4 Positive Signs It's Time to Leave a Job

Hello, lovely listeners, it’s time for Episode 101 of Faithful on the Clock, the podcast where all the hot dogs get roasted to get your faith and work aligned. As always, I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and today, we’re talking about leaving a job. It’s not always the best thing to stay in the position you’re in, right? But how do you know when you should go, and how do you go about leaving in a way that’s still as loving as Jesus would want you to be? Let’s talk about it, coming up, right now.

All right, so when to leave a job, this is a topic you can find a lot of information out there on, but there are some reasons for exiting a business that get listed over and over again. These would be what I’d call the Quitting Greatest Hits. So, for example, if you go to work every day and you don’t feel safe, if you’re filled with anxiety or constantly overwhelmed, that’s not a good environment and you probably should get out. Sometimes, that comes from just having a bad supervisor, but sometimes, it’s the attitude of a whole team, you know, the whole culture is just incredibly toxic and not healthy. And a big test there is just to ask yourself, you know, “Would I recommend to somebody that they work here?” And if the answer is no, well, then, you probably shouldn’t stick around, either. Then you’ve got things like pay and promotions. So, if you’ve been working hard and you’re getting passed over for better roles, or if the company is just nonresponsive to increases in daily living costs, you’re not compensated in a way you know the market says you should be compensated, those are situations where a new role might serve you well. And of course, it can be time to look for a better opportunity if the company has become really unstable and can’t offer you pathways to growth at all. And one thing that often is a really early sign of trouble there is that the business will start looking at all these ways to optimize, and they do layoffs or start asking employees to take on more and more responsibilities without a whole lot more opportunity or compensation. And then, kind of the final check is if you can’t picture yourself working for the business long-term, either because you can’t fulfill your responsibilities, or because the values of the company are compromising the ethics you have and you can’t follow the passions you’ve got.

Now, all of those are super valid reasons to leave a business. But what you’ll notice is that they’re all super negative. They’re all based on things going wrong. And so, because they’re covered by so many other sources, what I wanna do today is cover signs to leave a business that actually are positive. I wanna give you the signals that are gonna make you excited to pivot and switch gears and that are gonna give you some confidence you’re moving in the right direction.

So, the first positive sign it might be time to leave your current role is that people keep recommending you for other things. And that doesn’t mean they don’t think you’re doing great where you’re at. It means they’ve seen your work, they trust you, and now they believe you have the God-given ability or acquired knowledge to take another step forward. It means they’re looking out and want the best for you. Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” Now, of course, that’s a warning against boasting and pride, right? It’s promoting this idea that being humble is a good thing. But you can also take that verse to mean, hey, it’s OK when others go out on a limb for you, that you can accept the good things they have to say and let all that work to your advantage. You shouldn’t try to hinder others from saying those good things when they’re true. So, if you’ve got lots of people who are starting to advocate for you, that’s a big clue you could do something different.

The second positive sign is that you don’t have any confusion about what your gifts and passions are. In other words, you have a sense of how God designed you and what you’d be willing to suffer to keep doing in order to bring glory to Him. And what you’ll see is, there’s clearly a better match between your gifts and passions in other opportunities and where you’re at. The first verse I want to offer to you around this idea is Ephesians 2:10, which says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” And then the second verse is Jeremiah 1:4-5, which says, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” And both of these verses, they get across this idea that God’s design for you, the passions He lays on your heart, those are not an accident, OK? And so, when He reveals that design and those passions to you, if the job you’re at is aligned with all that, then you’re gonna have this feeling like your current work is super comfortable, even though it might challenge you. But if the job isn’t aligned with your design and passions, then you’re going to have this persistent, nagging feeling like you are just being wasted, like you belong somewhere else. And if you’re in the latter situation, you should feel a natural pull toward other opportunities that are better aligned to you.

Then the third cue you can look for is, a lot of little things just start lining up in a way that make it really hard for you not to leave where you are or not to act. And I’m gonna tell you, you gotta be careful here, because people, we have a tendency to let our biases trick us into thinking that there are connections where there aren’t. But if you start to look back and see that, over and over again, there seem to be guardrails going up, or that the need you had to move forward was met in a way you didn’t expect or plan for, well, that’s not defying the odds, people. That’s God. It’s what some people call designed coincidence. And sometimes, those little things are things most of us would see as little blessings. It’s like you’re a toddler and God’s leaving you this breadcrumb trail of Cheerios. Like, you just happen to meet with that one person who makes a referral, and then you need $19 in gas to make it to the interview and you randomly find a $20 on the street when you’re never that lucky, and then a house goes up for sale in the exact neighborhood you’d want to be in if you moved, and so on. But I wanna be clear, sometimes, the setup God creates can look pretty awful or be pretty painful to go through. So, a great example of this is the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. And just to recap that story, Joseph’s brothers are really jealous of him, and so they sell him into slavery. And the people who buy him, they take him to Egypt. And over time, Joseph gains power there under the Pharaoh. And God uses him to make sure that when the famine hits the world, there’s food stored up for the people. And eventually, he’s reconciled with his brothers, and his entire family comes to Egypt. And that allows the nation of Israel to grow and sets up the showdown between Moses and the new Pharaoh so God’s people can be free. So, it’s through Joseph that God saves millions of people and keeps His promise to Abraham at the same time. And most people who look at that story, I mean, Joseph has every reason to harbor a grudge and run away from Egypt the first chance he gets. He’s abandoned by his family. He gets thrown in prison for something he didn’t even do. But scripture tells us God is with Him through all of it. And one of the reasons Joseph doesn’t hold a grudge is that God has already shown him the purpose Joseph’s suffering had. So, what that means is, the little things that line up, I want you to understand, it doesn’t have to be all unicorns and rainbows happening, OK? There still can be purpose in it when things hardcore suck. So, when you’re thinking about switching jobs, don’t look at whether the individual events you’re going through are positive. Look at the result that comes from how everything is linking together, because that can be incredibly and surprisingly good.

Another thing to look for is your ability to serve the Lord and minister to others. Now, this is a tricky one, because sometimes God puts you in hard places to be a shepherd. If you think of the apostle Paul when he was in Rome under arrest, that probably seems like the worst environment to spread the gospel ever. But what happened? The guy who was guarding Paul ended up converting and believing in Jesus along with his whole family. So, when you're thinking about whether you should leave where you’re at, don’t ask yourself whether the work is going to be easy or the setup looks perfect, you know, it checks all the boxes. Just ask yourself, is the move to the new job gonna allow me to have more of an influence for Jesus? If you have that opportunity in front of you, the move out of your old job should be a no-brainer. Because remember, like Colossians 3:23-24 reminds us, we’re not serving human masters here, and that includes your own ego. We’re serving Jesus. So, your first loyalty is to Him. And remember, too, when Jesus teaches the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, His point is that God rewards those who aim to cultivate what they’re entrusted with. So, if you see that you’ve got a chance to do more for God than you have been, that’s a good thing. It means He’s trusting you to take it up a notch.

So, now that you have a few signals you can look for, you still have to figure out how to take your exit in a compassionate and respectful way, right? Because sometimes, I mean, when you leave a job, you’re gonna be leaving a lot of good people, good friends. Or sometimes, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s hard feelings going on. Either way, it’s hard. So, just make sure that you’re leaving everybody in a good position to move forward after you’re gone. Give plenty of notice if you can, you know, tie up loose ends or hand things off appropriately. And keep in mind, the apostles, when they visited places to preach, afterward, they would check in with the people they preached to to see how they were doing. So, and I’ve said this before, but don’t think that just because you’re not in the same place anymore you have to end your connection with other people. You don’t. Make sure you can stay in touch and reach out when you can. And if there have been some hard relationships, remember Ephesians 4:26 where we’re reminded, “In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” So, do what you can to resolve those conflicts and leave in peace. Even if others harbor resentment to you, model Jesus and be forgiving. And I think a big part of all of this is communicating really clearly about how you and others are gonna benefit if you move into the new role. You know, be clear about what your motivations are, because I don’t think most people are gonna resent you going if they can understand you really did weigh this all out and that good things are going to result from your decision in the future. These basic guidelines should get you a good start. But if you want a deeper dive into how to leave a job without burning bridges, I’ll recommend that you check out Episode 48 of the show.

So, to bring this all to a close, just remember, there are a lot of pretty obvious negative signals that it’s time to leave a job. But as you’re looking to see if those are present, I just want you to also remember that there can be positive signals that God is trying to lead you somewhere. And it’s so important to pay just as much attention to those signals as you do the negative ones, because it’s the positive signals that reassure you God’s at work. And I don’t know about any of you out there, but I need reassurance of that all the time. And if you’re getting the message that He wants you somewhere else doing something different, remember, like I talked about in Episode 67 about layoffs, you represent Jesus right to the bitter end. Make sure you take your exit with kindness and forgiveness so you can be in a state of heart and mind to focus well in the next job.

So, let’s take a second to pray.

God, I don’t have the insight You do. And I’m not like Joseph. I don’t have the gift of being told in advance what You plan to do. But I do know that when You want somebody somewhere, You get them there. And so, Lord, I pray that people can feel Your presence as they walk whatever journey You have them on. And I pray that their walk will be fruitful with incredible purpose. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Well, that’s gonna wrap it up. I know I’m leaning on these points right now in my own life as I face some career uncertainties and choices, and I hope they’ll be helpful to you, as well. Next episode, we’ll be talking about how to handle naysayers — you know, all those people who are gonna tell you not to keep going or who try to tear you down as you’re going after God’s purpose in your life. Scripture has tons of awesome examples of how to keep your chin up and move forward, so I hope you’ll be inspired by that. Until next time, everybody, be blessed.