#1 Finding God's Calling for Your Life

Serenity for Success

Our society is full of well meaning advice on how to find your calling and your passion. Do what you love and love what you do, choose happiness, follow your dreams. These mantras fail to acknowledge the first step to following that advice requires you to know what your dreams are.

How can you be sure that you're doing what you love? What even is happiness? I've spoken to so many high achieving women who've checked all the boxes, gone to the right schools, taking the right postgraduate job, trying to date the right guy, but still feel deeply that they're not on the path that they're supposed to be.

Too often this feeling of confusion happens when we're listening to the call of the world and running after the World answer. Instead of running after God's calling, and God's voice. The trouble is, it can be difficult to hear God's voice and more importantly, to recognize God's voice at a time when there are so many competing things calling our name.

This conundrum reminds me of my favorite passage in scripture found in First Samuel chapter three. In this passage, we find both Samuel a young boy who lived at the temple, and Eli, the priest who oversaw him. And they were both fast asleep.

Unbeknownst to Samuel at the time, he would one day become the first king of Israel.

The Word says that in those days, messages from the Lord were very rare. And visions were quite uncommon.

One night, Samuel sleeping in the tabernacle near the ark of God. And suddenly the Lord called out Samuel. Yes, Samuel replied, What is it? He got up and ran to Eli- Here am? Did you call me? I didn't call you Eli said, Go back to bed. So he did. This happened two more times. Each time the Lord called out to Samuel. Samuel ran to Eli thinking it was really Eli, who was calling him. Verse seven says that Samuel did not yet know the Lord, because he had never had a message from the Lord before.

But finally, Eli realized that it was God who was calling Samuel, verse nine. So he said to Samuel, go and lie down again. And if someone calls again, say, speak, Lord, you're serving as listening. So Samuel went back to bed. And the Lord came and called us before Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel replied, speak, your servant is listening.

Whenever I read this scripture, I find myself thinking, how confusing it must have been to be Samuel. Just like then, I feel like we're living in a time when the voice of the Lord is hard to distinguish, and visions and clear prophets are aware. But in order to distinguish God's call, Samuel had to be attentive, discerning and receptive. Let's break that down a bit. Samuel was attentive to the voice of God. He got up and he didn't stay asleep. And he wasn't alone. With the help of Eli, Samuel was able to discern it was God speaking.

Lastly, once he discerned it was God speaking, Samuel made the decision to be open and receptive to what God was saying to him.

If you're someone like so many of us who struggle to discern the voice of the Lord, my first question to you is, how are you positioning yourself to be attentive to God's voice? So often, we're so consumed by the World, Social Media, our calendars and schedules, that we don't actually leave any time or space to stop and listen, or even try to listen to God's voice.

What are the moments that you can carve out for yourself?

If not, every day, that maybe once a week?

What are the pauses you can take? The moments of serenity, the moments set apart where you can be attentive to God's voice?

Even in moments that aren't quiet and so how can you be actively looking for God and for his voice and direction in your day to day How can you seek God admits the busyness of our achievement culture?

And then who can you surround yourself with to help you discern the voice of God?

What spiritual support systems do you have in place? Like Samuel, who had Eli that will help you separate the world's voice from the Lord's?

And maybe, most importantly, how open are you to following the Word of God? And how receptive are you to His voice once you hear it?

Many of us, myself included, struggled to distinguish God's call from the cacophony of life. My journey, marked by contradictions and challenges definitely mirrors this struggle. As a woman of color, raised in Maryland by a Jamaican immigrant mother and parents. My college transition to Princeton was a jolt.

There admits glaring socio economic disparities, I grappled with finding my identity and purpose.

During this tumultuous time, conflicting societal messages bombarded me. Sheryl Sandberg published her book, Lean In women work and the will to lead a book that advocated for women's empowerment in the workplace and encouraged women to go full steam ahead toward career advancement.

Two weeks later, Susan Patton, aka Princeton mom made headlines for telling Princeton college woman that what we needed to be focused on was finding a husband before we graduated, and before we entered the dating world that would not value or respect our Ivy League degrees. Susan Patton's remarks on prioritizing marriage over your career success stirred quite the controversy. These conflicting voices emblematic of worldly expectations left many of us in a quandary.

However, true fulfillment and calling often lie off the beaten path tried to do by society. They are nestled in the quiet moments of prayer, and the meditative reflections on God's word. And in the guidance of mentors walking in faith.

Our purpose and passion divinely inspired may not align with worldly definitions of success, but they lead to profound joy and contentment.

As I navigated these conflicting messages, I realized that both were in essence voices of the world. They represented society's expectations, not necessarily God's calling for my life. I was running toward these voices thinking that they held the answers to my purpose and passion. But true fulfillment requires a deeper listening and attunement of our hearts to God's gentle whisper admits life's demands and society's expectations.

So buying this path, we must adopt Samuels posture, attentive, receptive, and discerning. When inundated by life's conflicting messages, we must pause and listen for God's guidance. We must be like Samuel, who once he understood who was calling him responded, speak Lloyd, for your servant is listening.

This should be our posture to and a world filled with noise and conflicting advice. Let us seek to discern God's voice, his unique calling for each of us. It took me a long time to learn to pause and listen to God's voice, or even to recognize that it was God who was calling me this entire time. God's calling for my life started in college when I first started helping my younger peers and students through the college application process. I enjoyed helping students get into college, but I brushed it off as just a side hustle. I was at Princeton, I plans to be a lawyer. Again, the calling came when I was at Harvard Law School when Princeton's pre law advisor left abruptly and I became the de facto law school admissions support to black and brown students at Princeton.

As I continue to help more and more students through the college and now the law school admission process, and gain mentors from admission Dean's and directors, I was grateful for this skill. But I still wasn't attentive to God's call, because I was too focused on my plan to become a family lawyer to pay it any attention.

I continued to work with more and more students though, I enrolled in a certificate program and an educational consulting and I joined the independent Educational Consultants Association, all while clicking for a judge and eventually joining a law firm. And I still didn't take time to pause and put myself in a posture to be attentive and listen to what God was telling me about my path.

However, during this time, I started struggling with anxiety, significant depression, unexplained weight gain from medicines to control my out of control autoimmune condition. And I finally started to have the deep realization that I was not where I felt I was supposed to be. I finally stopped and tried to look for God in my darkest moments.

I was where everyone else thought should be the quintessential hometown girl who returned to practice law after graduating from Princeton and Harvard Law School, the up and coming attorney who went to all the networking events and social functions.

But on the inside, I was deeply unhappy and struggling to figure out how I could have followed all the directions, checked all the boxes, and still ended up in a place that was far from the feelings of happiness and success. I was promised.

I was failing to perform well in my job failing to get my autoimmune condition under control. And I finally had a moment in my darkest hour when I stopped and prayed to God,

I finally put myself in a posture to be attentive.

It was at this time to when God sent me my own Eli. There was another black woman who worked with me as a lawyer, my friend. Janelle saw my struggles and my searching and she gave me the book, the circle maker, she became my confidant, and we spent moments at our breaks discussing my predicament. She helped me learn to really lean in and trust God's voice in this time in my life, even though it was so different from all the voices and opinions around me.

Ultimately, she helped me say the words that Samuel said, Speak Lloyd, your servant is listening.

Through prayer and meditation, I was able to be receptive to his voice, and I reconnected with God and we dedicated my career to him. I leaned into the promises of His Word, which reminded me who I was in whose I was, and I found new competence, hope and direction.

I left practicing law, and I started working with students full time, right at the height of the pandemic, when uncertainty was an all time high across the world. Despite this uncertainty, I stayed my course. And I started blending faith and prayer into the work we were doing with students on their admissions processes. We grew through faith and steadfastness to the calling God gave me.

And now four years later, I've been able to turn my passion into a national nonprofit organization that sits at the intersection of faith and access to education, we've been able to impact over 7000 students, and I was named to the Forbes 30, under 30 list in the social impact category.

And it all started with a shift, not an external shift in my circumstances, but an internal shift of my perspectives and priorities. I had to stop running after the world and realize that I needed to pause and run after God and ask him what he wanted me to do with my life instead.

So as you navigate the complexities of life, I want you to remember to pause and to listen.

Ask God to speak to you, and be ready to respond "Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening". When you find yourself confused by the voices of the world, seek God's guidance, and He will direct your path, for it is in him that we find our true calling, and our deepest joy.

Amen.

Thank you for tuning in to Serenity for success. If today's episode resonated with you, and you're eager to deepen your journey, I invite you to join our community further.

Sign up for our newsletter to stay connected and receive insights tips and updates directly to your inbox. And for a daily dose of inspiration and behind the scenes content. Follow me on Instagram @_serenityforsuccess.

Ready to take your journey to the next level? Discover our pathways to success coaching program designed to help you unlock your full potential and step into the life God has called you to.

Thank you for sharing this space with us. Until next time, may you find serenity and success in every step of your journey.