Answering the Difficult Questions Series (2 of 10)

AM I DOING WHAT GOD CALLED ME TO DO?

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There is a question that doesn’t shout. It waits.

It waits until the house is quiet. Until the sermon is preached and the chairs are stacked and the lights are off. Until you’ve done the faithful thing for the hundredth time and nobody noticed. Then it leans in close and asks, gently but relentlessly:

Am I doing what God called me to do?

I’ve sat with that question in different seasons. Sometimes it arrives as holy restlessness — a stirring that says there is more, and it is not yet. Other times it arrives as plain fear, dressed up in spiritual language, whispering that I have missed my window, taken the wrong road, wasted years on something God never asked of me.

Both versions sound the same at 2 a.m. Learning to tell them apart has been one of the more important disciplines of my walk.

So let’s be candid about this. Not with tidy answers, but honestly.

First, let’s loosen the word “calling”

We tend to load the word calling with things Scripture never puts on it. We hear “calling” and think platform. Pulpit. Title. A role with a name badge and a start date. Something that finally explains us to other people.

But when Paul writes to Timothy, he describes calling this way: God “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9). Notice what comes first. Not assignment — salvation. Not a job description — a Person.

Before you were called to anything, you were called into something: union with Christ. Every other expression of calling grows out of that root. Which means the question “Am I doing what God called me to do?” has a prior question underneath it: Am I His? Am I walking with Him today?

If the answer to that is yes, then you are already standing inside your calling. Everything else is assignment, season, and stewardship.

Why the question gets so loud

Three things tend to crank up the volume.

Comparison. We live in an age of visible ministry. Everyone’s obedience is broadcast, curated, captioned. We watch other people’s highlight reels and measure them against our unedited footage. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Comparison will always lie to you, because it compares your middle to someone else’s mountaintop.

Hiddenness. There are long stretches where faithfulness looks like nothing. No fruit you can point to. No confirmation. Just the same small obediences, repeated. We mistake hiddenness for abandonment. But formation always precedes recognition — the years nobody sees are not wasted years, they are shaping years. David was anointed long before he was crowned, and in between he was tending sheep.

Ambition wearing spiritual clothing. Sometimes the ache isn’t really “Am I in God’s will?” It’s “Why hasn’t God promoted me yet?” That’s worth naming honestly. God is not offended by our honesty; He is grieved by our pretending.

What calling usually looks like on the ground

Here is the unglamorous truth I keep coming back to: calling is most often discerned backwards, not forwards.

We want a blueprint. God gives us a next step. “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). He rarely hands us the whole map — He hands us enough light for the next few feet.

And He has already told us the shape of the life He requires: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). That’s not a career path. It’s a posture. It travels with you into every job, every season, every ordinary Tuesday.

Paul put it plainly: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). Assigned. Not achieved. Not auditioned for. Assigned — and often assigned exactly where you already are.

Six honest questions to sit with

Not a formula. Just questions I’ve found useful when the fog rolls in.

1. Is there fruit? Not applause — fruit. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). Is Christ being formed in me and through me where I currently am? Fruit is a better compass than feeling.
2. Do others confirm my gifting? Calling is personal but rarely private. Community is God’s sanity check. If nobody who knows you well sees what you believe you’re called to, slow down and listen.
3. Am I faithful in the small thing? “Whoever is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10). Obedience in obscurity is the training ground for obedience in visibility. If the small thing is beneath you, the large thing is beyond you.
4. What am I willing to do unpaid? Not a rule, but a revealing test. What would you still do if no one ever thanked you for it?
5. Is there peace, even when there’s cost? God’s leading often includes difficulty, but it rarely includes sustained inner torment. Peace is not the absence of opposition; it’s the presence of His hand.
6. Am I running from something? Jonah had a calling. He also had a boat going the other direction. Sometimes our confusion is really avoidance in disguise.

When you’re in the waiting room

Waiting is not inactivity. It’s assignment.

If you’re in a season where nothing is moving, consider that God may be doing something in you that He cannot yet do through you. Character. Capacity. Patience. A healed wound. A quieter ego. Those things cannot be rushed, and they cannot be downloaded.

“Do not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). Due season implies a season that is not yet due. Your harvest has a calendar. You just don’t hold it.

And if you got it wrong?

Here is the mercy I want you to hear clearly: God’s purposes do not collapse because you took a detour.

Peter denied Him and was restored. Mark abandoned the mission and later became useful. Jonah ran the wrong way and God still used him to turn a city around. “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Irrevocable. He does not rescind what He has given because you stumbled.

Repentance is not disqualification. It’s the road back onto the path.

So, how do you answer the question?

Maybe like this.

Lord, I don’t need to know the whole plan. I need to know You. Show me the next faithful step — and give me the grace to take it, whether anyone sees or not.

Because here is what I’ve come to believe: the question “Am I doing what God called me to do?” is answered less by analysis and more by abiding. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (John 15:16). Abide, and fruit follows. Fruit that lasts. Fruit that doesn’t need a caption.

Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called (Ephesians 4:1). That’s the whole invitation. Not spectacular. Just worthy.

And if you’re still unsure tonight — that’s alright. Uncertainty is not disobedience. Sometimes it’s just the sound of a soul leaning forward, listening.

Keep walking. Keep listening. Keep journaling.

He is not confused about you.

The Lord called me to ministry at the age of 16, during a youth group meeting, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I did not know what that calling looked like, only that I knew I would serve the Lord in ministry at the appointed time. It has taken 42 years of much back and forth, seeking, searching, straying and serving with a humble heart to have been ordained as a Pastor in our local church, (this past August 23rd, 2026) where the Lord has firmly planted Nancy and I. Never give up on the call the Lord has placed on your life, embedded in your heart, it will come to pass, and it will bear fruit in due season. For me, patience, and a lot of hard knocks were inevitable in this journey and formation. Be encouraged, the Lord Jesus is not done with you!