Previous page | Main ALOVE site Archive   When I grow up I want to be ... : back to vocation page    How can we find out what God wants us to be when we grow up? “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is the question asked of children in households around the world. It used to be a fairly straightforward question, almost a ridiculous one: “What do I want to be when I grow up? What do you mean? My Dad’s a farmer / baker / lawyer / King. That’s what I’m going to be as well, as if I have a choice. Duh.” Or “What do I want to be when I grow up? Well, I guess the choices are wife or nun. Like my Mom.” But now the options are wide open, or at least it seems that way. You don’t have to follow in the footsteps of your parents if you don’t want to (though of course we want to reserve the right to come and live on their couch and eat their food if our careers in underwater basket weaving don’t work out.) Of course, this glut of options does not necessarily make things easier. It actually forces us to ask some fairly difficult questions. What do I want to do? How will I make a living doing it? And perhaps most difficult of all: does God have a job in mind for me? This last question sometimes sounds like this: does God have a calling for me? A calling used to mean that someone was going to be a priest or minister or missionary of some kind, suggesting that only God specially called these people into ministry jobs. But again, things have opened up a bit in this regard. There is recognition that God might call someone to serve Him as an actor, a musician, a carpenter, a teacher, or a clown. Full-time ministry no longer automatically means putting on a white collar, attaching red epaulets to your shoulders, or submitting to a vow of celibacy for life. So, if God does have a calling for everybody, how do you find out what yours is? I guess you could always wait for a divine bolt of lightning to tell you that God has a life of plumbing in store for you. It has happened before. The story of Saul / Paul in the Bible is one where Saul is blinded, spoken to directly by Jesus, given a name change, and later set apart specifically by the Holy Spirit to go out as a missionary. It seems kind of unfair that Paul was given so much direction in his calling. Then again, the life set out for him was not an easy one, so we probably shouldn’t complain. Still, the cases of people deciding their future based on God making them blind are decidedly rare, so we should perhaps look for some other guiding principles. I like to look at some of the disciples for some inspiration. Here they are, happily fishing away, doing their jobs, and then along comes Jesus. “Come, follow me,” he says. And they stop what they are doing and follow him. Later on they confess that they left absolutely everything for Jesus. But the Bible also tells us that they kept on fishing as well. Sure, Jesus was making them into fishers of men, but they could also keep on fishing for fish. They were good at it, they could make a living doing it, so why not? Of course, if Jesus came along and asked them to follow him to Jerusalem, or if he had some specific mission stuff for them to do, they would drop everything and do it. And Jesus used their fishing time to teach them lessons about himself and his Kingdom. Their jobs as fishermen definitely came second to Jesus, but it didn’t mean they had to stop fishing. Paul was actually the same way. His main job was to follow Jesus and to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. But he also made tents wherever he went and sold them. Presumably he was pretty good at making tents, and maybe he even enjoyed it. (I can’t imagine enjoying making tents, but then I suppose that is not part of my calling.) The point is, God has given us all natural abilities, and it is good and proper to use them. We can be athletes or scientists or writers or fishermen, and those jobs may well be part of God’s calling for us. But God’s primary calling for us is to follow him, no matter where we are or what we are doing. That way, everything we do, whether we eat, or drink, or work as a cashier at the Safeway, we can do it all for the glory of God. So what do I want to be when I grow up? ... An astronaut. Or a cowboy. Maybe an astronaut cowboy. One who follows Jesus. : back to top : back to vocation page Youthwork - The Partnership ... ALOVE, Youthwork Magazine, Youth For Christ, Spring Harvest and Oasis are working together to equip and resource the Church for effective youth work and ministry.