Your Career and Your Calling

If you are going to have joy and meaning in your work, it's got to be connected to something bigger. Dr. Tony Evans says when you're working for more than just a paycheck, it shows.

The best workers ought to be the Christians, because they're working for a higher standard. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Everybody hopes to find their dream job, but Dr. Evans says if your job is more like a nightmare, there's hope. Today he shares how turning your career over to Christ can give you a new vision for your workplace.

Let's join him. Today I want to talk about your career and your calling. Your career and your calling. I did not say your job and your calling.

I said your career and your calling. The problem with so many people is they have a job but no career. They work for money, and that's about the only reason they work.

If it wasn't for the money, honey, they would be staying home. When a person has a calling, they can't stay home. And when a person understands that work has more involved with it than simply getting a paycheck, they are able to lock into purpose a lot cleaner. What is the purpose of a career?

The purpose of a career is to be able to facilitate your calling in a way that provides resources for it, whether it's money or skill or tools, as well as support for it. Lucifer had the best calling possible. He was called to be chief angel in charge. God created him and made him the number one angel. All the other angels were to follow his lead for the glory of God and for the purposes of God.

He was the bright and shining one. Ezekiel 28 talks about his pipes, the fact that he could sing. By the way, I don't know if you know it, that's why he doesn't like praise. It reminds him of his old job. His job was to lead the angels in praise and the worship of God.

But of course, you know the story. The story is his rebellion. He decided to break off in his own career, establish his own company, and do his own program. Ezekiel 28 says, pride swelled up in him.

Isaiah 14 says, five times he asserted negative volition, that is, his will against the will of God, and he says, I will be like the Most High. He rebelled. Now, let me explain his career choice. It's not that he wanted to do a different job. He kind of liked the job.

He wanted to do the same job a different way. In other words, he wanted to do it now for his kingdom and promotion of his glory, rather than God's kingdom and God's glory. So let me start out by saying, if your career choice leads God out, if your career choice sets up a rival kingdom, don't expect to have the blessing of God on your rival situation.

God established him for the purposes of his kingdom. One of the reasons that many Christians are confused today as it relates to their career or path in life related to vocation is either they're in the wrong vocation, so they're not where they're supposed to be, or they're in the right vocation only servicing the wrong kingdom. And it is very easy to be in the right vocation, but be in it where the kingdom of God gets no benefit from your being there.

You've heard me say it before, but let me say it again. If God has called you to be a doctor, you're not just supposed to be a doctor. You're supposed to be God's representative in medicine. So the medical field sees what God looks like when God helps hurting people. If you're a business person, you're not just a business person, you're God's representative in the field of business. So the business world gets to see what God looks like when God cuts a deal. And once you perceive that that is where God has you, you are to kingdomize the occupation.

To kingdomize the occupation simply means that you are to seek ways to serve the kingdom of God in that process. The Spanish army used to have what was called fifth columnists. Fifth columnists were very interesting. The Spanish army would march in five columns as they assaulted a particular country that they were up against.

They would look like an easy target because you could see the, actually they were marching four columns, you would see the four columns coming. But there was this group known as fifth columnists. The fifth columnists were people who had infiltrated the group that was being attacked by the Spanish army and had become part of the woodwork of the culture.

They became doctors and lawyers and nurses and business persons and they infiltrated. And their job was to sabotage the enemy so that when the four columns began to march, where it looked like it would be an easy victory, the sabotage was so ingrained that when the enemy now came out to fight, the weapons had been unloaded or destroyed or all manner of chaos because these folks had moved in a year earlier in order to be saboteurs against the enemy. What God has called you and I to be in our occupation are saboteurs for the kingdom of God. We are to sabotage the enemy's attempts to promote his kingdom and promote God's desire to embellish his own.

So, the purpose of your career, if in fact it is your calling, and I'll deal with what if your career right now is not your calling in a moment, but your career, which is more than a job, is to closely align itself to your calling so that it either is your calling or supports your calling because it supplements your calling. Nehemiah was the cupbearer for the king. The whole book of Nehemiah is about him. He's the cupbearer for the king. Now, that may not sound like a big job, but that's a big job. The cupbearer was the chief administrative assistant to the king, so he's an executive assistant, okay? Now, cupbearer was used because one of his jobs was, in case somebody was to poison the king, he had to sip the wine first, so if anybody went down, he went down first.

So, that's a serious job, but he had administrative responsibilities, too. Now, he is working for an ungodly king, so everybody is not going to be in full-time Christian service working for Christians. Sometimes we have people at the church and they think it's going to be heaven. I'm at the church.

I'm at the church. Then they discover people work at the church. You cannot fill the kingdom if everybody's working in the church.

Now, we need people in professional Christian service, so to speak, but God wants people in every aspect of his kingdom. So, Nehemiah is the cupbearer for the king. He gets a message in Nehemiah chapter 1 that the walls of his city, Jerusalem, his beloved Jerusalem, have been burned with fire. In other words, the city has gone to pot.

That's what it means. His brother comes and says, you won't believe what's happening back home. And he wept, the Bible says. God gave him a burden, a passion for the problem. But God not only gave him a passion, he had a job that was able to address it, because he worked for the king.

So he went into prayer, Nehemiah 1 says, and he says, Lord, you're in charge here. You know this mess we're in. I am willing to use my job to reverse this situation. I just need you to open up the opportunity with the government.

I need you to open up the government to get the job done. A number of months passed. The king looked at him one day and said, Nehemiah, you sure have been looking a little bit to spondulate.

Anything wrong? That's a Holy Ghost moment. I don't know if you've ever had a Holy Ghost moment, but a Holy Ghost moment is where the sinner asks you the question that you need to get the kingdom work done.

That's where sinners come to you and say, can I help you? He said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I'm having a little problem. My family, my people, everything is torn down, and I need some help.

He said, well, I'll tell you what. I'll give you a leave of absence. Why don't you go back, and why don't you oversee the rebuilding of the city? Not only will I give you a leave of absence, but what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna pay you while you're gone.

On top of that, I am going to create an assistance program. And you know the reason why that's possible is because the Bible says that God lays up the wealth of the sinners in store until the righteous are ready to handle it. God told Israel to build a tabernacle. How are they gonna build a tabernacle?

These are a bunch of poor, beggarly people. I'll tell you how they're gonna build a tabernacle, because on their way out of Dodge, that is Egypt, God told them, may you pick up all the jewelry you can get your hands on, because I'm gonna need that later on. But the Bible condemns us because it says often the unrighteous, Luke 16, have more knowledge of how to work the system than the righteous.

They know how to work the system for ungodliness, but we don't know how to tweak the system to promote the kingdom of God. And so you find the walls are rebuilt in 52 days, and you read the book of Nehemiah, and he has this tremendous revival that breaks out in a city gone bad because he uses his job in politics to maneuver the system. And Dr. Evans says there's a modern-day lesson for us to learn from the work Nehemiah did.

He'll share that with us when he returns in just a moment. First though, I'd like to let you know that you can get a copy of Tony's current audio series, Called for a Purpose, a two-volume 12-message audio collection on CD and digital download, as well as his helpful companion book, Discover Your Destiny, Let God Use You Like He Made You. It doesn't matter what other people have told you that you can or can't do. It doesn't matter whether you feel like you have anything worthwhile to contribute.

What matters is God's purpose for putting you on this planet, and nothing can stand in the way of that, if you're ready. For a few more days, we're able to offer this package to you as our gift when you come alongside the ministry and make a contribution to help continue Tony's work here on the air. We depend completely on your support to keep this program going, and this is one way we can show our appreciation for your faithfulness. Contact us today for more information on Called for a Purpose and Discover Your Destiny. All the details are waiting for you online at tonyevans.org or call us at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you.

I'll have those contact details for you again after part two of today's message and this. Every man wants to make a difference, to influence others to impact the world around him, and Tony Evans has written a powerful and personal book to show you how. Kingdom in Rising, the long awaited follow-up to Tony's previous bestseller, Kingdom Man, with over 400,000 copies sold, shows you how to take the next step on your journey to intentionally live as a man of influence right now. Get Kingdom in Rising online at tonyevans.org or at your favorite Christian bookstore today.

Together we rise. God is able to turn things around on your job when you become a kingdom worker rather than somebody just going to make money. Money is important. You can't live without money, but the Bible says in Deuteronomy 8 18 that God gives wealth not just so you can be wealthy. He gives wealth to fulfill His covenant. He gives wealth to expand His kingdom, to promote His program, not just so you can have more money in your pocket.

One other thing I want to point out, and that is the perspective with which you should approach your career. And I can't find a better example of that than Daniel, the book of Daniel. Daniel is one of the great Christians of the Bible. If you've not been introduced to brother Daniel, then you need to read Daniel sometime.

He is one of the great, great men. He shows up in a pagan land named Babylon as a teenager. So he's a teenager, and they have selected certain teens to work for the king, but they got to get them paganized first. So they changed their names to give them the names of pagan gods. They sent them to a educational system that taught them evolution, not creation. You know, they Babylonianized them. They doused them in all of Babylonian thought, all of Babylonian logic, all of Babylonian thinking.

They secularized these young men who were born in Israel. Then they came to him in chapter one of the book of Daniel, and they told him that they wanted him to eat meat, sacrifice idols. Verse eight, Daniel made up in his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank. So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.

Now, there's two things you want to see in this verse. Number one is commitment. He would not eat meat offered to idols. See, some of us think if we don't go out drinking with the boys or the girls, we can't get ahead. If we don't play politics, we can't get ahead.

That is illegitimate politics, that we have to kowtow to the unrighteousness of the system in order to climb the corporate ladder. And that is bold-faced lack of trust in God. If you've got to become like a sinner to make it among the sinners, then you're saying your God is not sovereign over the sinners. If you've got to become like the sinners to make it with the sinners, then you're inditing God as not being sovereign over the sinners. So Daniel had commitment. But please, let's not get too spiritual here, because it goes on to say he sought permission from the commander that he might not defile himself.

See, this wasn't a man who said, I'm not going to do something. He came up with something better. That's why you always want to pray to God for wisdom, to not just not do what the sinners are doing, but give you something better, give you a new idea. He comes up with a new idea, and his idea is better than the idea that the sinners came up with. And when they discovered that the Christian's idea was better than the sinner's idea, and that the Christians were doing better than the sinners, verse 17 says, as for these four youth, God gave them knowledge and intelligence and every branch of literature and wisdom. Daniel even understood all kinds of dreams. So it says, verse 20, and as for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and conjurers and all who were in his realm.

He found them 10 times better. God honored it. So the first thing is commitment, but not the kind of commitment that goes over into a wall, the kind of commitment that gets involved and comes up with something better.

And you'll be surprised at the ideas that God will give you when it comes out of a heart of commitment. Another thing you need to know about Daniel is his generosity. Because he was kingdom-minded, he wasn't only looking for himself. Look at chapter 2, verse 46 says, then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his faith and did a homage to Daniel. This is the government paying homage to the Christian, giving orders to present to him an offering and fragrance incense. And the king answered Daniel and said, surely your God is the God of gods and Lord of kings and reveal of mysteries, that you have been able to reveal this mystery.

Then the king promoted Daniel. Oh, we got a sinner promoting a Christian. Let me tell you when sinners will promote Christians when it helps their prophet. I don't care how much they hate the sinner.

They love the green more. He sees this is going to make things better for him. He gives him many gifts. He makes him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief perfect over all the wise men of Babylon. You're talking about climbing the corporate ladder.

He's climbing the corporate ladder because he's blessed of God in the marketplace and he didn't stop being a Christian to do it. And it says, and Daniel made requests, I like this, that he appoint Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over all the administration of the province of Babylon. And Daniel was at the king's court. Now notice what he did. He didn't say, I got mine.

I hope y'all make it. You know what? See, Daniel understood something we don't understand. When you're in God's will, nobody can have what belongs to you. When you're in God's will, what's yours is yours. You don't have to worry about helping Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego because if I help them up here, then it's going to be four of us. And then I won't be the only Christian getting all the recognition, all the credit. So if somebody else is going to take my place, you are very secure because if God has you there, only God can remove you.

Only God can remove you. We had a young lady being harassed by her boss. Her boss was harassing her, and he was a very ungodly man, and he was pressuring her because of her Christian values and everything. And she came to me.

She was just balling. And she said, I can't take it anymore. I love the job.

I want to work here, but I can't work for this man, but I don't have an opportunity to transfer, but I don't want to go to a new job. I'm so confused. I don't know what to do. I said, well, let's get on our knees. Let's get this into the hands of the Lord. So we did that. We did all we could do. There wasn't anything she could do. She went back. She just kept working hard.

Two weeks later, her boss's boss called her into the office and said, I just fired your boss yesterday because I didn't like his work. And if you would accept it, I would like to give you his position. So I have seen what this kind of commitment can do. So he was generous. He understood the kingdom.

You know, Nebuchadnezzar tried to get Meshach, Shirek, Abednego to worship this foreign god, this theo-ego, this Nebuchadnezzar god that he built. And they said, our God is able to protect us, but even if He doesn't, because our God is also sovereign, so even if He doesn't, we will not bow to your system. We will service your system. We will work hard in your system. We will give you the best that we can for your system, but your system will never become our God.

That is what God is looking for in the marketplace today. I like chapter 6 of Daniel because Nebuchadnezzar is dead. Nebuchadnezzar gone. Babylon is dead.

The whole country has been overrun by the Medes and the Persians. Daniel is doing fine. In other words, Daniel has outlasted the governance of other nations, and when new nations have come in, they kept Daniel. Why do they keep Daniel? It says, Daniel distinguished himself, verse 3, among the commissioners and satraps, because he possessed an extraordinary spirit, and the king planned to appoint him over the entire kingdom. Now what does that say about Daniel?

He was excellent. No sloppy work here. No going to work late here. No leaving early because I don't feel like working the day on a regular basis here. No calling in sick when he was well here.

None of that. It says he distinguished himself. He rose to the top. The best workers in any organization who are kingdom-minded ought to be the Christians, because they're working for a higher standard. They do the best possible work, giving whatever the gifts that God has given them, because they serve the Lord. They don't do sloppy work talking about, I'm tired. They serve the Lord, and so they and so they give the best of the best of the best, because they want the applause of heaven and not just the applause of earth.

Some people, you don't even want them to say they're Christians, because you look at the work that they do, and it is an embarrassment to God. He was diligent, he was committed, he was excellent, and it says they could find, verse 5, no ground of accusation against him. He was honest. He didn't steal from the company talking about they won't miss it. He was honest. They tried to find what he was doing wrong with the company, and said they couldn't find a thing wrong with this man.

And you know one thing they found wrong with him? His faith. It says the only thing we got on this guy is his faith, so let's get him there.

And guess what? His faith got him fired. Yeah, that does happen to Christians.

You distinguish one moment, the company doesn't need you anymore. He gets a pink slip, and this is a real pink slip. He gets thrown into the lion's den, so he's to be eaten up by lions.

But the Bible says God was with him in the lion's den, and the folks who got him fired wind up in the den, and he got re-promoted, because God doesn't miss a lake. We've all seen the red ants. Those red ants will take over a yard, all right?

They get these little mounds going, they will take over a yard. You know why red ants spread? Because they're busy serving the queen, and they serve the queen, guess how? By serving one another. And as they begin to serve the queen by serving one another, the mounds proliferate. When Christians serve the king and serving one another, the kingdom proliferates. The kingdom spreads.

But when Christians do not serve the king in the marketplace and serve the people of God, the kingdom stays small, and it doesn't expand, it doesn't grow, it doesn't demonstrate all that God can do. If you are going to have joy and meaning in your work, it's got to be connected to something bigger, and that is the kingdom of God and the glory of God. And if you've not yet figured out what God's got to do with it, you know, you know we got to solve what's love got to do with it? Nothing. What's God got to do with it?

Everything. When you make that connection and God sees, hmm, I can get some glory out this boy, I can get some glory out this girl, let me do something else with them, because I know they're going to take me with them up the ladder. Dr. Tony Evans, with advice on connecting your career with your calling. Just one message from his powerful series, Called for a Purpose.

As I mentioned earlier, you can get all 12 full-length lessons in this powerful two-volume collection as our gift. Just visit tonyevans.org, make a contribution in support of this ministry, and we'll send the audio series to you on CD and digital download, along with a special bonus of Tony's popular life-changing book, Discover Your Destiny, Let God Use You Like He Made You, our way of saying thank you. All the details are waiting for you online at tonyevans.org. That's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request center at 1-800-800-3222.

Again, 1-800-800-3222. Discovering God's destiny for your life will bring you more satisfaction than you can imagine, but it'll also cost you something. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans will talk about the price we ought to be eager to pay in order to find and fulfill our calling. I hope you'll be back with us for that. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.