Making this change may be more important than discovering your calling

Tom Harper April 7, 2025

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Sometimes we put too much emphasis on "calling."

"I've been called to a new role," you might say, thinking the new job is more in line with God's will than your old one was.

"I still haven't figured out my calling in life," someone adds, meaning they just haven't been satisfied with any job yet.

Brother Lawrence, in his 17th-century book, The Practice of the Presence of God, said that "our sanctification [does] not depend on changing our works, but doing that for God's sake which we commonly do for our own."

He adds that it's "lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works, which they performed very imperfectly, by reason of their human or selfish regards" (p. 26).

Brother Lawrence had no regard for the opinion of others or whether he was talented at his job, or even whether it was seen as some kind of special calling.

He simply did the job in front of him as well as he could, as an offering of love to God. He washed dishes not because he had special training or because he was "wired" for it.

He served the Lord through his hard work, and he used it to draw nearer to the Lord in conversation.

Does that humble you as much as it does me?

Calling is important, but I'm starting to believe our sanctification doesn't rely on it.

Working with you,

Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
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Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More »

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