Well, God gives each of us a different blend of skills and inclinations, certain instincts, mental capacities, emotional strengths, tastes, et cetera. So how do I know what role I'm supposed to play with my own set of gifts? It's a perennial question, and today it comes from a college student named Sandra.

"Pastor John, hello. My name is Sandra, a junior at Ohio State University. Thank you for this podcast and for your eagerness to hear from college students. I have been saved for about a decade, and I love Christ. In books I read and in conferences I attend, it seems more and more that I am being told to understand God's calling over me and my life, and I would sure love to know it, but I struggle here.

Maybe I will go into business, maybe a mom caring for a home, maybe even a missionary. It would be helpful to know what God has for me, but I don't even know where to begin this process other than to pray. How can I discover God's calling over my life, Pastor John?

Where do I even begin?" The question will never grow old, because generation after generation must answer it, and it is rarely easy to answer. So thank you, Sandra, for the chance to dig back into some of these great biblical truths. In fact, I find myself praying here at the front end of this question that God would use it to make hundreds of people find His precise, glorious, wonderful service.

Now it may be obvious to you, but I'm sure it's not to everyone, so I'm going to distinguish three kinds of calling. First, the kind of calling that God speaks to us when we are dead in sins, and the calling, that calling which brings us out of that deadness into life in union with Christ.

This is the calling in 1 Corinthians 1:22, "For Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." Millions of people come under the hearing of the general call of God in the preaching of the gospel.

But Paul says some among those millions regard this message as foolishness. Some regard it as a stumbling block, but some experience through it, through that general call, they experience a divine inner call of God that causes them to say, "Christ crucified is the wisdom of God. Christ crucified is the power of God." And they embrace it, and they are saved.

All Christians are called in this sense. We were made Christians by the sovereign call of God that brought us from death to life. Second, there's another kind of calling that we have in lifelong covenants that we make under God, and the main one that the Bible ordains is the covenant of marriage.

When God joins two people together in covenant in this way, namely on the analogy of Christ and his covenant with the church in Ephesians 5, when God joins a man and a woman in Ephesians 5 like that, then Jesus said that God has joined them together in such a way that no man may put this asunder.

So the calling that we have in marriage is unlike the calling that we have to any particular vocation. When you take a job, you're not forming a lifelong covenant under God. You can change jobs, but when you marry, your calling is "Till death do us part." So that's a second kind of calling, not like the third kind I'm going to talk about now, which is really the kind you're asking about.

The third kind of calling is the process. I'm saying this call of God is a process by which God leads his children into fruitful positions of service, whether in the church or in the marketplace or in the home. The way we hear this kind of calling is to be attentive to six ways that God acts on our behalf to bring us into a fruitful position of service in the world, not necessarily one that we'll have for 50 years.

We might experience movement as God's call moves, but the next one, and that's what Sandra is asking about. What's the next one that might be a lifelong calling or might be a 10-year calling? We'll see. So here are these six things, and I'll just say them very briefly because she said, "I don't know where to begin except for praying," and well, praying is one of my six.

And so here's five more for you to focus on. Number one, God gives us in the Scriptures a worldview with Christ at the center and reveals to us that certain vocations and certain industries or certain ways of running industries are good and others are bad. And when it's not crystal clear what's good and bad, He shows us that certain paths of service are more helpful or less helpful in the world, more hurtful or less hurtful in the world.

And in showing us this, He works to keep us out of callings that would be evil or hurtful or unhelpful in the world. So not every vocation is open to the follower of Christ, and that's a very important point of guidance that God gives us. Number two, God has spoken in His Word to show us both what true need is in the world and what the world really needs, and He has acted to incline us, His people, to lean into those needs rather than thinking only of our private security and comfort and wealth and ease as though that should guide us in our vocation.

He has said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and He has made us aware of how to define human need, and He has given us eyes and ears to discern where those needs are. So part of His acting to guide us is to incline us away from selfishness toward need-meeting and then show us the real needs of the world.

Third, God has acted in every Christian to grant them various abilities, or we could call them gifts. Listen to the way Paul speaks about this, because if you do, you'll get a flavor of what I'm talking about, because I'm not just talking about something that you might say, "Oh, that's just spiritual and belongs in the church." Here's what he says in Romans 12.6, "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us," differing grace, "let us use them.

Give service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes with generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness." Now those last three should cause us to sit up and take notice that gifts have application to both life in Christian community and life in ordinary human relationships in the marketplace—contributing, leading, mercy.

And my only point here is that we all have different inclinations, intuitions, different instincts, different skills, different mental capacities, different emotional strengths, different tastes, different capacities for stress and endurance, different capacities for crowds and solitude, and on and on and on. Oh, how different God has made us, which means that he has designed us to be more effective at some things than at other things, and more at home in doing some things rather than other things.

And mentioning being at home, I don't mean to absolutize that, that we should only do what we feel at home doing. I think that's a big mistake lots of young people are making today. They're saying, "I'm only going to do what perfectly suits my gifts. I'm only going to do what perfectly fits my inclinations.

I'm only going to do what makes me feel really fulfilled, because it fits like a glove on my individual hand." Well, there have been many times in history when people, in order to stay alive or in order to do much good, had to do many things they did not feel suited to do because they needed to be done.

Nevertheless, I'll back up and say, in a world where choices are many—and that's pretty true in the West—God's gifting becomes a more significant part of God's calling. Number four, God has put in our lives wise counselors and has ordained in His Word that we listen to them carefully about everything in this list of works of God.

One of the real needs around us is that we listen to counselors. This is Proverbs 11:14, "Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in an abundance of counselors there is safety." So we don't act in a vacuum. Don't try to find God's will for your life in a vacuum.

We are part of a community of wisdom and love. Number five, God has given us the gift of prayer. "Pray wisely for the purpose of becoming wiser in the choices we make. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." So we pray over every one of these points day in and day out.

I still do this at age 72. I pray, "God, don't let me make choices about what I do that would waste my life or what's left of it." Lastly, number six, and this one's a little controversial because it's the most subjective, but I would say that God, through all these things, and that's important, through all those five things, and then by His Spirit, more subjectively, works in our minds and hearts to produce recurring, strong desires for a certain kind of service in the church or in the marketplace, which are very significant.

These desires are very significant in guiding us when they occur in our holiest moments. So yes, I'm saying that your desires are a very significant means by which God acts on your behalf to give you the guidance you need into the service where you belong. And I'm saying that those desires have three characteristics about them when they're most reliable.

One, they're recurrent. They're not a flash in the pan. They come back again and again and again. Number two, they're strong. They're not passing and weak and insignificant like changing tastes. And most importantly, number three, these desires are not desires that are awakened while you're walking in sin, feeling distant from God, not enjoying worship, not spending time in the Word, not active in serving others.

No, no, no. Desires that happen during those times are probably not very reliable at all. Paul said, "This is the will of God, your holiness." First Thessalonians 4.3. Students used to ask me, "How can I know the will of God?" And I'd say, "I know exactly what the will of God is for your life.

Holiness, period. That's the will of God." And if holiness is God's will for you, it is safe to say that desires produced by holiness are significant for your guidance. So there they are. Number one, what kinds of service are good and beneficial? Number two, what are the needs of the world, the true needs?

Number three, what has God gifted me to be more or less fruitful at? Number four, what is the counsel I receive from godly people? Number five, am I covering all of this in constant prayer for wisdom? And number six, what are my recurring, strong, holy desires? Such important connection to hear about holiness and our personal desires and God's will, which all stem, of course, from that incredible text in Psalm 37.4.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Godward delight births in us righteous desires to follow. Really important connections here, Pastor John. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. For more information, go to our online home, DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

There you can explore all of our 1,200 past episodes. You can scan through a list of our most popular ones, read transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast through your favorite podcast app.

Well in building a ministry around joy in God, it leads to a lot of good and important questions that we need to think through because if our ministry centers on joy, then doesn't this invite an emotional rollercoaster rhythm to each of our lives? It's a really important question that we have to think through and we will next time.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. 1 Ask a Pastor John Podcast - Desiring God. For more information, go to AskPastorJohn.com