I recently dined with a former colleague named John. I had always enjoyed working with John, because he had been a good friend, trusted confidant and someone who saw the world as I did. That, and he had a great sense of humor. Every conversation with him was guaranteed a minimum of 7.6 average laughs per minute (ALPM). I missed him very much in the months since he'd left the company. Since his departure, I hadn't averaged more than 0.05 ALPM, not that I was counting, or anything.

At dinner, I asked John about his decision to leave.

"Tell me John," I said, with one hand in the pocket of my smoking jacket and the other holding my pipe aloft (not really, but it kind of adds to the atmosphere of the story). "When will I know that it's time for me to leave the company?"

"Oh," John said, "you'll know. Trust me, you'll know."

I've taken John at his word. I'm still at the same company, but I am continually praying for God's guidance for if and when it's time to leave. Not surprisingly, my prayers are most fervent immediately following a particularly bad day. (Come to think of it, I don't remember ever praying for that guidance after a good day…)

Maybe I'm unique in this, but for those of us who follow Jesus and desire to follow him better, I think it's fairly common to question whether our current job is really what God wants us to do. For Christians in the business world, we wonder if we can really be effective in ministry when we're working in a secular environment. Doesn't doing ministry require we work in a church, or at least a non-profit?

Of course, that's not the case. Many times our ministry is meant exactly for the backstabbing, money-grubbing, ethics-deprived corporate workplace. If ever there was fertile ground for spreading the gospel, this is it!

But there are days when I struggle with my job. The people are selfish, the boss is mean and the clients are just plain wrong. I ask God, "If it's this hard, is this really where You want me to be? Is it time to move on?"

The Possibility of Moving On
We all leave our jobs at some point—sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Some of us find work we love and upon retiring, colleagues fondly recall how we ministered to them. Others of us get fed up, throw the laptop out a window, and slam our security badge down on the boss' desk as we storm out the door. I'm praying my departure looks like the former, but anticipating it will look more like the latter—with the added dynamics, of course, of security guards and television cameras.

You increase the likelihood of police escort departures, I think, when your expectations are out of whack. When we expect guaranteed joyous lifetime employment, where coworkers model kindness and compassion, and where people line up outside our offices to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ, I think, just maybe, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. If that's what we expect, it's no wonder we didn't get our way.

Jesus, ever the realist, tells us to have the proper expectations of the Christian life. And it's not always silk pajamas and chocolate bon-bons. In fact, He tell us in John 16:33 that, in this world, we will have trouble (and he wasn't talking about stale bon-bons). "But take heart," he said, "I have overcome the world."

We have to remember Christ's victory over the world when we have a bad day, or even a series of bad months. In some cases, the difficulties may be God's way of telling you to pick up and leave. In other cases, he may be telling you to stay put—he has more for you to do or he wants to grow you up before it's time to move on. How do you know?

Knowing requires discernment. To get it, I recommend a prayerful look in the rearview mirror.

Incentive to Pray
God has this interesting system of getting us to pray. It's called "a bad day." Nothing puts you on your knees quite like a doozy of a day. But I seldom rush to prayer as the preferred remedy. My natural inclination is to rant and rave at the people I love and flail about trying to kick the dog. (I've never actually made contact, because the dog is smart enough to hide in the kitchen on those days.)

Once I come to the stunning conclusion that I'm not capable of solving this particular crisis, whether it is a malfunctioning copier or a companywide layoff, I get serious. I turn to prayer and have found journaling a good spiritual discipline for discerning God's will.

Maybe you haven't thought highly of journaling. I didn't initially. First, it's a spiritual discipline, and those words alone repel me. Second, I assumed journaling was only available to women. Part of it is the frilly journals they stock in Christian bookstores. They do more to turn men off of journaling than the "discipline" part. I bet if they sold leather-bound tool belt journals, accessorized with items that cut or make holes in things, men would out-journal women two to one.

But leather binding notwithstanding, I discovered that journaling is a very intimate and revealing form of prayer. It allows you to write a letter to God. It allows you to slow down and think through the issues as you write. In the time it takes to write, the Holy Spirit does amazing work.

Connecting the Dots
The greatest benefit of keeping a journal is seeing trends of how God has worked in your life. By reading past entries from the vantage point of knowing how issues turned out, you can see how God led you to your current state by answering prayer and creating opportunities. Connecting the dots of where God has led you can give a greater sense of where God is leading next.

A few weeks ago, after a particularly brutal day, I teetered on the edge of acting on John's advice, assuming it was time to move on. But after I had yelled at everyone in the house and couldn't find any family pets, I sat down and read my journal. The struggles of the day had a different perspective when viewed through the series of prayers God had answered. The next day, I wondered why I would ever think about leaving, when it seemed so clear that God was still working right here. Those are the times when you just feel a sense of confidence that you are where God wants you to be.

And of course, I felt better after drilling holes in things with my matching journal cordless drill/driver.

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Tom Petersen works to balance his job, faith and a sense of humor in his office at a Midwest company. You can track his progress at www.HisWorkInProgress.com.