Consider Your Calling E-Book

Gordon T. Smith

• Herausgeber: IVP
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

What on earth is God doing?Who are you?What is your stage of life?What are your circumstances?What is the cross you will have to bear?What are you afraid of?We ask these six critical questions—and then we ask them again—at points of transition in our lives. They all lead us to the one core question: What is the good work to which I am called? Gordon T. Smith, author of Courage and Calling, writes: "It is a good question because our work matters to us, to others and, of course, it matters to God. Work itself is good. It is vital to our human identity; and we are most ourselves, most who God calls us to be, living in what it means to know the salvation of God, when we know the grace of work well done." However, Smith acknowledges that this is not a simple question to answer in the midst of our very complicated lives. That's why he has written this brief and accessible book—to offer the support and insight we need as we ponder these six core questions in community with God and others. As a steward of your life, in attentiveness to the calling of God, how is God inviting you to engage the world?

Leseprobe

CONSIDER YOUR CALLING

Six Questions for Discerning Your Vocation

GORDON T. SMITH

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Contents

Introduction

Question One: What on Earth Is God Doing?

Question Two: Who Are You?

Question Three: What Is Your Life Stage?

Question Four: What Are Your Life Circumstances?

Question Five: What Is the Cross You Will Have to Bear?

Question Six: What Are You Afraid Of?

Conclusion

Appendix: A Prayer for Those Who Work

Also Available from Gordon T. Smith

Praise for Consider Your Calling

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

Introduction

What is the good work to which you are called? That is a good question, but it is not a simple question.

It is a good question because our work matters to us, to others and, of course, it matters to God. Indeed, the creator of the universe is the one who longs to give us good work—to call us into work that reflects the purposes of God in the world. Thus, it is a good question because work itself is a good thing.

For many, of course, work is sheer toil, with cruel and demeaning work conditions. But in that situation the problem is not work but the working conditions. Work itself is good. It is vital to our human identity, and we are most ourselves—most who God calls us to be, living in what it means to know the salvation of God—when we know the grace of work well done.

Indeed, we will only be happy—we will only flourish in the way that was intended when God created us—when we are doing good work. The goal of life is not less work but to know and embrace the good work to which we are called.

But while “What is the good work to which you are called?” is a good question, it is not a simple question. We are complicated souls and we live complicated lives. There is so much about daily life, our circumstances and the problems we face, that makes it difficult to make sense of the issues that intersect our lives. So many questions swirl through our minds as we encounter the inevitable transitions we have to navigate.

And we will navigate transitions. We hear different statistics all the time around the question of career changes. It would not be an overstatement to say that most of us will have a significant career and life transition every four to five years. We live in a fluid economy; the institutions of which we are a part are in constant flux. Our family situation changes, pressing us to consider what implications this has for our work.

And so, while it is a good question—it is complicated. And we do not wrestle with the question just once in life but rather as a regular part of living in a complex world. Therefore, surely, one of the basic capacities for living well is knowing how to navigate these transitions. Yes, there is the prior and ultimate question (What is the good work to which you are called?) but with that in mind, there are questions we can ask ourselves—questions that can help us make sense of these transitions and do so in light of the purposes of God in our lives. And that is the key: we want to approach the complexity of life and work through the lens of “vocation.” We consider the calling of God on our lives and find clarity and purpose in life and work by coming at it all with a desire to know God and discern calling.

Intentionality

We easily view ourselves as “victims” of our circumstances, of what others have done for us and the ways they have, perhaps, limited our lives. But we are not only victims, which means we have the capacity to be proactive, to not only react but also consider and move in God’s grace into work that God gives us. To consider—and that is the word—our world and our circumstances. To think, to think carefully, and to be in conversation with others making the best sense we can of what it means for us to respond to God, for this time and place. We want to be intentional.

We need resources that empower us to take personal responsibility for our own lives and our vocations. We may feel like victims living with the consequences of the decisions of others—or even our own decisions or actions, wishing we had spent more time in school or wishing we had not quit a job—but the actions of others and our own regrets need not define us. We can foster a capacity to be proactive, to name our reality but also engage that reality with confidence, hope and courage. We need not allow ourselves to be victimized by our circumstances, but can consider how God is calling us to respond with hope.

This means we choose and we act. Our vocation can be thought of as an invitation from God in Christ. It is a calling, something to which we are beckoned, and now it is for us to respond—to choose to accept the invitation. And no one will do this for us. Each of us needs to reflect on the particulars of God’s call in the midst of the particulars of our circumstances.

We can take personal responsibility for our lives. We can be stewards of the way that lies before us. We are not alone in this process of discernment and we will fulfill our vocations with others who will both help us along the way and, no doubt, stand in our way and impede us. But in the end, we are called to be stewards of our lives—our potential, our giftedness, our opportunities—and to invest our lives for the kingdom of God. We can, each one of us, look at the stage on which we have arrived and respond to the opportunity to act in response to God’s call with gratitude, hope and courage.

Good Conversation

We need to take personal responsibility for our lives and our vocation; we need to be intentional and proactive. We each will ask, What is the good work to which I am called? And only you or I can answer this question. We each have to make the call; no one else can do it for us. Yet it is equally important to stress that although we each make the call, we cannot do this alone. We need the company of others—co-discerners who walk with us on this road. We need fellow pilgrims who will be good conversation partners with us as we journey together on the road. At the very least, good conversation has the following qualities: it is hopeful, it is theologically informed and it is productive.

Good conversation is hopeful. Conversation about our work is easily filled with frustration. We complain about our circumstances and complain about the people we work with or the people we work for. Perhaps we complain about the situation that we face—economic or social problems that limit us. Or we feel the weight of what seem to us to be the limits that we have to live with, including the feeling that we do not get adequate support from others.

What is needed is good conversation—meaning conversation that is consistently edifying and grace-filled, that empowers us to navigate the challenges that inevitably come when we face a transition. As those who are older, do we know how to encourage and foster the capacity of those of a generation younger? As spouses, can we talk together about how we are being called, individually and together? As parents or friends, can we speak to our children and others about work that matters to us and them as fellow pilgrims trying to make sense of our lives and our work? Pastors are in conversation with their parishioners, teachers with their students, but they can only do this well if there is a resilient hopefulness that undergirds and infuses the conversation.

Good conversation is also theologically informed. By this, I mean that we have an understanding of the meaning of work. We grow in our understanding of what our work means to us, to God and to the world, and we view our work through the lens of the Christian theological tradition.

Finally, good conversation is productive, meaning that it helps us see our next steps and empowers us to act. In good conversation, we enter into the wisdom that comes from the encounter with others—wisdom that provides us with headlights on a dark night.

And in all of this, we have friends, companions on the way with whom we can speak with clarity and honesty. These companions allow us to ask the hard questions, the right questions, while we know that they care about our lives, our circumstances and our challenges.

So what I am proposing here is that good conversation requires that we learn how to ask the right questions—or better put, that we learn how to respond to the right questions. What follows are the crucial and pivotal questions each of us needs to consider and engage:

What on earth is God doing?

Who are you?

What is your stage of life?

What are your circumstances?

What is the cross you will have to bear?

What are you afraid of?

There are perhaps other questions that would be pertinent to a discussion on vocation, and I will reference a couple of additional questions in the conclusion, but these six are certainly a good starting point for fruitful conversation and they provide us with a vehicle for getting to the heart of the matter. In conversation with others, we can come closer to finding clarity and courage to face what lies before us.

Focus!

In the end, good conversation about our work fosters a capacity for vocational focus. The six questions just mentioned actually assume a prior question, namely, Where should I focus my time and my energy? When we speak of focus we make an assumption: vocation is not merely about doing a good thing, but rather about doing the right thing. I grew up in a religious tradition where preachers were inclined to call us to “pray more, give more and serve move.” Just writing this makes me shudder. “More, more, more,” we were told, on the assumption that more was and is better.

Sometimes, of course, more is required. There are no doubt times when I need to be urged to pray more. And cetainly there are times when I need to be urged to serve more. But generally, most of us need a call to focus with greater intentionality. We do not need to be urged to do more. Many of us are trying to do too much! Rather, we need greater clarity about what we are truly called to and freedom to accept those things that do not need to concern us, at least in the use of our time and energy. We need to give our attention, in an age of distraction, to the zone of life and work that merits our vocational energy.

There are surely those who are underengaged, and we may think that we need to say to them, “you need to do more.” There are those who are distracted or simply lazy, or those who don’t really value work or appreciate the joy that comes in work. Or those who are in a malaise, living in a vocational fog, unsure what to do and with little motivation to get off the proverbial couch. But for these folks, nothing is gained by urging them to do more. Simply doing more is of no help to them. For all of us, the call is for greater focus.

Vocation is not merely about doing a good thing, but rather about doing the right thing.

Thus, I use the word focus intentionally. This may well be the crucial vocational question of our day. The capacity to focus is fundamental to manage life effectively. This has always been the case; vocational integrity has always depended on the ability to focus time and energy wisely, purposefully and courageously. But the call to focus is particularly crucial in what has been labeled an age of digital distraction. If we are going to do the right thing and do it well, it may well be that the greatest threat to that very capacity will be the propensity of our generation to be “always on,” always trying to manage 101 things, including the full range of social media that we assume are essential to our lives. And the pressure to be on—always on—is vocationally insidious. It’s a killer intellectually, emotionally and thus vocationally. The urgent need of our day is not so much that we would learn “time management” but rather “attention management.” Where will we focus our mental, emotional and physical energy?

Now it needs to be stressed that our vocation is first and foremost to respond with gratitude to God and to grow in faith, hope and love in response to God’s love and generosity toward us. But when we discern vocation, we are essentially asking a more specific question: In what particular way am I being called to respond to God? Or rather, what is the unique work that will be the expression of my faithfulness to God? That is the bottom line: responding to Christ with gratitude and trust. Discerning vocation is merely the exercise of discerning how that will find expression within the particular contours of my life.

Vocation and Discerning Love

Sometimes the call to pray more and give more and serve more assumes that this is the way of love. That is, the more we love God and love others, the more busy we will be. So then if you love others you will pray and give and serve, and if you love a lot you will pray and give and serve even more.

But this relationship between vocation and love requires greater nuance. No doubt, our calling is always a calling to love God and to love our neighbor. This is a given; vocation is always about fulfilling the call to love. Love conditions ­everything; it demarcates each dimension of our lives. Even when we move into solitude—the solitary work of woodworking or gardening or sermon preparation or prayer—it is still work that is done out of love for God and others.

And this is the fundamental call of the Christian: to love God and to love our neighbor. This is the baseline that informs every dimension of the work to which we are called. But do not confuse love with misguided generosity. To love well means to discern well—to discern how I am being called to love God and love others. We see this link between love and discernment in the opening chapter of the letter to the Philippians: