How To Discover God's Calling | Pastor Notes

In this edition of Pastor’s Notes, Darren Tyler shares how to discover God’s calling by shifting the focus from finding His will to surrendering to it. Through Scripture and his own story, Darren explores how our desires, passions, and even our wounds can become clues to where God may be leading us.

• Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey, my name's Darren Tyler. I'm a pastor at Conduit Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Happy to be with you guys today. Huge fans of what ECN is doing, School of Ministry. And one of the questions that I, I get a lot as a pastor, but I get a lot in the ECN world too, is, like, how do I know my calling, like, my purpose?

  There's this idea in our hearts that God has something for us. We just don't know what it is, and how do I find it? And here's the thing, I got good news for you. The idea that, uh, y- you're trying to find God's will, uh, it, it insinuates that He's hiding it from you, and that's just not, not true at all.

  Psalm 37:4, this famous passage that most of us know, that if you delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart. Now, I used to think that meant Uh, if I'm just really good Christian, then I can get whatever I want and ask for. But that's not at all what the psalmist was driving for.

  The idea that he's [00:01:00] saying is that if, if you're delighting yourself in the Lord, not perfect, but delighting in the Lord, he, he's gonna give you what to desire. Not what you desire, but what to desire. Uh, Romans 12 talks about this, too, when it... Uh, we, we all know that passage, right? To offer your lives as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing, acceptable to Him.

  You know, being transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then verse three, it says, "And then you'll be able to test His will for your life, His good, His perfect, pleasing will." So it's not like knowing God's will for your life is going to Costco, and I get to sample this will and that will and decide which one I want.

  It's the idea that once I fully am s- I'm just offering my life to you, and then you're just gonna know His will for your life. I, I have a friend named Bobby Nelson who owns a car dealership. Actually owns a lot of car dealerships. And he said... He calls it the I don't care prayer, and what he meant was he got to this place [00:02:00] in his life where, "God, I don't care.

  I just want what you want for me. Whatever you want, I want. I don't care. I want what you want," is another version of offering your life as a living sacrifice. Now, here's the thing. God knows when you're lying, right? So if I'm saying I'm offering my life as a living sacrifice, but I'm not doing it, right, then He, He knows that.

  So there's that moment where you've gotta get to the place where you genuinely don't care about anything but Jesus, about what He wants for you, and that's something you come to when you spend time in the Word, when you spend time investing in, in your own walk with the Lord. It, it's slowly, sometimes even imperceptively, and sometimes it's like God strips everything else away from you, and then you get to the point.

  But one way or the other, you gotta get to the point where you don't care, accept whatever you want for me. And that sounds like, "Oh, what if He wants me to do something s- like [00:03:00] I gotta go to Africa. I don't wanna go." But if you're delighting in the Lord- Whatever it is that you desire at that point, like that's, he's gonna give you the desire to do that.

  The very first time I stepped off a plane in Africa in 2008, I, I stepped out into the open air, which was how most African flights land. There's no jet bridge. And in that moment, I, I don't know why I didn't think about it before, but in that moment I remembered a prayer that I had prayed very diligently when I was 16 years old.

  I was in Guatemala, my first mission trip. I just thought, "I'm gonna carve this notch on my gun for God, move on with my life." And I'd found a journal that I'd kept when I was 16, and in that journal I wrote this prayer, "God, please don't make me go to Africa." In fact, I remember negotiating with God thinking, "Okay, if you want me to be a missionary, I'll go to London.

  Like I could do England." Like I'm negotiating, right? Like I'm at Costco sampling, as well Fast-forward 30 years later, or 20 years [00:04:00] later, I'm stepping off that plane, and what made me chuckle when I got off was I remembered that prayer, and here I was in Africa, and I wanted to be there. I desired to be there.

  God gave me the desire to desire, not what I desired. Now, if you're looking for a clue, some of you, "That's great, Daron, but I don't know if I'm supposed to go to Africa. I don't know if I'm supposed to go down the street." What ... Something that I've learned over the years is that when Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:1...

  Uh, Ch- uh, 2 Corinthians 1:4, he says, "Who comforts us in all of our troubles," right? M- many of us know that, "So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." I- i- to put it differently, like, if you've had a wound in your life, like maybe you grew up in a home with a, a addiction or maybe, uh, y- your parents, uh, divorced when you were young and it wrecked your life.

  Like, there's some wound that happened in you, [00:05:00] that's a clue. Your wound can be your why. Like, if ... You know, I, I grew up in a town where I was extremely poor. We had ... Nobody was coming for me. You know, that wound in me was that nobody's coming for me, and, uh, but in the way that God comforted me, which was by a, a church that came to my town, and they came for me.

  So in the way that I was comforted, now I get to comfort other people, 'cause I, I know something about that because that's the way that I, I experienced it. It was the way I was comforted. Now I can comfort others. Look for the wound in your life, because there's probably a why behind there somewhere. And you don't have to start a .org.

  You don't have to start a nonprofit. I don't know that the world needs more nonprofits. What it needs is more people acting like Jesus. And if that's one clue, uh, th- th- maybe that's what He's called you to do, that your wound becomes your why. Uh, another one is, like, what are you passionate about? Acts Chapter 6, the early church, there was a, a, the first dispute, right?

  Which was the widows who [00:06:00] were being fed in the daily distribution were being overlooked, and the widows that were being overlooked were the Greek widows. That was the thing. The Jewish widows were getting the food first. The Greeks maybe not getting any. And so the disciples, you maybe remember the story, they were told, "Let's, uh, we need to pick seven men full of the Holy Spirit," all these requirements of what they were gonna do, "and we'll let them handle this problem."

  But when you read the names, the whole point I'm trying to make is that of the seven people appointed, five of them were Greeks. Their names, Stephen, Nicholas. Like, th- these are Greek names And who were the widows being overlooked? They were the Greek widows. So they already had a heart for them. They had a passion for them.

  And by giving them, again, full of the Holy Spirit, all that, they had a passion. These were their friends. They were their moms, right? Their cousins. They knew them, so they had a passion for them. So your wound might be a clue to where God is leading you. Your passion could be a clue to where [00:07:00] God is leading you.

  But it all starts with you saying, I'm offering my life as a living sacrifice. Coming to a very honest conversation, an honest prayer with the Lord that says, I don't care. I just want what you want. I experienced it myself. 2009, I was in the music business. I was, we were having a great time. We were having a great year.

  We were doing really successfully. And I just realized, I just felt there has to be more to this. There has to be more to this. There has to be more. And there came to that point where I'm sitting in the, literally in the parking lot outside of my office trying to muster up, I got to care about this because I got 25 employees that need me to care about this.

  That moment of like, okay, God, I don't care. If you want me to be a manager the rest of my life, I'll do that. If you want me to move to Haiti, whatever it is, I don't care. I'll do it. And [00:08:00] that became a process where it took about two years. But that process started me of verse three. And then I knew his will for my life, his good, his perfect, his pleasing will.

  And by the way, that will was to become a pastor. And anybody that knew me in those days knows that was crazy. Like neurosurgeon would have been an equal option for me, which is to say not an option. And the very thing that I never wanted to do, be a pastor, is the only thing I want to do now. And it's not because I'm spiritual.

  It's just because God put that calling on me. And when I finally submitted and said, whatever you want, he gave it to me. And his will for your life is, it says it in Romans 12, right? It's not just good. It's pleasing and it's perfect. Doesn't mean it's always fun. Doesn't mean it's always comfortable. But his will, his purpose is pleasing, not just to him, but it's pleasing for you [00:09:00] too.