Know Your Why

by Ken Costa

  Very often, when Jesus asks that question, we have no idea what the exact answer is. But our immediate response should nevertheless be, I want to hang out with you. I want to find out more about you. I want to be regarded as part of the family that meets in your home, in exactly the same way as the invitation was extended to those two disciples. Because I know that in hanging out with you and getting to know you, what I truly want for my life will become clear.

  John used the word meno thirty-three times in his gospel. You can see why this word was so important to him when you understand its meaning: the English translation is “abiding with,” “staying connected,” and “resting in.” Indeed, the key to making the best of your life, the key to discovering your calling, is to be with Jesus. As you stay with Jesus, you find out more about what he has in store for you. He knows your passions, your fears, and the deepest desires of your heart. As with Peter, Jesus knows your name. As with Nathaniel, he knows your nature. As with Philip, he knows your uncertainty.

  Jesus knows who we are. But he also knows who we are becoming. He has a vested interest in seeing us flourish in the future. One of the great joys of reading through the New Testament is seeing how these flawed, fallible, and lost disciples grew into their callings, transforming from wandering fishermen into the founders of the early church through the empowering presence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And it all started with that first question, that first encounter: “What do you want?”

  The disciples didn’t have an answer. They grew to know that answer over many years, as they discovered more about themselves, more about their hearts, and more about the amazing plans God had in store for them. As they discovered more about what it meant to build this new, revolutionary kingdom of God, they came to understand more about where God was calling them.

  We do not need to answer Jesus immediately, but we do need to draw close to him. For as he shows us more about ourselves, we learn more about the powerful calling he has on our lives, callings that equip us to see a future where the best is yet to come.

  So often the world expects you to behave in a certain way. Perhaps your parents wanted you to join the family business or teachers encouraged you to study one subject or another. But often what the world has planned for you and what God has planned for you are very different.

  One of my favorite worship songs, written by Will Reagan of United Pursuit, is called “Help Me Find My Own Flame.” The central theme is that we cannot simply rely on the passions of others; instead we need to find our own flames. It captures perfectly the idea that we have unique identities, and that we should not compete with or compare ourselves to one another.

  We cannot make the most of life and live well if we are trying to be someone else. God is not interested in calling clones. He invests in you and me as individuals. We each have a unique mold, customized in Christ for perfection. He wants us to be passionate, sold out to do the specific tasks that he has prepared for us. He enlarges our often-narrow visions of what we can achieve in our lives. He gives us space to dream.

  But individual encouragement can be meaningless if we don’t know what it is that drives us. When we’ve been shaped by the world, it can be so difficult to understand what our God-given passions actually are.

  And so, before we can even come to the question of understanding our callings, we first have to understand our identities. We have to tackle the most ancient of all philosophical questions: Who am I? What defines me? What is my identity?

  IDENTITY BEFORE DESTINY

  Each of us has a history, a personal story that gives meaning to our lives—and also to our fears. Often those main storylines are colored not by strong and encouraging narratives but by anxious thoughts of uncertainty, bad experiences with home and family, traumatic events at school, and demoralizing words from our elders and peers.

  Woven into my own life are childhood memories of the apartheid system in South Africa. I grew up in a rural area of the country firmly in the grip of those who believed in the separation of races. I never embraced those prejudices even though I attended, as required by law, an all-white school and eventually university. Like it or not—and I do not—the very system I loathed so much also provided the privileges of education denied to the vast majority of black people. In small ways I tried to stand against the system—leading our student union in protest against the government of the day—but I have always been troubled by the fact that I could have done more. There were many times when I was afraid to put the call of justice above my own interest, for fear that my own life and livelihood would be put in danger. And even now, many years later, I cannot but think of those occasions when the oppressed cried out for a response, but I simply did not have the courage to break the laws of segregation and face the draconian consequences of prison.

  In 2014’s Oscar-winning film Birdman, Michael Keaton plays a washed-out actor trying to start his life again after a series of failed roles. But his efforts are haunted by the voice of the “Birdman,” the superhero role that made him famous in his youth. This voice in his head tells him a story about his life—a story of failure and missed chances. It taunts him with memories of what he was and could have been, but now isn’t. The continuing question running through the film is simple: Will he listen to that voice of failure, or will he dare to believe that he can flourish again?

  How often do we hear similar voices that taunt us about our past mistakes, our failures, our missed opportunities? It can be so tempting to listen to them, to allow them to define us.

  But we are new creations in Christ: “The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old, negative history has been reformed; the story of our lives has been retold. Those discouraging, dominant thoughts seem to determine our futures, but God can, in his abundant grace and love, reshape them.

  That God’s love reaches out to us is a defining characteristic of our Christian lives. He calls to us from the depths of his love for us. We are powerless without the energy of his love, which has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit is the source of our confidence in the world.

  Ultimately I have a choice. Which narrative of my life do I believe? Is it the negative or the positive? It is easy to say the latter. But how do I deal with the former, which seems integral to my identity and, if unchecked, determines my response to my calling? I need to take responsibility for living this renewed life to the full as Christ promised. To do so, I see my story in the light of his journeying with me through every season. In this way, the apparently dominant negative theme becomes a subsidiary motif and loses its power to shape my decisions for the future.

  There is a moment in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony when a dramatic battle takes place between two keys—F major and A major. This battle reflects the psychological struggle in Beethoven’s own life. In the symphony, written after he had been deaf for many years, the F-major key represents the depression, frustration, and despair that he so often felt at being alienated from the world and from his own work. The despondency and downward spiral of depression start out as the dominant mode, but out of its depths, Beethoven introduced the A-major key, which represents life and love and beauty and hope. With the orchestra in full throttle, he determined to show the A-major theme of joy and love drowning out the F-major theme of despondency, thus establishing a sound of such boldness and confidence in life and the future as to be unforgettable. Even in the depths of his anguish, Beethoven chose to follow the positive, life-affirming narrative rather than slip into the resigned acceptance of his own weakness.

  As my wife and I heard this symphony at the annual music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, set against the grandeur of the Swiss Alps, I realized again that, as Beethoven did, I have a choice: to follow the narrative that leads to life, or to succumb to the presenting turmoil that would rob me of my calling.

  You may well have a distorted view of life or very low self-esteem. Perhaps you struggle to face the real you and w
ant to live another’s story. This is a huge danger; it is one of the great pressures put on you through social media. The temptation to post stories and images that enhance your personal standing is rife.

  Recent polls showed that online users are creating false memories and identities, and they can no longer distinguish fact from fiction. The poll found that the fear of being boring and the envy of other people’s lives caused two-thirds of users to lie about what they had been doing. One-fifth of those in their early twenties admitted that their online identities bore no resemblance to real life, and one in three personal posts were fabricated—a vacation that appeared so much more exciting than it was, a cool nightclub scene the poster didn’t attend.3

  It is so easy to create an avatar that represents a better self. And a growing number of young people admit that they feel shame about their untruths and cannot live up to their online images. So often what we imagine about ourselves crowds out the genuine voices that make us who we are.

  True identity cannot be self-motivated; it is given by God. Our tasks are to live out our true callings as uniquely shaped by God.

  I once sat down with a well-known Christian leader. I remember my shock when he told me that he really hated himself. Unsure of his own identity, he felt alienated and alone: a spirit trapped in a person he loathed. He had to pursue his calling in spite of persistent self-questioning. It was so difficult to know what to say. Outwardly, his life was successful and his ministry anointed. Inwardly, he was struggling.

  John the Baptist attracted attention at the start of his ministry, and the leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him “who he was” (John 1:19). He knew exactly who he was and who he was not, saying clearly, “I am not the Messiah” (v. 20).

  He was pressed three times for his identity. He denied being Elijah the prophet. It was a kind of guessing game. So often when we meet people, we ask questions about their families, where they live, who they know. We try to find a box to put them in.

  Finally John was asked, “What do you say about yourself?” (v. 22). John answered, “I baptize with water” and added that there was “one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie” (vv. 26–27).

  We learn a good lesson, vital to understanding our calling, from this interchange: identity comes before destiny. We need to understand the person God created before we can begin to understand the person God created us to be.

  Who I am, before why I am. So often we try to skip the first to end up with the second. We talk about our jobs in a functionally defining way, as if to say, This is my destiny and my identity rolled into one. But that is a mistake. I think of a friend whose identity was so tied up in his work as an accountant that he had a near breakdown when he left his job. After he left the office, he began the painful process of asking, “Who am I?”

  We often talk about someone having an “identity crisis.” In reality, very few people go through life without facing real questions about their identities.

  I know a young woman who held a senior position in an advertising firm but took time away from work to bring up her two small children. She struggled for years to rediscover her true identity, as her days were filled with mundane chores and she could no longer rely on her position at work to define her. And yet she knew that for that season of her life, her primary calling was to her family. She took on some part-time work to break the routine of the day and gradually grew to enjoy her decision to be at home. And then her calling changed as the circumstances changed. The children grew up and she could go back to full-time work. But she had learned a great lesson: she knew that she did not need to have her identity defined by her job. She was freer and happier in her own skin for being the person God wanted her to be. Through all the changes, God’s love was the constant.

  Then there was Sam, who had decided to leave the armed forces after serving for ten years. He experienced a long period of grave self-reflection, as his identity had been tied up in the military; he had to begin again to discover who he was in Christ. His discovery, too, was profound. He did not need to rely on his rank to know that he was valued by God.

  The question is not only, “Who am I?” but, “Who am I in Christ?” I am defined in relationship with someone else. I am no longer the arbiter of success in my life. I am loved by someone else. The focus shifts to another person. In the words of Saint Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). I am moving away from myself as the center and going toward Christ as the center. This is a hugely significant shift. This realization that life is best savored when lived for Christ is the key to living well. It moves the center of gravity from me to him, and, in that shift, is the very basis of finding my real calling.

  Our destinies are what he calls us to, but they are never a substitute for our identities—knowing who we are, knowing that we are uniquely and passionately loved by God. And for a good reason: in a fast-paced digital world, and in a world in which job changes are frequent, it is hard to find the constant thread that will keep us centered throughout our lives. If we come to the end of a phase at work, then we are tempted to think of ourselves as having no further value. But if we are secure in our identities, we know that the end of an era is not the end of our destinies. There is always more to come.

  The world tells us that when we have become successful and have created names for ourselves, then we have identities. But with Christ this is flipped on its head. Our identities are secure through all the shifting sands of time. We are his beloved, his children. It is from that place of a secure identity that we can step into our callings, and not the other way around.

  CHRIST-STYLE LIVING

  You need to have a clear, God-shaped view of your true identity. No matter what others say about you—whether you are unemployed or employed, whether you have a history of failures behind you or a catalogue of success—you are infinitely worthy, chosen, valued. No matter whether you are a charity worker, a managing director of an investment bank, a teacher, or a postman, you are loved and have eternal significance. It is only once you grasp this that you can step into your calling, because it is only easy and natural to serve and live for others when you first know how loved you are: “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

  It is a simple truth that we cannot give what we haven’t got. It is only once our love tanks have been so filled to overflowing by our heavenly Father that we can then give to others out of the overflow. This overflow of our hearts is manifest in Christ-style living.

  Christ-style living is distinctive and should be instantly recognizable. It tries to make the most of every moment, emitting a “pleasing aroma” (2 Corinthians 2:15) in our workplaces, our relationships, our homes, our vacations, and even our sweaty gyms. Those who live this way do so because they know why they are living. They live for others, not themselves.

  So my accountant friend who had the identity crisis when his job ended need not have feared, nor Sam when he left the army. Their identities were secure in Christ, who shifts our attitudes, activities, perspectives, and motivations away from ourselves and toward others, whom we regard as more important than ourselves. This is revolutionary in the workplace. Understanding that we are known by God as unique individuals created by him—loved by him—produces an antidote to the daily fear, anxiety, and corrosive inhumanity of living solely for personal gain. Being loved, known, and called by God is the trinity forming the basis of our confidence in the world.

  This truth was illustrated to me vividly by a woman working behind a coffee kiosk at the airport in Austin, Texas. Her whole day consisted of serving coffee to harassed and time-constrained commuters. I was due to catch an early flight, and, feeling groggy and out of sorts, I went to buy a cup of coffee at the stand. The lady was cheerfulness itself at a time when I was anything but. She inquired how I took my coffee with what appeared to be a genuine interest. She detected through my accent that I was not from Texas, assuming that coffee was as strange
a beverage to me as my accent was to her. “Tea,” she announced, “does not do it for me.” She asked me if I would like to try an additional flavoring, telling me that cinnamon was her favorite. She urged me to cheer up my day by ordering something different. All the while she was encouraging others in their orders.

  Curiosity, or the cinnamon, got the better of me, and I asked why she seemed to take such an interest in her job. “Oh,” she replied, with a smile that still pops up in my mind years later, “I want all my customers to have the best day possible. I try to give them a little piece of happiness to send them on their way. You know, I really love my job. I’m so grateful to have it. It gets me out of bed early. It’s my tiny contribution to life.”

  Although this woman was up at the crack of dawn and on her feet all day, her orientation was outward, to others, away from herself. I scurried off, leaving her to spice up others’ coffees along with their lives.

  She had a simple job, but it was one that she was determined to use to its maximum. She saw beyond the mundane nature of her work to the difference she could make to others.

  You need to start in the right place. If you view God as someone out to get you, to cramp your life and impede your pleasures, then you will see life in much the same way.

  However, if you see him for who he is—an amazing, loving, gracious God who is out to find the best for you and is prepared to guide and help you through the tough times—then in Christ, your life will be full to overflowing. Your image of him, and his in you, projects and shapes your life.

  You can only build an effective Christian life when you have a “settled core”: an inner self “hidden with Christ” (Colossians 3:3). When you go to the gym or a Pilates class, your instructor might encourage you to build core strength, as it is vital for balance and keeping the body frame strong. So it is with the Christian life. You need to take the basics seriously and, from a secure identity, develop core relational strength. This is particularly important when you have to withstand the attacks of the enemy, whose sole task is to knock you off balance. To know your identity in Christ and to be strengthened in your basic relationship with him is a virtuous cycle of paramount importance to following your calling in the world.