Four Questions For Career Choice Or Change

Technology makes adults obsolete. Anything the teenager wants to know can just be Googled. Communication with the older generation is totally unnecessary.

While it sometimes might seem as though our adolescents have adopted that stand, acquiring a load of information isn’t always the only thing needed to make a decision. Often, an injection of experience helps in the processing of the stats and summaries.

The most effective teachers and preachers know that folks of all ages are more likely to recall the main points of any teaching if illustrated by a compelling story. Knowing this to be true in my own life, I filled the weeklong lecture hours on the “Character of God” with personal anecdotes to keep the students in that hot and humid African classroom awake, as much as to help them remember the point of each story. In the evening, my Swiss colleague taught them a lively chorus to drive home the same key points of the day’s teaching.

The marvelous selection of Christian music available at the touch of a stylus (or fingertip) might mean that the teens can find any number of songs to accompany any information their searches may uncover, but they simply haven’t lived long enough to have the personal experience to sort out the volume of information acquired. Enter a trusted senior citizen, eager to share a lifetime of stories showing God’s faithfulness in directing her path.

Over a period of five years of Christian summer camps, teens surveyed came up with hundreds of questions to which they earnestly sought answers. Of course, responding to the survey while attending church camp might have influenced which questions they held in common. These two questions topped their long list: How can I know God’s will for my life? How can I really know if God’s calling me into the ministry?

Surprisingly, these same questions are being asked by Christians of all ages. The young person seeks to make the right start towards a fulfilling future. The employed middle-aged adult wonders the same when, year after year, he feels no satisfaction with his work. Even the person entering retirement asks the question. Her children are grown; her company has given her the retirement party; and now what? How can I know God’s will for my life? How can I know if God’s really calling me into the ministry?

The web has a plethora of advice and information out there, so I’m not going to repeat what might be found. Instead, I’m going to inject my experience/my story into the search for answers. This is where the age-thing comes in. Now that I’ve been in full-time ministry for more than thirty years, I can look back and see God’s hand preparing the way for me.

To help you sort out your own story, I’ll ask you four questions, using the illustration of what happened in my life to shake some of the cobwebs off your own memories.

Question One:

Is there a time in your life when you thought about serving the Lord in some form of ministerial or missionary service? (Don’t just say “No” immediately. Ask God if there was such a time, and ask Him to bring the memory back to your mind.)

At the age of six, missionaries from Africa presented a program to my Sunday School. Since all of the grade school kids filled the basement floor by order of age, I sat in the front row with my friends. The slides burned images of Africa on my young mind. I thought of how wonderful it would be to live in a place where no one dressed up in snowsuits to go outside and play. How I hated snow and cold. The missionary’s admonition interfered with my attention long after he’d finished and we’d dismissed to our individual classroom spaces around the large room.

He’d pointed at us little kids and said, “We’re the missionaries of today, but you kids are the hope for the church of tomorrow.”

No doubt about it; I’d made up my mind. One day I’d be a medical missionary in Africa, too.

In chatting with other career missionaries over the years, I’ve been amazed to learn just how many of my colleagues had stories very similar to mine.

Question Two:

Regardless of your age at the time, when in the midst of planning your career or deciding about higher education, did you ever consider choosing the ministry?

I certainly didn’t! Not me; I had big plans for my life. I first thought I’d like to be a Physical Therapist. That came to an end the first quarter in school. Watching a film showing the struggle of the quadriplegic made me leave the room to throw up my supper. Nope, PT wasn’t for me.

I changed my major to Pre-Medical Science and practically lived inside a chemistry lab for the next years. Medical missions? Nope, never gave it a second thought. I wanted to be a surgeon—right here in the good ol’ US of A.

Then, a wonderful event changed my life forever. I experienced being “born again,” and now all I wanted to do was learn more about God. Ministry? No, but my search to know God more did take me to a Graduate Program in Christian Studies.

Okay, let’s fast-forward quite a few years, and get to the next question.

Question Three:

When already engaged in some permanent form of employment, did you find clues that the Lord might be trying to get you to consider moving into the ministry or some form of missionary service?

Yes, but I resisted at first. God did bring the memory of the Sunday School program with the missionary to mind, but I was not at all interested in leaving the university community. I’d graduated with a Masters in Nursing and obtained national Certification as a pediatric Nurse Practitioner only the previous year. My first research article had been published in Pediatric Nursing; my career had just begun. Certainly, this wasn’t the time to leave for missions. There’d be lots of time later.

The urging of the Lord persisted with that old, old memory that just wouldn’t leave. It had been especially troublesome on Friday; I could hardly wait to just get home and relax, after a busy twelve-hour shift at the hospital. Walking through to my bedroom, I glanced at the stack of mail on the living room coffee table. Splashed across the cover of the new issue of the American Journal of Nursing was this question: “Have you ever considered Cross-cultural nursing?”

I said, “No,” but I found the coincidence unsettling.

One week later, I finished my twelve-hour night shift, caught a quick Saturday morning nap, and plopped down on the sofa to watch whatever old movie the Classics had playing. I delighted in the selection. The film told the story about three fourth-year medical students who’d decided to spend the summer helping an over-worked pediatrician, a woman, in an isolated village in Africa.

At the end of the summer, one of the three men elected to remain to help the pediatrician. Another coincidence?

I knew by the radiating warmth deep in my soul that this particular film had been divinely chosen for me that one Saturday. I felt trapped by God.

“Oh no, Lord,” I said out loud. “I’m not ready to go. My career is just beginning.”

Question Four:

Have you ever asked God to confirm something you suspected regarding your career choice or change? What did you do in response to His answer?

I knew better than to ask for God’s confirmation. I mean, if I point-blank asked Him and He answered me, I’d have to do it, right? Instead, I reminded the Lord that I had committed to send $50/month to another missionary. If I didn’t have a job, I couldn’t support the missionary.

A very short time later, I received the first-ever long-distance call from an old friend, a teacher who lived three thousand miles away. “You’re gonna think I’ve really lost it, but God keeps bugging me. So, I finally decided I’d just call and do what I think He’s telling me to do and you can tell me I missed something somewhere.”

“Okay,” I laughed, just happy to hear my friend’s voice. “Shoot. What’s on your mind?”

“God told me that I needed to call you to tell you that, from now on, I’ll be sending you $50 every month. You make a lot more money than I do, so I told the Lord you really didn’t need my money. But, He told me to call anyway, so I’m calling.”

“Oh no! No! That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard!” I groaned, shaking my head and squeezing the receiver in my hand.

“Why? What’s wrong? I was right, wasn’t I? You don’t need my fifty bucks.”

“Actually, I do. Your call means I have to go to the mission field.”

I put my resignation in the next week and never looked back. I’ve been a career missionary since 1984. God made me for Africa. He saw that I had all the training I’d need, but before I got too settled in, the Lord called me to the very career He’d planned for me all along. How do I know? I’m in the less than ten percent of Americans who actually love what they do for a living.

From that Sunday School presentation to my feet landing in Africa, nearly thirty years of living and training took place. God is not in a hurry, preferring to equip us fully for the job. Don’t worry. If your heart wants to obey God, He already knows it. He won’t let you miss His leading.

Do you have any stories of your own search to share? Are you in the process of searching right now? Feel free to write about it in the comments.