289: Moving Through Fear to Step Into Our Career Calling with Kelsey Kemp
How can we trust God and overcome fear as we step into our career calling? In today’s episode, Christian career coach Kelsey Kemp joins us to uncover what it truly means to partner with God while exploring our life’s purpose – despite the very real fears that can hold us back. If finding purpose has been on your heart, this episode will support you to move forward with confidence.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
- [03:05] What Are The Biggest Lies People Struggle With When It Comes to Seeking Their God-Given Calling?
- [06:20] The Importance of Taking Action When Seeking God for Our Calling
- [09:04] Create an Energy-Giving versus Energy-Draining List
- [14:15] Ask Yourself This Question When You Feel Paralyzed By Which Calling to Choose
- [17:00] How Can We Hold The Tension When We Know Our Calling Is Coming But It Is Not Quite There Yet?
- [19:18] “Our Calling Is Much Less of a Singular Event, It Is a Lifelong Conversation With God”
- [26:03] Alicia’s Reflections: Many Different Emotions Come Up Around Life Transitions, Use Emotional Confidence to Help Support You Through Them!
[03:05] What Are The Biggest Lies People Struggle With When It Comes to Seeking Their God-Given Calling?
The first lie Kelsey sees people struggle with when it comes to their calling is the idea that it has to be some huge, “Moses at the burning bush” moment. That can feel really discouraging if you are just waiting your entire life to see or hear a sign from God. But here is the truth, there is a purpose for you right now, and God cares deeply that you are here. As it says in Acts 17, “God marked out the boundaries of your land and appointed your specific time in history so that you might know Him and reach out for Him because He’s not far from any of us.”
The lie of needing to wait for “one big moment” can be dismantled by looking at the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). It is a better model for understanding our calling than the “Moses at the burning bush” scenario. In the parable, God is represented as the master who entrusts His wealth to three servants before heading off on a long journey. There is no timeline and no clear instructions about what to do while He is gone. Two of the servants get to work right away, making the most of what they have been given, and when the master comes back, they are praised for their faithfulness. The third servant is scared of messing up and he gets rebuked as wicked and lazy. The master says, “What little you had will now be given to someone else.” This shows us that we do not need to be perfect, we need to take action.
Kelsey reminds us that each one of us still has a purpose in this season, even if we do not have clear instructions. You are called to take action for the glory of God and the good of others – God deeply cares about the work you do. Kelsey says that sometimes people think when she talks about discerning your calling that she is talking about finding your “one big thing”. But the truth is, the Bible does not seem to emphasize the idea of a specific calling tied to a job title. So many people are held back because they think that their calling is a tiny pin on a pinboard that is easy to miss. This ends up crippling them and they feel extra pressure in every step.
[06:20] The Importance of Taking Action When Seeking God for Our Calling
As the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass says, “I prayed for 20 years, but did not start seeing change until I prayed with my feet.” This reminds us that we need to take action. Praying and thinking about your calling can be problematic when you spend your entire life in your head. Kelsey suggests that we need to trust that God is working with us just as He did with Abraham in Genesis 12. He commissioned him to go out and in verse one, He says “Go out to the land that I will show you.” Abraham did not know the next step or what would happen, he just had to take a crazy chance.
We need to do tangible market research such as seeking, asking, and knocking, to discover the vast variety of jobs that are out there. Many people feel stuck because they made a list of limited careers that do not ignite their passion or sense of purpose. This does not mean a career that excites you does not exist – you most likely just have not discovered it yet because you are just thinking about it.
Clarity comes through action, not just thought and prayer. Trust that God will guide you as you take steps to learn about new opportunities through online research or informational interviews with professionals in fields that interest you. You might find yourself thinking, “Wow, God really spoke to me through that interaction” and that happened by interacting with His creation rather than just staying in a closet and making your biggest career decisions there.
For those of us who have experienced disappointment or hurt, it is so tempting to stick to the “safest” route of staying hidden or planning endlessly. While education and preparation are important, there is also a real danger of getting stuck in that cycle and never actually taking action. At some point, we have to decide and say, “Okay, I am going to step out and do this.” One of Kelsey’s friends once said to her “A lot of people treat life as if God is just giving us a whole bunch of red lights until He gives us one green light. But life with God is more like a lot of green lights with yellow or red lights every once in a while.”
[09:04] Create an Energy-Giving versus Energy-Draining List
Kelsey reminds us that most jobs are morally neutral and you are not bad for selecting an accounting job over a consulting job, for example. God is in control of our destiny but He will still give us a choice. Our choices can also make us stuck because we might feel like we cannot mess something up. But there does come a point where God says, “What job fits your personality better? What do you like better? What would be more interesting?” Even when looking at jobs for our future, there is freedom in Christ.
Kelsey’s top tool for everyone to take away today is to create an energy-giving vs energy-draining list. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the right will be your energy-giving and on the left will be your energy-draining. Write down all of the tasks and activities that you notice give you a pep in your step when you get to do them. Then notice all of the things that feel neutral or negative. Then you need to start paying attention to them. If you notice that a certain aspect of your job is draining you, what are you doing to find a different specialty within your field? Move into something where you can go from spending 40% of your time on tasks that you are good at and energize you to 50% – and move up from there.
[14:15] Ask Yourself This Question When You Feel Paralyzed By Which Calling to Choose
For many of us, there are so many different things we can do so we start to get paralyzed by choice. If you feel this way, the first thing Kelsey recommends is to have a firm belief that they are not equally as good for you. When she was asking herself “What is my calling?” she made a list of what she was good at and what she enjoyed doing. She firmly thought that she liked business-building activities, deep conversations, art, history, and design – all equally. They are each radically different so she talked to people in each of those fields and heard what their day-to-day was like. This allowed her to picture her life in 10-20 years. She realized that she never imagined herself as a person in her 40s in an auction house selling art – she wanted to be an entrepreneur.
In addition, she always asked, “How can I be most helpful, God?” A sense of calling is not just found by what you do, it is found by what God has created you to be helpful. She asked herself, “What are people praying for that I could be a part of?” Of course, God ordains the arts, as we read in Exodus 35, but after reading that passage, Kelsey felt that she would sacrifice big time to get to help people in career coaching – which helped her discern between the two options.
[17:00] How Can We Hold The Tension When We Know Our Calling Is Coming But It Is Not Quite There Yet?
All of us are going to do our best to try to listen to what God has for our calling but honestly, many of us switch careers in our lifetimes. Many of us have a calling on our hearts but we know that it is still green on the vine. So how can we hold this tension while we wait? Kelsey shares that this has also happened in her life. She felt called to speak in a bunch of different places and the beginning of her coaching business was not like that. She had to sink into her calling of spiritual basics with God before this happened. There are a few helpful passages that Kelsey recommends to support us on this journey:
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 says “You don't know what’s going to work equally well. So why don't you try a bunch of things and acknowledge that God is the one that understands all the mystery of it all?”
Ecclesiastes 11:5-6 says, “As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother's womb. So you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. Sow your seed in the morning and at evening. Let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that or both will do equally well.”
Maybe you need to test out a variety of callings and you can do this by asking people in that field. If you have a desire to write a book, start by writing a blog and see if any topics take off. You can likely do this as you are working your full-time job. As it says in Ecclesiastes 11:1 “Invest in seven ventures, no eight” because you do not know which one is going to work out. God is talking about the importance of diversification.
[19:18] “Our Calling Is Much Less of a Singular Event, It Is a Lifelong Conversation With God”
When you think about the parable of the sowing of the seed, when the farmer sows his seed, some fall in the path, some on the rocks, and some among the thorns. It goes in all different places and that is okay. The same thing happens in life. While there may not be more “bad things” now than in previous times, we are far more aware of them because of the news and social media. This awareness fuels our desire for control and clear answers. We find ourselves longing for certainty – wanting to know exactly what to do and where to go next. We keep asking “Show me what to do next” regarding our jobs because we want to be good and faithful servants.
Kelsey shares that she sees people seeking the will of God in their careers as a method of control. You have to ask yourself “What is my purpose in seeking God’s will? Is it because I want to find the perfect thing and believe that nothing bad will ever happen if I do?” If that is the case, she reminds us that we do not see Biblical precedent for that. Every person who played a significant role in the kingdom of God experienced pain. Even Jesus Christ Himself was called to something very specific, and He asked for the cup to be taken from him if the Lord would will it.
We are not entitled to having everything look successful all the time for it to be successful in God’s eyes. God often works through seasons of desert and discipline, shaping something beautiful and eternal – something far greater than any earthly riches or temporary security we might desire. So do not equate God’s will with having a constantly “shiny” life, she says. Instead, trust that you’ll have a meaningful life because God is there with you. Most characters in the Bible ran toward what was unsafe most of the time. God called them to a land that was unknown to them, they called David to fight the giant, Paul was hated by Christians and then he was called to speak to them. So a calling does not have to be comfortable to be a calling from God – in fact it very well might not be.
Kelsey shares that when she started this path of entrepreneurship, she quit her consulting job and ended up having to clean houses because she got scammed out of her savings right away. While this was an incredibly painful experience, she now sees it as God’s way of preparing her for what the journey was about – resting in Him, trusting Him as her ultimate security, and relying on Him for her daily bread. As things became more comfortable, Kelsey found herself asking, “How can I continue to boldly trust God?” She realized He had already helped her let go of relying on the proverbial “Egypt” for security. Your calling might feel terrifying or it might not – you just have to wait and see.
Your calling is happening in real-time. It is not like God gave you your calling when you were 5 and now you are 45 and it’s the same. Our relationship with God changes, he equips us differently, and our calling is always shaping and changing based on our experiences. It is an adventure with Him to figure it out. Kelsey reminds us that our calling is much less of one of singular static event, and more of an ongoing, lifelong conversation with God.
God says to the Israelites through Moses, “I showed you miraculous signs and brought you out of Egypt. Yet you didn’t understand why. I didn’t give you eyes to see or ears to hear. But every day, I provided food for you. I did this so you would know that I am the Lord your God.” Even when we do not fully understand what is happening, that can be God’s way of helping us look up and realize His grace. It is like saying, “God, I don’t even have to understand what’s going on because You are holding me.” That’s good and godly too.
[26:03] Alicia’s Reflections: Many Different Emotions Come Up Around Life Transitions, Use Emotional Confidence to Help Support You Through Them!
Figuring out our calling can be challenging. There are so many moments in life when we feel like we have been moving in one direction, only for God to shift things and say, “No, now you are going this way in your career or calling.” Sometimes those shifts have nothing to do with choices we have made – they might be the result of circumstances outside our control, something someone else did, or just life taking an unexpected turn. Either way, there might be some pain and hurt behind this shift. Not only the fear of stepping out and making the wrong decision but also sadness in switching.
I know for me, in this season of life, and for a lot of moms I know, this empty nest stage brings a lot of mixed emotions. As our kids grow older and start going to college, life shifts in ways we did not fully expect. Our roles change and there is often this undertone of sadness, disappointment, and grief. But at the same time, there is this new freedom and exciting opportunities to explore paths we could not before.
My point in sharing all of that is to acknowledge that any time we are in a season of transition or stepping into a new calling, it comes with a whole range of emotions. Our emotions are an opportunity for us to step into a deeper relationship with the Lord. When emotions come up, it is a chance for us to lovingly examine what is inside, to acknowledge why those feelings make sense, and to hear God’s compassion for us. He felt fear before He went to the cross, He understands these feelings so we do not have to push them down. We can open up and allow God to help us understand them.
In my book, Emotional Confidence, we talk through a three-step process called ADD, acknowledge, discern, and decide. This tool helps us navigate through tricky feelings like this and I highly recommend picking up the book if you have not already. It is a great tool to help us through making a courageous choice as we talked about today. And if you are looking for specific advice on how to move through a career challenge, reach out to Kelsey and download her 8-step process for free here.
RESOURCES:
Tired of up-and-down feelings stealing your peace, sabotaging your relationships, and filling your mind with self-defeating thoughts? If so, make sure to get my new book, “Emotional Confidence: 3 Simple Steps to Manage Emotions with Science and Scripture”.
Want to see what Emotional Confidence is about? Download the first chapter for FREE!
Connect with Christian career coach Kelsey Kemp
RELATED EPISODES: