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A lot of us are in transition these days. If you’re in that number, before rushing to polish and upload your resume, take a deep breath and think about what God might want for you. Maybe your job is being eliminated. Or perhaps you’ve made the Big Decision to change careers. Either way you are starting one of life’s major transitions. Consider these ten great principles from the perspective of staying spiritually engaged.

1. Move on to something better. Expect to make where you are going a far better situation than the place you’re leaving. Get your mind really clear on this point. God doesn’t want you planning to do less good tomorrow than you did yesterday. He always wants better for you and better from you.
2. Be grateful to your former employers. Whatever your exit reason, frame your parting message to your bosses and colleagues with deep gratitude. The past battles may have been intense, but God does not want you leaving people with a sour taste. There’s a perfect exit at Acts 20: 17-24.

3. Leave a roadmap behind. Before your final exit, get your current job affairs fully in order and communicate the truth of what will be left undone. Do what you can to enhance the likelihood of success for those who pick up projects you leave uncompleted.
4. Spend plenty of time with God. Managing your spirit through a transition is more important than managing your network. God is, as the psalmists have it, “an ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Don’t ignore him.
5. Get Focused. Create a strong Spiritual Purpose Statement (SPS)—a concise expression of what you and God both want from your working life—and then pray it to him out loud. Here’s my own SPS: My true purpose is to help leaders from all walks of life achieve their greatest potential for growth.
6. Identify those who will help you. Create a list—hopefully a long list—of people you trust. Then take your SPS and share it—face to face wherever possible—with each of them. Listen to them carefully. These are the people through whom God is most likely to reveal your future pathway. There’s a good chance your next boss is known to one of them.
7. Always give something back. Whenever you meet with people to share your SPS always give a gift (not necessarily a present—could be an idea, a contact, or simply praying with them) and always follow up afterward with a message of gratitude.
8. Don’t necessarily take the first thing that comes along. Be careful of opportunities that emerge too quickly, there’s often a good reason they’re not filled. Don’t assume that, just because you’re hungry, the first morsel is the whole meal.
9. Be honest and respectful. Tell the truth as well as you understand it and show good manners in all your job search activities. God knows a relationship that starts in lies and disrespect will continue and end that way.
10. Fill your pipeline with many job opportunities. It may appear that your options are desperately limited but what seems to be be case is not necessarily what is the case. What if God intends your transition as a pathway to a new location or a radically different way of working? Let God’s creative abundance flow in the form of as many positive options as you can find. You are far stronger that way.

Finally, pray the “Career Transition” prayer every day:

God: Today, I surrender my working life to you. By your grace, help me reveal more of your amazing power and love as I serve you through my next job. Lead me on your abundant pathways to serve the highest and greatest good of the organizations and people you bring into my life. I ask this in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ. Amen

Dr. Stephen G. Payne practices leadership strategy and executive coaching through Leadership Strategies in Princeton, N.J. A former CEO himself, Stephen works with leaders in companies small and large (including the likes of Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, AOL Time Warner, Abbott Laboratories, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). Stephen is the author of First Rule of Leadership: Achieve Far More by Leading Your Self BEFORE You Lead Others