Do I Hear?

Lately it has become profoundly apparent to me that God didn’t make me to work in the IT world. Actually, to work in the indoor, behind a desk all day and stare a computer screen world (because that’s not just IT). It really seems to be more of a hobby than something that I actually love and get satisfaction from. Sure, I love helping people with their email crisis and making sure the backup tapes are running, but at the end of the day I wonder, if this is really the impact that God wants me to have in the world. I really feel that there is more exciting life out there for me that maybe I am just too scared to leave my life of comfort to embrace.
You can serve the Lord in different ways outside of work, and even doing everything to the glory of the Lord during the day, no matter how minute that act might be Brother Lawrence would say (the monk who was totally satisfied with doing dishes for God). While I believe that is doable for some people, I’ve really tried to keep that mindset at work for sometime actually, it just hasn’t stuck. I’ll get excited or really try to focus for a few hours, but after a while I just lose my train of thought.
Over the last few months I’ve grown frustrated with God over this and have been asking many questions. Why did he have me where I am when I feel like I am wasting time. Does he really want me here? If not, where would he want me? To be honest there really hasn’t been any resolution, but just a constant feeling that has been growing deeper, telling me that I need to move on. At first I took this as a realization that I’m not serving enough, I’ve continued with a new homeless ministry and signed up to Horizons for Homeless children. Both seem to just be falling through.
To be honest I feel pretty selfish, I’ve caught the American dream, I’ve been blessed in so many ways that others less fortunate haven’t been able to do. I’ve become the first member of the entire Worth family to graduate college. Here I am with a well paying job, that is flexible, a great work environment, wonderful co-workers, with plenty of opportunity and I am unhappy! I wonder if I should just suck it up, realize that I’ve met all my goals and continue on the 9-5 America life and be happy. Call me crazy but that doesn’t appeal. I feel God pulling me away, pushing me somewhere else and hes only getting more persistent, but there is no direction.
I was sitting in bed praying the other night and I just asked for direction. I feel like a weather vane in a tornado, turning in every direction, just trying to point north to God. I’ve always known what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve always had a plan. I’ve followed it and got where I wanted to be. I feel like now is the time for me to figure out where it is that God wants me. therin lies my problem. If God could send me that job opening I’m down. It’s just not that easy.
Thinking about it, I realized that God doesn’t want life to work like that. He wants his people to take risks on his account, risks that build our faith in him. If you aren’t sure about something, but are doing it with the intention of following God’s call in your life, how can that be the wrong choice? Think about Mother Theresa, someone who really had a clear mission, yet revealed in her diary that she wasn’t sure of her trust in God and her call. Seriously, if Mother Theresa had misgivings, what am I waiting for? Some of the things I’ve thought about joining/doing seem dangerous to people. The way I look at it I would rather die young doing something honorable and for God, than sitting in a comfortable life of monotony, wishing I was serving God. In my mind the latter isn’t really living to begin with.
So, I feel the call, but do I hear what it is? Do I have any idea what to do with myself? no. I do know that I need to take a risk on Jesus and trust in him. I’ll close with a passage from one of my favorite books

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”
— Brennan Manning (Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God)