Calling & Clarity, Discovering what God wants for your life.

Here is a summary of the book Calling & Clarity, Discovering what God wants for your life. Written by Doug Koskela. I found it very helpful when we are looking for more clarity about our Missional Calling. For instance, you can be a Student and need help deciding what is the best career for you, or maybe you are trying to change careers, or simply you want to serve God but you not sure where to begin. Hope will be a blessing for you.

What is my life about?

The concept of Missional Calling: is the unique and sustained contribution a person is called and equipped to make to the Kingdom of God. God does not need us to complete the work of His Kingdom on earth but he has chosen us to be part of this amazing work and your participation in that work is a gift of Grace.

Introduction

A college student walked into her professor’s office one afternoon.Her question was clear but daunting: “I want to serve God with my life, but I don’t know where to begin. It’s not clear to me what major would be best for me or in what career I can best serve God. How can I discern God’s calling for my life?” Over the next, our, the professor invited the student into a conversation about what that process might look like. He asked what the student’s passions were, what she was good at, and what genuine needs in the world she might be equipped to address. In the course of that conversation, it became clear to the student that the discernment process would take time and many more discussions such as this one. But the process had begun, and she became energized as she thought about the possibilities.

In Exodus 3, Moses walked beyond the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. He wasn’t seeking God’s calling on his life; rather, he was attending his father-in law’s flock. Nonetheless, God gave Moses a very clear and direct calling: “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt”. Moses asked questions, claimed that he was not sufficiently eloquent for the task, and finally asked God to send someone else. His problem was not discerning His calling. His problem was responding faithfully to the calling that was clearly and directly placed upon him. Despite his hesitation and his sense of inadequacy, Moses was ultimately used by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

This two stories about vocation, which is another word for calling illustrate the problem that gives rise to this book. On the one hand, many of us can relate to the student in the first story. We desire to serve God with our lives, but we find it difficult to figure out just how. On the other hand, when we examine many of the famous call stories in Scripture, we find something very different. Like Moses, those in the Bible who are called to something often have very little doubt about what God wants them to do. Some examples would be the call stories of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1), Jonah (Jonah 1), and Saul (Acts 9). Those who are called may hesitate to respond, and they may feel completely inadequate to the task. But their calling is clear and unmistakable. So we are faced with a disconnect between our own experience of seeking God’s calling and many well-known call stories in Scripture. The disconnect can be expressed in terms of a series of vocational questions:

• Why am I not hearing anything from God when I’m trying so hard to discern God’s will?
• Why do biblical characters such as Moses and Jonah receive a clear, unmistakable calling when they don’t even appear to be seeking one?
• Why should I look to my gifts and passions to discern God’s calling, when in Scripture God often call people to tasks for which they are ill-equipped or don’t want to do?

Much of the difficulty that arises when we begin to think about vocation is that the term itself can mean so many different things nowadays. For some of us, the first thing that enters our minds when we hear the word vocation is “career”, our vocation is how we make a living. Others might use the term “vocational training” to refer to acquiring particular job skills, often in contrast to a broader liberal arts education. In some contexts, having a vocation means that one is called specifically to the priesthood or to a religious order.

At its heart, vocation refers to the various ways in which God calls us to live. We have choices to make about how we will use our time, our energy, and our gifts. The various levels of calling guide us in making good and faithful choices. It has been common in the Christian tradition to think of two levels of vocation by drawing a distinction between general calling and particular calling. General calling refers to what God desires for all people, while particular calling refers to a task or purpose that God desires for a specific person. This book will argue that the category of particular calling really encompasses two very different sorts of calling: Missional calling and Direct calling.

The two stories above clearly illustrate my distinction between missional and direct calling. The college student in the first story was seeking to discern her missional calling, the specific guiding purpose God has given for her life that aligns with her gifts and passions. Moses, on the other hand, had received a direct calling, a clear calling from God to a particular task that a person may not be prepared for or want to do. A missional calling generally takes time, prayer, and the involvement of one’s community to discern. The key questions are what God is calling us to and how we might live that calling out in particular situations. A direct calling, on the other hand, is generally apparent right away. The key question is whether we will be obedient to that calling. Once we are clear on the basic distinction between missional calling and direct calling, then we can make much better sense of both the biblical text and our own experience.

I would suggest that much of the frustration that people experience in trying to come to terms with their own calling arises from confusion about the different kinds of calling. Missional calling, which I believe is the primary focus of discernment during the young adult years. While some people come to recognize their missional calling earlier or later than that, one’s undergraduate years are often filled with excitement and anxiety over the particular contribution that one might make to God’s kingdom.

Regardless of whether we have discerned our missional calling yet, and regardless of whether we have sensed a direct calling from God, our general calling can guide us in how we go about our day-to-day lives.  While gaining clarity on the various kinds of calling is a good and important task, it is not the ultimate goal of the book. my ultimate aim is to help relieve some of the frustration that can arise as we seek to discern God’s will, so that we may faithfully serve God with all of our lives. My hope is that we will cultivate hearts and minds that are attentive to God, seeking to understand our missional calling with the help of those who know us well. As we do so, our day to day choices can be shaped continually by keeping our general calling firmly in mind.

What is life about? The concept of Missional Calling

The term “Missional Calling” refers to the main contribution that your life makes to God’s kingdom. you could think of it as the “Mission statement” of your life. it refers to the distinctive direction in which you aim to spend the bulk of your time, gifts and energy. To be sure, your contribution to God’s kingdom is not limited to those things that fit neatly within your missional calling. Each person might be used by God in any number of ways, large and small. There are many ways in which you can serve God, but recognizing your missional calling is a way of acknowledging that God has wired you to serve in a particular, sustained way over a lifetime. Once you come to discern your missional calling, you often can see that you have already been working in that direction for some time. Furthermore, you begin to recognize fresh opportunities for that particular service in new and changing circumstances.

Grasping the idea of missional calling also helps you to avoid making two very common mistakes when thinking about vocation. The first mistake is to associate vocation exclusively with your job or career. While there is no doubt that a missional calling can be lived out significantly in a paid career, it is a much broader category than one’s employment. The second mistake is to think of vocation only in terms of one particular situation or task. Missional calling reflects a sustained and specific purpose that can find expression in many ways throughout your life. The possible examples of missional callings are practically limitless, but the following list gives a sense of the potential range:

• Improve life for children on the autism spectrum
• Make the gospel come alive in fresh ways for those who are already familiar with it
• Foster spiritual formation for young professionals
• Provide clean water to people who need it
• Help victims of abuse find restoration and healing

To get a clearer idea of missional calling, let’s focus on five basic features. First, Missional calling generally aligns with your gifts. The very idea of missional calling suggests that God has created each of you with certain abilities and gifts that should be used in God’s service. It must be said, of course, that you might well be called by God in some circumstances to tasks in which you are not particularly gifted, but those instances are not what I mean by missional calling. Your missional calling is an ongoing pattern of using your gifts for a particular purpose of significance to God’s kingdom.

Second, missional calling generally involves something you are passionate about and which gives you joy. Many people are deeply afraid that God will call them to something they dread. And, to be honest, I cannot entirely promise that God will not do this, Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, after all. But such instances, if and when they arise, are instances of direct calling rather than missional calling. They involve tasks to which God calls you for a very particular reason, whether you like what God is asking you to do or not.  On the other hand, the sort of sustained, lifelong purpose expressed in a missional calling usually takes advantage of the unique passions that God has given to every one of you. As you listen for the shape of your particular missional calling, you would be wise to look to those things that you love. While you should always be obedient if you sense God clearly calling you to a specific task (even if it’s something you don’t want to do), your lifelong purpose usually goes with the grain of the passions that God has created for you.

The third feature of missional calling is that usually takes significant time, prayer, and communal involvement to discern. While you wish you’re born knowing your life purpose, it usually doesn’t work that way. Instead, you will find that you need to spend considerable time praying, talking with those who love you and know you well and paying attention to what you do well and what you enjoy. From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode. But trying to interpret them is profoundly worthwhile.

Fourth, missional calling is lived out in many ways throughout a person’s life, not just through work. Too often, people speak of trying to discern their calling when they really are thinking in terms to discern their calling when they really are thinking in terms of what their career should be. While it is certainly a good idea to think in terms of missional calling as  you make choices about your career, you should recognize that missional calling is a broader category that is worth thinking about throughout your life. There are two very clear problems with associating missional calling only with your job. First, doing so presumes that you can fulfill your missional calling only at a stage of life when you are employed. But people who are in school, retired, or taking time away from a career fro family reasons can still be living out their missional calling. Second, doing so presumes that you are living out your missional calling only during the hours you are at work. But a missional calling is something to which you can give much time and energy throughout the week. It might be expressed in time with family in the evening or in volunteer activities during the weekend. One of the marks of a missional calling is that it shows up in different ways in the various circumstances in your life. Sometimes consciously and sometimes below the surface, you will find that you tend to devote your time and energy to activities that connect in some ways to this basic theme of your life.

A fifth dimension of missional calling is that, generally speaking, people only have one such calling in their lifetime. People can and do make all sorts of contributions to God’s kingdom that have no direct relationship to their particular missional calling By suggesting that each person typically has only one such calling, I am trying to convey the nature of this specific category of calling. It is a way of saying that God has wired you in a particular way to make a unique contribution to God’s purposes. Some people discover this relatively early in life, while others discover it much later. If you look carefully at your life, you will discern a unique thread that runs through your gifts, your passions, and the various circumstances of your life. The sooner you recognize this thread, the more consciously and intentionally you will be able to find new ways of living it out. As you do, you will be working in concert with the distinct way that God has crafted you.

Missional Calling and Career

Let’s consider the relationship between your missional calling and your career. it is clear that career and missional calling overlap for many people. In fact, daily work is one of the key means through which your missional calling can be expressed. When you think about serving God through your work, you might be inclined to think only in terms of things such as pastoral ministry or working with a Christian nonprofit organization. Or you might think of serving God in a particular profession such as education or medicine. Yet your missional calling can also involve all sorts of “everyday” work. Consider someone working for a catering business who finds a clear connection between her job and her missional calling to gather people together in fellowship around the table. Her professional training in culinary school, as well as the time she puts into promoting her business, hiring and supervising staff, and scheduling and billing each event all help her fulfill her missional calling of showing hospitality. Or imagine the stay home parents whose missional calling is to improve early childhood literacy. At other stages in their lives, they might live this calling out in different ways but they will also be able to live out their missional calling by helping their  own kids learn to read and write.

Still, it is very important to remember that a career is not a missional calling itself. For example, suppose Carol discerns her missional calling to be helping senior citizens find and maintain housing. As an attorney, she might advocate for senior citizens on the brink of eviction or foreclosure as part of her work. Yet notice two things about this example. First, Carol will likely do all sorts of things as an attorney that do not directly relate to her missional calling. Indirectly, such work might be honoring her legal skills to make her a more effective advocate, but there is no immediate relationship to her missional calling. I want to suggest that this is perfectly natural. In fact, the other work that her job requires may well have significant value in and of itself. You need not connect every aspect of your employment to your missional calling for both of them to be worthwhile. Second, Carol might live out her missional calling in many ways that do not involve her work as an attorney. Perhaps she volunteers on Saturday mornings for  a Meals-on-Wheels program or donates money to a non-profit organization that helps senior citizens pay their heating bills. The point is that you should not force too close a connection between career and missional calling.

Most of the examples so far are for those with a great deal of education and considerable social and historical advantages. But what about individuals much of the world’s population, really who do not have access to those possibilities? what about those working on an assembly line, or laboring in an orchard, or scrubbing toilets? These questions help draw a distinction between employment and missional calling for two reasons. First, we should not uncritically associate God’s will with the inequities and injustices of a fallen world. History is full of too many examples of arguments usually offered by people in comfortable or advantageous situations that some people must do back-breaking or tedious work precisely because God has called them there as their station in life. These arguments often serve more to easy guilty consciences than to tell us much about God’s will. It is one thing to suggest that God can bring good in and through an economic system full of inequality and brokenness; it is quite another to suggest that the system itself is God’s will. Second, there is often significant meaning and value in such work, but not everything that gives meaning or has value represents a missional calling. The balance I want to convey here is that there is potentially both inherent and instrumental value in all sorts of work, but your work does not determine the shape of your missional calling.

The main point here is that once a person discerns his or her missional calling, she will look wherever you can to find ways to live out that calling. Since most people spend a good portion of their adult lives in some sort of employment, it is good to find points of contact with your work whenever possible.

Missional Calling and the Bible:

First, consider the theme of spiritual gifts. Any discussion of spiritual gifts rightly focuses on the New Testament letters attributed to the apostle Paul. Three passages from  these letters are worthy of particular attention in this regard: Romans 12:3-8, 1 Corinthians 12:1-31, and Ephesians 4:4-16. All of these passages suggest that God has gifted us in distinct ways. Each gift is to be used in its own way in God’s service, and each has a unique and important contribution to make. It is worth mentioning that all three of these texts use the image of “the body of Christ” to talk about the community of faith. The different parts of the body represent different gifts that are used as we work together toward Christ’s purposes. For example, we might look at Romans 12:4-8

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching, the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

One thing that is especially striking in these passages is that the specific list of gifts is different in each case. There is some overlap, to be sure, but none of the lists are identical. The point of these texts, the, does not seem to be that Christians need to agree upon a finite and official set of spiritual gifts that are recognized in the church. Rather, the emphasis is on looking to the specific way that the Holy Spirit has gifted each person to find his or her unique contribution and to appreciate the unique contributions of everyone. that is precisely what missional calling is about.

Consider the connection between God’s creative activity and the life of the Psalmist in verses 13-16 of Psalm 139. the notion that God created you with such intricate detail and knowledge is a reason for celebration and praise. And God has given you the gift of time, has formed your days so that you can give expression to the unique of God’s handiwork in your contributions to God’s purposes.  In the New Testament,  turn to Ephesians 2:10  “For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. While this text appears to refer collectively to all of God’s people, the passage on spiritual gifts in Ephesians 4 is a reminder that this work takes shape differently according to each person’s gifts. The connection of GOd’s deep knowledge of you and the distinctive shape of your life’s contribution is made clearly when you think in terms of missional calling.

Sometimes passages like Psalm 139 and Ephesians 2:10 lead people to assume that God has planned out every detail of their lives. That is, for every decision or possibility that confronts you, God has on “right” possibility that represents God’s will. This leaves every other possibility as a wrong choice, one that takes you outside of God’s will and displeases God. Even though this view is quite common, I would suggest that both Scriptures and experience present a very different picture. while it is certainly true that there are times when God wants something specific from you, there are also times when God gives you tremendous freedom.

I have spoken with many people in the midst of making some major decisions: should I major in biology or art? should I marry this person or not? should I transfer to another university or stay here? Many times, even after seeking a clear answer from God through prayer, reading the Bible, conversations, and plenty of anxiety, no clear answer comes. Or, to put it more precisely, the answer seems to be: you can be within God’s will our outside God’s will by taking either path, depending on how faithfully you live as you go down that path. sometimes there is no direct calling, even when you would like one. And in those cases what matters most is how you live for and serve God in the context of whatever choice you have made.

Consider how James 4:13-16 talks about God’s will: “come now, you who say, “today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? for you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that”. Now, on the one hand, it is clear that the main point of the passage is that your plans don’t decisively determine the future. But the striking things is that the text still encourages you to make plans and make choices even as you lack control over the future. Too often, you may be afraid to take a single step until you hear a decisive direct calling from God. Yet this passage suggests the opposite: You should move forward in humility, making the best choices and plans that you can. As you step ahead in this freedom, you still have the responsibility to live faithfully according to God’s calling.

Colossians 3:17  offers this kind of focus on the how rather than on the what: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him”.

How do you serve God when you do not discern a specific task or choice that God wants you to make in this particular instance? you do so by living out your general calling and by living out your missional calling by any means you can find in your present circumstances.  God has given you particular gifts to be used in their own way. And God has created you in intricate detail, enabling a distinct contribution that you can make to glorify your maker. So you can get to work, by God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit, to make that unique contribution. Wherever you are and whatever limitations you might face in the present, there is a way that you can play your part in providing a glimpse of God’s kingdom. As you do so joyfully and with the grain of your being, you are living out your missional calling.

What is the Kingdom of God?  In many books of The Bible talks about the kingdom of God a bit different. But in their own ways, all of these phrases point to God’s work of healing what has gone wrong in the creation and drawing us ever deeper into the love of God. And it is clear that we live in between two decisive moments in the history of God’s saving work. we live two millennia after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yet we still await and pray for the coming of God’s kingdom in all its fullness. The kingdom of God is a present reality and is among us and within us as Jesus said. There is a general agreement that the kingdom of God in its completeness is not yet here, but we can participate in it in some sense now.

Discussion Questions?

1. Think about how you’ve understood the phrase “finding your vocation” in the past. How does the idea of missional calling compare to that?
2. Do you currently feel a sense of mission or purpose that gives shape to your life? If so, how would you describe that mission?
3. Have you often thought that God has only one right answer to every decision you might make about where to go to school, what career path to take, whom to marry? If so, where do you suppose this idea came from?
4. How do you respond to the idea that we have freedom to choose among multiple paths in those times when we do not sense a direct calling from God?
5. What are some ways in which your life right now provides a glimpse of God’s kingdom?

The process of Vocational Discernment

The process of recognizing your missional calling is the heart of vocational discernment. The primary outcome of this process is not identifying a major or a career path. Rather, the main goal is to find the thread that ties together the gifts, passions, and needs that will mark your distinctive contribution to God’s purposes. Once, that is in place, of course, a certain academic major and career path will make more or less sense. but your missional calling is sustained throughout your entire life, and thus it will outlast any specific decision you make about an academic or career trajectory.  Since missional calling is something that endures throughout your life, you should expect the process of identifying it to take time and attentiveness. God made each of us with different personalities and instincts  and I would suggest that in discerning your missional calling it is important for both the heart and the head to play a role in the process. As you aim to approach discernment in a manner that fits our distinct makeup, the, you are wise to consider your whole self. Enter into this process with the understanding that God can call you in a variety of ways. Hearing that call will require clear thinking, an open heart, and careful attentiveness. Toward that end, three key practices will each play a crucial role: spiritual disciplines, self-reflection, and communal engagement.

The role of Prayer and other Spiritual disciplines:

Discernment best arises out of a continual commitment to knowing God more deeply rather than from an occasional approach. now you must recognize that the purpose of spiritual discipline is not to answer your questions but to be drawn more deeply into the love and knowledge of God. First things must come first. If you set your heart and mind on connecting with God, the spiritual disciplines are one of the means by which you will be transformed. As you o so, you will come to learn the sound of God’s voice. This is the process by which vocational discernment becomes possible.  On the other hand, approaching these practices merely as a means of helping you make vocational choices will likely make the little long-term impact on your life.

Cultivating the habit of prayer is also essential for missional discernment. You can think of missional calling as the primary point of connection between God’s redemptive work in the world and the particularity of each person. In that light, discovering that point of connection will require the time and effort to know God and to know yourself.  That, precisely, is the work of prayer. I want to suggest that your missional calling will emerge more naturally if your prayer life is marked by three specific traits: attentiveness, honesty, and discipline.

Attentiveness is, in many ways, the heart of prayer. Stop, quiet your soul, and take notice. Give praise as you reflect on God’s nature and attributes. Give thanks for the specific ways God has blessed you. Lift up the needs that are revealed when you pay attention to your life and the lives of others. Ask forgiveness for your heart and mind recount the ways in which you’ve fallen short. Simply rest is God’s comforting presence. As you do these things that are, as you pay attention you cannot help coming to a deeper knowledge of both God and yourself.

True attentiveness is possible only if you also approach prayer in complete honesty.  People are often tempted to hold back their true selves when they approach God in prayer and that is just plain wrong, some people want to present a sanitized version of themselves in prayer. The problem is that when you hold our true self back from God, you are not opening yourself to the very one who can heal those parts of you that you may feel need to be hidden. The Psalms provide a wonderful model for genuine prayer, with their dazzling variety of deep mourning, heartfelt anger, and exuberant praise.

And of course, attentiveness and honesty can go only so far in a sporadic prayer life.  We need to have discipline which here means commitment. it refers to making prayer a regular, habitual part of your life. Unfortunately, prayer too often gets relegated to the corners of life that are left over after other priorities have collected their dues. Or perhaps you turn to prayer only when you feel like it. But prayer that is dependent on the mercy of a busy schedule or the whims of emotion is not likely to cultivate the soil for genuine spiritual formation. True knowledge of God and yourself becomes possible when you commit to making space for God in hurried times as well as times of leisure, whether or not you may feel like it. The good news is that once you begin to make that sort of disciplined prayer part of your life, it becomes more natural to keep it up just like with any discipline. When ou grow accustomed to connecting with God in the deep places of your soul, you long for more. What begins as a discipline becomes as normal as eating and sleeping. It is in precisely that context of attentive, honest, and habitual prayer that you are enabled to see yourself in all your uniqueness, which is the very stuff of discerning missional calling.

Along with prayer, immersing yourself in Scripture is key practice that shapes you for discernment. People read the Bible for all sorts of reasons. Some look for historical data or literary inspiration, while others search for ethical guidance. But to read the Bible as a spiritual discipline is to read it as a means of encountering God and being formed by God through that encounter. The point is not to read the Bible with the hopes of finding a particular passage that articulates your missional calling rather, the aim is to be transformed by God in and through your attentiveness to the fullness of God’s word. People who dwell in Scripture know who they are. They see the relentlessness with which God has called creation back to God’s self. They taste the joy of responding to that call by Grace. They hear the commission to live as active signs of the reconciling work of God. When your senses are engaged by this kind of meditation on Scripture, you are able to begin to recognize the specific role that you might play in that broader story. And what kind of reading, you might ask, enables that sort of response? after all, plenty of people have struggled and strained to make sense of a particular passage from Deuteronomy or Jude only to encounter frustration. The trouble often occurs when you try to read your way to God rather than waiting in the text for God to work in you. Like any spiritual discipline, reading Scripture is a way  of creating space for God rather than a means of forcing God to action. In that regard, the way forward is to open your whole self to God prayerfully, humbly, and patiently as you engage the biblical text. This is true even when you encounter challenging or puzzling passages. As with prayer, making a habit of immersing yourself in God’s word regularly enables genuine formation over the long haul. Those who commit to spending time with God’s Word in expectant hope for God’s Spirit to move are in a good posture for discernment.

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that has fallen off of the radar screen in many corners of the church. The practice of fasting involves refraining from eating food for a short period of time to focus on prayer and self-examination.  It has a long and deep history in the Christian tradition. It is worth keeping in mind Jesus’ advice about fasting in Matthew 6:16-18 namely, that the point is not to put on a display for others to see but to focus on God. Particularly in the process of discernment, focusing on God through fasting can reveal dimensions of yourself that you might not otherwise see. More than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. we cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface… anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear- if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. As you begin to recognize the things that may have been interfering with your formation in the likeness of Christ, you can welcome God’s work in clearing them away. As that happens, you may begin to see layers within yourself that you had not previously been able to see. Missional calling can begin to show itself as you gain a fresh and honest view of who you are.

The spiritual discipline of giving refers to offering time, money, and things to God by way of one’s neighbor. The most obvious expression of this discipline is the practice of tithing, or giving a tenth of one’s  income to one’s local congregation. But it can and should take other expressions as well. Volunteering as a tutor, organizing a diaper drive for a local food and clothing bank. The possibilities are almost endless. Sometimes you may not think of practicing such acts of service as a spiritual discipline. But that’s precisely what it can be, especially when approached in terms of making room in your life for God to work in transformative ways.

At its heart, the discipline of giving is about God’s work of orienting your priorities rightly. it functions both as a signal and as a catalyst. The regular practice of giving functions as a signal by showing you where your priorities really are. If you pay attention, you will begin to identify those areas where you are prone to hold back from offering everything back to God. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” Luke 12:34. If you find it relatively easy to tithe and give financially but wince at the thought of offering your time, then you have an indicator of a schedule that is in danger of becoming an idol in your life. Alternately, perhaps someone is perfectly happy to serve weekly in any number of capacities at church and in the community but struggles to let go of money or possessions. It is worth considering that this may be a sign of holding on to the wrong things. Just as fasting can uncover damaging spiritual patterns, so also can regular giving reveal misaligned priorities.  Giving can also function as a catalyst. By making a commitment to give even in those areas that are particularly difficult, you open yourself to a new possibility. That is you welcome the work of God in realigning your priorities through the very act of giving. As I’ve said repeatedly with these disciplines, this is not an automatic process. But a habit of intentional giving makes for very fertile ground in the work of transformation. When this change begins to happen, your sense of missional calling can become clearer as well.

The role of self-Reflection:

The role that the spiritual disciplines play in the process of vocational discernment is somewhat different from the role played by the next two categories. spiritual disciplines are not initiated for the sake of missional discernment, but they prepare the ground to make discernment possible. Vocational self-examination and communal discernment, are more specifically directed toward the goal of identifying missional calling. To begin, consider what is involved in the practice of looking deep into your life for signs of a missional calling.

It is crucial that the process of vocational self-reflection is intentional. While we have seen that a person does not need to go looking for the direct or general calling, missional calling is something that you really do need to seek out. Most students usually have some idea but not yet a complete picture of their missional calling. Wherever you are, you can begin this process with a very specific goal. At the end of the process, you want to be able to articulate your missional calling in a sentence or two. It may take a matter of months to get to that point, or it may take a few years. But you won’t likely get there if you don’t begin the journey.

It is also important to know just what your self-reflection should focus on in order to help reveal your missional calling. Essentially, there are three objectives: recognizing what you’re good at, finding your passions, and identifying the need that you are most compelled to address.  The first objective takes for granted that God has endowed each person with unique gifts. These gifts help you both to recognize and to fulfill your missional calling. You are wise to think as broadly as you can about this first goal. This would include spiritual gifts such as prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, or compassion, to draw from the list used in Romans 12:6-8. It would also include such natural abilities as facility with numbers, a knack for designing and understanding complex systems, or a way with words. All of these come from God, and all of them can be utilized in a missional calling. a very natural first step in a process of vocational self-examination, then, is to consider carefully where you are gifted.

There is no set formula for self-reflection on gifts, but here are plenty of ways to get started. A very interesting exercise is simply to write down three things that you do well. Rather than dwelling on this exercise for too long, it’s best to write down a few abilities or gifts that come immediately to mind.  Then think back over your life.

• Over your years in school, what areas came naturally to you and where did you earn your strongest grades?
• Where have other people consistently given you compliments or affirmation? This is especially helpful when you’ve received similar compliments from different people in a variety of contexts.
• What qualities or traits do you value in yourself the most? what qualities or traits have others said they value in you?

At this stage, your focus is not necessarily on what you love, but what you do well. As you write down you are looking for areas of overlap between what you have seen in yourself and what others have noticed. This exercise is not the end of the discernment process. It’s the starting point to take prayerfully and observantly into the coming months or years. As your discernment process continues, watch to see if that list of gifts is affirmed or refined by further reflection.

It is also helpful to identify those areas that will never be the strength for you. what do you know you are not created to do? When something lies beyond your capacity no matter how hard you try, then you have come upon a genuine limit. Any worthwhile purpose in life will bring times of struggle and difficulty. Some competencies come very naturally to you, but others are developed only out of tremendous effort and persistence. A temporary setback may be a failure, a time of discomfort, or an initial mediocre performance. But over time and with sufficient work, you can move past a temporary setback. You need to keep in mind the difference between direct calling and missional calling. Where God gives a clear calling to a particular task, then God will fully equip you to do it. But when you’re trying to discern missional calling, one way in which God can guide you to your goal is by showing you where your limits lie.

Along with looking for your gifts, a process of vocational self-reflection should also involve exploring what you love. God gave you certain passions to be used. your missional calling is a long-term pattern of how you will participate in God’s reconciling work, and it aligns with the unique way in which God created you.  That includes your loves.  I am not referring here to those activities that you merely enjoy but a passion runs deeper. A passion is something that gives you a sense of fulfillment, a sense of contribution. It is something that can be used to “build up the body of Christ”. A passion might be writing, gathering groups of people together for conversation, teaching, seeing people experience God’s love for the first time. The list of possibilities goes on and on. Some people can identify their passions immediately, but for others it will take some time and thought.  What are your deepest moments of joy in life? what are some experiences in the last few years that made you feel more alive? when have you felt the rush of a job well done? just as with identifying your gifts, it’s a good idea to begin writing down the ideas that come to mind. If you struggle to figure out your passions, you’re not alone. Quite often, the issue is that they simply have not tried enough new experiences to find a passion that may be lurking within. If you find difficult to articulate any deep loves, it may be a good idea to try something new. Volunteer in a brand new area of service in your church. This opportunities will help you shift your focus off yourself. Somewhat, you can often discover your deepest passions precisely when your attention is directed to others. This leads very naturally to the next step of self-reflection, which is to identify the primary need in the world that you are called to address.

Not only is it important that your missional calling makes use of your gifts and passions, but those gifts and passions should also be directed toward a specific goal. Merely wanting “to write” is not yet a missional calling, but writing to achieve a particular purpose may well be. Desiring to help people is too general to be a missional calling- in what specific way do you want to help people? in other words, your missional calling identifies a need that you are particularly suited to address. When a particular need grabs your heart, you will continually look for new ways to address that need throughout your life. That sustained pattern of contribution is precisely what a missional calling articulates.

The very idea of a missional calling presumes that your efforts can point to God’s kingdom.  In that light, the diverse ways that God’s people choose to focus their lives all have parts to play. some will be focused more directly on the community of faith, while others will sense a missional calling-oriented to the world as a whole. God’s purposes are vast; in fact, Colossians 1:20 suggests that they are nothing less than reconciling all things to God. While that is ultimately God’s work and not ours, we get a glimpse of that reconciliation when someone makes clean water available to a new community. We get a glimpse when someone else teaches a group of third graders at a local church with passion and enthusiasm.  What need has taken hold of your heart? what do you hope is included in the first paragraph of your obituary? If you find some connection between that need, your passions, and your gifts then you are well on your way to identifying your missional calling.

The role of communal discernment.

Even if your process of vocational self-reflection has generated a sense of a missional calling that seems to fit you, your work of discernment is not finished. Just as all are designed to mature as Christians in the context of community, so also you come to know yourself better through interaction with other people. To move forward with a sense of missional calling without involving others in discernment is usually a mistake. You are ultimately responsible for hearing and responding to God’s call on your life. But the process of hearing well entails listening to the insights that others have to offer.

Taking action

Channeling your abilities and love in a particular and worthy direction. The idea of beginning a process of self-reflection and communal discernment, rooted in the good soil of a long-term commitment to the spiritual disciplines, might seem daunting. Committing yourself to taking action is the best way to avoid the pitfall of vocational inertia. Discovering missional calling is not quick and easy, and it will not fall out of the sky at some point in the future. Once you take a step of discernment, writing down some gifts, perhaps, or talking with a parent the next step becomes easier.

In any discernment process, you run the danger of vocational wandering. This refers to a never-ending pattern of seeking your missional calling, which ultimately prevents you from actually living it out. Those who tend to be perfectionists are particularly inclined to vocational wandering since they want to be absolutely sure that they’ve got it right before bringing the process to a close. But here is a point to remember: concluding your time of discernment does not mean that your formulation of missional calling is absolutely fixed. It can and likely will be revised as life goes on. Your missional calling tends to endure throughout your life, but the way that you articulate it might be refined through new experiences.  You will find new contexts in which to live it out, and perhaps you will even find further gifts, loves or needs to incorporate into it. After prayerful self-reflection and communal discernment, then, take your sentence or two and go with it. The wording isn’t set in stone. But the God who made you and called you is faithful. So you can walk forward in confidence and with direction, offering what you have to God’s creative and redemptive hand.

Discussion Questions?

1. To what extent do you know your missional calling at this point in your life? are you aware of at least some of the elements of it?
2. Which of the spiritual disciplines described in this chapter are currently part of your life? Which ones would you like to begin practicing regularly?
3. Try to think of an experience in your life that really energized you or made you feel most alive. Does that experience tell you anything about your gifts, your passions, or the need in the world that you feel most compelled to address?
4. Have you ever identified a genuine limit or something that will just never be a strength for you? Does knowing this help you in discerning your missional calling?
5. Who are some of the people you would invite to participate in a process of discernment with you? Why would you choose them?

Who is Calling?

Your vocation does not ultimately come from inside yourself. Calling in all its forms general, missional, and direct comes from God.Ultimately, God’s calling is not as much about what God wants you to do as it is about knowing and loving God. It is also important to know that the more we think we know God the more we need to get to know Him. The Scriptures says is Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.  Paul described a similar verse in Romans 11:33-36.  

As you become more attuned to God’s presence and activity in your life, you simultaneously perceive the depth of God’s mystery. We have experience with something similar to this even in finite human relationships. Spouses, for example, will often find that the more they get to know each other even after many years together the more they realize how much there is yet to know. But what you find in human relationships is only a pale analogy to your experience of an infinite God.

For us, affirming God’s transcendence is an important spiritual practice. It offers an ongoing check against pride, reminding us to resist the temptation to believe we are able fully to comprehend God. It also helps us guard against idolatry, for the moment we think we have God fully contained in our understanding is the moment that we turn to a false God.  Worship of the true God requires that we leave space for what we are not capable of taking in.  God’s immanence is not just to recognize God’s presence throughout the world; It is also to affirm God’s involvement with the details of our lives. God remains relationally present to every inch of creation and God does, in fact, speak into your life.

To suppose that you will be able to recognize all of the ways God might be using your life is to ignore God’s transcendence. You simply do not know the complete picture of how God may bring fruit from your response to God’s calling. It is remarkably freeing not to have the weight of the world on your shoulders. your job is not to make the kingdom of God a reality on God’s behalf; your job is faithful to live as a sign of God’s reconciling work in the way you have been called. Therefore, you can plant seeds, or cultivate the ground, or water seedlings with a humble recognition of your dependence on a transcendent God to bring forth the harvest.

The Triune God and Vocation

How can God be both one and three? the doctrine of the Trinity does really matter for us today. Think of it this way: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the basis of our reconciliation with God and with each other. The Holy Spirit makes the work of Jesus a reality in our lives now and enables our worship and service of God the father. You can also recognize distinct roles of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, in your vocational life. Specifically, the Spirit makes it possible to recognize your calling and empowers your response. The Scripture is our essential source for recognizing general calling, and the Spirit is most directly associated with our encounter with Scripture.  The Spirit plays an indispensable role in our knowledge of general calling. This is also true for direct calling. The Holy Spirit also plays a central role in the discernment of missional calling as well. Furthermore, the very ability to follow where God leads you is the result of the Spirit’s work in your life.

Divine and Human Agency

Why should God bother to call us to redemptive activity if God is going to reconcile creation in the end anyway? And if God wishes to involve us in this work, why leave us the freedom to ignore or disobey that calling? we might begin to address these questions by noticing what creaturely freedom makes possible: the alignment of God’s purposes for creation and God’s purposes for each of us. A calling is an invitation rather than an act of coercion; the room is left for us to respond or not to respond. If we accept the calling, we live into what God wants to do both in us and through us. God could easily have forcefully transformed us into the kind of creatures we were meant to be or to push it back ever further have programmed us to be obedient from the beginning. But in those scenarios, crucial elements of a genuine relationship are missing: freedom, love, and willful interaction. By leaving us space to choose to respond, God has created the possibility of true communion. In that light, living out a calling is an act of loving obedience rather than a response to programming.

Living into Vocation as an Act of Worship

God is uniquely worthy of being glorified. Worship is the appropriate response to a God who is both immanent and transcendent, who is an eternal communion of love, and who invites our participation in healing the world. When we think of worship we naturally think of songs, prayers, and the like. One’s entire life can be offered as an act of worship.  Recall the words of Paul in Romans 12:1-2  Notice the extent of this call to worship to present our bodies, our whole selves, as a living sacrifice. In responding to God’s calling, we worship not just with our voices, but with everything we are.  It is not primarily out of the sense of duty or obligation that you should embrace your calling. Responding to God’s invitation is a free and joyful act of worship. You express your love for God through your actions in each dimension of vocation. It is true every day as you grow more mature in living out your general calling. It is true as you find new ways to fulfill your missional calling in the changing circumstances of life. It is true as you remain attentive and responsive to any direct calling that God may place on your life. Sometimes as you step forward you have a clear sense of where the road will take you. Sometimes you take the few steps that are known, listening and watching carefully as you go. In all times, propelled by the joy of knowing God, your life can proclaim God’s goodness and glory.

Discussion Questions

1. How has your understanding of God changed over the course of your life?
2. Can you identify times in your life when you clearly sensed God’s nearness and presence?
3. Can you identify times in your life when you became deeply aware of God’s mystery and otherness?
4. Practically speaking, why is the idea of the Trinity so important to the Christian life?
5. Vocation is about both what God wants to do through you and what God wants to do in you. What is God doing in you at this stage of your life?