What is your Profession?


John Telgren


What is your chosen profession in life? This is a question that many young people explore in High School and especially in college. I know that the word, "profession" is related to the word "professional." A professional has a profession. A professional is an expert at his chosen profession. He has devoted his life, his education, and his emotional energy to it. It is his career, his life's vocation.

So here is a question for our young people. I suppose it can also be a question for our adults as well. What is your "profession?" Many young people might say that they do not have a profession yet.

It was my reading of scripture that goaded me to think of profession from a different angle than what most people normally do. Here are some examples from scripture:

"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess" (Heb 4:14 NIV).

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful" (Heb 10:23 NIV).

"...women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion" (1 Tim 2:9-10).

"They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed" (Tit 1:16 NASB).

From this sampling, it is evident that a Christian "profession" is a confession that is much more than just words than come out of your mouth. It is something we must hold firmly to. It is something that goes hand in hand with our deeds. It is something that we live by at all times. It is our first and foremost passion.

As a Christian, then, our profession in life is to love Christ above all. This means we will love as he loves, we will serve as he serves, we will pray as he prayed, we will be devoted to and love the Father as he does. This is our profession in life. This is what we strive to learn and become an expert at. This is where we put our emotional energy. This is our vocation, our calling.

So, in whatever we do, whether we are a student, whether we teach, fix something, manage resources, sell things, lead people, research things, etc., all of this is in service to our primary profession, which is to love the creator and sustainer of it all, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

If we remember this every day, perhaps the first thing that will pop into our head when someone asks the question, "what is your profession" is not the job that you go to every day, but your life-long, eternal profession, which is to love God.