Donald Trump's inexperienced Secretary of State took the job because his wife told him that God had not finished with him yet.

Rex Tillerson, former chief executive of ExxonMobil, was appointed without having had military or government experience and without having previously met Donald Trump.

From Texas, he is a committed Christian and belongs to a Congregationalist church. 

He and his wife Renda St Clair have four children and several grandchildren and he had been looking forward to spending more time with them during his retirement.

But God – and President Trump – had other ideas.

'I didn't want this job. I didn't seek this job,' he said in an interview with Erin McPike for Independent Journal Review. 'My wife told me I'm supposed to do this.'

Trump had sought him out after he became President-elect but before his inauguration to discuss international affairs. Trump was impressed by his achievements as CEO of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil and gas company.

'When he asked me at the end of that conversation to be Secretary of State, I was stunned,' said Tillerson.

When he told his wife, she shook her finger in his face and said, 'I told you God's not through with you.'

He added, 'I was supposed to retire in March, this month. I was going to go to the ranch to be with my grandkids.'

Tillerson, who is 65 today, also made clear he has no regrets about taking the job. 'I serve at the pleasure of the President. My wife convinced me. She was right. I'm supposed to do this.'

One of his first jobs in the post is to work with Defence Secretary James Mattis on a strategy to defeat Islamic State. 'We can't get to deconflicting the rest of the region with ISIS in the way.'

He has also indicated that he intends to streamline the State Department to make it more efficient.

McPike was the only journalist allowed access to him on the plane from Seoul to Beijing, where he gave her the first interview he has given to any journalist since taking office.

Daniel Dresner commented in The Washington Post that the 'scary part' was not that Tillerson's wife talked him into taking the job, but that he had never met Trump before. He also writes: 'The other scary part is Tillerson's narrow vision of what the State Department is supposed to do.'

Dresner urges him to open up a bit more. 'Reassuring allies requires some public signaling. Credible commitments require even more public signaling.'

He says a person presumably does not become the chief executive of ExxonMobil without having some brains and the ability to learn from mistakes. 'After all it only took a few days for Tillerson to realise that skipping the NATO foreign ministers meetingwas probably not the brightest idea. The learning curve is still there.

'Until he moves along it further, however, Tillerson's instinct to not speak to the press seems like a sound one. Because he's really, really bad at it.'