Clarity in our calling?

It has been quite awhile since I wrote on the theme of calling.  Today I plan to return to this important subject.  I wish to explore a bit of the evolving clarity that comes with calling.  All to often, I believe people think their calling in life should be obvious.  As life moves along, they worry that they have missed the boat as to what God has called them to be and to do.  This fear causes much anxiety, depression, and a strange resignation as to one's place in life.

In other words, so many people, dare I say too many people, believe that they wasted their life if they do not have a direct and complete sense of God's calling from their teens or twenties that guides their entire life.

I must say that while I feel and have keenly felt their angst, I believe such thinking is clearly wrong for most people.  I know in my own life, I have had decades of wrestling with my "exact" calling.  In fact, I would say that my calling, which is to proclaim God's grace and gospel into the life of the Church and our culture, has taken several different twists and turns in terms of jobs and my life.  

I have been a youth pastor, a professor of history, a professor of theology, a solo pastor, a senior pastor, a salesman, an organic farmer, and last but not least a writer!  Furthermore, I also have learned a bit about how to be a husband, a father, a mentor, an adviser, and a friend.  At different times and seasons of life, each of these occupational and life events became my primary avenue to fulfill my calling.

Honestly, I did not clearly see all of these jobs and roles in my future when I was 25.  In hindsight, I can see how each of them shaped me and how the Lord used each of them to change me.  I can also see my confusion and lack of clarity as I made each transition!  Through these transitions, with their attendant struggles and difficulties, I have come to understand who I am and what God wishes to do through me.  Given this track record, I am fairly certain my life will take more twists and turns as I continue to mature and walk through life.

So is my life experience normal or abnormal?  Did I waste my time because I wrestled with whether to be a professor, a church planter, or a church revitalizer?  Am I missing the boat because I know I could be and do any of these three jobs, all three of them at once, or none of them sometime in the next ten years?  Is the model of Christian discipleship and calling one of pilgrimage or one that follows the path of a rocket?

I believe calling is first and foremost a response to God.  It is clarified as we understand who God has made us and as we grow in our ability to know/discern God's leading.  It is a journey mirroring an often times confusing pilgrimage through uncharted territory.

Yes, there is great joy in the journey.  Joy is found as we grow to know the Living God, and as He reveals who He has made us to be.  Yet, joy is often mixed with pain and difficulty because joy is most poignant when contrasted with pain, sorrow, and confusion.  We must not short-circuit the process!  I think the more we have to offer in service to God the harder it is to easily clarify with exactness what we are called to do.

In other words, cut yourself some slack!  The Lord loves you and He will lead you when you are ready to the next stage of the great adventure.  Get to know Him, know yourself, and walk through life with your eyes open.  Who knows what doors He will open next!

An interesting section of Os Guinness's The Call should help clarify and illustrate what I mean.  I will close with these thoughts.

We must remember the distinction between the clarity of calling and the mystery of calling.  Again selfishness prefers the first, but stewardship regards both.  To the extent that through worship, listening to God, and discovering our giftedness we grasp what God is calling us to be and do, there will be a proper clarity in our sense of calling.  But to the extent that we blithely rush to be explicit, we betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.  Oswald Chambers even said, writing of a special call:

"If you can tell where you got the call of God and all about it, I question whether you have ever had a call. The call of God does not come like that, it is much more supernatural.  The realization of it in a man's life, may come with a sudden thunder-clap or with a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, something that cannot be put into words."

Can you state your identity in a single sentence?  No more should you necessarily be able to state your calling in a single sentence.  At best you can only specify a part of it.  And even that clarity may have to be qualified.  In many cases a clear sense of calling comes only through a time of searching, including trial and error.  And what may be clear to us in our twenties may be far more mysterious in our fifties because God's complete designs for us are never fully understood, let alone fulfilled, in this life.