Pierce Brantley: Are You Doing What God’s Called You to Do? (Part 2)

John Farrell: What did you learn about yourself from writing Calling?

Pierce Brantley: I learned that the Lord had planted a lot in me from a very young age. I think if you grew up with less-than-ideal circumstances, you have a tendency to let that shape your worldview, whether that’s a poverty mindset or a specific kind of view of the world. And then Him leading me to write all of this down, I realized just how pleasant He was in less-than-ideal circumstances.

While mine might have been more extreme than others, I think we all have less-than-ideal circumstances that we might be going through. In my own experience, when I thought about what God has given me, I realized that He’s been much more present than I gave Him credit for. And then there’s the fun things too that come out of it. He’ll share new ideas and that kind of thing.

There are some challenging things where I personally have a really high expectation for excellence. It’s really important to me that things are done to the best they can be, and then He would wind that back and say, “Pierce, I know you have a really good sense of excellence, but let Me show you the difference between hard work and doing good things and good work.”

He’ll take me back to Genesis and say, “Look, my Spirit’s always hovering over the surface of the deep. I’m always hovering over unfinished, unformed situations and people, and broken things. I want you to do good things. Not just work hard and not just do excellent. I want you to actually be aware of the good that I want to do with the world.”

It was that growing and shaping of me, and then saying, “What are some of the Word’s principles, that even I’m relying on, that God actually has a bigger perspective for?” I got the opportunity to share them with others in the book, too.

JF: What fears did you have while writing? Were there any chapters or topics in particular that you struggled with writing?

Pierce: One of the chapters I think I struggled with writing was the one on anointing because anointing is one of those words that is kind of supercharged in the Christian world. It kind of means something different depending on what corner of the family you come from.

Trying to articulate what it means to have a life full of anointing when you’re a janitor, a school teacher, a layman, or doing some blue-collar work? What does it mean to walk in anointing when you’re in a position that you would never think would require it was very challenging. Then having to get past my fears of how this would be perceived was something I had to struggle through. I think it landed in a good place.

Anointing is the Spirit of God infusing a skillset. Just like anything in our lives, when we give something that we’re good at, that we’re talented at, or that we feel equipped for to God, He begins to transform that. Just like we’re always told that He’s the potter and we’re the clay. It’s the same thing with our talents and our abilities. If we give them to Him, He begins to shape them into a purpose that He predestined for good works. That’s what that chapter is all about. Your skill set has been predestined for good works and you can discover them to get the joy of using them in little secret missions that God has given you to do.

JF: Of all the chapters in your book, which one is the most important, and which one is the one that most people struggle with?

Pierce: I think the most important one is probably the one on the differences between fulfillment, purpose, and calling. These are all really big things that I think we all struggle with and most of us don’t begin to consider them until things get bad or we find ourselves in a job we want to leave.

In this chapter on purpose—I think it’s Chapter 7—it talks about how our purpose in life is to know and to be known by God and we never really graduate from that, nor should we. That’s kind of our reason for being. Whether or not we feel fulfilled in that.

Oftentimes, we wonder where God is in really difficult work situations or when things are stressful. Well, fulfillment in life has a lot to do with how connected we are to that purpose. If we’re not feeling fulfilled in our work, oftentimes it’s because we’ve cut off our relationship with God in working hours. If we do that, there’s never really anything to graduate to in terms of calling or there’s never the opportunity to live from a place of calling. That’s a really pivotal part of the book because it lays down some foundations that as Christians we move past quickly and end up experiencing a lot of stress.

As for the other question though, which I think is great, that would definitely be the one on good works. I think pretty much everyone, especially men, but I think everyone has been inundated with this idea. I think most readers will find it familiar, and it’s just this idea of do your best. “You need to do your best, do your best at your job, do your best for your boss, do your best for your family.”

The hardest thing about that is there’s no real definition for it, right? I may be doing my best, but who’s to say that my best is actually the best. There might be someone who I don’t even know who is more capable, more experienced, more talented than I am, and their version of the best isn’t mine.

If you constantly  live in a place of performance, even if you’re a good performer and you like performing and you like to work hard, what ends up happening subtly—and it’s really important for the Christian heart—is you end up living from a position of “I just need to do my best and if I’ve done my best, then I’ve actually represented Christ well because I worked hard.” That’s a problem too because if you didn’t take a bathroom break or eat lunch and you were present every single minute of the day from nine to five, or maybe you work much longer than that, or you work night shift, you could’ve given all of your time and hard work to a job and yet never once stepped into the work that God has given you to do or into the calling He has for you, which you can at any job.

What we have to do is embrace a new kind of ethos. Not that giving our best to our boss isn’t good or not that being present isn’t a good thing, but God has something different for us that is good work. I kind of touched on that earlier. If you look at the story of Genesis, when God created the heavens and the earth, He looked at everything and said, “It’s good.” It was no more effort for Him to do it all in one day versus seven days, but He was present in what He was doing, took the time He needed, and took joy in what He was creating.

Like I mentioned earlier, God is always hovering over things that are unformed and unfinished and in need of His creative inspiration in order to become good. There are broken people and colleagues around us, there are projects that don’t feel like they have an end in sight, and there are lacks of process and strategy everywhere. It’s easy for us to step into the work and say, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to do my part because this is my job description and at the end of the day no one could say I’ve done a bad job because I was there. I was present. I did my thing. I did my part.” Well, the Holy Spirit would challenge us and say, “Alright, but what good has come of the work you’ve done? What have you done to partner with Me in order to bring kingdom outcomes and influence into those tasks that you’ve been given?”

It can be challenging to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “You know what? I have worked hard, but I don’t know that I’ve done good work.” But it’s so important and you actually get so much more fruit out of working from that position. You’ll find that hard work becomes simple because the Holy Spirit gives you inspiration in ways you never would have experienced before if you hadn’t involved Him.

JF: What’s the main message in Chapter 1 “The Spirit and the Spatula”?

Pierce: “The Spirit and the Spatula” hints at the story of Stephen in Acts. You want to be familiar with the story of Stephen. This is such a cool story of practical God-experienced work in the middle of something that seems mundane.

The church is growing in Acts and we see the apostles and disciples who are having to serve food to a lot of the local folks in the city: a lot of the gentiles, the widows, and that kind of thing. The Bible doesn’t let you know if it’s tongue in cheek or not, but you can kind of hear what they’re saying in your head. They say, “It’s not good for us to wait on tables.” That’s how the Bible translates it, “It’s not good for us to wait on tables. We have other things to do.”

Then they say, “We need to go find somebody to fill this role.” So, they find Stephen and he ends up running the early church’s food bank. The funny thing about Stephen is as you look at his life and how the Bible describes him, it describes him twice. They said that he was a man full of wisdom and power, the Holy Spirit, and he was performing miracles, signs, and wonders. And you’re like, “Okay, why is it that a guy that’s going to be working at a food bank, why is it that these other things qualify him?” It’s because God has a different measurement for our resume than we do.

If you look at life, God has a divine sense of humor. You may think that your job is unimportant, it’s just paying the bills, or it’s just a way to make ends meet, but God is actually saying, “In Christ, I have qualified you to walk in this other realm in order to do these things.”

The reason the apostles found Stephen qualified was not because he knew how to organize cans or cook steaks or anything like that. What qualified him was all of the stuff that had nothing to do with the work itself. That’s how God wants us to see ourselves so that we can step into a calling.

You may think your job is unimportant, but the reality is there are all of these things that God sees as necessary in order for you to be able to do kingdom work. It’s really important to become present in those things. If you’re not present to them, you don’t know how to grow them, nurture them, or invite them into your day. This chapter does that. It lays a new foundation for this instinct that God wants to do more in your life.

Let’s talk about that because you don’t have to become a hermit or a missionary or go to seminary and drop everything you’re doing. No, there’s a good chance God has divinely placed you where you are right now. The question is: are you equipped to step into it in your present situation? It breaks down some foundational things for beginning to step into your calling that I don’t think we’ve heard before.

…

Order your copy of Calling: Awaken to the Purpose of Your Work by Pierce Brantley