Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network.

You're listening to Ask Me Anything with Pastor J.D. Greer.

Honest questions, quick answers.

I'm your host, Todd Unzicker, and this is where J.D. Gre you said, ask me anything.

So that's what we're doing this week on the podcast, Ask Me Anything.

J.D., the question this week, sometimes they're off the wall, sometimes they're really, really hard. This one's

super important, and wouldn't you get often? Question is, how do I distinguish God's calling on my life?

Maybe asked another way is, Jady, what's God's will for my life? Well, first of all, I grew up with the wrong idea of the will of God.

I thought that God's calling on your life, discovering his will, was this, like, sacred,

mystical moment that if you select people who were headed to seminary would have,

you know, I just, now I refer to it as the Cheerios method of discerning the will of God. You stare at your Cheerios every day and you're waiting for it to spell out like missionary to Afghanistan.

I mean, I stared at my Cheerios for years, Todd, and all it ever spelled out was over and over and again, just nothing but owes.

So that's, I don't, and maybe, by the way, if that happens, if your're cheery or spells something out to you, you should probably pay attention.

But I don't think that is the primary way that God calls people.

You know, the calling to leverage your life for the Great Commission, to be involved using your spiritual gifts and ministry, that was included in the call to follow Jesus.

He said, follow me, and I'll make you a fish or a man, which means

if you're following him, then he is showing you how to be a part of what he's doing in the world.

You know, the way we always say now to our college students is the question is no longer

if you're called. The question is only where and how you're called. So once you've kind of

gotten over that, okay, God has called me in the ministry. Now there's got to be a process of self discovery. What has God called me to do? How do you answer that question? Well, I mean, one of the first,

my wife tells a story of when, you know, she was interested in that. And so the ministry she was

involved with handed her the spiritual gifts aptitude test. It was like a personality test. Now, wait a for those of us who didn't grow up in church, like, what is, is there an actual

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