Discerning a Calling

Maybe you’re familiar with the concept that whatever breaks your heart could be the difficulty, situation, or topic where the world needs your voice and presence the most. It’s the idea that when you find yourself deeply grieved by a situation, and you hear yourself saying, “It shouldn’t be like this”,  God might be calling you to change things.

I see this process at work in the life of the Old Testament prophet, Nehemiah. 

Nehemiah was exiled a thousand miles from his Jewish homeland, serving a Persian king. If you’ve ever lived far from your native country, your hometown, or your family, you know that distance stirs up questions about the people and places you love. These questions range from curiosity to concern, random to persistent.

Question marks are heavy. Not knowing what’s going on, not having an answer, and not hearing a word, are burdens hard to bear. Whether questions linger about physical, spiritual, or emotional matters, they feel like carrying around a backpack of bricks or walking under storm clouds, thick with rain.

For Nehemiah, the only way news traveled was by foot - a reality we can barely imagine today - so when a band of brothers arrived in Susa from Jerusalem, he went straight to them for updates about escapees, survivors, and the capital city. 

What they shared only weighed Nehemiah down further, as they unloaded on him all the trouble, shame, brokenness, and destruction in Jerusalem. But how Nehemiah responded to the news, can serve as a template for us; when our hearts cry out, “It shouldn't be like this”, Nehemiah shows us what to do about it:

He sat down

He wept

He mourned for days

He fasted

He prayed

If you’re bearing a burden of “it shouldn’t be like this,” follow Nehemiah’s five-fold response, found in chapter 1, and see how God might actually open doors to a calling on your life.

For more on fasting, check out this article.