35. What Is My Calling? How do I find it? Primary Calling, Secondary Calling, and Assignment Explained

You have changed lanes before. A new job, a new ministry, a new chapter — each one entered with real hope that this would be the one that finally fit. And none of them fully answered the question. There isn't something wrong with you. You have been chasing the wrong thing — because nobody ever gave you a map.

This episode gives you the map. There are three levels — primary calling, secondary calling, and assignment — and most people have been living entirely at the third level without ever settling the first two. Until you understand how they nest inside each other, you will keep experiencing the end of every assignment as a loss of calling. And that conclusion is costing people their faith.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The three levels of calling — primary, secondary, and assignment — and why they are not the same thing
• Why the primary calling gives the secondary calling its character, the secondary calling gives the assignment its meaning, and the assignment gives the primary calling its current address
• What calling actually is and why it was established before you were born
• What yada means in Jeremiah 1 and why God's knowing of you precedes your forming
• What poiema means in Ephesians 2:10 and why you are God's poem before you are His worker
• Practical examples of what primary calling, secondary calling, and assignment look like in a real person's life
• The three things that happen when calling and assignment get confused: idolatry, restlessness, and guilt
• How to hold an assignment with full investment and open hands at the same time

Key Scripture references: Jeremiah 1:4-5, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 7:17, Romans 8:28-30

Perfect for: Christians who keep changing jobs or ministries looking for the right fit, believers who lost a role or ministry and felt like they lost their calling with it, people carrying guilt because their current assignment feels ordinary, anyone who has been asking "what is my calling" for years without a satisfying answer.

Part of our series: The Purpose Arc — Part 2 of The Formation Trilogy (Episodes 34-42) Follow-up to Episode 34: "You Are Not an Accident — What the Image of God Says About Your Purpose" Next episode — Episode 36: "Living From Purpose Instead of Toward It"

Connect with us via our Instagram: @faithformed_pod

Email us any questions or comments to yourpursuitpodcast@gmail.com

Order your copy of my latest book, "The Purpose in the Pause", here

Learn more about me at www.justindbelt.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You've changed lanes before. Maybe more than once. Maybe more times than you want to count. I know I have. Maybe it was a new job that felt closer to the thing. Or a new ministry that seemed like it was finally in the neighborhood of what you were built for. A new city, a new church, a new chapter. Each one entered with real hope that this would be, that maybe this would be the one that finally fit. And some of them were good. Some of them were genuinely good. But none of them fully answered the question. And after a while, the question started to feel less like an invitation and more like an accusation. Why can't you figure this out? Why does everyone else seem to know what they're supposed to be doing while you're still standing here with the same question that you've been carrying since you were 22? Why does every new assignment feel right for a season and then start to feel like a costume that you borrowed from someone else? I want to tell you something today that I think will change the way that you understand that experience. Because you're not broken and you're not behind. You're not the person who missed the moment. You've just been chasing the wrong thing. And it's not because you're faithless or confused or incapable of discernment, but it's because nobody told you the difference between a calling and an assignment. And those two things, they're not the same. Welcome to Faithformed. I'm Justin. This is episode 35 and part two of the purpose arc. Last week we laid the foundation, the Imago Dei, which means to be made in the image of God, and why the purpose question has to start with identity before it can move on to assignment. So if you haven't heard episode 35, go back. This episode builds directly on that foundation. But today we make a distinction that I think will do more practical work in your life than almost any other concept that we will cover in this entire arc. The difference between calling and assignment. What each one is, what each one requires, and what happens when you confuse them, which most people do for most of their lives. Now, this is the podcast that is about honest faith for people who don't have it all together. And so if that's you, you're in a safe space. Let's dig in. Let me start by naming the confusion directly. When most people say that they are looking for their calling, have you ever said that? What they actually mean is they are looking for their assignment, the right career, the right ministry, the right lane that will finally make the purpose question quiet down. And they're using the word calling when they mean the thing that they're supposed to do. And that confusion, while understandable, is producing something in people that I want to name clearly. And that is a specific kind of exhaustion. And it's not the exhaustion of doing too much. The exhaustion of doing things that don't feel like yours. The exhaustion of wearing lanes that were never cut for your particular shape. The exhaustion of people who are who are working hard and serving faithfully, but they still wake up with the nagging feeling that they have not yet found the thing that they were actually built for. And when an assignment ends, when the ministry closes or the job changes or the chapter turns, then people who have conflated calling and assignment experience it as a loss of calling. As if God took something essential away from them, as if the failure of the assignment is evidence that the calling was never real. And I've watched people walk away from faith over this. Not because God failed them, but because they believed that their calling was attached to an assignment that ended. And when that assignment ended, they concluded that their calling ended with it. And I can't tell you how wrong that conclusion is. But it is also completely understandable, especially if nobody ever taught you the difference. So if this is your first time hearing that there is a difference between calling and assignment, I want to serve as your teacher right now. Can I teach? Can I teach? Okay, let me teach. Now, before I define calling and assignment, what I need to do is give you a map. Because there are actually three levels here, not two. And most people have never had them laid out clearly. Okay, so here we go. The first level is primary calling. This is who you are. This is the deepest, most permanent grain of your personhood. It's the specific way that God has wired you to reflect his image in the world. And it was established before you were born. It never changes. It is not a job description and it is not a ministry title, okay? It is the theme that runs through everything you have ever done. The thing that you keep doing regardless of what you were hired or appointed or asked to do. Okay? So we have that primary level. The first level is primary calling. But the second level is secondary calling. And this is your vocational lane, more often than not. It's the particular domain or sphere of life where your primary calling tends to express itself most consistently. It is more specific than primary calling, but it but more stable than any single assignment. See, someone whose primary calling is to build people might carry a secondary calling in education. Someone whose primary calling is healing might carry a secondary calling in pastoral care or medicine or counseling. The secondary calling gives the primary calling a lane to freely run in. And then that leads to the third level of the map, and that is the assignment. Okay? And this is what you are doing right now: the specific job, uh, the church, the organization or context where your secondary calling is being expressed in this particular season. Notice it has a beginning, but it also has an end. It is the most specific and the most seasonal of the three. Remember, first level, primary calling. Second level, secondary calling, which is a little bit more specific, which gives framing for the primary calling. And then the third level is the assignment. Now, here's how they relate to one another. The primary calling gives the secondary calling its character. The secondary calling gives the assignment its meaning. The assignment gives the primary calling its current address. And they're not concurrent, they're nested. Each one lives inside of the one that's above it. So Osgennes um wrote a book called The Call, and it was a landmark book. And as I was researching this episode, I came across this, and I think this book really captures the very foundation of everything that I've said up to this point. In the call, uh Os Guinness argues that the primary calling of every human being is not a what, but a who. The primary call is to God Himself, to know Him, to love Him, to reflect Him. Secondary callings are the specific vocations and contexts and roles through which the primary call is expressed in a particular time and place. And what I'm calling assignment is the most specific expression of the secondary calling in a given season. Most people are living entirely in the assignment conversation. They've never settled the secondary calling, and they have certainly never settled the primary calling. So let me make all three concrete. So the primary calling is the builder, the person whose deepest grain is to look at what is broken or undeveloped and feels a compulsion to bring order and life to that chaos. Everywhere they've ever been, as a manager, as a parent, as a small group leader, as the person who shows up to serve in a neighborhood nobody else cares about, the building keeps happening because they can't escape it. It is explicitly how they are wired. That is the primary calling. It doesn't require a title. It doesn't require a platform. It's simply who they are. And if nobody noticed, if nobody patted them on the back, if nobody did this or that or noticed what they were doing, they would still do it because that is how they are wired. That's their makeup. That's the primary calling. It is your makeup. It is that thing that hums through your veins, that that flows through you. That is the primary calling. Where it doesn't matter who gives you applause. You would still do it because it's just in you to do it. Okay? We good there? All right. Now the secondary calling. So let's go back to the example, the builder. So the secondary calling for that builder might be organizational leadership. It's the lane where their building instinct most consistently finds traction. Not just building anything, though, it's building teams or organizations and structures that carry people towards something. That secondary calling is more specific than the primary one, but it gives that primary calling a shape, a domain. And it is still more stable than any single role. Now, the assignment for that builder right now might be executive director of a nonprofit in that city. That's the current address where the primary and secondary calling are living, right? The specific context where the secondary calling is being expressed in this season. In this season, notice that part. In five years, it might be a different organization or a different sector entirely. The assignment will change. The secondary calling will give the next assignment the same essential shape. But that primary calling is the heartbeat, man. It keeps thrumming, it keeps humming, and it's going to keep running like an operating system underneath all of the activities. It's going to be building, always building, regardless of what the title says. So what is your primary calling? Now, here is what I want you to feel in that framework, okay? Because I know that there's going to be a lot of confusion. I don't know what my primary calling is, much less my secondary in my assignment. I'm still trying to find it. Here's what I want you to feel in that framework, okay? The assignment can end without touching the secondary calling. The secondary calling can shift without touching the primary calling. Because the primary calling was established first before any of those other things existed. When the nonprofit closes and nonprofits close, the builder does not stop being a builder, right? The healer does not stop being the healer, right? The teacher does not stop being the teacher. And the moment that you understand the difference between those two things, the end of the assignment stops feeling like a theological crisis and starts feeling like what it naturally is: a transition between vessels. Calling is the water. Secondary calling is the river. And the assignment is the particular stretch of riverbed that the water is running through right now. Same water, right? Same river. But depending on where that riverbed is in that moment where that water is along that riverbed, there's a difference there. Because the water does not stop being water when the riverbed changes. Calling is not discovered, it is revealed and it is permanent. And it cannot be lost just because the assignment ends. It cannot be revoked when a ministry closes. It does not expire when a chapter turns, because it was established before any of those things. We're not pastoring a church right now, but I still am a pastor. That is the through line of the entirety of my life. Jeremiah 1, 4 and 5. I love this. The word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. See, the knowing precedes the forming. Come on, somebody. The calling precedes the person. The Hebrew word for knew is Yada, which means deep, intimate, relational knowledge. And God did not know about Jeremiah before he was born. God knew Jeremiah. The specific grain of this specific person, and out of that knowing, God set Jeremiah apart. And he has done the same thing with you. Your calling was established in the same way. Before you developed your gifts, before you knew what you were good at or what you loved or what broke your heart, God knew you. And it is that knowing that is not changed ever, regardless of what your current assignment looks like. And so the question that you need to sit with is this. When you look at every role across every context, every assignment that you have ever carried, what theme keeps showing up? What do you keep doing regardless of what you were hired or appointed or asked to do? That theme is pointing to the primary calling. And the domain where the theme most consistently finds traction, that is pointing to the secondary calling. Settle those two things before you chase the next assignment. Because the assignment will mean something completely different once you know what it is carrying. See, assignment again is what you do in a specific season. It's the most concrete and the most temporary of the three levels. You can see it, right? But but it has a shelf life. And Paul addresses this directly in 1 Corinthians 7 17. He says, Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them to be. Now, Paul was talking to people who were talking about marriage, but I want you to notice something here. He uses both words in the same sentence. He says, The situation is assigned. The calling is what God has called them to be. The assignment is contextual and specific. But get this. The calling is about being, not doing. And Ephesians 2 and 10, for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. See, the Greek word for handiwork here is poema. It is the word that we get poem from, right? That's why it sounds familiar. You and me are God's poem, his crafted, intentional, beautiful work. And that poem was written before the good works were performed. The identity precedes the assignment. The calling precedes the work. But also notice that the good works were prepared in advance. That means that there is intentionality in the assignment as well. It's not just all willy-nilly, it's not random. The work in front of you right now was prepared for you, but it was prepared for you as an expression of who you are, not as a substitute for knowing who you are. Frederick Bucher wrote that the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Let me say it again. Okay? The place that God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. That definition has shaped a generation of people. But I want to press on it just a little bit. See, the gladness that uh Bucher is describing is not the gladness of finding a job you enjoy, it's the gladness of living from the wellspring of who you are, of expressing your primary calling through a secondary calling through an assignment that fits the grain of your personhood. The gladness is downstream of the calling. The world's hunger is the assignment context. I think about my wife. I think about my wife. My wife was a teacher for 10 years, and there was a gladness that existed in that for her because I think at her very core, my wife's primary calling is to care for people. She is a carer, she is a healer. That is a part of her aspect. And so as a teacher, she cared for students, and she was able to heal several students from emotional things that they may have had going on, and she was glad in that role. But then the assignment ended, and God called her into a new assignment of being a chiropractor. But guess what? Her primary calling as a caretaker, as a healer, that part didn't change. But God gave it a new assignment that brought gladness because it expressed who she is at her most basic setting. But see, the calling and the assignment, they both matter. But the gladness has to have a foundation under it, or it will shift with every new assignment that you pick up or you put down. And I want to stay here for a moment because I think, and this is a big topic, this is a big episode, but I think that this is the most practically important segment in this entire episode. So I need you to stick with me right here. When calling and assignment get confused, there are three things that consistently happen. The first is what I will call assignment idolatry. That's when the assignment becomes the source of identity rather than the expression of it. So your job title becomes who you are. Oh, I'm pastor this. Oh, I'm apostle this. We see it in the church all the time. I'm prophet this, I'm evangelist. Come on, man. It's when your ministry role becomes your worth, the thing you do becomes inseparable from the person that you are. And when the assignment ends, which it always does, then the loss of the assignment feels like a loss of self because you're idolizing the assignment. I've watched pastors lose churches and conclude that God had rejected them. If I'm honest, when our church closed, I felt like God had rejected me. Huh? Let's be honest. I've watched ministry leaders whose organizations closed conclude that their calling was never real. Yep, I checked that box. I've watched people whose careers shifted conclude that they had missed God entirely. But none of those things were true. And if that's you, none of those thoughts are true. The calling was intact, the assignment had ended. But because they had never separated the two, the loss of the assignment registered as the loss of the calling. Now, the second thing that happens is what I want to call assignment restlessness. Oh my gosh. I'm talking about myself. So it's the constant movement from one lane to the next, looking for the assignment that will finally feel like enough. Each new role or ministry or career is entered with hope and exited when it Feels when it stops feeling like it's the thing. The person is sincere, the search is genuine, but it never settles because no assignment can satisfy the longing that only a settled calling can address. And then the third thing is assignment guilt. And this is when this is for the person who is in the assignment that doesn't feel transcendent. The work feels ordinary and the role feels unimpressive. And so then that person concludes that they are wasting their life because nothing about their current assignment looks like what they imagined they're calling would produce. And so now you're like, God, it this can't be it. God, there has to be something else. God, there has to be something greater. God, there has to be. So now I'm a quit. Huh? Now I'm a quit. And now comes a waiting pattern. Hmm? Because the work that you're doing doesn't feel transcendent. It doesn't feel like it matters. It doesn't feel like it's addressing your calling. Esau Macaulay writes powerfully about this in his work on vocation. And he argues that one of the most damaging lies that the church has told people, particularly people from communities that have historically been excluded from positions of prominence, is that calling is reserved for the dramatic and the visible. That the person whose assignment is quiet and unglamorous is somehow less called than the person on the stage. So the worship leader who can run you up out your seat and through the walls and around the sanctuary and out the doors, surely their calling is substantial. But the person who volunteers to serve in the children's ministry because nobody can see me, oh my gosh, I must not be called. I must be called to ministry. I must be called to the pulpit. I must be called to evangelize. I must be called to start a YouTube channel. I must be called to be visible. But visibility is not the barometer of your calling. It's not. And that lie has produced generations of people who feel like their faithfulness doesn't count. Can I tell you it does? But that lie has produced people whose ordinary obedience in ordinary places feels like a consolation prize rather than a genuine participation in God's work in the world. But family, your assignment doesn't have to be impressive for your calling to be real. Your calling was established before you had anything, anything to show for it. And I'm gonna take it one step further. God delighted in your calling. Come on. God delighted in your calling before any assignment manifested in your life. That's healing somebody right now. I know that's healing somebody right now. God saw your calling and God was pleased with it and pleased with you before any assignment came your way. Whether people can see it or not, I need you to hear me. I need you to internalize that. God, I pray that you would seal that in the heart of the people who of the person who needs to hear that right now because it is the truth by your Holy Spirit. So how do you hold an assignment rightly? How do you hold it? You hold it with open hands, not a closed fist. You step into it fully, you give yourself completely to it, you do not hold back investment into it or commitment or energy because you know it will eventually end. No. You pour yourself into the work that God has placed in front of you right now, in this context, with these people and at this moment, and you hold it without bawling up a fist and gripping it tightly, because gripping an assignment produces a person who cannot hear God when he is ready to move them on. It produces a person who cannot see the end of the season because they have made the assignment their identity. And it produces a person who misses the new thing because they are holding the old thing tightly with both hands. Eugene Peterson spent decades writing about the kind of faithfulness that is possible in ordinary, unheroic, unimpressive obedience. In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, he argued that the most important spiritual posture is not the dramatic leap, but the sustained step. The willingness to keep going in the direction that God has given you in the assignment that He has placed you in without requiring it to be more than it is. That's what the sustained step is. And that's how you hold an assignment. You're fully in it, and your hands are open. And when it ends, when the chapter turns, when the role shifts, when the ministry closes, you grieve what was real about it. That's human. But you carry forward what was formed in you through it, and you trust that the calling that God gave the assignment is, that gave the assignment its meaning, it's still relevant. It hasn't disintegrated, it's still very much intact. Romans 8, 28 through 30 contains one of the most theologically, I believe, dense passages in the entire New Testament. Paul writes that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose. And then he traces the chain. Those he foreknew, he predestined. Those he predestined, he called. Those he called, he justified. Those he justified, he glorified. So the calling sits inside of a chain, right? That begins in the eternal foreknowledge of God and ends in glorification. It's not fragile, y'all. It's not dependent on the success of your current assignment. You could miserably fail, but the chain still remains intact. The chain where God foreknew you, then he predestined you, then he called you, then he justified you, then he glorified you. That chain is going to endure regardless of your success or failure in an assignment. It is held by God Himself from before you were formed all the way to the end of your story. That is what you and I are standing on. Not a job, not a ministry, not a lane. We are held, we are we are standing on a calling that is held by the one who knew you before you existed. Come on, somebody. Ah, that is a foundation that is worth building on. It is. It's worth building on. Man, listen, I'm saying all of this to you all because I've lived it and I'm living it. I've spent years in assignment restlessness, education, ministry, writing, church planting. Wait a minute. Apparel branding. On my Facebook this morning, I saw, you know, it has the memories, and I could see, I tried to start this apparel brand called Lion Slayers Wanted. It was a dope brand. The fashion on it, oh my gosh, it was so good. It was so good. But it didn't last. But each one of those things were genuine. They centered with real belief that this was the thing. And each one, not because it failed, but because it was finite, eventually showed me its edges. And every time I hit the edge of an assignment, I thought it was supposed to keep carrying forever. Wait, let me say that again in a different way. Every time I hit the end of an assignment that I thought was supposed to last for longer than it did, I experienced it and interpreted it as a loss of calling, as evidence that I had missed something. When the church closed, God, you didn't, maybe you didn't call me to plan a church. Maybe I'm not the kind of guy that you would call to plan a church. Maybe I missed it. When I left human resources, maybe I wasn't supposed to do that in the first place because it just didn't, it didn't end well for me. Maybe I'm not supposed to be an author because I've never even sold 500 books total from everything that I've written. God, maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'm not supposed to write music because nobody's ever saying anything. Maybe God, I must have missed it. Yeah, I must have missed it. Surely I missed it because if I had to miss it, things would work out differently. The assignment would stretch on, huh? I interpreted it as a question about whether God had ever really spoken to me. Come on. What I'm understanding now, and I want to be really honest about this, because I'm still growing in this, is that I was looking for my calling inside of my assignments. I was trying to find a permanent thing inside a seasonal thing. And there is no seasonal thing on earth in existence that can hold a permanent weight. The calling was never in the assignment. The calling was in me. It was given before I was formed. It was expressed through the assignments, but it was not contained in any one of them. And honestly, man, I don't have my next assignment mapped out. Right? I just released an e-book for men called Seven Lies that destroys the man God has called you to be. I have books that are just, they're not selling. I, you know, I mean professionally, I really wonder what's the next step, right? So I don't have it mapped out. And the the assignments that I have right now, I'm holding them with an open hand and loose fingers. But I know what I'm called to do. God has called me to care for his people by encouraging them with the word of God, by motivating them to pursue God, and by inspiring them that God is the highest pursuit in life, and that he desires us to love one another with a fervent love. That's my calling. And I know the deep gladness and the world's deep hunger that Buchner describes. And it's that knowledge does not depend on any particular door being opened. It's me. It's the battery. And I think where I'm approaching right now is a different kind of settled than I've ever been in my life. Even in bouts of confusion and moments where, you know, you might feel depressed, right? I know what God has called me to do. And so this is where we land after episode 35. Calling is who you are. It was established before you were born. It is permanent, particular, and held by God. It cannot be lost when an assignment ends, or revoked when a chapter turns, or invalidated when a ministry closes. Assignment is what you do. It is seasonal, specific, and subject to change. It is the context through which calling is expressed. It has edges. It ends. And when it ends, it's not evidence that the calling was never real. The exhaustion that you have been carrying is not evidence that you've missed something. It's evidence that you have been trying to find permanence in something that is seasonal. Settle the calling, okay? Hold the assignment with open hands. Pour yourself fully into what's in front of you. And when it ends, grieve it honestly, but trust the one who called you before you were formed and is not finished with you yet. Next episode, we're going to close the purpose arc. And we're going to talk about what it looks like to live from purpose instead of tworded. Like what changes when the foundation is settled and the assignment is held tightly. But before we get there, I want you to sit with this. What have you been treating as your calling that is actually your assignment? And what has the ending of that assignment made you believe about yourself that it's not true? Father, I want to come to you right now on behalf of every person listening who has confused calling an assignment and have paid a heavy price for it. For the one who has lost a ministry or a role or a career and concluded that you had revoked something essential. God, I ask that through this episode you would separate those two things in their understanding. The assignment ended, but the calling didn't. You knew them before you formed them, and that has not changed. For the one who is in an assignment, who is in assignment restlessness right now, moving from lane to lane, hoping the next thing will finally be the thing. Lord, I pray for the grace of stillness, not passivity, but stillness. The kind that asks, what should I be, that asks that doesn't, that doesn't ask, God, what should I be doing? But who did you make me to be? Those are two different things, God. And I pray that as a result, the primary calling would settle before the secondary calling gets chased again. For the one who's carrying assignment guilt, whose work is ordinary and whose job is unimpressive, and who's concluded that their faithfulness doesn't count, God, I ask you to speak directly to that lie. You prepared them for good works in advance. Their obedience in ordinary places is not a consolation prize. It is participation in your work in the world. And for the one who is just beginning to understand that their calling is held by you and not by any particular door being opened, Father, let that settle. Let it settle deep. Let it become the foundation of that next assignment and that it gets built upon instead of the other way around. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, before you go, if this episode named something in you that you've been living with for years and never had language for, share it. Send it to the person who's in the middle of an assignment ending and doesn't know what to do with it. They they need to hear that the calling is still intact. Also, take 60 seconds to leave us a five-star rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Every review is how this podcast gets pushed out to the people who need it. And also subscribe so that you don't miss episode 36 or a single episode moving forward. We're closing the purpose arc, but there is so much more to come. And it's gonna build directly on everything we've laid down in these first two episodes. Follow Faithformed on social media. Y'all be blessed.