Discovering Your Personal Mission

Several years ago a book appeared on the shelves (this is before Kindle!) with the title, “I’d say yes God if I knew what you wanted”. And of course we would. But the problem it seems is that we find it very hard to know what God wants.

              Last week in the Contemporary and Classic services, and this week in Café, I took the text we know well of the voice of Jesus calling four fishermen to follow him. It’s a text which has always intrigued me, mainly because of the immediate and whole hearted response to Jesus by the four, Peter and Andrew, James and John. What was it in the invitation to follow that impelled them to leave their boats? There could be lots of reasons, but one I think is that the invitation of Jesus, the word of Jesus, was a creative word. Jesus’ voice brought into being that which was said. We may not literally hear the voice of Jesus, but when Jesus summons us to follow, his is a voice which creates possibilities of discipleship.

We may not ‘hear’ the summons of Jesus in the way we normally
understand the word ‘hear’, but we can, nonetheless, hear Jesus invitation for us to follow. Each and every one of us is called to follow Jesus in some way. The word I would use is vocation. We all have a vocation. Mostly ‘vocation’ is used as
synonymous with career or job.

However, in the spiritual context it is used differently. There vocation is the way God wants to use your life to make a difference in the world. How, then, do we go about discovering our vocation, that unique life to which God has called us?

We do not invent our vocation. The seeds of who God calls us to be are p0lanted within us and our task is to create the environment in which those seeds can grow and flourish.

In a positive way our vocation reveals itself by asking the right questions.

What seem to be my gifts?

What kinds of things do I do well?

What kinds of activities give me real sense of contentment?

What kinds of things do I find most challenging and fulfilling to do?

In what kinds of activities do I feel most myself?
What kind of people do you most admire? (The people we admire reveal something of ourselves.)
Do you feel an inner nudge that seems to point you in a particular direction? What kinds of things do you think you and God can do with your life that will make a difference for good in the world?

“Somewhere under the stars God has a job for you to do and nobody else can do it.”