My friend Willis Finifrock worked as a college teacher, a turkey farmer, a fuel oil truck driver, and a furnace repairman. He is also a father of three boys, a husband to Kay, a grandpa, and a lay leader and choir member at Barnum Community Church, the first church I pastored in Minnesota. One word holds all those jobs and roles together–vocation.

The same is true for your life. Vocation simply means calling. Throughout the Bible, God calls ordinary, often hidden and always sinful people to himself. Then he sends them back into the world in various roles and relationships with work–paid or unpaid, at home or outside the home.

For the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century, vocation meant much more than your “job.” Vocation is how God assigns and then works through us to govern his creation, release creativity, restrain evil, and provide for human beings. As author Os Guinness defined it: “[Vocation] is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service.” Given the scope and depth of vocation, it drives us into a deep dependence on the life of the Church, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the need for a prayer-filled life.

Where has God stationed you–and with whom? How is the Lord calling you in this season of your life? How does your Sunday worship infuse your “Monday morning” job, paid or unpaid? How does prayer empower your vocation? How do we keep love at the heart of our calling? We’ll explore these questions as we seek to bring everything we are, do, and have under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As we surrender to the Holy Spirit’s power to equip us for these callings, I trust we will see Lord’s goodness in our faith, work, Sunday worship, and loving our neighbors.