In an article called “Calling is More Than Your Job,” author Steven Zhou suggests that while determining your vocation and profession path is very important in life, there may be more to discerning God’s calling. He writes that simply “finding a job that matches” is not enough. In fact, he even writes that this assumption that our job is similar as our calling will be “misleading at best, even perhaps harmful” because it might cause friction, disappointment, and a way of failure when the job that we thought we were called to do doesn’t work out (even when the brand new option finally ends up higher for us).
And I completely agree not only on principle but from my very own experience. As Zhou states, our understanding of calling is “due for an update… that disentagles it from modern views of profession success and broadens our understanding of labor and time.” Doing just might give us the “healthier approach” that we’d like – one by which we realize that we are able to “glorify God… without having identified a particular vocational calling.”
This more radical or fundamental line of excited about calling jogs my memory of Paul’s instruction to the believers in 1 Corinthians 11:1 to “imitate” him as he follows Christ. In addition to preaching, starting churches, and prison ministry (that last one wasn’t really his selection), Paul appeared to produce other vocations throughout his life, including making tents (as seen in Acts 18:3). But regardless of how he ended up making a living, he recognized that his predominant calling was to first follow Christ and second lead others to Christ.
This is a really basic way of understanding the “general calling” that each Christian has of their life: to follow Jesus in all areas of our life and lead others to Jesus. This calling isn’t unique to us and doesn’t have to be “discovered” since it is already revealed to us in Scripture. Dave Harvey wrote in his book titled Am I Called?:
“One’s identity must be grounded on the gospel… Based on this identity, ministry is then capable of flow out of 1’s weakness (and even fears) fairly than abilities and performance…”
If we will not be first following Jesus by surrendering ourselves day by day, humbly obeying God, and loving him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind (as Jesus said in Luke 10:27), then our sense of calling must start there first. The next step of our general calling is to obey Jesus’s Great Commandment and Great Commandment to “love others” through the use of our words, actions, and attitudes to guide others to Jesus as “fishers of men” (like Jesus called his own disciples in Matthew 4:19). My favorite example of that is in the primary chapter of the Gospel of John when Andrew went and located his brother Simon and took him to Jesus immediately after meeting Jesus himself by the Sea of Galilee from the testimony of John the Baptist.
But just as a coin has two sides, calling does, too. On the opposite side of general calling is our “specific calling.” In contrast, our specific calling is exclusive to us, should be discovered, and is worked out as we live for Christ and follow the Spirit. It is our “sweet spot” (as Max Lucado calls it) on the intersection of who we’re, where we’re, and what we are able to do. It is the special position that God wants us to play on his team.
However, our specific calling isn’t typically obvious. This often confuses us and keeps us from serving and leading courageously. This is what happened to me early in my adult life until I “updated” my understanding of calling, just as Zhou suggested.
So, how will we discover our specific calling? Will God give us clear direction in a miraculous way like he did Moses, Samson’s parents, Abraham, or Mary? Probably not. Instead, he normally gives us tools or indicators to find out his calling on our life in order that we are able to each be empowered by God to make use of our gifts, service, and activities for “the common good,” as Paul clarifies in 1 Corinthians 12:4-27.
How Can You Use Your Needs, Abilities, and Vision to Discover Your Calling?
These tools or indicators that God gives us on the journey of life to assist us discover our specific calling will be seen as these three navigational markers: Needs, Abilities, and Vision (or NAV for brief). To get clarity on these three markers, we’d like to ask three questions:
1. What is occurring around me? Asking this query helps us examine the situation that our church, community, and world is as a way to see what dire needs we are able to meet or what holes we are able to fill. Henry Blackaby calls this simply “joining God in his work.” Many people find their life’s calling by jumping in to assist with a spiritual emergency around them.
2. What can I do best? As we start noticing what needs are around us, we’ll probably realize that we do not need the talents to fulfill all of them. At this point we must discover what we do best and where we fit the very best. Sometimes we already know the reply to this query and other times we’ll must ask the opinions of others that we trust.
3. What do I like to do? This last query fine-tunes our understanding of our specific calling. While we would recognize many needs around us, and we would even realize that we’ve multiple abilities that we do well, nailing down what we’re most keen about and what motivates us probably the most will help us hit the bullseye on our specific calling by discovering the vision for our life. When we’ve certain desires all the time on our mind which are in alignment with Scripture and have as their ultimate end the glory of God (not personal satisfaction), then we are able to deduce that they’re from God, who gives us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4)!
This last query is very important to ask also because a vision from God has the facility to propel us forward regardless of the obstacles in our way. Vision breeds motion, but an absence of vision leads to inaction (Proverbs 29:18).
So regardless of what job we’ve or profession we find yourself with, we are able to find purpose and achievement in life by adopting these “general calling” imperatives to follow Jesus and lead others to him in addition to these “specific calling” markers of our needs, abilities, and vision. When we do, Pastor Wayne Cordeiro explains that:
“We will know amazing joy, enjoy healthy accountability and experience accelerated spiritual growth… The more you understand the best way the Lord designed you to be, the higher you’ll have the opportunity to cooperate with HIS design.”
And as creator Todd Wilson writes:
“God the Creator has uniquely designed each of us to operate in ways in which bring us purpose and significance… [and] to play a particular role in accomplishing his mission on earth as we make disciples. When we deal with our unique calling without rooting it in our primary calling to make disciples is a type of idolatry.”
God bless you your journey to find God’s calling in your life. And as you discover it, may you go all out to make the type of difference that God wants you to make on this life!
Photo Credit: Unsplash Saulo Mohana
