Mark Lindsey

This lesson was part of the course “Life’s Work: Finding Purpose in Every Task,” offered in North Wake Church’s Adult Discipleship in 2025.

Work is a way of serving others. When someone says that they have a “calling” for their work, what kind of thing do they usually mean? Ministry. And ministry, if you were going to give a little more definition to it, pastoral—usually some sort of potentially teaching role. We wouldn’t think of support jobs necessarily: You wouldn’t use that word “calling” a lot of times for support, assistant, behind-the-scenes jobs. But we do use the word “calling” in this really narrow sense. And I’m going to challenge that. I think that’s actually not the biblical way we should use the word “calling.” All of calling is a lot bigger than that.

The other thing is, when you choose a job—or even when you have a job and you’re keeping your job—how do you think about whether you should keep this job or do something different next year? If you were a person without Christ, how would you probably think about it? Pay, freedom, advancement, authority, platform, opportunities for growth, training and education.

With Christ, how does belonging to God change this for us? It’s an admission that God is the one who gives the gifts. The gifts are part of what you’re doing—they are a commission. They weren’t given to you just to serve yourself. They are about serving others as well.

There’s a cool story in the book Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller about United Airlines Flight 811 in the 80s. It took off from California, flying to New Zealand. At about 20,000 feet, the cargo door blew off, damaging an engine. The plane started falling. There was a big hole in the side—decompression, chaos, everything not strapped down flying around. Fortunately, everyone was buckled, so nobody got sucked out.

Now just imagine the pilot is a Christian elder, a pastor, who studies the Bible and teaches faithfully—but his day job is flying airplanes. In that moment, what is his primary calling? To share the gospel? To shepherd and console those on board? No—to keep everybody safe. To fly the plane. That was the ministry of competence. God equipped him to serve that crowd through flying the airplane skillfully, especially in an emergency he had trained for.

I want us to think about calling in this bigger sense—the way Paul and the psalmists use it.

Let’s look at some passages. First, Romans 8:30: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Here, calling means salvation—God calling us out of darkness into his marvelous light to proclaim his mercies (1 Peter 2:9).

In Romans 12:3, Paul says each of us is assigned gifts by God. God is the assigner.

When we use the word “calling” in secular ways—called up to the military, called to public office, called in by the CEO for a special assignment—what do we mean? It comes from outside yourself—someone recruits or affirms you because of your design, your gifts. It’s specific, well-defined, an opportunity that puts you to work for something bigger than yourself. We wouldn’t use “calling” for something totally private, like writing poetry no one will ever read.

Calling can change over time—not our salvation calling, but our assignments. The airline pilot might lose his eyesight and no longer fly. Gifts come and go. God doesn’t always keep us doing the exact same thing forever. (A practical way to assess whether your particular inclination is a “calling” can have have least three components: A desire to do something, an affirmation from others that you should be doing it, and an opportunity to do it.)  Sometimes those opportunities come and go, and we can trust that God is at work.

In the United States, there are “exempt” and “non-exempt” employees. Non-exempt have fixed duties for hourly pay. Exempt (teachers, counselors, ministers) are salaried and generally open to whatever is asked. There aren’t the same hard-and-fast limits on hours and duties. In a way, Christians are like “exempt” employees under God—open to whatever work he calls us to, and the particular assignment might change.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7:17, says: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” These are the same big, religiously-framed words used for spiritual gifts and salvation. Paul is applying them to common social and economic tasks—secular jobs. God equips all people with talents and gifts for various kinds of work to build up the human community, even before they are believers.

The greatest commandments (Matthew 22:36-40): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Loving God means enjoying him, obeying him, aligning our desires to his. Loving neighbor means serving, caring, willing for them what God wills for them, pointing them to Christ.

1 Peter 4:10-11: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” Gifts are for serving one another and for God’s glory. We serve in a way that causes others to see God’s strength, not ours.

Paul, in Acts 20:34-35, reminds the Ephesian elders that his own hands ministered to his necessities and those with him. By working hard (tentmaking), he helped the weak and lived out Jesus’ words: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Even at the highest level of ministry, Paul worked a paying job to show that the gospel is freely given and to provide for others.

Ephesians 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” The motivation for work is to have something to share.

In Psalm 145 (actually referenced as 147 in the talk, but quoting themes from both), God strengthens the bars of your gates and gives food in due season. How? Through locksmiths, construction workers, farmers, fishermen, truck drivers—ordinary work. God works through every kind of job. He equips you with skills enabling the “ministry of competence” — the ability to do helpful things using your abilities. What an amazing gift from Him to know that our daily work truly is a calling from God to serve others and to glorify him.

It is so much more joyful when you can say that the work you’re doing—configuring a router, writing a contract, homeschooling, flying a plane, installing a deadbolt—is something God has equipped you to do. You are stewarding a gift he has given you. It is a real calling, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. You are doing it with the opportunity he has given you right now to honor him as the giver and to serve and care for other people—to share with them, to do competent work that protects and provides.