Os Guinness - Rising to the Call: Discovering the Ultimate Purpose of Your Life

RISING TO
THE CALL

RISING TO
THE CALL

OS GUINNESS

2003 by Os Guinness.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations used in this book are from the Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guinness, Os.
Rising to the call / by Os Guinness.
p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8499-1783-7 (HC)

ISBN 978-0-8499-2877-2 (TP)

1. VocationChristianity. 2. Spiritual lifeChristianity. I. Title.
BV4740.G86 2003
248.4dc21

2003000948

Printed in the United States of America

08 09 10 11 12 LS 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

D.O.M.
and to C.J.
with love and gratitude

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
The Ultimate Why

CHAPTER 2
Everyone, Everywhere, Everything

CHAPTER 3
Do What You Are

CHAPTER 4
The Audience of One

CHAPTER 5
Dreamers of the Day

H ow do we each find and fulfill the central purpose of our lives? No theme I know strikes a deeper resonance with more people today than discovering lifes purpose. Its a question, of course, but its morefar, far more. Its a question thats a passion, a longing, a hunger, a restless stirring in our souls, a driving motivation that fires the deepest parts of our lives and taps into the most powerful sources of our energy.

This question, as well see, comes up at various points in life. This little book addresses many of them, but it is written for people at two moments in particular:

The first is the golden big seven yearsthe years between eighteen and twenty-five when childhood lies behind and you have climbed high enough to see the shimmering vistas ahead. But how do you choose when there is so much to choose from? And how do you choose well when you have more energy than experience and your excitement outstrips your wisdom? The notion of calling is the clearest, strongest guide to the challenges at that wonderful stage of life. There is no deeper meaning in life than to discover and live out your calling.

The second moment is a few years later: for those who realize they chose badly the first timeusually because they didnt know the notion of calling. They then wonder if they can have another chance, and how they can do a better job of choosing the second time around. Was novelist George Eliot right when she wrote, It is never too late to be what you might have been? The notion of calling is the deepest, surest encouragement at that particular moment in life. Your calling is deeper than your job, your career, and all your benchmarks of success. It is never too late to discover your calling.

So read this book and let your mind run deepthinking over your life, your family, your gifts, your hopes, your dreams, your friends, your world, and your goals. No truth in all human history has changed more lives and changed more societies. It can change you. It can change the world through you. Or rather, he canfor there is no calling without a caller and down the centuries Gods call has proved the ultimate Why in the human search for purpose. No one and nothing else even comes close.

OS GUINNESS

CHAPTER
1
THE ULTIMATE WHY

A s you know, I have been very fortunate in my career and Ive made a lot of moneyfar more than I ever dreamed of, far more than I could ever spend, far more than my family needs. The speaker was a prominent businessman at a conference near Oxford University. The strength of his determination and character showed in his face, but a moments hesitation betrayed deeper emotions hidden behind the outward intensity. A single tear rolled slowly down his well-tanned cheek.

To be honest, one of my motives for making so much money was simpleto have the money to hire people to do what I dont like doing. But theres one thing Ive never been able to hire anyone to do for me: find my own sense of purpose and fulfillment. Id give anything to discover that.

That issuepurpose and fulfillmentis one of the deepest issues in our modern world. At some point every one of us confronts the question: How do I find and fulfill the central purpose of my life? Other questions may come logically prior to and lie even deeper than this onefor example, Who am I? What is the meaning of life itself? But few questions are raised more loudly and more insistently today than the first. As modern people we are all on a search for significance. We desire to make a difference. We long to leave a legacy. We yearn, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, to leave the world a bit better. Our passion is to know that we are fulfilling the purpose for which we are here on earth.

These passions can differ enormouslyfrom an Olympic gold medal to a Hollywood Oscar to a Nobel Prize to an executive suite to the White House. Artists, scientists, and builders often labor to create a unique work that can live forever in their name. Politicians, business people, and administrators usually think of their monuments more in terms of institutions they have created and sustained. Parents, teachers, and counselors, by contrast, view their contribution in terms of lives shaped and matured. But for all the variety, the need for purpose is the same. As Thomas Carlyle wrote, The man without a purpose is like a ship without a ruddera waif, a nothing, a no-man.

All other standards of successwealth, power, position, knowledge, friendshipsgrow tinny and hollow if we do not satisfy this deeper longing. For some people the hollowness leads to what Henry Thoreau described as lives of quiet desperation; for others the emptiness and aimlessness deepen into a stronger despair. In an early draft of Fyodor Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov, the Inquisitor gives a terrifying account of what happens to the human soul when it doubts its purpose: For the secret of mans being is not only to live... but to live for something definite. Without a firm notion of what he is living for, man will not accept life and will rather destroy himself than remain on earth....

Call it the greatest good (summum bonum), the ultimate end, the meaning of life, or whatever you choose. But finding and fulfilling the purpose of our lives comes up in myriad ways and in all the seasons of our lives:

Teenagers feel it as the world of freedom beyond home and secondary school beckons with a dizzying range of choices.

Graduate students confront it when the excitement of the world is my oyster is chilled by the thought that opening up one choice means closing down others.

Those in their early thirties know it when their daily work assumes its own brute reality beyond their earlier considerations of the wishes of their parents, the fashions of their peers, and the allure of salary and career prospects.

People in midlife face it when a mismatch between their gifts and their work reminds them daily that they are square pegs in round holes. Can they see themselves doing that for the rest of their lives?

Mothers feel it when their children grow up, and they wonder which high purpose will fill the void in the next stage of their lives.