You Are Called

You are also called to work. A part of the divine calling is the call to have dominion over things: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’” (Genesis 1:26). Humans are called to have say over things. This is tied to our vocations, our callings. Some are called to have dominion over musical notes (e.g., a jazz musician); others are called to have dominion over mathematic equations (e.g., a math professor); still others are called to have dominion over words and ideas (e.g., a journalist).

A vocation is an occupation, trade, or profession that a person is called to do and, ideally, for which they are well suited. I have family and friends in law enforcement, medicine, education, insurance, business, sales, publishing, and the law, just to name a few. I have friends who are writers and musicians and artists. A vocation is different from a job.

A job is what we do in order to be paid. In my life, I have had many jobs. I worked in a butcher shop, a lumberyard, and an athletic shoe store while in high school. I mowed lawns and painted houses one summer. I was never called to these jobs; I did them with one aim in mind—to make money.

A vocation, a calling, assumes that one is called to a specific work. For a Christian, the One who calls us is God, and the work he calls us to is good. But hearing the voice of God, and even hearing the voice of our own hearts and our own life, is difficult. It requires discernment, which is an art, not a science. There is no foolproof test to determine our vocation. The aptitude test I took in high school said I should be a forest ranger or a florist. I have no idea how that happened —neither of these professions has any interest for me. But learning to hear, to discern, our calling is not impossible. There are many clues and many sources that can help us find our way into work that is meaningful and fulfilling.

A most helpful clue to discerning our calling comes from one of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner. I was privileged to spend an evening with him when I was in graduate school, and I asked him a lot of questions about discerning vocation. He said, “The best advice I can give you is this: listen to your life. Pay attention to your life. You will find the answer if you listen.” I have never forgotten these words, and I have found them to be true.

In one of his books, Buechner says this about discovering our vocation:

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. . . . The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

I have found this intersection between our own “deep gladness” and the world’s “deep hunger” to be especially useful. But it should not be treated as a Venn diagram, it is not that simple. There are many things that make my heart glad, and the world is starving for a lot of things. Finding the intersection will take more work than an aptitude test or a diagram. What I love about Buechner’s approach to discernment is where it begins, with what makes us uniquely who we are.

Reflect on some of your God-given desires. Are they guiding you into something new?

For many years I was actually afraid to give my life and my will completely to God. I assumed if I did, I would end up dying as a martyr on the mission field, which I thought would give God the greatest glory. If not martyrdom, I assumed God would call me to something dreadful, because I assumed he was most pleased when we suffer for God’s sake. I have come to believe those narratives are not only false, but deadly. God takes no pleasure in our suffering. And God created us with desires, and did so for a reason—that they might guide us. Again, there is no bull’s-eye that we either hit or miss. E. J., in the opening story, found gladness in both business and in pastoral ministry, and both jobs gave glory to God.

The great theologian Ray Anderson tells the story of discovering his callings, and I have found his insights very helpful. When he was a young man, he grew up on his father’s farm. One day Ray took lunch to his father, who was out working in the field. During lunch his father said, “Son, put your hand in the soil. This soil is your life. Take care of it and it will take care of you.” At that time in his life, Ray was very attached to the farm, to the soil, and assumed it was his calling to be a farmer.

After he returned from serving in World War II, he went back to the farm to enter into the same relationship his father had with the soil. His father was pleased, and said, “Now you have found your place, son.” Not long after, his father passed away. And not long after that, Ray’s emerging life of faith in Jesus began to take central place in his life. As he put it, he felt “dissonance” with his calling to be a farmer. He felt an urge to go to seminary and this calling produced a lot of tension, so he took that step in faith. Six months into his time in seminary, he said, that tension left. He still loved his father and loved the soil, but he felt fully freed to make ministry his next calling.

Looking back, Ray said,

My father had not attached my hand to the soil of a farm—although that is how I had understood it. Rather, he had attempted to attach my hand to my heart. No matter what “soil” my hand was plunged into, if the task was undertaken with my heart, there was a sense of completeness that brought joy and fulfillment.

What a beautiful understanding of calling: no matter which “soil” we plunge our hand into, if we do it with our full heart we find joy and fulfillment.

Ray went on to be ordained, and would serve in the local church for the rest of his life in different capacities. But later he felt called to be a teacher. Ray asked himself another question I found important: “What will satisfy my soul?” This question, he said, helped him discover his destiny. His primary call was to be a seminary professor and to be a pastor.

How do you find your destiny? Ray Anderson believed the key question is this: “If _____ [fill in the vocation] is the last thing I will ever do on earth, will it be meaningful to me?” For Ray, that was being a teacher, a seminary professor. He said it was his hope to be teaching until the day he died. He was once a farmer and loved it. He was a local church pastor and loved it. But he eventually found his deepest gladness in being a teacher. And I am one of the many people who is glad he did. I was blessed to take a course from Dr. Anderson, and that one course shaped my understanding of ministry more than any other course I took.

Fill in the blank: “If [this vocation] is the last thing I will ever do on earth, will it be meaningful to me?”

Completeness, joy, and fulfillment are wonderful indicators of our calling, because that which makes us sense these things is located deep in our souls. I think this is what Frederick Buechner meant by “deep gladness.” I do not mean by gladness that we will find happiness in every aspect of our job. Every vocation has challenges, ups and downs, and aspects we will find difficult. For me, I am grateful to have found my calling and destiny in being a college professor, a writer, and a teaching pastor. All three callings come with their own challenges, but they are all things I love doing, and would do even if I were not paid to do them. Like Ray, I hope to be doing them until I pass over into glory.

I have also come to believe that our callings are intimately connected to our sacred stories. One of my former students, Jimmy, sensed a call to ministry and everyone who knew him affirmed it. He tried working with youth because, he said, he did not feel worthy to minister to adults. He later worked in a dying, inner-city church, laboring to raise it to new life, to no avail. He found the spark that ignited his true calling when he became a military chaplain. This calling made perfect sense in connection to Jimmy’s sacred story. Both his father and grandfather had been in the Air Force, so he knew and respected the military from a young age. But both his father and grandfather had gone down wrong paths in life. They suffered from substance abuse, and were abusive to their families. Jimmy once told me that the pain inflicted on his whole family by these two men was devastating.

For Jimmy, becoming a chaplain in the Air Force Chaplain Corps fit him in a way no other ministry work had before. “I saw the great need that existed in the military. I have a deep desire to help military members not go down the same path my dad and grandpa did. In a way, I am trying to honor them by helping others.” Jimmy has risen in rank and is flourishing in this role. His story is a good example of how we discern our callings. We are all called to something; it is imprinted on our souls and discovered in our stories.

My sister, Vicki, is ten years older than I am. When she was young, my dad changed jobs several times and she had to change schools along with it. This was very hard on her. She would make friends, then have to leave and make new friends all over again. As a result, she was often an outsider. She became very outgoing and also very compassionate toward those who did not fit in; it was a part of why she wanted to be a teacher. But a deeply fulfilling calling came later in life when she began working for the Child Abuse Prevention Agency. Though she was not abused herself, she has a deep compassion for children who are. She works tirelessly, speaking to kids in schools and teaching parenting classes.

It is common for our callings to be related to our own pain or our own positive experiences. Many therapists become therapists because of how much they were healed in their own therapy; many teachers teach because they had at least one teacher who changed their lives. Just as our callings are embedded in our souls, they are also interwoven in our stories. If you are still searching for your calling, one great piece of advice is to listen to your life. And one great question worth asking yourself is this: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Take time to reflect on your life. What is it saying about your calling? And what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

In looking at my own life and at the lives of those I know and love, I have come to the conclusion that we discern our callings best when we are most in tune with God. When the transcendent connection with God is at its strongest, our sense of calling is at its clearest. In the quietness, in the stillness, when I am most in tune with God, I have a greater sense of clarity about what I am to be doing in my life. There are many voices clamoring for attention, but only one voice I find reliable when it comes to making decisions about what to do with my life.

Reflecting on the story of E. J., I wonder, as he did, what would have happened if he had gone into local church ministry in his late twenties as opposed to his late fifties. This I do know: E. J. was great at being a pastor in a local church for those eight years. I know this because E. J. is my father-in-law. I witnessed firsthand how much he loved it and how much the people loved him. I saw the church begin to grow and thrive during his tenure. And I watched him step down with grace and gratitude when he retired.

I think there is a seasonal dimension to our calling. There are professions, such as athletics and ballet, which one ages out of. But most professions, the ones that are not dependent on physical prowess, are vocations we age into.

Have you begun a new season of your callings in your life? Or do you sense a new season of calling?

I love the fruit trees in my backyard. I love to watch them blossom in spring, produce fruit in summer, gloriously fade into autumn, and remain dormant in the winter—still very much alive but resting. In our lives there are times of great growth, and times of quiet rebuilding. I am not the same teacher I was thirty years ago when I started. I miss some of the exuberance, but I don’t miss the naiveté; I miss the innocence, but I treasure the wisdom.

In every season our soul is awake and speaking to us. It longs to be desired, to be loved, to be forgiven, to be alive, to be holy, to own its story, to connect to God, and to engage in meaningful work. The good and beautiful you longs for a good and beautiful life of purpose and joy. God has designed you for all of this, and God, in Christ and through the Spirit, makes this a reality. By grace you have been made, by grace you have been saved, and by grace you will one day be glorified and rule and reign in the heavens for all eternity.