Calling.

A few days ago, I read a blog post that a friend posted. He wrote about something very close to his heart, something that I - and I'm sure many others - had been praying about for him. And what was written about gave me much food for thought.

He wrote, and I quote:

I felt a tug on my heart to take a break. Not just any break. This wasn’t a break from working, or from job searching, or to take a vacation or anything like that. This was a break from asking the big question.

What big question? The question that I find Christians ask the most, and are never sure of the answer, or if there even is an answer. Until we our living within our “passions", we will always be asking God about our calling in life. It’s probably a question we’ll ask all our lives. Calling is the thing that revolve our lives on. In fact, we would stop everything to wait for it. Maybe we’re caught in the myth that if we don’t hear a big voice from heaven or some significant experience that tells us our calling, then we failed to hear God or that God is not responding to us. I’m now wondering if it’s possible for us to simply walk into our calling by following small steps in our obedience to small yearnings.

I had to stop and re-read it.

It's strange, and very naive of me, to be so shocked that there was someone else out there who didn't know his or her calling. I suppose it's not entirely true though, since this guy knows that he is destined for ministry, and worship is a big part of that ministry. However, the feeling of relief that swept over me, and that compelled me to write this post, is indescribable. (And before you condemn me as an idiot for thinking I was the only one out there with no "proper" dream, it's partly because I was surrounded by people who knew exactly what they were supposed to do - or people who seemed to know, at least...)

Ever since Hillsong 2004, I've asked God numerous times, What is my calling? What is my God-given dream? What do you want me to do for you?

Mostly, the answer I got was, Not film. Film is only for you to prepare yourself for the work that I have for you to do. And so I willingly walked away from film in 2008, to do Cleansing Stream (and turn down an offer to work on Mao's Last Dancer), and then to turn down The Karate Kid (or The Kungfu Kid as it was known back then) as I started to co-lead a plus group (a role that I was not suited for at all, in retrospect - I still feel guilty that my co-leader stepped down... for some reason, I think that had I not been such a ridiculously bad leader, things might not have gotten so bad). I know I always wanted to help anyone who had a dream, and had the recurring thought that maybe my dream is to help people achieve their dreams. At some point, I was pretty sure that God had called me to be a missionary - mostly because I was reminded of all the books I'd read on missionaries back when I was at pre-teen Sunday School in Singapore.

It's funny though, these days I feel like film is my thing after all. I still don't know. I still don't have a clear-cut calling, a distinct God-given dream to pursue at all cost. But now, it doesn't matter. I suppose it stopped mattering a couple of years ago, maybe when I started working for my ex-boss. Now, it just seems like, whatever I do, as long as God is with me, that is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. To hell with dreams - perhaps as my friend wrote, I'll "simply walk into [my] calling by following small steps in... obedience to small yearnings."

And so I shall conclude here. God bless JP - may he be a blessing to all those around him.