Letter #3: To a Friend who Isn’t Seeing Success in their Work

Dear One,

I’m so glad we got to spend time together recently. It was a joy to hear more of what life has been like over the last year. You remain committed to the Gospel, your family, a community of people in your city, and your work – despite the hurt you’ve felt recently.

It’s so hard to endure when you can’t see the success of your labors. I can’t say anything to explain away the grief and challenge of processing and responding to that. There’s frustration in that. There’s disappointment in that. There’s a feeling of injustice in that.

You clearly love the work that you get to do every day, and you know that God is with you in it as you collaborate with your team, support your family, and try to build a better city. But, it’s so hard when you don’t win a project bid – and especially hard if it feels like, time after time, you can’t seem to get a deal done while others are making it happen. So many contributing factors for that unevenly-distributed success are beyond our control, yet, in the thick of it, it still always feels like I’m the one to blame if I can’t make the deal. What’s wrong with me if I can’t get the project like that other firm can?!

I’m really sorry you haven’t been experiencing the success you hoped for when you got into this work, my friend. I hope you know how much I mean that. 

I was reading When Work Hurts by Meryl Herr after we spent time together and her reflections on God’s words to the Israelites in exile seemed to speak to the core of what you’re wrestling with right now. Amidst pressing questions of hurt, disappointment, physical and existential pain, and so much more, God calls His People to:

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may give birth to sons and daughters; and grow in numbers there and do not decrease. Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity will be your prosperity.” (Jeremiah 29:5-7)

To people wondering how long they’ll be in exile, our God seems to totally change the topic. At first glance, I wonder if God really cares about the groanings of His People, but it strikes me that these words of assurance reveal an even greater depth of care than a quick and immediate promise of resolution.

In the previous chapter, a swindler stood up among the people and promised a quick, easy, and powerful escape from Babylon within two years. You can go see how our sovereign God sorted out that false hope. 

Whereas the false prophet told Israel that God will be with them when they get out of Babylon, the True God told His People that he is with them in exile – in the very personal place of their homes, marriages, gardens, and prayers. The comfort of our God in your present place of hurt is much the same. It is not dismissive, complacent, or apathetic – your continued excellence to your craft and contributions to your industry and community matter to our God! Instead, God offers deep hope to you that this is not the end of your story. He is present within you, around you, and through you even as you labor in the darkness, unsure of if any of this is successful or productive.

I don’t know when or if you’ll land the project. And, given that you consistently seek wise and honest feedback to grow personally and professionally, whether you do or not is much beyond your control. But, I do know that our God loves you deeply, and that status and identity precedes anything that you can possibly accomplish.

While so many professional, economic, and social factors remain beyond your control, God is inviting you to ordinary faithfulness within your realm of control – and that is not nothing. For the exiles in Babylon, that posture of faithfulness was everything. 

That’s a hard posture – I can’t do that on my own. I will pray that God helps us both seek the good of the place and people to which He has sent us even as we are honest about the hurt and confusion about the lack of results.

George Macdonald wrote in “Diary of an Old Soul”: 

“My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;

I think thy answers make me what I am.

Like weary waves thought follows upon thought, 

But the still depth beneath is all thine own,

And there thou mov’st in paths to us unknown.”

Keep being honest with our God about the pains you feel within and see around you. I am praying that you and I both can have the ears to hear what His answers are to us – through Scripture, trusted companions, and the weekly worship of the Church. God is at work in “paths to us unknown.” I pray that he strengthens you to see just a little bit more of His work, just a little bit more of what He’s doing through you in your work, and just a little bit more of how He is in control over all of our work even when we can’t feel it.

I’m proud of you and I admire what you’re doing. 

We are Together in Christ,

Rh

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The “Letters to a Friend” blog series is a series of encouragements rooted in biblical wisdom written specifically for those wrestling with challenges around work. Many of these challenges feel so visceral that we need something deeper than advice or explanations – something more like an encouraging letter from a friend. Our prayer is that these letters encourage you with wisdom from Scripture, reminding you that God is with you in this very place of challenge.

Perhaps one of these letters will encourage or equip you to write your own letter to a friend who needs this kind of encouragement right now.