Calling Quotes

Christians ought to have a different approach to business. As believers, we should view work as both service and a form of worship.

~ Charles W. Colson

We are all priests before God, there is no such distinction as 'secular or sacred.' In fact, the opposite of sacred is not secular; the opposite of sacred is profane. In short, no follower of Christ does secular work. We all have a sacred calling.

~ Ravi Zacharias

If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment ... all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Will I someday pass into history having passed by God and therefore forfeited the opportunity to change my world and reap the blessing of being able to do so because I saw myself as inadequate to achieve either? And how long will it take me to realize that if I doggedly refuse to pass by God, my inadequacy is instantly irrelevant and I have in actuality begun to achieve these very things.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Don't differentiate between This is a job and This is what I'm doing for fun. It's all simultaneous.

~ Spike Jonze

If you launch a career doing something you don't really like, that even if you're successful, you won't feel successful, and you'll be contemptuous of your own success.

~ Douglas Copeland

The curse of the fall didn't affect only manual work, as we often seem to think. Excessive ambiguity that prevent us from figuring out how to navigate is really a form of confusion. Overload is one of the forms that frustration takes. The inordinate challenges we face in knowledge work can be traced to the fall just as much as the challenges in manual work. Send it especially lies behind the villain of lack of fulfillment. The reason we lack fulfillment is because we aren't fulfilling our true purpose, that is because we have sinned and deviated from God's path.

~ Matt Perman

We feel unfulfilled when there is a gap between what is most important to us, the realm of personal leadership, and what we are actually doing with our time, the realm of personal management. You are satisfied with your day when there is a match between what you value and how you spend your time.

~ Matt Perman

Our task is to carry the Lord's peace into every situation, into every duty.

~ Davis Bunn

Surrender is a choice, it is never a calling.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is the doing of your calling that attracts the support of the God of the Universe. When I stepped into that space, the wind in my life changed direction. The doing rallied the Heavens. It was the voice of my faith. If you don’t do out of your being, you aren’t truly showing up. Maybe that’s what’s meant by faith without works is dead. Without it, there are no smoke signals going up to attract the people, resources or opportunities.

~ Suzette R. Hinton

Shoddy work is not just shoddy work. It's a failure of love.

~ Matt Perman

Every step you take, every breath, every conversation, your calling is center stage. There is no longer a piece here and a piece there, but there is wholeness. The sound of your voice and the sound of your life have come together.

~ Suzette R. Hinton

Authenticity distinguishes between a hobby and a calling. A hobby is something you like to do when you can. A calling is something that won’t wait. There is a different sound to one versus the other. Your hobby brings you joy but it is not a priority. Your calling is impolite and disruptive and doesn’t care whether it’s a good time or not.

~ Suzette R. Hinton

Meanwhile, on Earth, a completely different esoteric plane of existence, Father Chuck awoke with a jolt. This time he was sure of it. Oh dear, he’d heard the Voice of God.What had the Good Lord said? Trembling, the little priest smoothed down his mustache. He was not the right man for a calling. Not the right man at all.

~ E.a.a. Wilson

I became an actor because it was my clumsy attempt to become myself.

~ Martin Sheen

I think that’s what we are all meant to do, all we can do, with the gifts we have been given, be they experiences or talents. Those gifts are waiting to be used to touch others’ lives, as we patiently listen for and obediently follow the direction to which God is calling us. Because that’s what you do with gifts, you give them away.

~ Ryan J. Pemberton

A true Christian lives and labors on earth not for himself but for his neighbor. Therefore the whole spirit of his life him impels him to do even that which he needs not do, but which is profitable and necessary for his neighbor.

~ Martin Luther

Use the information you’ve been given as an individual, but NEVER let what you’ve heard or read or experienced in the past prevent you from answering the call on your life. You are responsible for your life. That includes the voice inside you and everything it calls you to do. Don’t ignore that voice to follow rules that don’t fit. When a jacket doesn’t fit anymore, it’s time to donate it. Same principle applies for rules which no longer serve you. You don’t have to curse the rules or condemn them. In fact, there might be someone else who would benefit from them at the exact moment you no longer need them. Just step into all that you can be and all that you can do.

~ Stephen Lovegrove

The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor.

~ Alexandra Fuller

It is an exciting adventure, doing what you love.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer - if we are unfaithful to true self.

~ Parker J. Palmer

Cause every task of your day to be a sacred ministry to the Lord. however mundane your duties, for you they are a sacrament.

~ Richard J. Foster

I always like to be in the presence of people who are good at and love their jobs, Irrespective of their jobs.

~ Geoff Dyer

Celebration comes when the common features of life are redeemed.

~ Richard J. Foster

While you might think the choices that leave no regrets behind are the minimal ones and the casual ones and the safe ones, I believe the opposite is true. Regret happens when we are still left with “what if.” Regret is the result of leaving a story within you still untold, a song inside of you never sung, a touch unique to your personhood that never was felt by another. When you lay everything on the line because you believe that much that the life you have been given is the utmost calling to be answered, you don’t regret it.

~ Stephen Lovegrove

The layman need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.

~ A.w. Tozer

In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have the opportunity to make a positive difference in society.

~ Winston S. Churchill

We are peculiar people called to fulfill a great mission.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It's a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I don't quite know why mine didn't, although I think books, again, are partly to blame.

~ Maureen Corrigan

Teddy Roosevelt had relished every hour of every day as president. Indeed, (he was) fearing the dull thud he would experience upon returning to private life.

~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

A call to duty, a call for service.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The rhythms of the game complemented the lifestyle he preferred.

~ Nicholas Dawidoff

Purpose declares that the trajectory of my existence and the course of human history were intentionally set to collide at this precise moment in time because what I have to offer human history is desperately needed at this precise time.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Your Heart's Desire is the Voice of God, and that Voice must be obeyed sooner or later.

~ Emmet Fox

A person's true identity can often be difficult to discern, even to themselves, causing one to question their character, their calling, their very existence. For most, time gives clarity, but for others, these questions remained unanswered for an identity can not be fully defined when it is a guarded secret.

~ Emily Thorne

To live out God’s plan for your life calls for you to discipline yourself…and your body. To push yourself. To deny yourself.

~ Elizabeth George

Our problem as Americans -- at least, among my race and gender -- is that we resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives.

~ Parker J. Palmer

The only Christian work is good work well done.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers