Things to Consider When Choosing A Profession

Things to Consider When Choosing A Profession
By Matt Varughese

I have noticed that our young adults have a difficult time in choosing a profession. It is a difficult decision, so I would like to assist by offering you some guidelines. To make an informed decision about a profession, you’ll need to get six essential components together, as follows:

It must be something you genuinely like to do. This choice requires you to identify your own strengths, weaknesses and interests.

It must be something you have the ability to do. You might want to be an attorney but lack the talent to do the academic work and pass the bar examination.

It must be something you can earn a living by doing. You might want to be an artist, but if people don’t buy your paintings, you could starve while sitting at your easel.

It must be something you are permitted to do. You might make a wonderful physician and could handle the training but can’t gain entrance to medical school.

It must be something that brings cultural affirmation. In other words, most people need to feel some measure of respect from their contemporaries for what they do. This is one reason women have found it difficult to stay home and raise their children.

Most importantly for the genuine believer, it must be something that you feel God approves of.

What makes it so tough to choose an occupation is that all six of these requirements must be met at the same time. If you get five of them down but you don’t like what you have selected, you’re in trouble. If you get five together but are rejected by the required professional schools, you are blocked. If you get five lined up but you can’t earn a living at the job of your choice, the system fails. Every link in the chain must connect.

Given this challenge, it isn’t surprising that so many young people flounder during the critical decade. They become immobilized for years not knowing what to do next.

Young adults in this situation remind me of rockets sitting on the launch pad. Their engines are roaring and belching smoke and fire, but nothing moves. The spacecraft was made to blast its way through the stratosphere, but there it sits as if bolted to the pad. I’ve met many young men and women in their early twenties whose rockets just would not lift them off the ground. And, yes, I’ve known a few whose engines blew up and scattered the debris of broken dreams all over the launch pad.

The mission sometimes fails because an individual refuses to include God in his lofty plans. The psalmist wrote, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" (Ps. 127:1). Those words offer incredible meaning for those of you who are just getting started in life. Whatever you try to do, whether it is to build or defend, will be useless if you do it in your own strength. That may sound very old fashioned, but I promise you it is true. Furthermore, the Lord will not settle for second place in your life.