The book is a 20-chapter, 56-page book with a central theme. The theme is on Personal Calling, which is another way to couch “Purpose and Destiny”.
The author first made a demarcation between having a job and a vocation. He shows that people spend their lives pursuing a job and neglecting that thing in them that gives them a “higher calling”, a gift, passion, or something that creates a vocation for them.
A job can make you money, but a vocation can bring you unspeakable joy.
From the book, “A vocation is something that comes from within. It comes from your heart. A vocation is not something that has to be programmed by the mind as discipline the way a job does. A vocation comes from deep within your heart, or your spirit, where you know for certain you have found the vein of your life“.
The author made an effort to emphasise what CAREER means. He said, “Career is a service we perform. We trade our time, effort, skill, knowledge, and experience for a salary, benefits or other income”.
A career can develop out of a job and it can develop out of a vacation. If it develops out of a job, it is because the job the person does is something that they love to do. They may be employed and serving a boss, but because that job aligns with their soul, they make a career out of it.
A vocation, however, is something that a person may be doing while also being gainfully employed somewhere. Once your vocation has become your career and you are willing to spend a considerable number of years of your life doing it, then you have found your calling.
Now, the author did special work on demystifying the concept of “a calling”.
There is an idea concerning “calling” that is popular in the world today. This idea was popularised by Christian teaching. When you hear someone say that he or she has “a call” from God, the express meaning is that “God has called them to function in a capacity within the church”. Capacities like pastoring, missions, singing ministry, becoming an evangelist, and all that “kingdom work”, as many know it as.
But that is not what calling is.
Calling is synonymous with “life purpose”, it is what happens when any person has figured out the answers to these questions:
who am I?
what am I passionate about?
what are my gifts/talents?
what do I want to do with the knowledge of myself, my passion and my gifts?
If these answers are made in the right frame of mind and within the context of the nature of the society that a person finds him or herself, the better the calling is.
Another point that the author highlighted is that “LOVE” is at the heart of truly stepping into your calling. With this love comes your desire to be of service to people, and to humanity. Since the greatest business in life is the business of bettering humanity, anyone finding his or her calling will realise that they are aligning with this One Purpose that God willed in Creation, the One Purpose of “furthering” things, allowing progress, initiating it, supporting it, doing your part.
Finding your calling is fitting your vocation/passion into the grand purpose running through life. When you make this vocation your career, you have found that thing that makes life have meaning, that thing that gives you “unspeakable joy” as Jeremy Lopez puts it.
How do you find your calling? Pay attention to what “awakens your heart”. That is always a guidance system that anyone anywhere in the world can rely on.
A question that the book will answer for those who have such questions is: “Are everyone called?”
Yes, everyone is called. Every human on the planet has something that awakens their heart. The problem is a lot of people do not follow the tunes of their passion and because of this, they fail to tap into the reservoir of potential within them. These are some of the people who say they do not know their purposes in life.
There will be obstacles to the fulfilment of your calling. Jeremy advises that you do not focus on them. Focus on the goal. It is not easy to live out one’s vocation when all you have to do is work for an employer and get the cash to feed you and your family. But you have what it takes to make it happen if you stick to it, focusing on the goal.
A chapter in the book deals with FLEXIBILITY. Some people think that once they have found their calling in life, there is only one way to go about fulfilling it. When that plan is not working, rather than changing, they keep doing the old stuff and find themselves stuck, delayed, and disoriented. The author counsels that you allow flexibility provides you with the option of changing the path to the goal. Plans can change, but the goal is the same. Only when you are flexible can this mindset work for you.
Falling in love with the vision of the calling is a sure way to stick to it when things around you are not going according to plan. Endearing your vision allows you to see ways that you can make it work.
Stay receptive to new information and knowledge. Close-mindedness does not take anyone far. As much as you are open to learning can push you forward in the performance of your calling.
The author also makes mention of “your circle”, the quality of people you are around with. He said, “You are going to have to remember that if you want to reach your goal one day, you are going to have to receive from those that God has put in your life and allow their voices to empower you”. Iron sharpens iron! He cautions that you avoid people who steal your freedom to think, who bend you to their own thinking processes and want you to do only the things that they find necessary.
Take action on your goals when the green light is there. Only you can decide if your vision will see the light or not. Only you.
