#28: Determining God’s Will For Your Career

The college years are pivotal in determining a career path. Beginning with choosing a college and then choosing a major, and often even a specialization, students are faced with many important decisions. It is often challenging for the Christian student trying to discern God’s will in these career choices. It involves determining your calling and having the courage to follow that path. I discuss this with Dr. Gordon Smith, president of Ambrose University and author of Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential.

In this podcast we discuss:

• How Gordon’s own wrestling with career questions lead him to write this book
• The fundamental paradigm for determining God’s will
• Does God only “call” people to ministry?
• Is serving in “ministry” more valued by God? Why or why not?
• The value of careers that involve “manual” work
• How Gordon developed a more accurate theology of vocation
• How others can help you discern God’s will in making career decisions
• The important difference between your “career” and your “vocation”
• The four questions that will help you discover your calling
• The greatest roadblock to discerning your calling
• The role anger should and should not play in your discernment process
• The value of the Myers-Briggs [Personality] Type Indicator in your discernment process
• How to deal with the fear of “missing” God’s call in your career choice
• Why you should take classes in a wide range of subjects during the first few years of college
• Releasing the burden of having to nail this all down by the time you graduate
• Being freed from the “urgency and tyranny of time” in finding and living out your calling
• How your vocation is tied to your specific time and place
• The importance of courage in finding and following your calling

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Gordon Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential
• Gordon Smith, Teach Us To Pray
• Francis Schaeffer’s Trilogy, How Shall We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, and his many other books
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
• Liam Atchison, “Higher Education 101: How Universities Came to Be and How They Work,” College Faith podcast #3
• Gordon Smith, Consider Your Calling: Six Questions for Discerning Your Vocation (for college students)
• Gordon Smith, Your Calling Here and Now: Making Sense of Vocation (for those in mid-life)
• Edward P. Hahnenberg, Awakening Vocation: A Theology of Christian Call