God, Is That You Calling?
Correcting Some Misconceptions About God's Will That May Have You Stuck
Some people seemed to be surprised and alarmed by recent polling that showed belief in God had dropped to slightly over 80% in America. I was actually surprised that it was still that high. If 8 out of 10 Americans really believe God exists, then I suspect that there is still a huge percentage who wonder what God is like and what God wants.
Of course, we are left to ourselves, with all of our imperfections, to wrestle with those questions. Even though the Bible declares very early on that people are created in God’s image, we all know that we spend a majority of our time making God in ours. While we say we want to become more like God, we are really more comfortable seeing God become more like us. This is true individually on a deeply personal level, but it is also the case socially and communally for entire societies sometimes. For my professing Christian readers, I contend we need a reset in one of the most fundamental and basic components of our faith, the issue of God’s will.
“I want to know God’s will for my life.” Have you heard someone express that sentiment? Have you thought it yourself? The Church1 has been happy to answer this question for people. We have books, sermons, and resources telling us how to find God’s will, answer God’s call, and live in such a way that we miss neither.
The problem is the popular notion of answering God’s call or finding God’s will is so strongly tied to our contemporary condition of occupation obsession. We live in a context that has young citizens go to school for years where they have to decide on a career path for life. Then, they go off to college and spend tons of money to specialize in a particular field of study. We are hyper-focused on having everyone figure out their career, and what they will do for the next 40 years, and this context drives our teaching on God’s will.
What we end up with is a series of conversations about whether it is God’s will for a person to be a doctor or a teacher, to attend this university or that university, to devote their lives to this occupation or that one. There are enough current sociological reasons why this is unwise, including the fact that the job market is ever-changing and many of the jobs young people will occupy may not even exist yet. Thanks to technological advances, more work is remote and the workforce is more mobile, switching from one role to another or from one company to another more often. Also, there is the proven fact that our metrics for ranking students and colleges (grade point average, SAT tests, college ranking reports, etc.) are all based on misleading, inaccurate junk data. For these reasons alone, we should abandon much of how we direct young people to discern God’s will for their lives.
But I am here to argue an even more significant reason. God doesn’t work this way. It is bad theology from the start. All the problems listed above are society’s problems in general, but this concern is ours as Christians to resolve. Pastors, teachers, parents, and youth leaders, we can and must do better.
Rather than imposing our current context on scripture, we can see that the tendency is for God to call people to causes or tasks.
Build this wall.
Fight this battle.
Deliver these people.
Speak to this king.
Prophecy to this group of exiles.
Visit this city/town.
Heal this person.
What these have in common is that they are all temporary projects. Serious and important, but temporary. More often, it is not a case in which God calls someone to figure out their occupation for the next 40 years, but God gives them a mission, a purpose, for the next 40 days or 40 hours. This approach makes sense in light of what we learn about God throughout the trajectory of Biblical history, that He is relational. He differentiates to meet people where they are and each relationship is dynamic and unique. It is not a fixed state any more than a friendship or a marriage.
Another trend we see is that the call of God is less about the individual being called and more about the people to which they are being called to serve or help. The impetus for God to call someone is that a group of people are in danger or pain. Someone needs to be set free, physically or spiritually. Someone needs to be defended or protected. Someone needs to hear the truth. Someone needs to be healed. It is for the sake of victims, widows, orphans, children, the outnumbered, downtrodden, exiled, and defeated. Calls of God are birthed out of the compassion of Christ.
It matters to our theology that we recalibrate our teachings on God’s will. It misrepresents Jesus when we equate a career path with a calling because it makes people think Jesus is all about them figuring out the best way to spend their years at a job, how to make money, and how to get ahead in this world while doing good. Frankly, it makes us self-centered instead of oriented toward others. What we have as a result of this self-centered approach to discerning God’s will2 is droves of people feeling guilty and trapped in jobs they don’t like or jobs that don’t give them any sense of meaning or purpose. We are left with false sacred and secular dichotomies that really don’t exist in God’s economy of love. We are left with people praying fervently and repeatedly because they are scared they might have missed God’s will. God becomes a distant, unapproachable figure who is administering tests they are worried about failing.
Is God calling me to move to Pittsburgh?
Is God calling me to sell my house?
Is God calling me to be an electrician?
Is God calling me to go to community college?
Is God calling me to stay single?
Oh, the stress of figuring out what God must want me to do with every key decision of my life! See, all of the attention is on me. What is best for ME? That must be what keeps God preoccupied, at least the God the Christian Church has taught me about recently. You know, the God who wants me safe and secure and satisfied.
There is a way to reset this discussion.
First, emphasize fruit (character) over gifts (talent) when we talk about God’s will. All of our present methods have led us to an obsession, in the Church as much as out of it, with talent development. We emphasize discovering our spiritual gifts and using them for the glory of God. There is nothing inherently wrong with that except that it should be about ten percent of the discussion, not all of it. The overwhelming focus should be on developing the fruit of the Spirit, allowing God to grow and display His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in us. Why? Because this is God’s will. You never have to doubt if He wants you to become a person who can extend grace to others. You never have to wonder, is this a situation where I should be more kind or less kind, desire more peace or less peace? It sounds silly when put like that, but that is the point. It is silly to obsess over what God wants you to do with the rest of your life more than who God wants you to be for the rest of your life. In the end, your legacy will be based on your character traits more than your skill sets.
So, put a pause on the spiritual gift inventories and the personality profiles and the competency matrices for a moment. They will always be there to come back to, I promise. Settle into the fact that God’s will has been clearly expressed for all life, not just yours. It is to remain in Him while He remains in you growing and pruning and blossoming the fruit of His Spirit in you. By the way, not only will this help alleviate so much angst about finding God’s will, but it will also dramatically help us get back on track with serving the world around us with a healthy Christian witness and message of love. In case you haven’t noticed, the reputation of the Church is in bad shape, and deservedly so. God’s way is better than what we have been putting out there.
Second, focus on a present reality rather than a future potential when seeking to answer God’s call. When you look at the present reality around you, what is the problem you can help solve? Where is there injustice or hate or deception? Who is hurting that you know? What is the reality of your circumstances? Is there a cause or a people group that you have a passion for serving? Then, don’t worry about what that will mean in ten years. Do good now. If you are worried that it might not be God’s will for you to do good now in some way, then I invite you to read this sentence out loud again and recognize the absurdity of it.
Here is the thing. We are human and we are emotional and we are impulsive. It could be that we get this wrong every now and then. That is the beautiful thing about God’s will being anchored in character over jobs or interests or hobbies. These things can all change. These things do change. It’s okay to work in a soup kitchen this month and a school next month. It’s okay to want to be an accountant to bring financial integrity to businesses for a few years only to switch to real estate for a time while you have the flexibility to volunteer in your child’s little league activities. Instead of asking, what does God want me to do with the rest of my life, ask, what does God want me to do now with my life? Relieve yourself from the pressure to have the perfect answer. The perfect answer is to do good.
My disclaimer, in conclusion, should go without saying, that I am not offering a license to excuse yourself from the working world. It takes hard work to repair the world and it takes responsibility to have some kind of honest income to live on. We all have to work. Finding jobs that you will thrive in is important, but it is not the end-all, be-all. And more to my point, it is not God’s chief concern. We need to stop “spiritualizing” career paths as though they are the way God directs our lives. We need to stop equating them to God’s will or call.
When I capitalize Church, I am mostly referring to the institutional church. It is what most people in mainstream America think of when they hear the word church. In reality, I recognize that the true church is distinctly universal, diverse, organic, and spiritual.