“ We can’ t discern our calling without knowing what the caller’ s voice sounds like.”
Paying Attention to Our Community Have you ever sensed God calling you to do something, but you weren’ t sure that you heard clearly or correctly? This is where community can help. By community I mean trusted relationships with people who love us enough to tell us the truth— even the hard truth. These people know us well and have walked with us through highs and lows. They know our gifts and our faults. They see our potential and our blind spots. They’ re our friends, family, mentors, teachers, spiritual directors, therapists, and perhaps even our bosses. When we sense God calling us to do something, we can ask them to pray with us, ask us clarifying questions, and even challenge us. And we ought to pay attention to what they say because God could be speaking to us through them.
Paying Attention to Ourselves God has created us with certain dispositions and given us gifts, experiences, and knowledge to steward well. That means we have to cultivate some level of awareness of who we are and what we have to offer the world. In his book Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential, Gordon T. Smith writes,“ In discerning vocation, in responding to the call of God on our lives, nothing is so important, nothing is more central than coming to terms with our selves.” 1
Paying attention to ourselves certainly involves understanding the gifts, skills, knowledge, and experience God has entrusted to us. What are you really good at doing? Paying attention also includes noticing what activities give us life. Where do you experience what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called“ flow”— where you’ re so engaged in work that’ s so enjoyable that you’ re completely absorbed in it to the point of losing track of everything going on around you, including time?
“ We can’ t discern our calling without knowing what the caller’ s voice sounds like.”
Pastor Brad Bell encourages his listeners to look for a“ holy discontent” given to us by God 2. He says a holy discontent is an issue or problem on our heart that keeps us up at night or wakes us up in the morning. It’ s a sense that something is wrong in the world and we’ ve got to play a part in fixing it. Do you feel the need to help the families in your community have better access to quality day care? Or do you want to develop a neighborhood using sustainable building and landscaping techniques so that you can better care for the environment? If so, pay attention to that. It’ s a clue.
Paying Attention to the World Around Us Frederick Buechner famously wrote,“ The
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