Tips You May Never Have Heard about How to “Find” Your Calling

Years ago, I felt God calling me into some kind of ministry. I was worrying about a work project when the Holy Spirit prompted me with this question, “how long will this project have an impact?” After thinking about it, I realized that the project I was working on would benefit my organization for five years at best. The Holy Spirit then spoke to me again and said, “come do work for me that is eternal.” That simple message touched my heart and started me on the path to considering how I might use my life to honor God. 

The truth is we don’t “find” our calling from God. Instead, we receive it. In summary, we need to:

• Have a basic relationship with God
• Be ready to say “yes” to God
• Work to deepen our relationship with God
• Recognize that we should be passionate about God’s calling 

When we do these things, we prepare ourselves to receive the lifelong mission God has for us. If you want to learn more, keep reading! I’ll share more about these tips as we study the life of Moses and how God called him to free the Israelites from Pharaoh.

Tip #1: Start with the Basics to Find Your Calling

Your calling comes from God, so you’ll need to be able to hear Him to receive it. The best way to cultivate your heart to hear from God is to read the Bible and pray daily. A relationship with God is an essential part of not only discovering your calling but also successfully living in it. The Bible is filled with many men and women who had a close relationship with God. These men and women lived successful and purposeful lives because they made hearing God’s voice a priority.

In the book of Exodus, we are introduced to Moses’s mother, Jochebed. During her lifetime, she didn’t have the physical Bible we have today. The Israelites memorized and verbally shared the word of God that was passed down from their ancestors, including Abraham. This woman of great faith, like many Israelites, would have known about God’s promises to make Abraham into a great nation (Genesis 15:12-21).

She trusted God and received a word of her own to hide Moses. In response, she put him in the basket to float down the Nile river (Exodus 2:1-4, Hebrews 11:23). She knew through a special revelation from God that Moses would somehow help to set the Israelites free. If she hadn’t been faithful to know God’s previous word to her ancestor Abraham, she would not have been able to understand the word she received from God about her own son. 

If we truly desire to find our calling, we have to make our relationship with God a priority. Without a close relationship with God, we may not be able to properly identify when God is speaking to us to give us the instruction we need for our calling.

Tip #2: Prepare to Say “Yes”

Those who receive a calling from God tend to be those who are willing to say “yes” even before they know what they are agreeing to do. It’s important to nurture this kind of radical faith in our hearts if we want to learn our calling from God. Our hearts need to be open to doing God’s will even if we don’t fully understand how it will be accomplished or don’t feel equipped to do God’s work. We have to learn to trust that God will provide the resources and empower us through the Holy Spirit for the things He is calling us to do.

We see an example of this in Moses’s life when God commissions Moses to rescue the Israelites from Egypt. Initially, Moses tries to make excuses and even tries to convince God to send someone else to rescue the Israelites. God, however, is patient with Moses who eventually agrees to the task. He promises to empower Moses to do miracles (Exodus 4:1-9), teach Moses what to say and how to speak before Pharaoh (Exodus 4:10-12), and even sends Moses’s brother, Aaron, to help with this task (Exodus 4:14-17). 

Sometimes we pray and ask God for our calling but a part of us isn’t really willing to submit to God’s plan or timeline. Other times, we are fearful because we feel inadequate or because finding our calling means making big life changing decisions. If we truly desire for God to guide us to our calling, we need to learn to put aside fear and approach God with a faithful and willing heart. 

Tip #3: It’s All About a Deeper Relationship with Him

God calls us to partake of His work because we are His children. Ultimately, He desires for us to get to know Him and learn how to do life with Him. A calling from God is truly an invitation to develop a deeper relationship with our Heavenly Father. It’s important to see our calling as a sort of adventure with God and an opportunity to bond with Him. This means that our calling is not meant to be something we do on our own or in our own strength.

Moses’s experiences with God throughout the later part of his life shows us that he grows to trust God. He does miracle after miracle in Egypt as he consults God (Exodus 7-12). He spends days in fasting and prayer atop a mountain in order to learn how the Israelites are to live and worship God (Exodus 24:12-18). During his life, Moses spoke with God as with a friend (Exodus 33:11). By the end of the his life, it was said that there is no one like Moses who spoke with God face-to-face (Deuteronomy 34:10-12). Moses’s life illustrates that finding our calling should bring us into a closer, more intimate relationship with God. In fact, a closer relationship is required if we’re going to be successful in our calling.

Tip #4: You are Designed for It

There’s no need to be fearful about discovering God’s call on your life. God has designed you for it. He knew you before you were even born and knew where life would take you. This doesn’t mean that you’ll have every skill you need to fulfill your call. It does mean that God has been preparing you since you were born and plans to help you accomplish everything He has asked you to do. 

Take Moses, for example. He was raised in Pharaoh’s household and understood the Egyptians and their customs (Exodus 2:10). This would no doubt help Moses when he had to use the proper protocols to go before Pharaoh. His childhood experiences helped him to understand the Egyptian kingdom, values, and geography so that he could later demand freedom for the Israelites and eventually lead them into the desert. 

God Prepared Moses for His Calling

Moses also had a burning desire to help the Israelites who were suffering (Exodus 2:11). While he went about it the wrong way, Moses had a heart for God’s people long before he knew what he would be called to do. Lastly, we see that God allowed Moses to be a shepherd in the desert until it was time for his calling to begin (Exodus 3:1). Moses’s shepherding experience allowed him to become familiar with living in simplicity in the desert. This skill would prove to be very helpful since the Israelites lived in the desert for many years once freed. 

God cultivated every detail of Moses’s life in order to prepare him for his calling. Since He shaped Moses for his calling, we can trust that He will most definitely do the same for us. Perhaps you feel that there are parts of your life that were wasted. This is simply not true. For example, God used Moses’s mistake of killing an Egyptian to transition him into being a shepherd. As stated above, God used Moses’s experience living a simple life as a lowly shepherd. Nothing is wasted with God, and we can trust Him to use every part of our experience for good.

Tip #5: Once You Find Your Calling, You’ll be Extremely Passionate about It

God’s calling requires passion. Moses was extremely passionate about freeing God’s people and helping them to develop a relationship with God. I believe that God put this passion on his heart. I also believe that God wants to do the same with us. Over the course of our lives, our calling may change a bit. For Moses, God’s calling initially meant liberating the Israelites. However, his calling later meant leading the Israelites in the desert and helping them to establish their own nation. Moses’s story shows us that we must be passionate about God’s work. Only then can we be flexible and resilient enough to take on new challenges as our calling evolves.

What are some of your tips for receiving God’s calling? Have you received your calling? Please feel free to share in the comments below!