The Call That Comes

I spent six months mistaking my own voice for God's. The static cleared when I stopped listening for a plan and started listening for a Person.

I spent six months building a product nobody asked for.

The idea arrived the way false callings often do—disguised as clarity. I’d been running a consultancy for years, and the recurring frustration of trading time for money had been building. Then one evening, reading about a competitor’s product launch, I felt it: the spark. I could build a platform. I could scale beyond hourly billing. I could finally break free.

I prayed about it. I journaled about it. I told my wife and my small group and my business partner that I felt “called” to this new venture. What I didn’t tell them—what I barely admitted to myself—was that I’d already decided. The prayer wasn’t seeking; it was seeking permission. I was listening for God’s voice, but I’d already tuned the radio to my own frequency. Every signal that confirmed my desire sounded like God. Every signal that didn’t sounded like static.

When it finally collapsed—door after door closing, the beta launch landing to silence, the whole thing dissolving over a single humiliating month—I was devastated for about a week.

Then something strange happened.

I felt relief.

The burden I’d been carrying wasn’t the weight of obedience. It was the weight of grasping. I’d mistaken my own wanting for God’s sending, and the collapse was actually mercy—the mercy of being pried loose from something I’d been gripping too tightly to see clearly.

Here’s what I need you to know before we go any further: I still can’t always tell the difference. My voice and God’s don’t come with labels. But I’ve learned that the problem isn’t usually volume—it’s that I’m listening for the wrong thing. I’m straining to hear a plan when God is trying to reveal a Person.

The Silence After the Prayer

I’ve prayed the dangerous prayers.

“God, show me your will.” “Open the doors you want open.” “Lead me where you want me to go.”

And then I’ve sat in the silence afterward, straining to hear something—anything—that might tell me whether this venture I’m considering is calling or just ambition wearing calling’s clothes.

God rarely answers the way I want Him to. I want the burning bush. The angel at the winepress. The voice from heaven saying “This is the business you should start; in it I am well pleased.”

Instead I get silence. Long, uncomfortable silence. And in the silence, my own voice rushes in to fill the void—remarkably good at impersonating God. It knows all my theological vocabulary. It can construct providential narratives out of coincidences. It prays in King James English when it needs to sound authoritative.

The silence is where most of us get lost. Not because God isn’t speaking, but because we haven’t learned what His voice sounds like. We’re tuning the dial frantically, hearing static, and every so often our own desire breaks through and we think we’ve found the signal.

Is this God calling, or just me wanting?

The question haunts every honest entrepreneur. And the answer, I’ve learned, doesn’t come from listening harder. It comes from knowing the Caller.

Abraham: Movement Before Clarity

God calls. That much is certain.

But let me show you how calling actually works in Scripture—not the summary version, but the story.

Abraham was living in Ur—a prosperous, sophisticated city. He had family, position, the security of the known. Then God spoke: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).

Notice what God didn’t say. He didn’t say where. The destination was hidden. The land was unnamed. The route was unspecified. “The land that I will show you”—future tense, progressive revelation, one step at a time.

And Abraham went.

Hebrews reflects on this: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8).

Not knowing where he was going. The father of the faithful didn’t have a detailed map. He had a command—go—and a promise—I will show you. He had to take the first steps before the next ones became visible.

Think about what that required. Every morning, Abraham woke up in unfamiliar territory, following a God who hadn’t told him the destination. Every decision—which route to take, where to camp, how far to travel—had to be made without the certainty we crave. He was constantly discerning, constantly listening, constantly trusting that God would make the next step clear when it was time for the next step.

Calling requires movement before full clarity. The direction is given; the destination is hidden. You take the next step and the step after that reveals itself.

But here’s what I missed for years about Abraham’s story: the certainty wasn’t in the plan. It was in the One who gave the command. Abraham could move without knowing where because he knew who had spoken.

Moses: The Caller, Not the Called

If Abraham shows us that calling requires faith to move, Moses shows us something deeper: calling exceeds what we can do. And that’s the point.

Moses was tending sheep in Midian—forty years removed from Egypt, forty years removed from his failed attempt to deliver Israel by his own hand. He’d killed an Egyptian, fled, and settled into obscurity. Whatever sense of destiny he’d once carried had been ground to dust by decades of silence.

Then the bush that burned without burning.

“Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am” (Exodus 3:4).

God told him: Go back to Egypt. Confront Pharaoh. Deliver my people.

Moses’s response was the response of every honest person who’s ever sensed God calling them to something beyond their capacity: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11).

Who am I? The capacity objection. I’m nobody. I’m a shepherd with a criminal record and a stutter. I’m not connected. I’m not enough.

And God’s answer wasn’t about Moses at all.

“But I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12).

Not “you’re more capable than you think.” Not “I’ve prepared you for this.” Not “here’s a strategic plan that leverages your existing skills.” Just: I will be with you. The adequacy is in the Caller, not the called.

The adequacy was never in Moses. It never is.

You’ve felt this. The venture that keeps surfacing in your prayers exceeds what you can do. You don’t have the network, the capital, the expertise. You’re Moses at the bush, staring at a commission that makes no sense on your résumé. And you’re waiting to feel adequate before you move.

But God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called—not by inflating your abilities, but by attaching His presence to your obedience. I will be with you outweighs every deficit on your balance sheet.

Isaiah: Vision Before Commission

Abraham shows us that calling requires movement before clarity. Moses shows us that calling exceeds our capacity. But the deepest truth about calling—the one that reframes everything—is hiding in a temple in Jerusalem, in the year that King Uzziah died.

Isaiah 6 is the summit of every calling story in Scripture. Watch what happens:

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim... And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.” (Isaiah 6:1–4)

Isaiah didn’t seek a mission. He saw God.

And the vision undid him: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).

Not “I feel inadequate for the task”—he didn’t know there was a task yet. Not “who am I to be called?”—no call had been issued. Just: I have seen God, and I am undone. The encounter preceded any commission.

Then the coal touched his lips. “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). Cleansing. Grace. Before any assignment.

Only then—after vision, after undoing, after atonement—does the call come: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

And Isaiah’s response isn’t reluctant. Isn’t calculated. Isn’t “let me pray about it and weigh the factors.” It’s immediate: “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

This is how calling actually works. Not a career guidance session but an encounter with God that produces a response. Isaiah didn’t analyze his skills, assess the market opportunity, or consult a five-factor framework. He saw God—and the mission became inevitable.

The disciples experienced the same thing. When Jesus called them from their nets, the call wasn’t “go do this work.” It was “Follow me“ (Matthew 4:19). A person first, a role second. They left their nets not because they’d discerned that itinerant ministry aligned with their gifting profile. They left because they’d encountered someone, and the encounter demanded response.

He didn’t seek a mission. He saw God.

This reframes the entire discernment question. You don’t figure out calling by analyzing factors—you encounter the Caller, and the response flows from the encounter.

Listening for the Right Voice

Now here’s where the factors I used to treat as a checklist become something different.

Scripture, desire, gifting, providence, burden, counsel—these aren’t a diagnostic test. They’re ways of listening. Means of encounter with the God who calls. Scripture is where you learn His voice—not a manual of specific instructions, but the place where God’s character becomes so familiar that you recognize Him elsewhere. The Spirit who inspired Scripture will not contradict Scripture. Desire, held rightly, is shaped by encounter: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4–5)—a promise about transformation, not a blank check. My mistake with that failed product wasn’t paying attention to desire. It was paying attention only to desire that had never been tested against delighting in God. Providence is His hand arranging what you can’t see—closed doors that aren’t frustrations but redirections. Gifting is His preparation in you. And counsel is His wisdom through others who can see what you can’t: “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).

But burden deserves a longer look, because burden is where calling most often begins. Nehemiah heard about Jerusalem’s broken walls and couldn’t shake it: “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4). He didn’t seek this burden; it gripped him. Then he waited—months, it seems—for the right moment to act. The burden preceded the action by a significant gap. He prayed. He planned. He watched. Not every passing interest signals calling. But the weight that remains after enthusiasm fades, the concern that deepens rather than diminishes—that’s worth attending to.

The picture forms as you hold them together—not as a photograph snapping into focus, but as the static gradually clearing until you recognize the voice you’ve been straining to hear. You might not get certainty. You’ll get enough to take the next step.

Seasons Change

Calling is seasonal.

We want lifetime assignments delivered complete at the beginning. Show me the fifty-year plan and I’ll execute it faithfully. But that’s not usually how it works.

Joseph’s calling shifted from favored son to slave to prisoner to prime minister—each season preparing for the next, none visible from the beginning. David was anointed king as a teenager and didn’t take the throne for fifteen years, spending much of that time running for his life.

Hold your work loosely enough to release when God redirects. The calling that’s clear today may complete tomorrow. Stay attentive throughout.

The relief I felt when my product collapsed wasn’t just a burden lifting. It was the relief of returning to the Caller after chasing a calling. I’d been so focused on discerning the plan that I’d forgotten the Person. I was tuning the radio frantically, scanning for a signal, when the voice I needed was already in the room—not telling me what to build, but inviting me to follow.

The static clears when you stop listening for a plan and start listening for Him.

Abraham went out, not knowing where he was going. Moses stood before Pharaoh with nothing but “I will be with you.” Isaiah saw the Lord and the mission became inevitable. The disciples left their nets for a Person, not a program.

Maybe calling isn’t something you figure out. Maybe it’s someone you follow.

But calling has counterfeits. Good desires can be corrupted. The same impulse to build can spring from holy commission or unholy grasping.

Before you move forward confident in your calling, you need to examine your own heart. Because the difference between true calling and counterfeit calling isn’t always visible from outside—but it determines everything about how you’ll build.

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