Your Truer Calling

As a Creativity Coach, I’m frequently asked to help people discover their true calling. Most don’t realize how their current job and interests might connect to a larger creative calling. 

If that’s how you feel, don’t let it overwhelm you. You aren’t behind. It’s not too late. If God has stirred a desire in you, he will see it through. In fact, you’re likely closer to breakthrough than you think. Don’t believe me? Let’s pay a visit to an eye surgeon and some expert fisherman.

A friend of mine is an eye surgeon. She restores sight. That’s her profession and she’s good at it. But one day she realized if money wasn’t an issue, she’d write stories. That felt like such a disconnect from the trajectory of her career. I pointed out that there was actually a clear link between the two. Her passion was to help people see. That was her true calling. But her deeper love was writing stories. Rather than a detour from what she’d been doing, God was inviting her to help people see in an entirely new way—through story. That is her truer calling.

For another example, consider the fishermen before they met Jesus in Galilee. They excelled at their craft. Fishing likely brought these men some level of joy, but then Jesus invited them into something truer. In an instant, expert fishermen became “fishers of men.” They traded the foreshadowing of their prior calling for a full measure of what they were born to be. Their truer calling.

Want a practical way to shed light on your truer calling? When you think back on your Story, what have you always been drawn to? I’m not asking what others say you do well. You can be good at doing things that you have little interest in. I’m talking about activities that cause you to lose track of time when you enter into them. What would it look like to experience that joy again, in a fresh new way?

I don’t recommend you quit your job in the hopes that someone will begin paying you for what you most love to do. That would be nice…but rarely happens in that way.

Perhaps the first step is reclaiming what used to bring you joy in a new way. Perhaps as a hobby. If you came alive playing a certain sport as a teen, maybe you could join a recreational league. If your body can’t quite do what it used to, then volunteer as a youth coach.

Perhaps in your spare time you could earn a few dollars in a freelance role that plays to your gifting. But don’t make money the goal. Focus instead on the joy and the desire. Then see where God takes it from there.

As you enter into this discovery process, stay with God and stay expectant. Like the eye surgeon and the fishermen, your truer calling may be closer than you think.

Want more? Order your copy of The Story of With today!