The life of a faithful christian is one that is counter-cultural. While the world chases material wealth, temporary satisfaction, and an earthly legacy, we are called to pursue eternal treasure and intimacy with the Father, especially when our flesh pulls us to the fleeting.
In college, I found myself at a crossroads of faith and career many times. How could I nurture my deep-rooted desire for success and security without abandoning my long-internalized pursuit of a loving relationship with God? All too often, it felt like I was trapped, forced to choose one or the other.
I have since realized that my pursuit of career often led to an identity crisis. What I am pursuing is always a deeper indication of who I am pursuing.
This conclusion most clearly manifested itself during my junior year of college, when I finally intimately experienced burnout. For the premed student, there is an almost unconscious acceptance that productivity is king. Every moment of inactivity is a moment wasted, moments in which your peers are getting ahead of you. To be spread thin is an expectation and norm. I was no different from the crowd, involving myself with leadership positions in clubs, clinical work, and research, all while balancing school. There were days I left my apartment at 7 a.m., not to return until past midnight.
Leading this kind of life was tiring. I dreaded going to work because I worried that my encounters with patients would not be significant enough to add to my resume. My board positions lacked passion due to my obsession with title over impact. I neglected research because I felt that there were limited opportunities to progress in status within the lab. My daily motivations became an echo chamber of inward ambition, and I found myself profoundly dissatisfied and anxious. But it was precisely in this extended season of busyness that God revealed what I was missing, or more accurately, who I was missing: Him.
One day, driving back from work to a meeting on campus, the GPS took me on an unfamiliar route through a neighborhood near the school. The streets were nothing special, but as I cruised by house after house, I could feel God pressing onto my heart.
“Jonathan, take a breath with me.”
So I did. And it was so sweet. I distinctly remember pausing in that moment to notice the trees swaying beautifully in the breeze, and the clouds framing the rich blueness of the sky. Over the next couple months, I took a breath with the Lord every time I returned from work as I passed through that neighborhood. Every time, those 30 seconds would be the highlight of my day.
God’s presence was always close. I just had to acknowledge it.
That transformed my daily perspective. Work became a front-row seat to witness God’s powerful hand of healing. Board positions were opportunities to express Christ-like kindness to club members and intentionally impact the campus and community. Rather than using my anxieties as my daily alarm clock to roll out of bed, I acknowledged that my life was in His sovereign hands, allowing me to experience new morning mercies and blessings through my responsibilities.
Overall, my daily rhythms of responsibility did not change. I never faltered in my underlying pursuit of medicine. But the means by which I framed the motivations and desires of my heart in those pursuits radically transformed: Jesus dwelled there. Ultimately, it was not any measure of my pursuit that pulled me back to Him, but rather His constant presence that reminded me that all I had to do was open my eyes.
This Christ-centered mindset is, and will continue to be, a lifelong battle. Even as I apply to medical school now, I need to daily remind myself that my striving will not open any more doors than God will already allow in His timing. But I have learned that my pursuit of career does not have to come at the cost of my faith. In fact, it is precisely at the intersection of the two that I live out my calling here on earth in perfect harmony.
As Christians, we are called, whether we eat or drink, and in whatever we do, to do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). How do your life pursuits reveal that glory? What would your life look like if you simply acknowledged God in your daily pursuits? Perhaps that anxiety and burnout you feel in finding success and security in your career stems from a rootedness in the world’s futility rather than the Lord’s eternal promise.
I exhort you to answer this question in your heart of hearts. Is your career, or pursuit of a career, a space for the Lord to dwell? If not, how can you foster that space with daily intention?
In this christian race we call life, our journey possesses such profound beauty. But oftentimes, we are enamored by the rocky road we traverse, overwhelmed by the fear of falling. My encouragement to you is to look up from your feet once in a while, to gaze into the face of whom is walking beside us, hand in hand, the entire time.
I will leave you with this:
Sometimes, we neglect to acknowledge that we are drowning, unaware of how far the waves have taken us from the shore. In those seasons, we have a lighthouse that illuminates our position in the water. The point of that lighthouse is not to provide us with divine strength to swim to shore on our own devices. Rather, it uncovers our location so that a rescuer may dive into the crashing waves and bring us to safety. Such is the reality of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
Header Photo Credit: Ed 259