Practical Application: Vocation and Calling
For my practical application project I decided to do choose the mentoring option. This seemed like the obvious choice for me, as I have already built a mentor-mentee relationship with one of my good friends, Micaela, who has also been discipling me and two other girls since last semester. Micaela and I had already established a close relationship, and she had already provided me with so much revelation and wisdom just by doing life together for all of freshman year. She is a sophomore here at Baylor and apart from our previously established relationship, I knew she would be a good mentor for this project because I relate to her in many ways and she is also on a business track without a clear idea of what she wants to do after graduation, just like me. Apart from spending time together in lifegroup and discipleship, we were able to meet one on one for this project and just talk about life and vocation and calling and how we see the Lord working in our lives. This paper is a reflection on conversations Micaela and what I have learned in class as well as a reflection on my freshman year as a whole.
Prior to taking Leadership 2301 I thought I had an understanding of vocation and calling, yet at the same time, they were ideas that I had a hard time putting into words. I understood that vocation had to do with more than just what your job was, and I knew that calling had to do with God’s purpose for your life, but I struggled to understand what that meant for me and my life. I’ve never been the person to have my whole life planned out since childhood. I’ve never dreamed of being a doctor or a lawyer or president of the United States. This is something that has both frustrated me and provided me with peace. It is frustrating because the planner in me wants to know for sure that I am on the right track; that I am majoring in the right thing, doing the right things to get there, and meeting the right people along the way. Yet at the same time, my uncertainty is reassuring in the fact that I have time to figure everything out as I go, to focus on the things that interest me, and to test out the water. But that being said, I have also learned that much if not all of this, my vocational calling, my future, and my purpose, is completely out of my hands.
Chapter one of Courage and Calling expresses the biblical idea of vocation to be “about being raised from the dead, made alive to the reality that we do not merely exist, but are called forth to a divine purpose”. I like this definition of vocation because it presents the idea that our calling doesn’t come from ourselves and what we think we want for our life, but that we were created by a God who set into each of our lives a unique purpose. The cool thing too, is that Psalm 20:4 tells us that God grants us the desires of our hearts. He doesn’t just set in motion a plan for our life that will be difficult and unenjoyable, but He his plan lines us with the deepest desires of our hearts. He is the one who planted those desires and passions in ourselves, and he allows us to experiences His love and joy in aligning our callings with things that we have a love for. This is something that Micaela and I were able to talk about, and it brought new and hopeful insight into how I can think about my life and vocation.
She explained how in her own life she has a desire to watch others develop their identity in Christ as well as see how He is developing her into the person she is. Reflecting on this she believes her calling is to be a developer, of people, of ideas, and of places. This in itself was encouraging because it helped me in understanding that our calling is more than being called to be a doctor or a lawyer or anything like that. But our calling is something that we can live out in every aspect of our life, both in the office and out. I believe that the same calling we feel like applies to our jobs can also be applied to the way we interact with our families and friends and even strangers. God is using Micaela to develop, encourage, and mentor everyone she comes in contact with, and is similarly using that same developmental desire to point her towards an entrepreneurial career in public relations where she will be able to develop new ideas, or products, all while continuing to develop relationships rooted in the Christ love that she emulates.
Reflecting on this I still do not have an exact word to express as my calling, but I have a better understanding of how my calling plays out in my life. I know that right now my calling is to be a student and invest myself here in Waco and at Baylor. But I also know that the Lord is working in my time here, and I believe that at some point I will be able to look back at my life and be able to recognize where and how my calling had been played out in the different parts of my life.
As my freshman year of college draws to a close I reflect on all that I have learned. Most of which was not learned in a classroom at all. As cliché as it sounds I have learned more about myself than I even thought possible. I know recognize that I am far more dependent on people that I thought. I have learned that I don’t just like people but that I really like getting to know people on a deep and real level. I like living life with people and being with them in the up and the downs. I can see this in the friendships I have made over the last two semesters. I guess its because living apart from my family and everything I had ever know, but it has been so much easier for me to open up to people since I have been in college. I don’t just want to make friends I have fun with anymore, I want to make friends that I can have fun with but also be serious with and ultimately just walk through life with, and I am lucky enough to have found that in more than one person at Baylor.
I trust that God will open the right doors at the right time, and ultimately I will find myself living out my calling. For know though, I am just trying to be faithful and intentional about where I am in my life at the moment. I am learning to be purposeful with and find joy in school even when it gets hard, and how to be purposeful with the friendships that I am developing. For know that is all I can do and that’s enough for me. As I take more classes and attain more life experience, I believe I will begin to be drawn more and more towards my specific calling. That may be something in the business world, or it may be something the complete opposite, but I know that wherever I end up the things that will really matter will be me living my life to Christ and doing so with people who do the same.