Do you feel the pressure to live a really successful life? To perform? Achieve? Accomplish?
When I was eighteen years old, I knew God was real, but my fancy prayers and daily devotionals were not cutting it. I thought I was giving God what He wanted, but it felt all wrong.
Surveying my life now, I realized doing all the right things had won me the admiration of everyone but God. I felt empty and prideful. It was worse than rebellion: being good with no God. Maybe God was after something else.
I was chasing the wrong things. After chasing everything the world has to offer, nothing is more satisfying than God.
We all want success. We find joy in being able to reach our goals and accomplish our dreams. These are not bad things in themselves, but there is a tension in it all; a dark place where we start to lose sight of what our role is here on this earth. The battle begins when these things become our idols, the real drive behind who we are.
The world wants you to gain everyone’s approval, and find your worth in your reputation. But the Bible tells us something very different.
I look around and see currents that have dug deep crevices in our culture and eventually carved them into our souls. Currents that make us think:
“These seventy to eighty years of life feel long and important.”
“Comfort and safety are worthy pursuits.”
“Stuff matters.”
As a generation, I believe we are waking up, identifying these currents, and comparing them to the truth of God. If God is real and we are going to live with Him forever, shouldn’t He be the controlling force of our lives? If we really believe this we feel a growing desire to not become like the religious people God referred to when He said, “This people draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, while their hearts are far from Me” (Is. 29:13, ESV).
Finding Your Calling
I encounter a lot of women who are on the hunt for their calling and purpose. He made it really clear when He gave us this mission statement in Matt. 28:18-20 (ESV):
“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.’”
This is it. Making disciples right where we are.
This mission is not just for those in vocational ministry. It is for all of us. Whether you are an accountant or a teacher, a stay-at-home mom, or a doctor, God has called you to help other people know God.
We get to rest in that! Instead of chasing down the next thing to achieve and wondering if it is what God has for you, you get to measure up every decision with this grand mission on your life. Is it helping you make disciples?
Why is Living Called Better than Living Driven?
Living confidently in our calling to go and make disciples is not a permission slip to live a lazy life. It is, however, permission to quit beating yourself up over unmet expectations. We get to live with open hands, knowing that as we take small steps of obedience with what God’s given us, He handles the outcome. You are going to be too busy running your own race that you won’t have time to look up and compare your race to someone else’s. Your confidence in who you are and what God has called you to do will be contagious. Link arms and bring them along.
We are given all kinds of places to use our gifts, and throughout our lives, those places change. The location or numbers do not matter. Live called. Rest in the fact that God built you, gave you a calling to make disciples, and freed you up for Him to move through you.
Great people don’t do great things. God does great things with surrendered people. And surrender happens every day in one thousand small moments.
