I’ve been talking for the last couple of days on the value of having a job that you love. If you aren’t content in your current job, of course, the first thing to consider is how you might be able to craft it and shape it in a way that is more in line with your strengths.

But if the discontent remains, perhaps it’s worth considering something radical. Something more radical than just switching jobs. Maybe it’s worth thinking about missions.

I’m not suggesting here that secular employment or a non-profit or ministry role in the US is less valuable than doing missions. Rather, I’m just suggesting that, if you are discontent in your job and the discontent tends to remain, it’s worth considering missions as one of the possibilities for what’s next.

Here’s how John Piper puts it at the end of Don’ t Waste Your Life:

The Meaning of Your Discontent

Many of you should stay where you are in your present job, and simply ponder how you can fit your particular skills and relationships and resources more strategically into the global purposes of your heavenly Father.

But for others reading this book, it is going to be different. Many of you are simply not satisfied with what you are doing. As J. Campbell White said, the output of your lives is not satisfying your deepest spiritual ambitions.

We must be careful here. Every job has its discouragements and its seasons of darkness. We must not interpret such experiences automatically as a call to leave our post.

But if the discontent with your present situation is deep, recurrent, and lasting, and if that discontent grows in Bible-saturated soil, God may be calling you to a new work. If, in your discontent, you long to be holy, to walk pleasing to the Lord, and to magnify Christ with your one, brief life, then God may indeed be loosening your roots in order to transplant you to a place and a ministry where the deep spiritual ambitions of your soul can be satisfied.

It is true that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when he deploys you from one place to the next, he offers fresh and deeper drinking at the fountain of his fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of his sustaining grace. . . .

Big issues are in the offing. May God help you. May God free you. May God give you a fresh, Christ-exalting vision for your life — whether you go to an unreached people or stay firmly and fruitfully at your present post. May your vision get its meaning from God’s great purpose to make the nations glad in him. May the cross of Christ be your only boast, and may you say, with sweet confidence, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

It’s almost silly to even ask that question. It’s like asking “Is it biblical to chose a spouse that you actually want to be with?” Yes, of course it is. Why would you marry someone you don’t want to marry? Likewise, if you have the choice (and we do much more often than we realize), why would you chose a job you aren’t excited about?

In fact, Paul’s teaching on marriage is actually a helpful analogy here, because it gives us a principle. In regard to marriage, he says: “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). So marriage is an area of freedom — marry whom you want (as long as they are a Christian). In other words, what you want to do is not only a legitimate consideration; you are free to make your choice on that basis.

In fact, Paul goes further: “Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God” (v. 40). Now, at first it doesn’t sound like he’s going further, because he is actually recommending in this case that a widow not remarry. He’s not forbidding remarriage, but just recommending against it in this case. My point here is not to discuss whether it is better to marry or not. Rather, here’s the important point: Paul’s reason for his advice here is that she will be happier if she remains as she is.

In other words, your happiness is a valid and legitimate consideration in making life decisions. Paul is suggesting that she actually would be happier not to remarry. Again, the issue of whether someone should get married or not is not my point here. My point here is that, remarkably, Paul considers happiness a fully legitimate consideration in making the major life choice of whether to marry and whom to marry. In fact, it actually seems to be the primary consideration in the decision, since his entire reason for recommending singleness here is that this path would, he argues, result in greater happiness.

If happiness is a legitimate consideration in choosing a spouse, then it would also seem to follow that happiness is a legitimate consideration in making other life decisions as well, such as where you work and what you do for a living.

I’m not saying that there aren’t more things to take into account. But enjoying your work and having a job that suits you is a right and good and significant consideration in choosing your work.

Tomorrow I’ll give an example of what this looks like.

Rick Warren writes in The Purpose Driven Life:

We have all heard people say, “I took a job I hate in order to make a lot of money, so someday I can quit and do what I love to do.” That’s a big mistake. Don’t waste your life in a job that doesn’t express your heart. Remember, the greatest things in life are not things. Meaning is far more important than money.

Someone might say, “That’s hard to do in the current economic environment.” And yes, it can be.

But Warren is making a much wider point here that goes to the issue of how we think about jobs in general. We need to stay away from the mindset of “deferred purpose.” That is, don’t fall for the view that your job is merely or even primarily about earning money, such that you need to take whatever job you can get now (or whatever pays the most) with the aim of doing what you really want later. If you do this, chances are the “later” will never come. When you chose a job, you are often choosing not just a job, but a path.

Further, the “deferred purpose” approach only takes into account one dimension of ourselves — the economic. But, as the Bible teaches and management thinkers of today are also pointing out (such as Stephen Covey — see, for example, Principle-Centered Leadership or The 8th Habit), people are more than just economic beings. We are also social, talented, and spiritual. When choosing a job, you cannot isolate one dimension from the others. To take a job only for the money is to treat yourself as merely an economic being. We need to view our work not as just a way to earn a living, but as something which in itself ought to engage the social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of human nature.

And, when you do this, you will be more effective in your job. (Interestingly, it is not only the case that people who work for more more than money are more effective; it is also the case that companies that exist for a purpose beyond making money are also more effective. See, for example, Jim Collins’ chapter “More than Profit” in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies).

Warren’s point here also relates to the way many people today think of retirement. The common notion of retirement is that you work for 40 years or so in a job (or series of jobs) that you may not like in order to build up a large retirement account so that when you retire from work altogether around 65 (or maybe earlier, if you can save effectively enough) you can then be completely free from work to do whatever you want. And, much of the time (but not all of the time), the things people “really want” to do focus on their comfort, taking it easy, and recreation.

Tim Ferris, in The 4-Hour Workweek, does a good job of exploding this notion of retirement. He basically says “why do what you don’t want to do for 40 years and put off what you really want to do to the end of your life?” But Ferris doesn’t take the concept far enough. He argues for taking frequent “mini-retirements” throughout your career. These retirements can be used for service, but that doesn’t come across as a primary emphasis.

What I would want to add to Ferris is a greater emphasis on utilizing these “mini-retirements” as a means of serving people — radically, creatively, and generously. There is some incredible and creative thought that can be given to this. Along with this, the extra time that can be freed up every day and every week simply by utilizing good productivity practices in our work is also an opportunity to give more time to serving others — and in creative ways, rather than with an “oh, I better put in my time helping out” mindset. (And this is amplified even further if we are in an environment that has a results-oriented philosophy of “work wherever, whenever, as long as the work gets done,” which sees performance as measured by what you produce and accomplish rather than by the amount of time you put in.)

But we need to go even beyond this. What Ferris seems to leave out is an affirmation of our work itself as an enjoyable, meaningful thing that is itself a means of doing good to others.

In other words, in addition to becoming more efficient and effective in our jobs so that we can have more free time to serve, we also need to see our jobs themselves as a means of serving. And, further, we need to take jobs that fire us up, that spark a passion in us, so that we are fully engaged and truly serving in the way that we are called to serve. We need to get away both from the mindset that says “I’ll do a job I hate for 40 years so I can retire with freedom and money,” and the mindset that, as Warren points out, says “I’ll do a job I hate for now so I can make a lot of money and then at some point do a job I love.” Avoid the deferred-purpose mindset. Find a job you love now, so that you can serve with maximum enthusiasm now — not in 20 years.

There’s one problem here, of course. In the current economic environment, it can be extra hard to find a job that you love. And I realize that some may indeed have to take a job mainly to pay the bills so they can get by for the short term. But, in doing that, don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. And this means, first, avoid doing that if at all possible. Don’t give up too easily on finding a job you love, even in challenging economic times. And if you do find it, you will be more likely to keep it and advance (for enthusiasm drives effectiveness — it’s hard to get good at what you hate, but it’s easy to get good at what you love.). In fact, it could be said that the economy really needs more people to hold out for jobs they will love, because the result will be greater productivity throughout the entire economy as more and more people are in jobs where they love what they do.

Second, if you do have to take a job mainly to pay the bills for a season, you still can and should do that job diligently and from the heart. You can do that by doing it for the Lord, as Paul says in Ephesians 6:5-8. Be as effective as you can be, wherever you are (and, who knows, that may itself lead to something that really is a good fit in itself). More on this more specifically in another post, perhaps.

And, finally, if you do have to take a job you’d rather not in order to stay afloat, don’t let that season last too long. Before you know it, three or four or more years can go by, and you are off track. Be diligent. Do everything you can, as soon as you can, to get into a job you love. Obviously you won’t love everything about any job, and you will also have things to learn and grow into in any job and vocational trajectory. You won’t have instant success or instant effectiveness. But be vigilant and rigorous in finding a way, if you do have to “settle” for a time, to both make the most of the job you are presently in, and then get back into the role you really need to be in.