On her last night shift, Halimat did the medication round herself. She did not need to. She was the ward sister on the surgical ward of a busy general hospital in Lagos, and she had two staff nurses and a student on duty with her. But she wanted to go from bed to bed one more time. She checked the drip in bed four. She adjusted the pillows of the old man in bed nine who had been with them for three weeks. She sat for a few minutes with a young woman who was frightened about her operation in the morning, and prayed with her quietly when she asked.
At seven in the morning, she handed over to the day sister, signed the report book for the last time and gave back her keys. The ward staff had bought a cake. Someone made a speech. The matron, who had trained her nineteen years earlier, held her hand and said, “We are losing a good one.”
Halimat smiled through all of it. Then she went into the changing room, folded her uniform carefully, sat down on the bench and wept.
Her mother had suffered a stroke two months earlier in Ilorin. She could no longer walk unaided or feed herself, and Halimat’s brothers were abroad. Her mother still prayed five times a day and had never fully understood her daughter’s decision, made at university, to follow Christ. But she trusted her daughter’s nursing more than anyone else’s, and she had asked for her. Halimat had prayed about it for weeks. She was sure it was right. And she felt as though she were resigning from her calling.
“Nursing was my calling,” she told me a few months later, sitting in the small parlour of her mother’s house. “Since I was twelve I knew it. God gave me this work. Now I am bathing one patient and waiting for the NEPA light to come back so I can iron. I do not know what I am any more.”
PunchlineOn the Sunday before we spoke, the visiting preacher at her church in Ilorin had asked everyone who was “walking in their calling” to stand. She had stayed in her seat.
Two ways of getting it wrong
Halimat’s distress came from a very common belief: that a person’s calling and a person’s career are the same thing. If your job is your calling, then losing the job, changing it or setting it aside means losing your calling. Retirement becomes a kind of spiritual death. Unemployment becomes a sign of God’s displeasure. And a season of caring for a sick parent becomes a detour from the will of God.
There is an opposite mistake, and it is just as common in churches. It treats only certain jobs as real callings, usually pastoral ministry or full-time missionary work, and regards everything else as merely a way to pay the bills. In this view, the banker, the mechanic and the nurse are not really called. They work, and then on Sunday they serve God. Some young believers carry a quiet guilt for years because they enjoy engineering or law and suspect they should have “gone into ministry” instead.
Both mistakes misunderstand the word calling. Scripture uses it first for God’s call to salvation and fellowship with Himself: “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9). That call comes to every believer equally. Within that call, God gives each of us particular places, relationships and responsibilities, and our paid work is one of the most important of them. But it is one of them. A paid occupation may express a large part of your calling. It never contains the whole of it.
Remain with God where you were called
Paul addressed this question directly in his first letter to Corinth. Some of the new believers were wondering whether conversion required them to change their outward circumstances. Should a married believer leave an unbelieving spouse? Should a Jewish believer remove the marks of circumcision, or a Gentile believer receive them? Should a slave who came to faith try to escape his situation in order to serve God properly? Paul answered:
But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
“As the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk.” Paul’s basic instruction is that conversion does not require a person to abandon his ordinary station in order to follow Christ. The call of God comes to you where you are, and you can serve Him there. The Jewish believer does not have to become Gentile, and the Gentile believer does not have to become Jewish. “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.”
Verse 20 is often misread: “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.” In context, the same calling refers to the situation in which God’s call found you. Paul is not saying your job is your calling in some fixed, permanent sense. He is saying that your outward situation is the place where you live out the call of God, and that it is a legitimate place to do so.
But look at verse 21. “Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.” Paul does not tell the slave that his condition is a permanent divine assignment. If freedom becomes possible, he should take it. Circumstances can and sometimes should change. What matters is that, whatever the situation, the believer belongs to Christ. “He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.”
It needs saying plainly that Paul is not endorsing slavery here. He tells believers to “be not ye the servants of men” in their deepest loyalty, and to take freedom where they can. His concern is to free believers from the idea that their standing with God depends on their social position.
Then comes the summary: “let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.” The key phrase is with God. Your calling is first a relationship. The occupation, the marital status and the social position are the settings in which that relationship is lived. They may change. God remains.
That is why Halimat had not lost her calling when she gave back her keys. She had been called to God. She had been living out that call on a surgical ward. Now she was living it out in her mother’s parlour in Ilorin.
Whatever you do, as to the Lord
If 1 Corinthians 7 frees us from tying calling too tightly to career, Colossians 3 frees us from treating ordinary work as spiritually empty. Paul writes to all believers: “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17). Whatsoever. No activity is outside the reach of that word. Then he addresses those whose work was the hardest and least honoured in the ancient world:
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
Paul is speaking to slaves. In the Roman world, they did much of the labour that kept households, farms and businesses running. Their work was often heavy, repetitive and invisible. And Paul tells them that this work could be done “as to the Lord.” He even says, “ye serve the Lord Christ.”
That is astonishing. The person scrubbing pots in a Colossian household was serving Christ. The labour itself could be an act of worship, offered “heartily,” which translates a phrase meaning from the soul. If that was true for a slave, it is certainly true for a nurse, a teacher, a driver, a civil servant, a banker or a trader in Balogun market.
Paul also names the opposite of this kind of work: “eyeservice, as menpleasers.” Eyeservice is work that is done only when the supervisor is watching. It is the effort that rises when the manager walks past and falls when he leaves. A believer who works for the Lord cannot do eyeservice, because the Lord is always watching. “Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”
These verses need a guard-rail. Paul’s instruction to work heartily does not mean that a believer must accept exploitation, unpaid wages, sexual harassment or abuse in the name of serving the Lord. The same letter tells masters to give their servants “that which is just and equal” (Colossians 4:1). Where an employer acts unjustly, a believer may seek redress through proper channels, speak up, join with others and, where necessary, leave. Working for the Lord means working with integrity. It does not mean surrendering your dignity to people who abuse their power.
Your paid work may express a large part of your calling, but it never contains the whole of it. You were called first to God, and that call goes with you into every job and every season.
Work that gives
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians includes a single verse that gives one of the richest pictures of work in the New Testament:
Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
The verse traces a journey. It starts with a thief: “Let him that stole steal no more.” It moves to a worker: “but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good.” And it ends with a giver: “that he may have to give to him that needeth.”
Notice the purposes of work this verse reveals. First, work replaces dishonest gain. The believer earns what he has. Second, the work itself must be “the thing which is good.” Not every way of making money is compatible with following Christ. A job that requires deception, exploitation or harm to others cannot be offered to God, however well it pays. Third, and most strikingly, work is meant to make generosity possible. Paul does not say the believer works only to survive or to get rich. He works so that he may have something to give.
This means that the money you earn has a calling too. Your salary, your profit and your wages are part of God’s provision for your household, and they also make you capable of helping others. The engineer who supports his widowed sister’s children, the trader who pays the school fees of a neighbour’s son and the civil servant who quietly gives to a struggling church are all fulfilling something Paul describes here. Their work and their giving belong together.
It also means that a believer who is able to work should not be idle. Paul told the Thessalonians that “if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). That instruction was aimed at those who were able to work and refused to. It was never meant for the sick, the disabled or those who genuinely cannot find employment, and it gives no licence to despise them.
The tentmaker who preached
Some believers assume that the more spiritual a person is, the less he should be involved in ordinary work. The life of the apostle Paul contradicts that assumption:
After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers. And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.
When Paul arrived in Corinth, he found a Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla, who had been expelled from Rome. “And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.” The greatest missionary in the early church spent his weekdays cutting and stitching leather or goat-hair cloth. On the Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue.
Paul did this deliberately. He reminded the Ephesian elders, “these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me” (Acts 20:34). He told the Thessalonians that he had worked “night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you” (2 Thessalonians 3:8). He also defended the right of those who preach the gospel to be supported by the church: “Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). Both arrangements are honourable. Some ministers are supported by the church so that they can give themselves fully to the word and prayer. Others work in another trade and serve alongside it. Neither is more spiritual than the other.
And Priscilla and Aquila themselves were not professional ministers. They were business people, and yet they became some of the most important teachers in the early church. They later explained “the way of God more perfectly” to Apollos (Acts 18:26), and a church met in their house (1 Corinthians 16:19). Their trade and their ministry ran side by side.
Remember too that Jesus Himself was known in Nazareth as “the carpenter” (Mark 6:3). For most of His earthly life, the eternal Son of God worked with wood. Those years were not wasted while He waited for His real calling to begin. They were part of the life the Father declared Himself well pleased with before Jesus had preached a single sermon.
Excellence in a foreign court
The Old Testament gives us several believers whose calling was worked out almost entirely in what we would call secular employment. Joseph managed the economy of Egypt. Nehemiah was cupbearer to the Persian king. Esther was a queen in a pagan court. And Daniel and his friends were trained in the administration of Babylon:
As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.
“God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.” Notice who gave the skill. These young men were studying the literature and sciences of Babylon, a culture full of idolatry, and God gave them understanding in it. Their learning was a gift from Him. And when the king examined them, he found them “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.”
Daniel did not treat his work in the civil service as a compromise to be endured until he could get into real ministry. He served under several kings for decades, and he did it with such excellence and integrity that his enemies later admitted they could find no fault in him except concerning the law of his God (Daniel 6:5). His calling was expressed through his career, while his faithfulness to God went deeper than the career. When the two came into conflict, he chose God, even at the cost of the lions’ den.
This gives us a pattern for believers in government ministries, banks, oil companies, hospitals and schools. Your work is a legitimate place to serve God. Excellence in it honours Him. And your loyalty to Him goes deeper than your loyalty to any employer.
John the Baptist made the same point in a simpler way. When tax collectors came to him asking what they should do, he did not tell them to resign. He told them, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you” (Luke 3:13). When soldiers asked, he told them to do violence to no man, to accuse no one falsely, “and be content with your wages” (Luke 3:14). The calling was expressed through honest work in the same occupation. In a country where padded contracts, inflated invoices and small “settlements” at every desk are treated as normal, that instruction is not small. A believer who refuses to take what is not his, and who does his job properly when nobody is watching, is living out his calling in public.
When the career swallows the calling
There is one more danger to name, and it tends to affect the most diligent people. A career can grow so large that it crowds out everything else God has called us to. The hospital, the firm or the business takes the evenings, then the weekends, then the family holidays. The children grow up seeing their father mostly through a phone screen. The marriage runs on whatever energy is left at eleven at night. Church becomes a place to catch up on sleep.
Often this happens for understandable reasons. Rent in Lagos is high. School fees rise every year. Extended family members depend on the one who has a good job. A believer can feel that any slackening of effort would be a failure of responsibility. But the psalmist gives a needed warning: “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). Hard work is good. Anxious, endless labour that leaves no room for rest, worship or love is not what God asks.
Jesus put the matter even more sharply: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). A person can succeed in his career and fail in his calling. He can be promoted at the office while neglecting the wife he promised to cherish, the children he was given to raise and the God who called him to Himself.
So part of honouring your calling is setting limits on your career. That may mean refusing some overtime, choosing a job with less pay and more time at home, or deciding not to pursue a promotion that would take you away from your family for months at a time. These are not easy decisions, and believers will make them differently according to their circumstances. But a job that consumes the whole of your life has taken something that belongs to God and to the people He has given you.
A calling larger than any career
NuggetIf calling is first to God and then expressed through many responsibilities, then a person’s career can change without the calling being lost. This has important consequences.
It means a change of career can be faithful. Some people work in one field for twenty years and then move into another. Some leave paid employment to start a business. Some leave a secure job to serve in a church or mission. Others leave church employment to return to a profession. None of these changes, in itself, is a step up or a step down in spiritual terms. Paul’s “if thou mayest be made free, use it rather” shows that changing circumstances can be wise. The question is whether you are following God faithfully in the new place.
It means retirement is not the end of calling. A retired headmaster who now mentors young teachers, a grandmother who prays daily for her grandchildren, a retired engineer who helps his church manage its building projects: all are still living out the call of God.
It means unemployment, though painful, does not remove a believer from God’s purpose. A person who has lost a job should seek work diligently, and the church should help practically. But the call to know God, to love and serve others and to grow in Christlikeness continues through the season of searching.
And it means that seasons of caring for others are part of calling. Paul writes that children and grandchildren should “learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God” (1 Timothy 5:4). To requite means to repay. Caring for a parent who once cared for you is described here as “good and acceptable before God.” It is not a detour from God’s will. It is God’s will for that season.
When you are making decisions about work, then, you do not need to find the one perfect job that will fulfil your entire purpose. No job can carry that weight. Ask instead: Where can I use what God has given me? Where can I work honestly and with excellence? What do my responsibilities to my family require at this stage of life? What needs are in front of me? What do wise and mature believers see in me? Pray, take counsel and act. God’s will is less like a narrow tightrope and more like a wide road with clear boundaries.
Six months after she moved to Ilorin, Halimat was called to the house next door. A neighbour’s boy had pulled a pot of boiling water off a stove and scalded his arm. His mother was screaming. Halimat ran over, cooled the burn under running water for twenty minutes, covered it properly, calmed the child and his mother, and insisted that they take him to the hospital that afternoon. She went with them.
Within a few weeks, word had spread through the compound. Women came to her with questions about blood pressure, diabetes, a baby’s fever, an elderly father’s bedsores. She answered what she could and sent them to the clinic when they needed it. Her church asked her to run a short course for members who were caring for sick relatives at home. Eleven people came to the first session. Most of them, she discovered, had been doing it alone for years without anyone teaching them how to lift a patient safely or prevent pressure sores.
“I thought I had left my calling in Lagos,” she told me the next time we spoke. “But I brought it with me. It was never only the ward. It was God, and the people He put in front of me.”
Her mother lived for another three years. Near the end, she said something Halimat has never forgotten. “You nursed many people in that big hospital,” the old woman said. “But you were sent here for me.” She did not become a Christian before she died, and Halimat still grieves that. But she died clean, comfortable and loved, in the arms of a daughter who had learned that her calling was larger than her job.
PunchlineHalimat now works part-time at a hospital in Ilorin and continues to train family caregivers through her church. Her responsibilities have changed several times. Her calling has not.
Perhaps your work feels like the whole of who you are, and you are afraid of what would be left if it were taken away. Or perhaps you have treated your job as spiritually empty and kept God for Sundays. Either way, hear Paul again: wherever you are called, abide with God. Do your work heartily, as to the Lord. Work for what is good so that you can give. And when the season changes, as it will, take your calling with you into the next place.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you tended to treat your job as your entire calling, or as something with no spiritual meaning at all? What has that done to you?
- Paul says that slaves in Colossae could “serve the Lord Christ” through their work. What would it look like for you to do your work “heartily, as to the Lord” this week?
- Ephesians 4:28 says we work “that he may have to give to him that needeth.” How does your work make generosity possible?
- Where does your workplace pressure you toward dishonesty or eyeservice? How could you remain faithful there?
- What responsibilities outside your paid work are also part of your calling in this season of life?
This Week
Write down every significant responsibility you currently carry: your paid work, your family, your church, your neighbourhood and any others. Beside each one, write a short sentence describing how you could serve God through it this week. Then choose one task at work that you usually do carelessly or only when someone is watching, and do it with full attention and integrity as an offering to the Lord. If your current season includes caring for someone, thank God that this too is “good and acceptable before God.”
A Prayer
Lord, thank You for calling me first to Yourself, into the fellowship of Your Son. Thank You for the work You have given me and for the people I serve through it. Forgive me where I have made my job my identity, and where I have treated my work as if it had nothing to do with You. Teach me to work heartily, as to You, with honesty and excellence whether anyone is watching or not. Let my work provide for my household and make me generous to those in need. When my responsibilities change, help me to follow You faithfully into the new place, knowing that I am still Yours and still called. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.