“If time and money were no object, what would you do with your life?”
I forget who first asked me that question, but when they did, it was a defining moment for me. Well, it eventually became a defining moment for me. In the moment, it was just plain annoying.
I didn’t want to do the hard work of thinking. I wanted someone just to tell me what my plot in life was. I wanted someone to tell me what I was good at, so that I could just do that, and be done with it. I wanted to copy what made others successful, hoping that following their paths would do the same for me.
Boy, am I ever glad someone asked me that question. It’s what has partially catapulted me down the road to where I am today and the deep honor and privilege I have to serve pastors and church leaders.
I often return to what Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War wrote. Let me paraphrase him,
If you know your enemy, you’ll win half of the battles. But when you know yourself, you’ll win the other half. [1]
Just imagine the implications if we spent as much time discovering the unique ways that God has wired, gifted, talented, and called us, as we do reading biographies, copying the “successful,” and mimicking models? Investing in yourself is time never wasted.
The Power of the Right Questions
I love what Peter Drucker wrote about the importance of questions,
Answers are important; you need answers before you need action. But the most important thing is to ask…questions.
In order to find your calling in life, take a moment and prayerfully answer the following questions from my friend Todd Wilson’s new book, More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure:
- Am I willing to move and go wherever God wants me to go?
- Am I willing to work with whomever God wants me to work?
- Am I willing to go whenever God asks me to go?
- Am I willing to do whatever God asks me to do, regardless of consequences?
- How can I expect God to send me and use me if I’m not really willing to go? [2]
BE-DO-GO Framework
In More, Todd provides a timely framework to help us discover our personal callings and the unique impact that God is preparing us to make. This framework is broken down into three questions:
- “What am I created to BE? (a design or identity question)
- “What am I created to DO? (a purpose or mission question)
- “Where am I created to GO?” (a compatibility or position question)
These three questions are then divided into two categories: our primary calling and secondary one.
Our “primary calling is to be disciples who make disciples where we are!” Our secondary calling is our unique calling—“the unique, divine equipping God gives each believer to help carry the fullness of Jesus to the world.” This calling is, in the cofounder of Yale University Cotton Mather’s words, a “certain particular employment, by which [a person’s] usefulness in his neighborhood is distinguished.”[4]
Do you know your calling(s) in life?
Are you clear on your primary calling? If so, do you know your secondary calling? In More, Todd Wilson acts as your guide to help you discover both.
Before we end, let me list ten of my favorite quotes about calling from this book:
Next Steps:
- Pick up a copy of More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure.
- Click here to learn more about this book, download an excerpt, and get additional resources.
End Notes:
[1] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (England: Allandale Online Publishing, 2000), 11.
[2] Todd Wilson, More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 72-73.
[3] Ibid., 89.
[4] Ibid., 91.
[5] Ibid., 212.