Discover Your Kingdom Calling
“As a prisoner of the Lord, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
— The Apostle Paul (Ephesians 4:1)
You’re Called
It’s impossible to live a life worthy of the calling you have received if you aren’t aware of the calling you have received. One of the enemy’s greatest strategies to slow the advancement of the Kingdom of God is to lie to you about your calling. The lie often sounds like this: you’re not called, you’re disqualified from your calling, your calling doesn’t matter, or your calling isn’t significant. Or perhaps it sounds like the voice of religion: "You’re not one of the called," or, "Only pastors and missionaries are called."
Here’s a well-known and worth-repeating truth: God doesn’t call the qualified—He qualifies the called. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “the gifts and call of God are irrevocable.” You didn’t do anything to earn your calling or to qualify yourself for it. All that’s required on your part is a “yes.” And if you didn’t do anything to earn or initiate your calling, then you can’t do anything to disqualify yourself from it. I know that flies in the face of cancel culture and performance-based religion, but God isn’t looking for reasons to disqualify you. (That doesn’t mean that certain forms of abuse or sin can’t disqualify someone from specific positions of leadership—but even then, the call of God remains.)
If disqualification were the standard, then nearly every leader in the Bible apart from Jesus would be disqualified. Yet God still chose them, and He still chooses you.
What do I mean by calling? The word translated as "calling" in the New Testament comes from the Latin word for “vocation,” which has its root in the word “vox.” We get our word “voice” from vox. You can think of calling as God’s voice shaping the direction and actions of your life. It’s another word for your unique, God-ordained, God-spoken purpose.
At its core, this means God created you on purpose for a purpose. You are God’s solution to a portion of the world’s problems and an answer to dreams that are on God’s heart.
Nature, Identity, Calling & Assignment
It’s vital that we don’t confuse calling with our identity or our new creation nature. Calling is what we do, and in God’s design, what we do always flows from who we are. Human nature often attempts to define who we are by what we do, but that’s a backwards way of approaching life, and it costs us our identity and leads us into performance-based striving.
Our identity is who God uniquely created us to be and the distinct way we reflect His image to the world. Did you know that you represent a facet of God that has never been seen before? That’s significant.
It’s also easy to confuse our identity with our new creation nature. Much of the teaching over the past decade on "identity in Christ" is good, but often misnamed. These are vital truths, but they are not unique to you. They are universally true for everyone in Christ. They include themes like:
You are adopted into God’s family
You are a son or daughter with spiritual inheritance
You have access to all the assets of the Father and His Kingdom
You are beloved, forgiven, innocent, holy, and righteous
You are no longer a slave to sin
You are the temple of the Holy Spirit
These are glorious truths that we must embrace. But again, they are universally true. Your identity is what is uniquely true about you.
Here’s a word picture: envision a strong and mature fruit tree.
The roots represent your New Creation Nature
The trunk represents your Kingdom Identity
The branches represent your Calling
The fruit represents your current Assignment
Your New Creation Nature anchors you and nourishes your life. Your Kingdom Identity provides the stability and strength to live out your calling. Your Calling flows from your Identity and expresses who you are in Christ. Your Assignment—the seasonal way you express your nature, identity, and calling—is the fruit you bear.
Why does this matter? Can’t I just live my life and let things happen?
It matters for more reasons than we can count. But at the core, it’s a stewardship issue. If it’s true that everything in the Kingdom comes in seed form (check out this blog article for more on this idea), then it’s our responsibility to cultivate the seed we’ve been entrusted with so it can mature into the fruit-bearing tree it’s meant to be.
For me, living from identity and calling is a matter of integrity. Not just moral integrity like don’t lie, cheat or steal, but integrity in the true sense of the word: wholeness, being consistent all the way through. The more clarity I have about my life’s call, the better I know:
What to pursue and what to refuse
What to say “yes” to and what to say “no" to
Where I need to grow and where I need equipping
My Kingdom Calling becomes the framework that helps me endure hard seasons and persevere in faith. It’s all connected.
So how do you discover your Kingdom Calling?
Short answer: attend Sozo’s Next Steps class, catch the upcoming Sozo sermon series The King is Calling, or wait (and pray) for my upcoming book by the same name. But let me give you a quick overview here.
Your Kingdom Calling flows out of your Identity. There are so many ingredients that go into what shapes your life, your history & family, your gifts, passions and experiences, your education and your work experiences. What I’ve found is that the core of your Kingdom Calling can be revealed by looking at your fivefold wiring and the prophetic promises over your life.
A Crash Course in the Fivefold Gifts of Jesus
Back to Ephesians 4. Let’s look at verses 1, 7, and 11:
Verse 1: Paul urges us to live a life worthy of the calling we’ve received.
Verse 7: "To each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”
Verse 11: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers"
We’e already looked at verse 1, but it’s crucial to know that verse one sets the context, calling, for this chapter. The phrase “each one” in verse 7 is the Greek word hekasto, meaning every single person. That means you! Then Paul says that "grace" has been given—not just undeserved favor, but divine empowerment. This isn’t just forgiveness; it’s the power to become all that God created you to be and do all that He’s called you to do.
Finally, it says that grace is given "as Christ apportioned it"—that word "apportioned" means custom-made or tailored just for you. So, in essence, Paul is saying that each of us has been given a unique, custom-made empowerment from Christ to fulfill our calling. That’s rich.
Then verse 11: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers…”
Often this verse is pulled out of context and used to define church leadership. I do think that effective church leadership have a representation of the fivefold ministry, and healthy, mature churches should have activity in each of these ministries of Jesus. But Paul isn’t recreating a clergy-laity divide that was abolished at the cross. He’s describing the expressions of grace he just mentioned in verse 7. Each of these five roles represents a type of grace and a facet of the ministry of Jesus, and they are not just for church staff—they are for the whole Church.
Mike Breen explains this in Building a Discipling Culture. He writes that every believer has one or two primary fivefold graces. He calls this your "base gift"—your core wiring. It’s part of who you are and will always be present in your life. He also describes how we may express different gifts in different seasons, for the sake of maturity and mission.
In my life, I’ve had evangelistic seasons where I seemed clearly wired as an evangelist—but over time it became clear that those were moments of growth, not my primary base gift. In contrast, my base gift is apostolic, and I also have strong pastoral wiring. I can see those as consistent themes throughout my life. I’ve come to describe my Kingdom Identity as a "pioneering father”, where the nuance of the type of apostle I am is reference in the words “pioneer” and “father” and the word “father” also reflects my pastoral wiring. (My use of the word apostle is about the biblical function of apostles as sent ones, kingdom builders and culture changers, not to be confused with the role or authority the original twelve apostles played in church history.)
What’s incredible is that each of these fivefold graces have in themselves a myriad of expressions. Peter was a governing and sending apostle while Paul was a pioneering and building apostle. Some evangelist are inviters, others are relationship builders, others are convincing and others gatherers. Each of the fivefold graces can be expressed in many ways, but here’s a basic definition for the function of each:
Apostles are sent ones—culture changers who bring heaven to earth.
Prophets are truth-tellers—those who reveal the heart and mind of God.
Evangelists are good news carriers—those who recruit people into the Kingdom.
Pastors (or shepherds) are heart-healers—those who care for people walk them into healing.
Teachers are truth-revealers—those who bring others into deep understanding of Scripture, God’s heart, and the vastness of the Kingdom.
These fivefold graces are how Jesus expresses Himself through His Body. Some people express them most in the church gathered; others live them out in business, education, arts, or other realms. Some people’s calling is tied to a specific geography or people group. It’s not one-size-fits-all.
That’s why discovering your Kingdom Calling is such a personal and powerful process.
Here’s how I’ve developed my own calling statement:
I am a pioneering father who partners with God to build people, organizations, and movements who walk in their Kingdom calling.
Each of those words carry significance for me and most of them have appeared multiple times in prophetic words and encounters with God.
Activation Exercise: Drafting Your Kingdom Calling Statement
Your Kingdom Calling Statement is a personal mission statement that connects identity with assignment. Here’s a simple structure to help shape yours:
“I am a [kingdom identity] who partners with God to [verb/impact] [people/context] so they can [transformation].”
Example:
I am a pioneering father who partners with God to build people, organizations, and movements who walk in their kingdom calling.
Now it’s your turn, but don’t do this without God. Take a moment to invite the Holy Spirit into this process with you.
Identity: Who are you?
Mission verb: What do you do? (build, lead, create, teach, equip, nurture...)
People/context: Who do you serve or influence?
Transformation: What change happens because of your presence and partnership with God?
Write your first draft:
I am a __________ who partners with God to __________ __________ so they can __________.
Reflection Questions:
Where do you need to grow in your understanding of your New Creation Nature?
How might knowing your Kingdom Identity and Kingdom Calling add meaning or purpose to your daily life?
Which of the fivefold graces seems to most align with your life? Which are you experiencing in this season? Where would you like to grow?
If you’re interested in receiving a fifty question survey I developed to help you discover your fivefold wiring, email me at joel.lowry@sozosmtx.com with the subject line: "Fivefold Survey".
