September 15

God’s will for my career

“Make you perfect in every good work to do his will” (Heb. 13:21).
“The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will” (Acts 22:14).

But there is a will for career as well as for character. There is a will for where—in what place, viz., in this town or another town—I am to become like God. There is a will for where I am to be, and what I am to be, and what I am to do tomorrow. There is a will for what scheme I am to take up, and what work I am to do for Christ, and what business arrangements to make, and what money to give away. This is God’s private will for me, for every step I take, for the path of life along which He points my way: God’s will for my career.


If I have God’s will in my character, my life may become great or good. It may be useful and honorable, and even a monument of the sanctifying power of God. But it will only be a life. However great and pure it be it can be no more than a life. And it ought to be a mission. There should be no such thing as a Christian life; each life should be a mission.
God has a life-plan for every human life. In the eternal counsels of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the Creator had a thought for you and me. Our life was to be the slow unfolding of this thought, as the cornstalk from the grain of corn, or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and years, our influence and our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, from another will, if we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God has fixed. But it was man’s prerogative to choose his path; his duty to choose at all has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God and cut his career for himself.
It comes to pass, therefore, that there are two great classes of people in the world of Christians today: (1) Those who have God’s will in their character; (2) Those who have God’s will likewise in their career. The first are in the world to live. They have a life. The second are in the world to minister. They have a mission.
—Henry Drummond.

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