131 - Calling vs. Assignment (Ep. 5 Replay)
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Show Notes:
I think it's pretty safe to say that when it comes to our work, we want to be part of something that we are called to do— something that is full of meaning and has purpose, something that is in line perfectly with our passions and giftings. But today I want to challenge our way of thinking, and really the language that we use describing our work and our calling.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
So I think I was around 14 years old when I went on a missions trip to Mexico. It was one of the last nights we were there and I remember the youth leadership had an altar call after a time of worship and some sharing. The leader said, "If you are called to the ministry, I want you to stand up and come forward." I remember sitting there thinking, aren't we all called to ministry, like if we are following Jesus, doesn't this apply to all of us? I really wrestled with that question and I did not go forward because I did not feel like a specific call to full time ministry at that point. Now I remember talking with one of my youth leaders afterwards like, I don't understand, aren't we all called to ministry. She was explaining like, yes we are, but that was a call to full time ministry, like a vocation. And I just sat there thinking like, how am I supposed to know that now? I don't know. So the bottom line is, I was in ninth grade at 14 years old and I was really wrestling with this and it stands out to me as a defining moment because it was at that point that I knew I was going to be called to ministry no matter what my work looked like in my life, whether that was a full time ministry position or whether that was just being in the workforce or the marketplace.
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with my life, but I knew I was called to ministry and that no matter what my work looked like, I was going to be using it as ministry. Now it's funny because my husband Will had kind of a similar situation. So he went to some youth event, I can't remember if it's the mission trip or some retreat that he went on but, similarly, the leader said, "I want you to stand up if you have a call to ministry." He felt very strongly, “Yes, I have this call to ministry.” So he stood up and they gave him a little card and literally had him check a box. Do you want to be a pastor or a youth pastor or a missionary? And those were the three boxes for full time ministry. And he was like, I don't think I want to be in any of these. I don't think God's calling me to be any of these things, but I know I should be doing ministry. And so he too kind of wrestled with this feeling: “Hey, I should be doing ministry, but I don't know exactly what God has for my life.”
So both of us had really amazing church and youth group experiences growing up— we’re super thankful for that. Our love for God grew separately in two different youth groups in different churches. But even though that was the case, ever since I was a young girl, I've just wrestled with my calling. What am I called to do? What is the thing? What is God's calling on my life? Because we talk about that a lot, especially in the church. What is God's call on my life?
But I realized recently that there is a big difference in my calling and my assignment. That my calling actually never changes, but my assignments change season to season. And when I realized that, I found a lot of freedom. So today I'm hoping that maybe you will find some freedom too.
I'm going to talk about the difference between our calling and our assignment, hopefully giving us some more helpful language to use around this topic. So here's my goal: I want to simplify this thing for us today, like strip it down, super simplify it. And in doing so, hopefully bring us all some freedom and lightness in the way we understand and talk about our work.
So here's the simplest way to put it. Ready?
Our calling never changes, but our assignments do.
We are called to Jesus to follow him, to walk with him, to live a life of obedience to him, a life of ministry and healing to others. Our calling in every sense is simply to Him. So whether I'm 12 or 83 years old, my calling is to Him.
Now, our assignments are directly related to our work and our roles in our season of life. God gives us different assignments in different seasons and it's up to us to be in tune with Him and know if we're walking in the assignment that He has for us. Now, does God call us to do things? Absolutely. He calls us to embrace certain roles, to start new businesses, to move to new places. But I think this is where it gets a little tricky, because we can declare that He's called us to do something, but then we take it to the furthest point and we say it's a calling on our life for our entire life, for the rest of our life. But we have to understand as surely as He can call us into something, He can also call us to lay that same thing down or step out of it or, by our very circumstances, it can just be taken away from us.
I think about Elisabeth Elliot a lot, and if you're not familiar with her story, she and Jim Elliot were married and He was called, there was a call of God in his life to be a missionary and share the gospel with a people group that had never heard it before and he was killed among a small group of men that went the very first time that they set foot in their land. So, Elisabeth Elliot, was she called to be a wife? Well, she was a wife to Jim Elliot and then she lost him, and she actually ended up being a wife two other times over the course of her life. She had three husbands. What was her call? Right. Because we can say we're called to be a wife, or we're called to be a mother or we're called to do these roles. But the thing is, with her life, and she's a Godly woman, I love her books. I love her writing. But the truth is that she was given the assignment to be Jim Elliot's wife for a season, and then he was taken from her, and then she was given another assignment to be another man's wife. And then she lost him. And then she was given another assignment to be another man's wife. But her calling to Jesus never changed. Her calling, who she was, her identity never changed. Her assignments in that role did change. She was a wife to three different men at three different times of her life. And even before she was a wife, she was still called to be the Lords. And so that role was an assignment for her.
Calling
So I want to talk about calling. As we kind of use it today, we talk about this word calling, what's the calling in your life? We're talking about finding our perfect career. We're talking about who we are, our identity. When we have found our calling, we have found the right answer for all the questions in our life, right? When we've found our calling, we are aligning with God's will. This is our understanding of what the word calling is today, but I want us to think about our calling according to scripture. Instead of using those thoughts to describe calling, Paul talks about calling simply in relationship to Jesus. Our calling is to belong to Jesus, is to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength. It's to love others as we love ourselves.
And even Paul as he introduces some of the books that he wrote in the New Testament, he says, “Paul, called to be an apostle, called to be the bringer of good news.” And that's how he's describing himself. So our calling is always directly related to who we are in Jesus, not what we do. It's who he says we are, our position in relationship to Him. And our calling is to listen to Him and to walk with Him.
Assignment
Okay, now let's talk about assignment. Your assignment is all about your work, your roles in this season of life that you are in. Assignments change and that is completely normal. Okay. Can I just pause for a second and be super honest. I wish somebody had sat me down when I was in college and told me this very thing, like, “Hey Nancy, you're not supposed to decide and understand the calling of your entire life for the rest of your life right now while you're in college. Nancy, this is a great opportunity for you to listen to God and choose with his help, the next assignment that you have, or maybe you can be trained in something now and that will be your assignment years later.”
I feel like there's so much pressure to know what our calling is and decide on it for the rest of our lives in college, when in reality we should know that we're just going to college to be trained for an assignment. God might even call you to do something totally different from college. And that's okay. He might call you to a different assignment and that is totally fine.
So, going back to the Bible, let's look at Paul. Let's talk about him. He was called to Jesus. That never changed, but what were some of Paul's assignments? Paul was a tent maker. We know that that's what he did as his job. He was a missionary. He obviously was also a writer as he wrote much of the New Testament. So does this calling to Jesus change? No. Do his seasons and assignments change? Yes.
So, I kind of wanted to stop and apply this to my own life for you. What is my current assignment? Well, currently I'm a wife. I am a mother to three little ones; an infant, a toddler, and a preschooler. I am a business owner and a team leader. I am now a podcaster. Going back to the mom thing, I think it's important to say that my assignment is to those ages specifically because an infant, toddler and preschooler are very demanding and my assignment to be their mom is going to look a little bit different than my assignment to them when they are in high school, right? My responsibility to them and how I care for them, it's just going to look different.
Do my assignments change? Yes. Does my calling to Jesus change? No, never. And if I can just be honest with you, so in the last episode I walked you through the season I'm in right now, and how I really felt like God was leading me and has led me to close the doors of my photography business and I've been doing this for 12 years. Well, for the longest time I have been saying, “I'm called to be a photographer, I’m called to be a photographer.” and while it's true that God called me to start this business and be a photographer for a season, the more accurate way to say it would be that he gave me that assignment, because I really wrestled with the fact that I was leaving my calling when I decided to close the doors of my photography business. But that's not at all what God was saying. My calling has never changed. My identity is in the Lord and it's not in my work. And so once I kind of came to grips with the fact that my photography business was an assignment for me for a season, it really lifted a burden off my shoulders, like "I can do that. I can take on a new assignment. That's good.” And I found so much freedom when I started explaining it like that.
So here are three ways that we can know our assignment.
Number One
God will make it clear to us or will call us to do something. I remember when I was engaged to Will, I was praying, “God, is he the right one for me? I want to follow your will. Is this right? This is a major decision in my life. I don't want to get this wrong.” And I got such clarity because I felt like it was wrong to not marry him. I was so sure that he was meant to be my husband, that I knew I had to move forward with it. And so God made it very clear to me that that is something that He wanted me to do. And He called me to be Will's wife. He gave me that assignment. And I know I'm not guaranteed to live out all of my days with him, and that that might change for me, even though I do have a deal with him, that he has to stick around longer than me and I'm going to have him first, but we'll see what happens. But really that's an assignment that God made clear to me.
Number two
God will allow us to choose our assignment. I found oftentimes in my life, God is happy to let me simply choose it. Choice is a gift that He gave us from the beginning and He delights in that. And sometimes when I pray and pray and seek Him about something that I really want His guidance on, He stays quiet. I've even sensed in my spirit that He's saying, "Hey Nance, this is on you this time. It's all good. I'm going to bless whatever you choose."
Other times, He makes it really clear the way that I should choose. And so number one, God will make it clear to us. Number two, God will allow us to choose, but number three is that our assignment is given to us out of our circumstances. Caring for little babies or caring for an aging parent or maybe supporting your spouse in their new work. These are all things that are given to us out of our circumstances. Financially, your assignment might be just to take the job that takes care of your family and pays the bills in this season, and you don't really have much of a say as to what that job is. You just know you have to show up and do it.
Now in these seasons, the more that we allow what He wants of us and we don't resist it, the better, because these are hard. When our assignments are just given to us due to circumstances, sometimes that can just be really hard. I was listening to a podcast and I'll be happy to link to this in the show notes. Pat Flynn was interviewing Hal Elrod, he's the author of The Miracle Equation and The Miracle Morning. I have not yet read those books, but they sound great. Anyway, how Elrod speaks from experience, and he talked about how when he was in a car accident and was told that he would never walk again, the doctors are really concerned because his attitude was really good. The doctors kept talking to his parents like, he's in denial, you need to tell him he's never going to walk again. And his response was, “I understand I'm not going to walk again, but I really want to be the happiest person that you've ever met in a wheelchair. And I really want to be the most joyful person that you've ever met, and I want to believe that I can be healed and that I will come out of this trial stronger than ever before. But in order for me to do that, I have to embrace my limitations. I have to embrace the circumstances because the more I resist this wheelchair, the more I resist my circumstances, the more angry and bitter I'm going to be. But as soon as you choose to embrace that, then you can embrace the joy in all that comes with your limitations.” That was so profound to me.
The more we resist our circumstances and the more we resist those difficult assignments that are in our life, the harder it's going to be. But if we can just release and except it, the easier it's going to be. So God will either make it clear to you, or He'll allow you to choose your assignment, or it will be given to you out of circumstances. But no matter what season you are in, it's your job to walk with the Lord and stay in tune with him and know what your assignment is in this season. So your calling is your identity in Jesus. You are called to Him, to ministry, to live life in Him and with Him and no matter what your work looks like.
Early in my photography business, I wrote a blog post that was all about my work is my ministry. It kind of goes back to what I was saying in the beginning of this episode that I had that experience where I felt called to ministry, but I didn't know what my work would look like.
So I just want to close this episode and encourage you today that no matter what your work is, no matter what your assignment is, your calling never changes and your assignment is always to do the work and assignment that you've been given through the filter of ministry. So, your calling is your identity in Jesus. You were called to Jesus, to ministry, to live life in Him and with Him. No matter what your work looks like, it is unchanging. Whether you are single, married, working or not, with children or without, you are still you. Living your life as a son or daughter of God walking with Him and being a light for Him.
Your assignment is the work that He has given to you according to this season. There is one guarantee in your life: your assignment will eventually change. But what about someone like Billy Graham? He had a clear call on his life and he did that his entire life. Well, Billy Graham I think was faithful in the assignment that God gave him, and he did do that most of his life. That happens sometimes where God gives you a clear assignment and it will be the same one for much of your life. Does that happen all the time? No. I think it's important in cases like this to simply not compare ourselves to other people and just keep our eyes fixed on the Lord and say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe my assignment will be a lifelong assignment, but maybe it won't be, and that is simply up to me to listen and to know what God is asking of me today.” The important thing is to simply walk with God, listen to Him, and walk in obedience to His plan for you, whatever that may look like.
Thanks for listening to Episode 5 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray.
As always, you can find me at nancyray.com or follow me at Nancy Ray on Instagram or Facebook almost daily. My prayer for you today is that your calling would be unchanging and your assignment for this season be clear. I'd love to close this episode with a quote by Jill Briscoe,
"Your greatest mission field is what is between your own two feet."
