The Secret to Your Vocation: The Caller is Calling

The language of calling is all around us.   The word is right there on the subway sign with the implication: “follow the right path, get the right education, and you’ll discover your calling.”   We seem attracted to the idea that you can find a path to a dream job, your a life-purpose, a destiny.   We love “calling,” but we’re collectively squeamish about the source of this information.   We are not sure about the “caller.”

They say they want the kingdom, but they don’t want God in it.

Johnny Cash/Bono The Wanderer

We are living in a cut-flower civilization. The roots of Christian culture have been cut, and the flowers are beginning to die on all sides.^[1]

Os Guinness

Three Signs the Caller is Missing in your Calling Journey

1. You Are Your Caller Whether you’d label yourself an atheist, an agnostic, or a self-help aficionado, at the end of the day, you are your caller.  The defining voice that guides your life is your own. I imagine many reasons flow from your intellectual and emotional journey which lend credence to this conclusion.  You can only really trust yourself.   Yet I would suggest that even this approach is fraught with perils. Our best gut read, our best decisions for our lives often end up wrong. At least with this view, you are intellectually consistent, unlike the split personality approach lived by the second group of readers. 

2. You Are Your Caller For Your Work Life.   You know if you live in this bucket when you play by two sets of rules. One set for work, one set for civilian life.   In your personal and family life, you pray and seek God and at least give some lip service to the idea of real-time trust in Jesus.   But then you go to work on Monday. Your job is yours.   You figure it out, you make it happen, you are the caller for your work life.   You add the loneliness and tendency not always to get it right from #1 to the added burden of simultaneously living in two entirely different worlds. 

3. You Are Neurotic About the Possibility of Missing Your Calling.   A third group believes there is a caller out there.   The Caller is personal, active in our world, and knowable.   But are afraid you will (or have missed) miss it.   God has spoken, and you were busy taking in your social media drug of choice.   You made the wrong call for schooling or the first job, etc. and you are doomed to have not quite get God’s best.

What’s the answer to these blockages to finding our calling?

The Secret

Could it be that the secret to finding and following a calling is more about a relationship and less about technique?  The best tools (and I am a tool fan!) to discern your genius talents, the most realistic map of the job market, and ninja networking skills are no replacement for the one who knows what we are supposed to do with our lives.

Jesus, describing himself as the good shepherd, said the following:   “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his sheep by name and leads them out.” John 11:2   He is the eternal Word (John 1:1), and there is no place where is voice is not heard (Psalms 19) He knows us and is calling to us (Psalms 139).

Proximity to the caller leads to clarity of calling.  

It is simple but not an easily controlled or domesticated process.   God is calling, we listen.

As you ponder your sense of calling and the coming of the caller this Christmas, take some inventory:

1.   What has he already shown you about his purposes for your life?

2.  What will it look like to listen more carefully in the year ahead?

Good Christian men, rejoice

With heart and soul and voice

Now ye need not fear the grave:


Peace! Peace!

Jesus Christ was born to save

Calls you one and calls you all

To gain His everlasting hall

Christ was born to save

Christ was born to save

Merry Christmas Reader!!!

Other Posts in This Series:

1. Success = Finding and Following Your Calling
2. Myths about Calling Part 1 and Part 2
3. 2 Callings are Better than 1.
4. Your work calling: A Tale of Two Cities

About the Author:  

Dr. Chip Roper writes Marketplace Faith from New York City, where he is the director of Marketplace Engagement at the New York City Leadership Center.  Chip is driven to turn the daily grind into a spiritual adventure.   In service of this vision to empower individuals to approach their work with a keen sense of vocation, he aims to end the “stunning silence of the Church regarding life at work.” He is convinced that a central piece of God’s plan for any city or community is the work that people do each day. You can learn more about him here. Chip is available for speaking, consulting, and coaching engagements. Inquire via his email: croper@nycleadership.com.

[1] http://www.christianpost.com/news/os-guinness-calls-for-a-new-christian-renaissance-51309/#l7Ma1sxlfMkWQkk2.99.

Pic:  Found here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/286478, no copy write or attribution info available.