The Calling Lab
From a resource by Underground Church
The Calling Lab is offered by the Underground Church in Tampa, Florida. It is essentially free and open for anyone looking to ask Jesus for clarity in their calling. Here is the transcript from the introductory video:
I think most people come to the desire to understand their calling frankly from a selfish perspective. They begin because there is this notion floating out there that if I can find my calling, if I can find that thing I was made for, that I was designed for, I'll be happy whether it's job satisfaction or productivity or creativity.
We think and believe that there is something out there for us to do that we were designed to do and, if we do it, we'll be whole, we'll be happy and that is true. But I think it's like, as Fredrick Buechner, puts it, that calling or purpose is that place where your happiness and the world's needs meet and actually a calling is scripturally more about where we're being deployed – to use a military metaphor.
It's about reporting for duty to Jesus and having him say, “I need you there.”, “They need help over there.” and “I'm sending you there”. Our yes to that is about meeting that need, about obeying God and about glorifying God in the world, seeing the kingdom of God come. Is that fulfilling ultimately for us personally? I think so but that's actually the by-product. That's the secondary thing.
Sometimes we put too much pressure on this moment. Expecting to come out of this with my whole entire life mapped out in front of me. That could happen, but if we look at calling as called to Jesus, sent from him to do something to meet some need, to glorify him, to see the Kingdom come somewhere in the world in some place, then the duration of that sense of calling also is up to God.
There will be some of us that we'll have a sense, a dynamic sense, that I think I'm supposed to do this for the rest of my life - some permutation of this for the rest of my life.
Others of us will think for the next season of my life, say two or three years, I think I'm supposed to invest my life in this. Because so much of our life is a developmental journey that that two or three years may prepare us for the following two or three or five or ten years or that life thing.
God is in the business of developing, educating, discipling us and it could be that the first assignment is not your full-term assignment.
Watch the 3 minute video here:
Other short videos and resources are found here. They cover; Worship, Triangulating Your Calling, Personality Inventory, Vocation Assessment, Opportunity Analysis, Emotional Evaluation, Listening Prayer, Counsellor Input, Your Calling.
There are also 7 podcasts - episodes 69-75 found here.
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From a resource by Underground Church, 18/02/2025