Friday, March 11, 2005

Finding Your Calling

Finding your calling is one of the most basic drives a person has. Why am I here? What should I be doing? What's the meaning of my life? The questions go on and on, and sometimes finding the answers aren't easy.

Sometimes the problem in finding the answers may lie in our self-centered approach to the search for meaning. If it's just about me, or even if it's mostly about me, I'm unlikely to find the answer, and for lots of reasons. The biggest reason is that life is not about me.

A Calling is when God entrusts you with something His heart yearns for.

Anita Carman who leads the organization Inspire Women, shared this definition while speaking at an event I attended yesterday. I think it has a lot to offer.
  • First, calling is about God and what He wants to occur.
  • That suggests that discerning my calling requires being aware of God and his purposes.
  • It also means that I must be open to stepping up when I sense that God is offering to entrust me with something He wants done.
Anita also suggested that as a result, we must learn to follow the person of Jesus, and not our five-year plan. If we're focused on Jesus, He will provide the opportunities and the insight to find our calling. If we're focused on the five-year plan, it's likely we won't see the opportunities and won't gain the insight.

What God entrusts to us will match our background, resources, and skills. That's why he made us the way He did, gave us the skills and resources that He has, and trained us with the life experiences He's afforded us. Being self-aware -- knowing how we're wired, what we're good at, what we're interested in and passionate about -- is a good thing because it provides a background to look for the intersection with what God calls us to do. But some of us may even use this to put God in a box. If we see a possible opportunity that might be a calling, we may dismiss it because it doesn't fit in the box that is us as we understand ourselves.

Which leads to a final point Anita made -- "Recognize that you've been reading from an incomplete script." Our self-awareness is ever growing, and more importantly, our awareness of God and what He is doing is always growing.

May God open our eyes to see Him and His calling for us more clearly!




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