What Are You Made For?
All summer long, the board outside the church office is collecting your questions — written on sticky notes, about God, faith, the Bible, doubt, or whatever else you've been carrying. Each issue, I'll take one or two and do my best to answer them.
Today’s question:
"How do I know what is God's plan versus my own doing? How do I discern between the two so I can follow God's plan versus straying off on my own?"
I want to start by gently pushing back on one word in this question — not to dismiss it, but because I think the word itself is part of what makes this so hard. The word is versus.
"God's plan versus my own doing" frames this as a competition — as if what God wants and what you want are pulling in opposite directions, and discernment is the task of choosing the right side, of suppressing your own desires in favor of something hidden somewhere outside of you. I've felt that tension in my own life. I've also met a lot of people who carry that framework. I've watched it create a lot of unnecessary anxiety.
Here's a different way to hold it. What if God's plan isn't hidden somewhere outside of you, waiting to be discovered — but is in some meaningful way expressed through the gifts, loves, and longings God has already placed inside you?
This is what I mean when I talk about calling and vocation. I believe every person has one. Not just pastors and missionaries — teachers, nurses, musicians, parents, engineers, neighbors. A calling isn't primarily about what you do in church. It's about who you are made to be and what you are made to contribute to the world.
I also believe our callings evolve. What I was called to at eighteen looked different than what I was called to at twenty-five, and both of those looked different than where I am now. That's not failure. That's growth. Callings don't usually arrive as a single clear announcement; they emerge, they develop, they deepen over time.
So how do you know when you're on the right track? The writer Frederick Buechner — a Presbyterian pastor and one of the most beloved voices on faith and vocation of the twentieth century — described it this way: the calling is found at "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep hunger." I find that beautiful, and I've spent years working with it. I'd also add a distinction Buechner leaves implicit: the thing you love to do and the thing you are good at doing aren't always the same thing, and both matter.
Think of it as three overlapping circles:
What do I love to do?Not what I think I should love, or what seems appropriately impressive. What genuinely brings me alive?
What am I good at doing?What comes naturally — something others recognize in you, something that seems to flow from somewhere deeper than sheer effort?
What meets the deep need of the world around me? What, when you do it well, makes things more just, more beautiful, more whole — more like the Kingdom?
When something lives at the intersection of all three, that's a calling. That's where discernment starts to feel less like anxiety and more like paying attention.
Which means the question changes shape. Instead of how do I suppress my own desires to find God's hidden plan — it becomes: what am I longing for, what am I made for, and what is the world longing for that I might help meet?
Those questions won't resolve in an afternoon. But they're worth carrying. And the path has a way of clarifying as you walk it.
More questions are waiting on the board, and I'll be back with another in the next issue. You can add yours on a sticky note on the board outside the main office — or send them directly to me through my contact page. Anonymous is always fine. Every question is worth asking.
