Simon Sinek wrote the book “Start with Why”. In it, he states that your why is a purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do. Eugene Cho further detailed the why concept and how it helped him when wrestling with his career choices. He stated about finding his work passion, “the biggest realization for me was that it [your work] was never something meant to be figured out logically…Finding your passion is an emotional process, not a logical one.” This could also be stated, your work passion connects with the emotional part of who you are and this is what ultimately connects you with your why.
We Are Spiritual Beings First and Foremost
This is getting closer to the reason we are not satisfied in our work, but it is not enough. Why? Because we are spiritual beings first and foremost. A culture and a people that do not honor or nurture the things of the Spirit above the material will ultimately get things out of order and ultimately end up lost. The Bible states in Eph 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” All struggles are based in our spiritual condition and ultimately a part of a spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of people.
A Spiritual-First Reality Demands Starting with Truth About Identity
Connecting your emotions to your choice of work vocation is still only considering material factors – that is, it assumes that your passions or who you are meant to be is relegated within you alone and based on feelings and internal desires, hopes, and dreams.
But, if you are a spiritual being, then truth regarding your spiritual origin and destiny should guide what matters most and influence the work you do. It gives you your identity. John Mark Comer shared on video with Qideas “the core human temptation is to redefine good and evil on [our] own terms rather than trust God’s vision for human flourishing.” Another way to think about this on a more personal level is our tendency to replace God with self and with that a focus more on our own selfish desires, our deepest idols. These are deeply held and more easily hidden, rooted in pride and greed. With this, our tendency is toward self reliance, self fulfillment and all of the ways we depend on our own strength above learning to rely wholly on God.
Passion means to suffer for. How can we know what we should suffer for in obedience to the truth until we place our faith in the truth and believe it? Absolute truth helps us know how to abide in who God is. It guides our perspective in choosing acts of obedience, in this case, our work.
Truth Gets Sabotaged By Us
We must remember, that our pursuit of truth very easily gets sabotaged by our own idols and becomes an artificial self-righteousness with an outward appearance of godliness. It is easier to go about doing things that are important to us and from our perspective seem to be amoral. But even then, we can be avoiding the truth or defending our own pride and no one else can know it. It is easy to shrug off our neediness toward God and drift from aspiration to ambition and to arrogance in what we want to happen. This drift toward selfishness subtly moves from submission to God in humility and gives us over to our logical thoughts and emotional feelings.
The act of prayer and talking with God, with the implanted relational word of God in us, is how we and others do the ongoing rooting out of self-idolatry and instead constantly seek selflessness. This is hard to do when it comes to choosing our work and acting in obedience to truth but it must be our constant state of being and longing. This should inform the work that we do, not logic or emotions, but the Spirit that lives in us and through us.
“Sometimes we think we’re defending Jesus when in fact we’re defending our own egos.” Rebecca McLaughlin
“The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with an all-holy God.” Martin Luther
It’s so important that we make the connection like Martin Luther did that this is not a personal quest to find our ideal work but to trust and have faith in an all-holy and all-knowing God. Our tendency toward self keeps us from a dependency on God and missing God’s best for us and our own human flourishing. It literally keeps us from greater fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. We become dissatisfied with the work that God has put before us because we cannot connect the implicit importance of who we are, and namely, who we follow, in the midst of our work.
This is exactly why we need not our why, but our who – namely Christ – to transform our hearts both in salvation and in ongoing sanctification. Our why will never be enough to satisfy the longing in our heart or to identify absolute truth outside of our own existence. Absolute truth is something supernatural and existential. Our who is necessary for our human existence and having peace and contentment in the work we are called to do.
Praise God in Your Work
In America, we have choices and freedom around work. Praise God for that. Literally, praise God and continue to praise Him. Do not take credit for your good results, promotions, good deeds. Be grateful and thankful for God’s favor. When we come from a position of knowing the giver of absolute truth, who we are serving, we praise him for all things, the good and the bad. When choosing work in a position of praise, we look to our personal bent and interests and the struggles that we have made it through and ask for clarity from God to guide us.
The Origin of Work is from God
By beginning this way, with truth and with praise, we can acknowledge the source of all truth, God’s word, and obey the origin of work. We acknowledge who made us and that God made the world good. But we were tarnished by sin and evil. So we want to redeem the good through work and point it back to God.
And even when stuff hits the fan and things are going horribly in my view of my wants and desires, what is my re-centering factor? What keeps me sane, grounded, hopeful? When everyone has disowned me and I feel lost and alone, it’s not my why that matters, but my who. When everything is going well but I find it still missing something, it is the unwavering belief in God and the reality of life with Him that gives me life. It keeps me going and seeking to live selflessly. It is the hope in what is not yet fully realized – God’s immense love for his children and our opportunity to commune with God himself. And it brings everything back to praise of God as the object of our work.