Your Job is not your Calling

pharmacy

Your job, trade, occupation, career, profession or business is usually a commercial enterprise which provides goods and services. It is something you choose and are trained to do. It promises status, money and power. Many people choose professions like Medicine, Pharmacy, Engineering, Law and so on because of the prestige and the money they offer. This is also why some who are not talented in those professions dabble in them.

A vocation may be loosely defined as a calling. Vocation implies having a strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work (a religious work, for example). The word “vocation” has the Latin roots of vocare, which means to call, and from vox, which means voice.

The calling is actually what God has created you to do. It is God’s purpose for your life. Your calling may bring you some difficulties and challenges, which may be opportunities God uses to shape you.

Since your calling is something you do for God, you should be asking yourself whether God has approved what you are doing. You may be a pastor, carpenter, teacher, singer, farmer, lawyer, medical doctor, taxi driver etc. What you do is not as important as for whom you do it and the purpose of doing it.

We have been given different talents according to our abilities to use them. The society cannot function if everyone is an engineer or a lawyer. We need professionals, as well as artisans. The crucial question is whether you are serving and pleasing God.

You choose your profession or career but you cannot choose your calling. Instead, you receive your calling. You discover it. It is your responsibility to know what God has planned for you. You must carefully listen to the still small voice. You are like clay in the hands of a potter. The potter wants to mould you to become a useful vessel. If you don’t surrender your life to God and allow Him to mould you, you may be pursuing something you are neither called nor equipped to do.

Generally, when God calls you into a service, He equips you and provides what you need to succeed. Hebrews 13:11(NLT) says, “May he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you through the power of Jesus Christ every good thing that is pleasing to him,” Also Philippians 2:13 (NLT) says, “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

It is clear that many people are engaged in the wrong jobs, where their talents and gifts are not being fully or properly used. Such people do not excel in their careers.  When there is downsizing in companies, they are the ones usually affected. They end up frustrated or miserable.  I agree with Mike Murdock, who said, “If you have chosen the right kind of work for your personality and calling, it will be the source of great delight for your entire lifetime.”

When you are engaged in the right type of work, which is your calling, God can make you extraordinary. In Exodus 35:30-35 when the Tabernacle was being built, God anointed two artisans – Bezalel and Aholiab – to carry out special craftsmanship. He filled them with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic work in gold, silver and bronze. These artisans trained in their area of calling and made themselves ready for use by God. I believe that, in all fields of endeavour, God is looking for prepared vessels for special services.

As long as you develop your talents and gifts, your services will always be needed and nobody can take away your talent from you. You can be sacked from your job but never from your talent. Romans 11:29 (NKJV) says, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

You can use your talent throughout your life but you can stop using your skill or training. That’s when most people retire from their jobs. When you stop using your skill there will be atrophy. But the God-given talents and gifts remain for life, waiting to be fully deployed.

It is   indeed your talents and gifts that will make you the person God wants you to be. Proverbs 18:16(NKJV) says, “A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men.” If then your education, skill and training are in the area of your gifts, you are on the right track.