|
blessedinnyc -> RE: Right career choice? (8/19/2008 6:10:06 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Love2play
Hi people :)
I am 18 yrs old and last year after I graduated from high school, I took a year off before I entered college and the reason why I took a year off was because I did not know what to take as a career choice so I wanted to think about it long hard before making the right decision.
I've been praying to God and asking Him what's in HIS will and not mine.
I have a lot of interests like music, sports, children, cooking, and computers. I had a lot of careers in mind such as a police officer. So I thought of early childhood education, but I also had business in mind. The thing is, I've never taken business in my life, but it has always interested me so I was stuck between business and early childhood education. Ultimately, I felt like early childhood education was what God wanted me to do.
I am about to start college in 3 weeks and I am just completely nervouse and stressed out. I've talked with a friend and she told me that ece is really stressful and involves a lot of work and now, I'm just thinking if I made the right choice.
I just don't know if I made the right decision and maybe this is God's way of showing that I made the wrong choice?
I'm just really scared now and I just don't know what to do.
What should I do?
I was worried about the exact same thing. It was really scary leaving my family- whom I'd lived with for my entire life (except for 1-2 week trips to various camps) and going to college. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I certainly had no confirmation from God that I was supposed to do XYZ. I chose Computer Science because I enjoyed designing websites.
When I got to campus, my Mom was on the verge of tears as she hugged me goodbye, and I found myself in a cinder-block dorm room with a roommate I'd never met before. That was about the low point for me. I was dropped off on a Saturday, and the next morning, I resolved to keep my Christianity, and found a Methodist church to go to. I had grown up an evangelical, but the church was close and convenient, and it seemed like they needed me as much as I needed them. I quickly found myself organizing evangelism efforts (Methodists use food, and besides being a former evangelical, I also enjoyed cooking).
A lot of us had liberal friends who, in the 2004 elections, assumed that the only Christians were members of the Christian Right. We chose to focus on sharing the good news with people who might not otherwise respond well to conservative evangelical evangelism attempts. (The people whom Intervarsity and Campus Crusade, some of whom apparently made careers out of being RAs and evangelism experts in various dorms, would have trouble reaching.) Two years later, the Wesley Foundation at UIUC won a district-wide award for evangelism; we had gotten at least several new people to come to Christ and doubled the number of regular students from 20 to 40. Ironically, everyone who played a part in the growth of the church showed up at just the right time, and I was one of the lucky people to participate.
So it was clear that God had an obvious plan for my life all along, even though I had no idea what I needed to do to put that plan into effect in certain cases.
So, there's four truths in this story:
1.) It's natural to be scared to go to college.
2.) The fact that God has a plan for you doesn't necessarily tell you what he wants you to do until he actually needs to. Sometimes he ignores seemingly important things- like college majors, as he did with me and you.
3.) If you seek God, you'll find him, and you'll find his will for you (Jesus actually talks about this a bit; see Matt 7:7). All you need to do when you get to campus is resolve to stay a Christian and get involved with other Christians you have fun hanging out with and keep a schedule of regular worship.
BTW, I was a CS major, but I work for a bank now. College majors are not the end-all be-all of your career! In 50 years, when I've forgotten what Backus-Nauer Form means for relational databases, I will still remember the cold November Friday evening when Wesley brought in 40 non-Christians to our church for dinner for the first time since anyone can remember. Even after I forget what NP-completeness means, I will remember what happened the next Wednesday, when we had an evening worship service in our darkened church and a college student who had joined us for dinner knelt at the altar crying afterwards and resolved to follow Christ. Oftentimes, those seemingly unimportant things compared to college majors- like dinners- are strikingly meaningful in hindsight.
Just follow the advice in Matthew 7.
|
|
|
|