Quit Your Job – Give It to God

Proverbs 16:3

"Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established."

After Adam and Eve got booted from Paradise for some highly illegal snacking, our entire civilization's job market essentially got a kickstart. I mean, they had one rule—one!—and they still managed to blow it spectacularly.

So, out they went, and that's when humanity's job search officially began. Suddenly, we had to start earning a living, literally by the sweat of our brows. We were given this incredible knack for developing a wide range of skills to get by. Some folks became farmers, getting their paycheck from the dirt. Others were shepherds, managing a herd of woolly clients. Then you had the builders and craftsmen, basically the contractors of the ancient world, putting their skills to work to meet the "supply and demand" needs of the day. And it's been that way ever since.

Back in the day, apprentices had a straightforward mission: learn everything the master knew so they could eventually take over. The mantra was probably something like, "Listen, learn, do. If you mess it up, listen again, learn more, redo!" People's professions weren't just jobs; they were an integral part of their identity. What you did for a living was literally who you were.

Honestly, not much has changed. If you still happen to have a physical phonebook lying around (a rare artifact these days!), give your fingers a little workout. You'll quickly notice how many of our last names—Smiths, Carpenters, Archers, and Masons—are just a shout-out to someone's old career. Let's not forget the Coopers, Bakers, Shepherds, and Clarks. It turns out that our names are still holding a grudge about work defining us.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Ah, that classic question. Parents and relatives used to love hitting us with that one, usually while we were still trying to master long division or debating the mysteries of our own belly buttons.

Let's be honest, most of those childhood dreams never came true, and thank goodness! The world would have been up to its ear-piercings and tattoos in ballerinas and astronauts. Back in the day, we'd all ask each other what our dads did for a living, secretly hoping our best friend's dad had a cooler job than ours. But the truth is, man still earns his keep by the sweat of his brow—it's just a different kind of sweat now.

Today, the real sweat comes from the stress on our minds, the fear in our hearts. Our jobs churn out anger in our guts, and corruption drips from our very souls. And yet, we still hear that old warning: "Don't ever let 'em see you sweat!"

It turns out that being defined by your job was never God's plan for us. The Hebrew word, golel, literally means "to roll"—like rolling your worries, your whole identity, onto another. In this case, to roll it onto God.

So, we were never meant to be defined solely by our occupations, folks. The Creator of the Universe went to the trouble of planning and identifying each one of us as distinctive. In other words, you're unique—just like everybody else!

You might earn a living as a teacher, a firefighter, or a pastor, but that’s not who you are. The most important title you have is that you were made in the image of God. That’s the real way to see ourselves and each other.

You know how they say, "Let go and let God"? Well, Proverbs has a similar, but maybe even more direct, approach. It basically says, "Hey, hand your work over to the Lord and put it in Jesus' care."

And now for the most crucial part, the one we all seem to forget: Leave it there!

As the theologian Derek Kidner once put it, "Our activities and thoughts will be no less our own for being His: only less burdensome." The work is still yours to do, but the heavy lifting is not. That's not on your shoulders anymore.

So, do your thing for His glory, and trust that the rest of your plans "will be established." The truth is, when you take this approach, the job gets a whole lot easier, the rewards are better, and you'll find yourself sweating a lot less. The entire process is a "no sweat" situation. You don’t have to quit your job. You have to reassign it. Give it to God.

“Everything I do, Lord, I do it for You!”

I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the truth is... "Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." - Proverbs 16:3