“I just wish I knew what God wanted me to do with my life. What is it?!?!”
The thought blasted through my head, louder than “Guerilla Radio” played on-repeat through my headphones. It was May 2014 and my 10th and final medical school application had just been rejected. I needed to run to clear my head. What was I supposed to do with my life?
In the years since I’ve been captured by this question of calling. How do we know God’s call for our lives? After reading a number of books, here’s the core of what I learned.
It starts, like our lives and the whole of the universe does, with a Word from Jesus.
“As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Matthew 4: 18-22
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Three Thoughts from Nate
1. “Simon, who is called Peter.” Your call starts with your names and it exists in a relationship. Both of Simon’s names are used. When Paul is called by Christ, his name is changed from Saul to Paul. Your calling is particular to you, and is based in a relationship, not a contract for things. I’ve made the mistake of thinking my life is a series of “whats” and if I could line all these up correctly then I’d be following my calling, living my life’s purpose. What school to go to. What job to take. What car to buy. While these all have importance, it’s far better to think about “who”. Who am I becoming? Who am I in relationship? Thinking this way, I might still have grief and disappointment in my 10th rejection, but it didn’t change who I was. I was still called a husband and was about to get a new name, “Dad”.
2. “Come after me and I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus doesn’t say “I have made you fishers of men”, he says I will. Your call will mature over time. It will change as you grow. You will get new calls. If we wrongly think about calling as a series of “whats” there is a strong temptation to believe that you aren’t enough if you can’t yet do the thing you’re called to do. This transforms into a persistent longing for the future. That if I work hard enough, I may be able to achieve my calling sometime later, but not now.
But if you switch this to “who” and look at it through the context of a relationship, that temptation looks foolish. Consider my life. First I was a son and brother, then I became a friend, a husband, an uncle and now a father. Someday I might become a grandfather, but there is still work to do here and now. I can’t be grandfather without being a father first. Today I am not called to be a grandfather, I’m called to be a dad. You might be called to be a student today, and a doctor in the future. You can do well by your calling right now.
3. “At once they left their nets and followed him.” It requires action. You must move. The fishermen leave their nets and in doing so begin to become disciplines of Christ, following his call to them. Or, as the author Luke Burgis said in his book Unrepeatable,-
“If you want to understand a person, don’t focus on what they say. Focus on what they do. Tim summed up this connection between the action-oriented nature of mission and its effect on a person: “Mission isn’t something you do, it is someone you become.” A vocation is a call to become who you are through the actions that you undertake to fulfill your mission. ”
Are you becoming who you were created to be? I bet you are.
A Long Quote From a Book
My dad wrote one of the books I read on calling. It’s good. I didn’t need to say that, but I did.
Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life by Paul J. Wadell and Charles R. Pinches
“The call of Abraham also demonstrates a third point that fills out the Bible’s picture of call: the occasion of a call—when God speaks it and we hear it—very often marks a significant turning point in the story, certainly of the one called, and often enough in the larger story of God’s redemptive work in the world. Often there is a radical disruption, a sea change in life. With call one kind or form of life is ended and a new one begun. Abraham and Sarah had a settled place in family life in Haran, but were suddenly yanked from this by God’s call, becoming the wandering nomads who produced God’s chosen people. Or, the disciples were tending their nets by the Sea of Galilee, along comes Jesus who says “Come, follow me,” and they drop their nets and take up a course that leads them to become apostles of a new movement that eventually spreads around the world.
The radical disruption we often find in biblical calls heightens the drama— which makes for a good story. We remember many biblical stories of call, like Abraham’s or Moses’s or Jeremiah’s or Paul’s, because of the drama in them: God suddenly breaks in, confronting someone, and afterwards everything is different. The difference, in fact, amounts to a new kind of life that the call has begun in us. This third feature, so often found in biblical stories of call, needs qualification. We can recognize that the Bible tells a dramatic story which highlights turning points, but the story is also of a people who have lived with God, in a more or less ordinary way, for thousands of years. Jeremiah was one of a kind, as was the dramatic destruction of the holy city; we need not imagine that to be called we must mimic his radicality, or his suffering. Similarly, the first disciples will remain the first; we don’t need to think that our call is invalid if it does not create a new world movement.
Who is God calling me to be? Right now, I understand I’m being called to…..
Christ asked his followers to be the salt of the earth. Stay salty.
Until soon,
-Nate