Waiting for the Lord as I Looked for a Job

Versi Bahasa Indonesia dari tulisan ini sudah lebih dulu dimuat di WarungSaTeKaMu.org dengan judul Ketika Tuhan Mengizinkanku Menunggu dalam Masa Mencari Pekerjaan.

From the title alone, most likely you can guess how my story unfolded without reading this sharing. Jeff prayed for a full-time job after he graduated from college. God told Jeff to wait. Not long after, God gave Jeff a job. The end. Isn't this just another cliché?

However, there's one part of the story missing from the summary above: "What did Jeff do when God told him to wait?” In commemoration of 2 years since God gave me this job as an environmental consultant, here is my story.

A good beginning

I think I began my job search well. Name anything a job application needs. Tips on writing a good resume and cover letter? I consulted on these documents with my campus’s career consultant and academic supervisor to ensure that they would catch the HR staff’s eyes. Tricks on answering interview questions? I trained intensively with my career consultant until I knew outside of my head how to answer certain questions. Grooming and manners during the interview? I had a list of all the actions that I need to tick off before, during, and after attending an interview. Having done meticulous preparation, I started sending out applications since September 2017, the beginning of my final academic year in university. My goal was to get a job in environmental consultancy, but I was also open for other opportunities such as in data analytics, management consultancy, engineering, or commodities. At that point in time, I cared little about whether I was offered the job. Graduation is still a year away, I thought. Moreover, campus statistics showed that most fresh graduates would only get their job after applying for 20-30 positions. So, I embarked on this journey in optimism, sending out applications every one or two weeks.

Entering 2018, I shifted my gear up and became more active in searching and applying for full-time positions while completing my final term internship. It was then that the fruits of my hard work began to appear as I was called to attend several interviews. However, no one gave me an offer or even called me for the second-round interview.

Past the breaking point, into the nadir

Six months passed, and with it, my internship came to an end. What’s left from campus life was the graduation ceremony two months after. During this period, my job search effort reached its peak with me sending my applications daily, at one point writing cover letters for six positions in a day! The number of calls for interviews rose up, but still no offer at all. This went on until the beginning of September 2018, approximately two months after I got my bachelor’s degree. After more than 60 positions that I’d applied for, I finally reached my saturation point. How could I not? I felt being pressured from all directions – by all of my batch-/housemates who had started working, by parents who kept asking about job search by both calls and texts, and by my friends in church and school. Of all these pressures, I felt the biggest one to be coming from my parents. There was one time when I was really annoyed by their constant pressure that I abruptly cut short our phone call. I may have been rude, but in my defence, I didn’t feel appreciated by my own parents when I’d given my best in finding a job. All of these pressures made me exhausted, desperate, and doubtful of the kindness of God, who apparently kept telling me to wait. At this point, you may wonder how I could confidently conclude that God was telling me to wait. I couldn’t quite understand it myself, but in His grace, God provided me with sufficient faith to wait and hope for Him. But if I still had faith in God back then, where was the nadir? It manifested in how I lived my days of unemployment. It can be argued that I was clearly in a bad place, mentally and emotionally, hence my actions may be justifiable. Nevertheless, I started to slack around in my place, from morning until night only watching TV series, reading books and comics, and not preparing my Sunday school lessons well. You may consider this behaviour to be normal, but looking back at those days now, I definitely went overboard. I was so sluggish that I even completed a TV series in two days, which I’d never done before! Consequently, the frequency of my sending out applications decreased drastically. It was also during this period that my devotional and prayer times underwent a drought that, while not putting them out of existence, put my faith under fire. Praise God! for He raised me up from this nadir through a passage in the Bible that was retold in Jon Bloom’s book “Not By Sight”. Can you guess which passage I’m referring to?

A tale of the fishermen and the Resurrection

John 21:1–14 recorded Lord Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearance to His disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. The previous chapter informs us that this appearance was not the first for the disciples. Jesus had even appeared to them two times, firstly on the night of His resurrection (20:19), and eight days after the first (20:26). There’s no further record in the Gospel of John about what transpired in between these three appearances (cf. 21:25), but we can be sure that the disciples were “waiting”. How do we know this? In the first appearance, we see Jesus commissioning the disciples in the same manner as the Father sent Him (20:21). He promised them the Holy Spirit (20:22) and told them to preach the Gospel of forgiveness of sins in His name (20:23). The record of the first appearance ends here, but from Luke 24:49 we see that Jesus also told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until the Spirit descended upon them (Acts 2). In this context of waiting for the coming of the Spirit was the third appearance recorded. Imagine what the disciples felt as they waited. They were first surprised and grieved by the betrayal of Judas, one of their own, that culminated in the crucifixion and death of their Teacher. Not long after Lord Jesus was buried, the women among them claimed that He had risen. While still in grief, they went to the tomb to confirm that the women had hallucinated, only to find it empty. Immediately that night, the risen Jesus appeared amidst them with marks on His hands, legs, and side as proof that He indeed had died and risen. Abundant with love for them, their Teacher then blessed and sent them to do His mission. But before they were to go, they must first wait for the coming of the Helper that He’d promised. He then disappeared and made several more appearances to them. And in between those appearances, the disciples waited. And waited. And waited. But how long did they have to wait? Lord Jesus, who by then had not yet ascended to heaven, was not known of His whereabouts and didn’t give them any other instructions. The promised Spirit also never came. Amid this waiting that seemed to last forever, one of them broke the silence, “I am going fishing” (21:3). Peter didn’t know what else to do while waiting. Fishing was his occupation long before he became a disciple of the Lord. For him, doing something he’s good at while waiting is better than sitting idly doing nothing. The other disciples, catching Peter’s intention, went out with him into the waters to fish. All night they were looking for fish, but they caught nothing. As the day was breaking, they heard a voice from the shore, “Children, do you have any fish?” Perhaps, with irritation and exhaustion in their tone, they answered the stranger, “No” (21:5). The most amazing thing happened next. The stranger told them to cast their net on the right side of the boat. The disciples looked at each other with a meaningful gaze, perhaps half bewildered, half hopeful. “Could it be the Teacher?” And so they cast their net. What transpired thereafter was the disciples’ third encounter with the risen Lord Jesus, where they were encouraged by and had a fellowship with the Lord.

An even better ending

Reading and reflecting upon this passage brought divine interventions into my life. I could see God’s handiwork in changing my attitude as I waited for His answers. I still watched TV series and read comics and books, but only when I was taking breaks from my job search. Besides returning to sending out applications every day, I began picking up other things: writing, leading a church small group, helping out a mammal research survey, and going to an apologetics camp. I also regained my focus in preparing my Sunday school lessons. I started receiving calls for interviews again, and although there was still no job offer, I kept waiting for the Lord in faith and hope while doing the next things I could work on. Until the answer that I’d been waiting for arrived in early October 2018. Within two weeks, I discovered a sustainability and environmental consultancy company, applied there, went for the first round of interview, was uneasy for a moment as the second-round interview may take place when I was going to an apologetics camp, had my heart rebounded to its place after managing to secure the second-round interview to the week after the camp, and skipped a heartbeat when I found out that the second-round interview was really a confirmation talk to work in the field I’d like to explore. The rest was history.

While waiting, do the next thing

Now I’ve been working as an environmental consultant for two years. It took me one year of waiting and struggle to finally get here. While I was waiting, there were lots of questions and disappointment that I posed towards and poured onto the Lord in my prayers and devotionals. Why didn’t I get any offer from Company A? At least I could have made it to the second-round interview for position B, right? The list goes on. But God kept telling me to wait, and it was during this time of waiting that I learnt to do the next thing. In retrospect, I realised that God was using those periods of waiting to sharpen and hone my faith so that I may be able to rejoice more in Christ when His answer eventually arrives. When God tells us to wait, it doesn’t mean that we are to stand idly by and do nothing. On the contrary, we are to do the next thing. We will undoubtedly see and experience His goodness in the plans He has for our welfare, which gives us “a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:11).

The grace of Lord Jesus be with you, soli Deo gloria.