Did you know the diameter of the Earth is only about 7,926 miles?
I was shocked when I looked this up because I thought that it was at least near a gazillion or something. (I was never really good at geometry in school.)
It’s crazy to think that the Earth is so small, yet so big at the same time.
Located on this small rock in the middle of space are over 8 billion people, 400-something million businesses, and over 1,000 flavors of ice cream.
You could imagine what more there is.
It makes me wonder if the reason there’s nothing new under the sun is because there’s already a lot under the sun.
With so many paths and opportunities in the world, there are countless decisions to be made.
What career do I go into?
What kind of car should I get?
Who should I marry?
Where should I live? Do I buy a house?
What should I do with my money?
Surrounding all of these questions and affecting their outcomes is the grand theme of calling.
What am I supposed to do with my life?
Or another way it’s commonly worded:
What is God’s will for my life?
The answer to this question is different among the various religions of the world, but for the Christian, it can be especially debilitating.
The born again believer wants to honor God with their life, but sometimes they battle an intense fear of messing up God’s special plan that ends up just keeping them confused and stalled.
Often, it’s not the calling of God that we’re afraid of, but the discerning and understanding of the calling that has us shaking in our boots.
“God, if You would just tell me EXACTLY what You want me to do, I will do it.”
And when we don’t hear or feel anything specific from the Lord, our first tendency is usually to freeze in fear of making a wrong decision and absolutely destroying God’s plan for us (as if we could do that!)
God is not trying to be sneaky or secretive with His plans (plural) for our lives. He’s not trying to make us paranoid and second guess all of our decisions.
Understanding our calling in life is simple, actually.
Just Do Something
In his book Just Do Something, Kevin DeYoung shares three aspects of God’s will.
The first is God’s will of decree.
This is His sovereign rule over creation.
DeYoung says,
“God’s will of decree cannot be thwarted. It is immutable and fixed. God is sovereign over all things—nature and nations, animals and angels, spirits and Satan, wonderful people and wicked people, even disease and death.”
What God wants to accomplish on the Earth, He will do. There is nothing more powerful than Him that could stop Him.
The second is God’s will of desire.
These are the commandments of God written in scripture—His heart for how we as Christians ought to live.
“God has secret things known only to Him (His inscrutable purposes and sovereign will), but He also has revealed things that we are meant to know and obey (His commands and His Word).”
The last is God’s will of direction.
This is usually what we’re concerned with the most. God’s will of direction, His plan for our lives, is what I consider to be this mysterious calling we’re all searching for.
“Trusting in God’s will of decree is good. Following His will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess. It is bad for your life, harmful to your sanctification, and allows too many Christians to be passive tinkerers who strangely feel more spiritual the less they actually do.”
Kevin DeYoung’s argument in this book is that we’re so obsessed with having the whole plan and knowing all the steps that it causes us to wait forever for specificity before we actually do anything.
His encouragement for believers is to lean into Matthew 6:33.
For context, we’re dropping right in the middle of The Sermon on The Mount, where Jesus laid out a whole bunch of teaching on Kingdom culture.
In Matthew 6:25-32, Jesus commands and encourages His disciples to not worry about their lives. He reminds them that if God is careful enough to provide for the birds and dress the lilies of the field, then He is careful to know our needs and provide for us.
So about worry and need, Jesus says this:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
We’ll come back to this in a moment.
Calling Is Found In The Kingdom
Calling begins with the Kingdom of God.
A kingdom doesn’t only speak to a place or a realm, but also to the rule, dominion, and authority that a king has over it.
In other words, a kingdom is subject to its king.
There are two kingdoms warring against each other in our world.
There’s the Kingdom of God (the more obvious one) and the kingdom of Satan.
How do we know Satan has a kingdom?
Scripture tells us:
“But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?”
The devil is called in scripture “the god (little g) of this age.” His rule is over the patterns and systems of this world. (Maybe that’s why we’re told in Romans not to conform to the patterns of this world.)
The Bible says that the devil is the father of lies and there is no truth in him.
It also says that he has come with a very niche agenda—to steal, kill, and destroy.
This is why Satan went after Adam and Eve in the garden, they chose to go against God, and fell into sin.
When sin entered the world, two things happened:
It separated the heart of man from the heart of God (we pulled away).
It tainted all the things God created and called good.
Now everything in this world is under the curse of sin—the kingdom of Satan is throwing everything it has at humanity.
This is why there are wars and sickness and death.
Satan’s kingdom is one of death, hatred, selfishness, pridefulness, lies, and destruction.
But God’s Kingdom is one of life, love, righteousness, peace, and hope.
Although the evilness in the world doesn’t please God, He tolerates it for the time being because (1) He honors our free will and (2) He’s been working out a plan from the beginning to reconcile the world to Himself.
He has set before us life and death and His desire is that we would choose life.
A Calling To Be
“But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
Satan has blinded humanity from the truth of God and it’s for this reason we have to begin with the gospel when talking about calling:
Because before everything else, calling in itself is an invitation to step out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.
We are first called to sonship—to become children of God.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:”
As we study out this topic of calling a little more, there are three things we need to understand:
God’s will, His plan from the beginning is to cleanse the world and everything in it from sin. This is the process of sanctification.
Because of this, God is more concerned with who we are in Him than what we do for Him.
A person who, with the help of the Holy Spirit, lives and operates in the Kingdom of God (according to God’s commandments, systems, principles, and rules) has a heart that is submitted to sanctification. (The truth of Christ enters a person, He establishes His Kingdom in their heart, and then it flows out to everyone and everything around them.)
I believe this is why Jesus said the Kingdom of God is not by observation, but that it is within us.
When we understand these things, the pressure of trying to discover our calling or figure out God’s will for our lives is lifted.
A Calling To Do
So first we are called to sonship—then as sons and daughters we are called to discipleship/stewardship.
A disciple is a student and a follower of a teacher.
Discipleship goes beyond just knowing of a teacher—it moves into the process of following that teacher, learning from them, and adopting their ways.
God’s desire is that we would be His children, but even more that we would live as His children. (Especially in our commission to make disciples!)
In the Colossians 1, the apostle Paul (the guy who used to kill Christians before God saved him) writes a letter to the Church of Colosse, opening with thanksgiving to God for their faith in Christ and the message of the gospel.
But Paul doesn’t stop there.
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
Paul is telling this congregation that He is praying for them—that they would be filled with God’s wisdom and live a life pleasing to the Lord.
It’s no different for us as believers in 2026. James 1 tells us that we are to be doers of the Word, not hearers only.
We’ve made understanding our calling so difficult, but I would like to encourage you today that it’s simple: We be His children and trust that He will guide us in all things as everything we do flows out of that.
But two questions still come up:
“Okay, but what about what God has specifically called me to do?”
There are times when God gives us specific assignments and directions and we wonder if they’re really from Him. How do we find out?
Three things come to my mind:
We continue to pray about it—asking for wisdom and discernment.
We seek out godly counsel from our pastors and mature believers in our lives who know us well.
We understand that what God asks us to do will never contradict His Word or His desire for us. (God will never ask us to sin)
And then we start taking the steps or make the decision and trust that God will direct us.
“Okay, but what if I don’t feel or hear anything specific?”
This is where the other side of the discipleship/stewardship coin comes into play.
If we don’t feel like we’re hearing anything specific from God, the worst thing we can do is be idle with our lives, sitting around twiddling our thumbs.
In this case, I believe the truly biblical thing to do is to do our best with what has been given to us—to be good stewards. That includes (not exhaustive) our:
Spiritual and natural gifts
Income and finances
Relationships
Health and fitness
Jobs and career
Another way we could say this is just: In whatever you find yourself doing, do it well!
Would we strive to bring glory to God in all we do.
I have a sticky note on my mirror in my bedroom that reads:
“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”
I guarantee if you ask any mature believer who has been walking with the Lord for 20, 30, 40 years, they will tell you as they look back at their life, the Lord has redirected their steps at times and that His hand has always guided them.
So anytime we find ourselves worrying about our lives, what we’re supposed to be doing or how we’re going to make ends meet, my prayer is that we would live out Matthew 6:33.
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
The moment we begin to seek God’s rule and reign over our hearts and lives is the moment we begin to truly thrive and not just survive.
He’s called you to be His and He’s called you to be about His business, operating in the unlimited abundance of His Kingdom.
Hope this blessed you.
Hannah