Who You Are Before What You Do

Life does get simpler as you age. It doesn't take as much to produce joy and contentment as it once did.

As a younger person, it's hard to imagine who we'll become when we're older. This is primarily because we've never been there and don't know what we'll go through getting there.

My wife, Mary Kay, and I have done many fun and great things. We've traveled and had the privilege of great friendships. We've also had the honor of investing in others whose impact far exceeds what we could have done alone.

At this stage of life, we have little to prove. It isn't that we're pulling into a shell and giving up on travel, friendships, or investing in others, but we no longer need to do these things to feel fulfilled. We get to do them because we desire to. We can do things that are part of our calling, but not our identity.

Calling vs. Identity

There's a big difference between calling and identity.

Our calling is what we are made for. Our identity is who we are.

The 'what' and the 'who' are different. The 'what' is about what we do. The 'who' is what enables us to do it.

Identity must come first. It enables us to do things without owning the result out of a need to bolster ourselves. Too often, people do things because it makes them feel good about themselves. Their doing meets the need of validating who they are.

The trap? You can never 'do' enough to feel good about who you are, if who you are isn't settled and secure. I don't care how you measure your doing: position, possessions, passions, or popularity. These are all vacuums that can never be filled in this life.

So identity must be established before calling.

Most of us must work on both in parallel. Ideally, the identity issue is resolved in the family of origin, which then provides the basis from which calling can be explored and developed. However, for most of us, we lacked that solid foundation of identity in our family of origin, so we have to work on it as adults while also attempting to identify our calling.

This is what makes our work so difficult in helping leaders identify their calling; it's enmeshed in identity.

Three Distinctions

If career is what you are paid for, and calling is what you are made for, then identity is what you are made of.

Think of a hammer. It's made for pounding things, but it's made of steel. Those are two different things. Ironically, a hammer only works well if its steel is more resilient than what it's pounding.

The same is true for identity. If the substance from which it's made isn't more resilient than what it's doing, it will falter. That's why pastors whose identity is wrapped up in the size of their church or the number of their followers will never truly fulfill their call. Their identity is enmeshed in their calling.

Only as they fully understand their identity in Christ and their unique characteristics will they be able to fulfill their calling appropriately.

My Identity and Calling

My identity is being a redeemed child of God who is fearfully and wonderfully made to do unique things. That uniqueness flows out of my hard wiring (catalytic, innovative, fun-loving) and software (habits of health, being special, working hard).

My calling is a derivative of my identity. It flows out of my identity. This makes sense in that God creates us first and then calls us second. This is consistent with Bobby Clinton's mantra: He works in you before He works through you.

His work in me is establishing and rooting my identity. Then He begins to develop my calling out of that.

So identity and calling are related; calling flows out of identity. But identity is always the foundation upon which calling is built. To do it in reverse sets us up for burnout.