How to Discover Your God-Given Calling for Good Works
- Jack Selcher
- Jan 30
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Summary
Discovering your calling begins with God, not self. True calling is revealed over time through spiritual gifts, prayer, Scripture, wise counsel, and obedience. God uses preparation, changing seasons, experimentation, and affirmed passions to guide believers into meaningful good works. When the Holy Spirit burdens our hearts for specific needs and grants peace, we gain confidence that we are living out God’s purpose.
Callings That Exclude God Become Idols
I read “How to Find Your Calling: 16 Ways to Pursue Your Dreams” by Maggie Wooll. She defines our life’s calling as that which makes our lives meaningful and purposeful. She says that our calling uses our skills and talents, consistent with our values.1
My question is, who is the caller? Can there be a calling without a Caller? You notice that I capitalized “Caller.”
Her approach is a secular attempt to make meaningful a meaningless existence apart from following God’s purpose for life. Her “meaningful existence” is self-defined, more invented than discovered. Because God has nothing to do with it and it competes with God’s calling, it is an idol.
Finding Our Calling Is a Process
So, how do we discover God’s specific guidance for our lives, the good works He has planned for us? Today’s good works might be preparation for more impactful future good works. That is my experience.
God Uses Preparation Over Time
I remember one pastor asking why I was writing about discipleship when there was already so much material available. With hindsight, I should have responded that discipleship material is not abundant everywhere, and free discipleship material is rare.
Finding my personal calling has been a process. My passion for writing discipleship materials thirty years ago was preparation for God’s use of them all over the world through the internet many years later.
Your God-Given Calling Can Change with the Seasons of Life
Your God-given calling might change with time. My calling thirty years ago was to write discipleship materials. My calling today is to continue writing them and to make them freely available in Christian resource-poor countries.
My calling to develop a website for a church fifteen years ago helped prepare me to create my own website (https://www.christiangrowthresources.com) to provide free spiritual growth resources for people around the world.
My calling in retirement over the last seven years has been to create Christian blogs, organize and publish what I have already written during my pastoral career, and develop my website into the most effective tool it can be. All three have been a process.
God’s General Calling for Every Believer
God calls every believer to love Him, love others, and make disciples of Jesus. That is our calling, in general. I love God and others and make disciples best by writing discipleship materials. So, how did my passion for writing discipleship materials develop, and how can you discover your own calling?
Our Calling is Gift-Driven
It begins with identifying our natural and spiritual gifts. Both categories are God’s gifts to us (1 Corinthians 4:7), and not cause for pride. In fact, the more gifts we possess, the more God expects from us (Luke 12:48).
Our gifts are the tools God uses to bless others through us. Using them is how we love others and build the church most effectively. I have the spiritual gift of teaching.
God Gifts Every Believer for Service
God gifts every believer to build up the body of Christ. “In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you” (Romans 12:6 NLT). “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other” (1 Corinthians 12:7 NLT).
Discovering Calling Through Word and Prayer
Reading and studying God’s word renew our minds and equip us to see life from His perspective. As He speaks to us through His word and we speak to Him through prayer, His values and priorities become ours. He works in and reveals to us what our calling is: “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Philippians 2:13 NLT).
God’s Wisdom Guides Our Steps
God promises wisdom to discern our calling, among other things, if we ask Him for it (James 1:5). Sometimes, He channels that wisdom through the advice of others. “Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise (Proverbs 13:10).
The Spirit Leads Us into Our Calling
His Spirit leads us to our calling (Romans 8:14). If we submit to His leading and allow Him to control our minds, we experience abundant life and peace in God’s calling (Romans 8:6). ”When we're actively in God's Word, walking by the Spirit, pursuing purity and gratitude, and seeking to be transformed into the image of Christ, we can trust that God is guiding our steps.”2 God’s peace in our hearts assures us that we are where God wants us to be doing we He wants us to do.
Discovering Calling Through Action and Confirmation
We discover our gifts by experimenting, venturing into previously unexplored areas of life. A girl I coach sat on the softball bench for two seasons. In her junior year of high school, she tried throwing the discus and immediately enjoyed it. She placed sixth out of about 200 throwers in her conference. Her sweet spot sport was throwing, not softball.
As a pastor, I performed a wide variety of ministries, but my passion has always been discipleship.
We Discover Our Calling by Identifying Our Passions and Abilities
So, how do we discover our sweet spot ministry? Our passions and abilities usually align with that sweet spot. What we can do and what we want to do for Jesus point to our calling. Identifying it requires discernment. Being good at something doesn’t necessarily mean that it is God’s calling.
I was a biology major in college and did well in my classes. My career path began as an aquatic biologist with the Pennsylvania Fish Commission. I performed my job competently, but that was not my calling. I was there temporarily because I had said no to God’s calling into vocational Christian service during my Senior year of college, while I was at a Christian conference.
Interestingly, when I was a Senior in high school, my English composition teacher suggested that I try writing if science doesn’t work out. She recognized a talent that no one else had. That takes us to our next point.
We Discover Our Calling When Believers Affirm Our Gifts
Recognition of our gifts might take time. By the end of the Sunday school quarter, one of the first Sunday school classes I taught more than fifty years ago had only two loyal students remaining. I chased everyone else away with my incompetence!
I persisted and learned how to teach more effectively. The point is that we might think we have a certain spiritual gift, but if it isn’t blessing anyone, we might not have it.
We Discover Our Calling When God Burdens Our Heart with Specific Needs
Those needs might be next door or on the other side of the Earth. God has burdened my heart with providing discipleship resources for believers, perhaps in part because I had none when I was a teenager. He has also burdened my heart with the need for my life to make a positive difference for others. What is your spiritual passion? What do you want to do for Jesus?
After retirement, I discovered a great need in Malawi and the surrounding African countries for both Bibles (which people cannot afford) and discipleship resources to help them mature as believers. God has burdened my heart and graciously used me to meet those needs. That is my calling and how I live for Jesus, who died and rose again for me and those to whom I minister (2 Corinthians 5:15). What need is God burdening your heart to meet?
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