Do you ever feel like you’re racing through life in the wrong lane wearing somebody else’s shoes? What if the reason you feel hopelessly behind in your career isn’t because you’re not trying hard enough or haven’t achieved enough, but because you’ve been running somebody else’s race? This week’s Radical Stewardship™ blog outlines practical steps to unlocking your own calling and running a race you can win!

The Lie of Aspiration

It’s human nature to grapple with that internal, burning question: “What’s my calling?” However, when we allow that spiritual drive to be co-opted by worldly aspiration, we can quickly find ourselves running our race in the wrong lane wearing someone else’s shoes. We see the dynamic speaker commanding the stage. The entrepreneur with the massive following. The corporate leader with the high-powered job and the big paycheck. And we immediately think: That’s the calling for me! If I could just achieve that title, that visibility, that impact, I’d finally be fulfilling my purpose!

My friends, this comparison is a trap. It convinces you to spend all of your energy looking outward, trying to live up to someone else’s assignment, instead of looking inward to the unique gifts and specific purpose that God has already wired into you. The result: you feel perpetually inadequate, trying to jam yourself into shoes that were never fitted for you. In order to step into the fullness of all that God has for you, you must shift from trying to design your own calling and take hold of the assignment that is uniquely suited to who you are created to be.

The Clarity of the Call: Lessons from Moses

When we envision someone who is truly living out their own calling, we picture someone who is running toward the fire. Moses, however, started off by running the other way.

When God showed up through a burning bush to commission Moses, Moses was settled into his life in a humble, individual contributor role. He was living in exile, working for his father-in-law as a shepherd in the field. He was about as far down the career ladder as a person in his time could be, but he was serving faithfully, and he was content. He was absolutely not aspiring to be a national deliverer! So when God announced the assignment, “I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt,” Moses was in disbelief, and he was not exactly thrilled with the idea. He simply didn’t see himself in this role, and he gave God a list of excuses:

1. The Status Excuse: “Who am I, that I should go?” (Exodus 3:11). Translation: I’m low level, individual contributor. I don’t have the political capital for this.
2. The Capability Excuse: “I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). Translation: I am horrible at public speaking. I literally can’t talk. And you want me to be the spokesperson for the largest-scale international political prisoner release in history?

Moses was actively resisting his assignment, convinced that he was unqualified. He was not a man climbing a career ladder; he was a man being shoved onto a divine launchpad!

But Moses’s calling came with both specificity and a promise of divine enablement. God didn’t care that Moses wasn’t an eloquent speaker. He said, “I will be with your mouth” (Exodus 4:12). God didn’t require anything of Moses that Moses didn’t already have. He used Moses’s siblings as his support team and the simple shepherd’s rod already in Moses’s hand as an instrument for miracles. By trusting God and leaning into his own calling, Moses successfully led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, miraculously through the middle of the Red Sea, and right up to the border of the promised land.

Here’s what we can learn from God’s calling of Moses: True calling is not defined by grand ambition, but by a clear, sometimes inconvenient, assignment that is backed by God’s provision and grace. When we stop seeking the role that we think we should have (aspiration) and start listening for the specific assignment that is uniquely suited to our current gifts (calling), we will find that our assignment comes with the grace and provision to pull it off.

God’s Divine Blueprint

The Apostle Paul’s letters in the New Testament provide a clear framework for recognizing and stepping into our true calling, which is our uniquely assigned function in God’s kingdom. Your calling is not a vague feeling, an aspiration, or even a career track; it is a perfectly fitted function in a systematic design for service in furtherance of God’s kingdom within the body of Christ.

Your Role in the Body

In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he used the analogy of the human body to illustrate the futility of comparison and striving. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Romans 12:4-6).

Let’s break down the practical keys in this verse:

1. Each of our functions is essential, right where we are designed to be: The eye doesn’t wake up one day and decide it wants to be the foot. It can’t! The whole body depends on the eye to see and the foot to move. Your specifically assigned function is essential to the whole and is non-transferable. When we try to force the gift of our eye to operate in a foot role, not only are we creating dysfunction, but the important job of the eye remains undone.
2. Calling is grace-given, not goal-driven: Body parts are not placed according to their aspiration. If you think about the physical human body, there are some parts that would probably not be high on anyone’s aspirational list. But we would discover their importance in a hurry if they weren’t there or weren’t functioning as they should! Each of us is placed in the body by God according to His divine design so that the body may function perfectly as a whole. Our spiritual function is given “according to the grace given to each of us.” And that accompanying and necessary grace, that enablement, that capability, has been distributed to us for each of our assignments also.
3. Look for the effortless ease: To identify your function, your calling, instead of looking at what somebody else is doing or what you wish you were doing, look at where you already operate with competence and flow. Where do you get results that seem to exceed the effort you put in? Where do you feel a natural sense of joy and utility? That ease is a direct sign of the grace specifically given to you.

Recognizing Your Calling

In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul drills down even further, outlining three components that intersect when your calling is fully realized. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). Your calling lies at the powerful intersection of these three components.

1. Gifts (Charisma): Where You Excel

• The Raw Power: This is your talent, your spiritual endowment. It is the raw, supernatural power given by the Creator specifically to you. This is what you have natural ability to do well, often with a sense of energy and delight.
• Self-Check: What are you genuinely great at? Are you the person who always brings order to chaos (administration)? The one who knows just what to say to lift spirits (encouragement)? The one who sees the big picture (discernment)? God is calling you to step into your power and own your charisma!

2. Service (Diakonia): Where and With Whom You’re Placed

• The Context: Service means ministry or sphere of action. This is the simple answer to: Where am I currently placed? Who am I currently called to serve?
• Present Application: Your gifts are not a realized calling until they are applied in service to a specific need, whether that’s leading an initiative, mentoring a young colleague, or volunteering at a food bank. Each call to service is a training ground where your gifts are planted and can begin to grow. It is all too easy to become overly focused on the potential of a future assignment, but preparation for the next assignment often involves mastering the assignment that we currently have.

3. Working (Energema): Divine Enablement

• Supernatural Operation: Working is the divine effect, the undeniable, unearned outcome that only God can produce. It’s the spiritual force that validates the assignment.
• Supernatural Fruit: When you deploy your gifts (charisma) in your assigned service (diakonia), the results will be supernatural. For example, if you use your gift of teaching, and people are transformed, that is the working (energema) of God confirming your assignment. When you operate in your calling, you’ll see fruit that exceeds your own human effort.

Practical Steps to Unlocking Your Calling

The intersection where your gifts meet your service and where the working of God is undeniable is the place where your calling lies. Here are some immediate, practical steps you can take to unlock your own calling:

1. Stop Aspiring, Start Observing (Know Your Charisma) Put down the biography of the star entrepreneur or the celebrity CEO and pick up your own notebook.

• Run the Grace of Ease Test: For one week, rather than focusing on the things you think you should be doing, log the things you are doing that feel easy, delightful, and impactful. For example, if everyone else finds organizing the team meeting report a total nightmare, but you enjoy building the clean, clear spreadsheet, that is one loud, clear clue. That competence is part of your calling’s signature.
• Identify Your Fuel: What tasks, when finished, leave you feeling more energized, not drained? Your gifts should fuel you! Get to know your charisma.

2. Embrace the Now (Own Your Diakonia) Stop biding your time waiting for a “better” future job. That’s slothfulness dressed up as spiritual seeking.

• The Steward’s Challenge: Look at your current service environment: your home, your workplace, your gym, your church. You have unique gifts. Ask yourself: How can I apply my gifts right here, right now, to solve a genuine need?
• The Faithfulness of Moses: Moses was faithful with his father-in-law’s sheep before God ever gave him a nation of people to lead. Your current sphere of influence is not a holding pattern. It’s the training ground for your next promotion! Prove your faithfulness in your current diakonia.

3. Seek the Divine Effect (Look for the Energema) Be on the lookout for God’s hand, not man’s praise.

• The Fruit Check: When you operate in your calling, what is the outcome? Look for genuine, lasting transformation or a positive impact that clearly exceeds your talent. If you bring a word of wisdom, and it causes a lasting change that human advice alone couldn’t achieve, that is the working of God.
• Put God to the Test: When you step out in faith in God’s grace, you are accepting God’s dare to see what He will do through you. That supernatural confirmation is your energema.

You Are Commissioned, Not Cloned

Discovering and thriving in your own calling requires dumping the quest for someone else’s. The greatest career freedom you will find is abandoning the futile pursuit of a calling that doesn’t belong to you. You are not called to be the next anyone else. You are called to be the unique and powerful YOU that you already are, perfectly equipped with the specific grace needed for your function. Your significance is not measured by the title you hold or the size of your paycheck, but by your fidelity to your God-given design. Stop striving, start observing the charisma that you already possess, commit to service where you are placed, and watch for God’s confirming, supernatural power. This is how you step confidently into the grace of your own calling. You are a vital, essential part of God’s grand design, and your own calling is the only place you’ll find lasting, abundant, career fulfillment.

If you’d like help identifying your gifts and serving with supernatural power in your own calling, I encourage you to check out my coaching page or connect with me directly. I’d love to walk with you!