that we must lose our life to find it. We can certainly know what it is to be fulfilled and complete, but not because we have a scintillating, challenging job. We are simply barking up the wrong tree when we look to a job or career for fulfillment.