I'm confused about my calling Pastor Steven Furtick - Steven Furtick

The term calling mostly as a human construct. It's a

way for us to try to describe a bunch of

fragments and make things not feel random because calling in

a biblical sense is more general.

That God has called us to himself.

And what we want that to mean is that we

have a specific path that we're going to understand from

the outset, and then we can guide our lives by

it and not waste time on things that aren't a

part of that.

And that's a human construct. That's nowhere in the Bible.

There's no, I can't think of any evidence in the

Bible that people were given a itinerary for their life

and then their life followed that itinerary. It's much more,

if you just want to use a simple analogy, it's

much more like riding with your GPS without the directions

tab to see the next turns.

It's much more next turn. And it just is. It

has to be.

It has to be on every level because you're going

to understand certain things in one season of your life

as being the ultimate goal that are actually just for

you to find out that you didn't like that or

that wasn't it. So I think a lot of people

have an imprisonment to their concept of what their calling was.

And it's unnecessary that God called me to blank. No,

all God called you to do was glorify him. All

God called you to do is like pursue wholeness.

All God called you to do was live out of authenticity,

you know, honesty. That's the calling.

Anything other than that, we should probably use another term for.

And I think it's done a lot of damage. I

don't think it's just semantics because this idea that there

is a calling kind of guided me in my 20s.

And a lot of what I preached then was from

my construct of, I have a calling as a preacher.

Now, what's yours? Well, the fact is I just kind

of found it early.

What I was good at, I was able to work

on that early.

I got opportunities early. Not everybody has that.

And so then it's become now something. I can talk

to you about my own experience if you want me to,

but it's become now something that this role is not

at all what I thought it would be, but it's

exactly what I dreamed of doing.

But they couldn't be more different.

So even if you do what you set out to do,

it won't be what you set out to do.

It'll be the reality of it.

And that's whether you do ministry or whether you are

parenting or anything. Did you get to hear my Joseph

teaching from Inside Elevation, session one? This is the dream,

or I think I called it something else. But the idea,

did you get.

To hear it?

It's so relevant, but it usually is something you're only

ready to hear when you're 40. but I think you

can hear it earlier and I'm coming up on 40.

It's really a sermon about disillusionment, but it's not about

the danger of disillusionment.

It's about the necessity of it.

And if you can receive it at 25, I wonder

how much less energy you'll waste agonizing over finding it.

Because what it basically says is that God, and I won't,

Repreach it here. It takes an hour to build up

the concept. Joseph saw something in his youth. He was

the center of attention. He was the stalk of grain

that the other stalks were bowing down to, the sheaf

that all the other sheafs came.

And gathered around.

The stars and the sun and the moon bowed down

to him that represented his parents.

And his brothers.

When that actually came to pass, he was actually 38

years old. which was kind of connecting to me personally,

not that I'm Joseph, just I connected to that. And

by the time that his brothers were bowing down before him,

it wasn't shiny like it was in the dream. And

he was at the center, but the reason he was

at the center was to serve them.

Not to be the star.

And the process of disillusionment is like, you get the dream,

God shows it to you in one form, and it

looks shiny like the stars in the moon. Or you see, wow,

I'm at the center. I'm standing head and shoulders above

everybody else. So it's kind of like about your own importance.

It's about your own specialness. It's about your own uniqueness.

It's about all those things.

And it has to be for a season of your

life because that's what motivates you.

That's what drives you. Greatness. And I just want to

reach my potential. And I'm a hustle. I'm a grind.

I'm a this. I'm a that. Whatever, whatever.

But then the second necessary process is where you go, oh. Wow,

because Joseph was crying. He was betrayed by his brothers.

He had a lot of responsibility.

He had a lot of stress.

So it was the same thing he saw, but it

wasn't the same thing he saw. It was the mature

version of it. And so God uses those little things

where you get here and you're like, wow, this is

not even what I'm good at. God's like, cool, good,

because it's one of the ways he disillusions you. He

discomforts you. He disillusions you. And then you have to

find out, well, am I what I do or am

I who I am? You know, because you probably identify

with something that you've done that's gotten you attention in

your life or gotten you props or whatever. So God

has to put you in situations where you don't get.

To operate in that. And then you feel like you

don't even know you are.

You don't even feel like you know how to operate.

You don't even feel like you know how to do it.

But that's a gift because that's like getting you to

the core. That's getting you to a different layer. So

the part I'd want you to hear at 25, the

way you asked me the question is.

I don't know whether you can.

I don't know whether you have to get exhausted to

the point where you go, oh, and then you come

back to it and you go, Pastor Stephen tried to

tell me that, you know, my dad tried to tell

me that, my youth minister tried to, whatever, you know,

whoever's been in your life. I don't know I can

say it, but at least maybe I can give you

a framework so that when that's happening to you and

it could be a disappointment or sometimes a dream will

come true and.

You'll go, I thought I would like this more, you know?

Or you'll find fulfillment in something that seems maybe way

off the map, but at least you'll have a way

to recognize that that doesn't make it feel like failure

or doesn't make it feel like a negative thing.

So I would encourage you to abandon.

Your early 20s concept of a calling.

Because it's a prison. And then you might.

Get in a situation where somebody's actually trying to help

you see. You would actually really be great at that,

but you're married to your first idea of what you

were supposed to do.

And you won't pay attention to your life.

You won't pay attention to how God is using you,

how other people are responding. So, you know, there's an

openness that can be really helpful. I know that sounds

like contradiction from the guys like, I'm going to be

a pastor and I don't care and I'm going to

start this church and don't tell me otherwise. But within

that even, I've had to give up my idea of

what I thought that meant and what I was supposed

to be and how you're supposed to do it. And

like not a lot of my friends, if any, write

worship music for their church that are pastors. I have

friends who write worship music. I have friends that pastor.

I don't have friends that do both. So I had

to kind of like, give up even within, I'm going

to be a pastor. I thought that was going to

entail this, this, and this. And it's been so different.

The way I lead, the way that my life looks.

So just don't marry the mirage.

Mentally. If that makes sense, don't fall in love with

that fantasy.

Because then the reality of it will actually be great,

but you'll compare it to the fantasy and you'll be

disappointed in it.

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