Your Destiny is Beyond Your Occupation
This week Daron delves into the concept of finding one’s divine vocation beyond mere occupation. He encourages listeners to embrace the fluidity of life’s journey, drawing inspiration from Bruce Lee’s wisdom on adapting like water. Daron shares personal insights, emphasizing the importance of discerning one’s unique calling and balancing life’s evolving roles. He touches on biblical teachings that advocate for responsibility and creativity, urging individuals to explore their true selves. Throughout, the focus is on flowing with purpose, guided by beliefs and spirituality, and stepping confidently into one’s destiny.
Key Takeaways:
- ⚡️Vocation vs. Occupation: Understanding the distinct difference between what you do as a job and your divine calling is essential to fulfilling your destiny.
- ⚡️Fluidity in Purpose: Embrace fluid adaptability in life, akin to water, to remain responsive to divine guidance and purpose.
- ⚡️Importance of Exploration: Make a careful exploration of your identity and gifts to sink into your true calling.
- ⚡️Spiritual Connection: Stay attuned to the spirit of God to empower and energize your actions towards your destiny.
- ⚡️Hope in Uncertainty: The transformative power of the word ‘yet’ fosters hope during phases of uncertainty and exploration.
Notable Quotes:
- “You were created on purpose and for a purpose.”
- “Become like water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee
- “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.”
- “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there’s freedom and there’s flowing.”
- “He will make you fit for what he’s called you to be.”
Episode Resources:
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TRANSCRIPT
But you can have those careers and still not actually fulfill your destiny or what. I want to introduce you to this idea of your vocation, not occupation, but your divine vocation, created on purpose and for purpose. Hey, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Hope I didn’t just scream in your ear there, but hey, maybe you needed it, you know what I mean? You’re just starting mowing the lawn, just got on the treadmill, maybe the peloton, whatever it is, you need a little pick me up. You need me to yell at you?
I don’t want to yell at you, but I am glad that you downloaded this episode, stoked to be back with you here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast. I am your host, Daron Earlewine. And you may have noticed maybe the few have been listening or watching. We’re actually just watching the podcast for years. We’re in the new or in a different studio. This is what we call the home studio. But back in 2024, the Amazing Organization, company that was letting us use one of their offices for all of our Blackbird stuff had to move their offices. And over this past year, they’ve been building a new office. And so we said, hey, what can we do that? Well, maybe we can make a little home podcast studio. So we did.
And recording these from home, I think, not sure. I think in the next six weeks, six months, we’ll be bringing you podcast episodes from a brand new studio, which will be. Which would be cool. And we’re excited about that process. And I tell you that story because I think it ties in with what we’re going to talk about in this episode of the First Element, the first noble quest within the rogue way, which is destiny.
And destiny. One of the ways that we talk about it is, is learning to live in the zone, or what we might call the flow of your life. And you know what’s been interesting for me is this process of trying to discover who God’s created me to be, trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up, if you will. We say it that way sometimes, right? And there has been a flow of this process. And, you know, I had missed some of it until I was writing my book, the Death of a Dream.
If you’ve never gotten a copy, a couple copies over my shoulder here, but you can get it on Amazon, you can get it on Kindle, you can also get it on Audible, as far as an Audible book. And when I was writing the Death of a Dream, I got to this chapter that we entitled Woven Not Wasted and it was interesting as I’m writing the chapter, as I was having these, like, epiphany moments where I was discovering these threads that I didn’t really.
I hadn’t made connection for in my brain to carry the illustration like I thought. Yeah, there were some threads that I thought were kind of weaving together my life, but now they’re just, you know, they’re left on the editor floor, right? They were cut out and they’re back there, way back in the background. And they were just a waste of time. They were just a wasted effort. They were just a wasted thread. And as I started writing the chapter, it started blowing my mind that, like, wait a second, God had been weaving together some of these themes.
And all I had to do was to continue to stay in the flow of what his spirit was doing. And that flow takes you through a lot of different adventures. I mean, there was a season, right, we’re on this podcast where it was. I was recording these at the radio studio while we were doing a radio show for over three years. And then we changed the name. And we’re kind of moving with the flow of, like, man, we think this radio theology thing is going to be it.
And then 2020 happened and it went away. And we just continued to do our best. And I’ve tried to do my best to continue to stay in the flow of moving and responding to what God is doing, but at the same time getting clearer and clearer and more focused on the unique gifts and abilities and calling that God has placed into my life. And in that process, okay, I feel like I’m stepping further and further into discovering, into experiencing my destiny.
And you may be listening to this, and maybe you’re 18, maybe in your 20s, and right now you’re on that first couple phases of life where you’re really experimenting with this and that and this career and this ability. And you’re not real clear yet on what are the unique abilities and what is the unique calling that God’s placed within your life. And that’s okay if you say, man, I don’t know, Daron. I don’t know what God wants from me. Here’s what I want to give you. The one, a powerful word I taught to my 8th grade football team this past year. The word is yet.
The word yet has so much hope packed into it. He said, Daron, you’re 40-something. You’ve been doing this forever, and you’re talking about all this confidence you have, that naked taking this next step into the flow of God. You know, the destiny has for me? Well, I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I do good. I don’t know what I do bad. I just. I’m stuck right now. I just don’t know yet. You don’t know yet, and that’s okay.
And here’s the promise. The promise is that where the spirit of the Lord is, there’s freedom and there’s flowing. And if you will stay in the flow of this connection to God’s spirit, he will begin to, step by step, take you into your destiny. You don’t have to have it all figured out yet. That’s good news. And here’s even better news. You don’t have to figure it out on your own. This rogue way of life is not you figuring out how awesome you are and you putting it all together.
This rogue way is about you connecting to the greatest rogue that ever walked the face of the earth. His name is Jesus. And he teaches you how to flow with what he calls the spirit of God, who he has sent to guide, to teach, to empower, to strengthen, to encourage, to bring you hope and to tell you about the future. I’m not making that up. Like, that’s literally what Jesus said he was going to do, what the Holy Spirit was going to do in our life. And so for us to walk in this understanding of destiny, it’s not something we do. On your own, right? God’s not far.
Right. He’s not far away from you. He’s near you and he’s for you. He’s not against you. And guess what? He’s created you on purpose and for a purpose. That means you have a destiny and define that destiny. What we help you discover as a part of the rogue way is this. You gotta stay in the flow. Bruce Lee, I love this quote. I’m talking about staying in the flow, right? He says you must be shapeless, formless, like water.
When you pour water into a cup, it becomes the cup. When you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water, my friend. Great stuff from Bruce Lee. We’ve got to become like water, where we flow. And sometimes our water, sometimes our life flows us into a cup. Sometimes our water flows us into a bottle. Sometimes we flow into a teapot.
The shapes, right? The containers, the seasons of life, a lot of times may look differently, but the reality is, as we get clear, that we are called to flow like water in response to what God is doing in our life. We move step by step into our destiny. And to step into this, one of the things that we focus a lot on in the rogue way, coaching, is this the difference between your occupation and your vocation.
I’m so indebted to Dave Gibbons as he unpacked this for me and it shaped so much of my understanding and I’m so glad that I’m allowed to use some of it with you. But Dave helped me understand the power of the difference between vocation and occupation. And he says it like this. This is not about simply figuring out your occupation. Many confuse their uniqueness with the occupation or job. A job is more like a piece of clothing.
You can express yourself through it, but it doesn’t define you. I see this all the time. For us, as we’re looking to discover and to step into our destiny, we usually are preoccupied with what job or what occupation we need to find. And in that, it’s kind of like back to the Bruce Lee thought, right? What container is my life? Am I a teapot? Am I a cup? Am I a bottle? Like, I’ve got to figure that part out because then I’ll know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
Well, the reality is your occupation is the uniform you wear. Statistically, they say that you may change jobs or occupations up to 10 times in your life. So if you’re defined by your job and you change that 10 times, you’re going to be in a spin cycle of an identity crisis for the most of your life. Oh, I’m this now. Oh, I’m this now. Oh, I’m this now. Oh, I’m this now. And if every job or every occupation you get right, you make more money and you have more power and you have more possessions, as we talked about before, right. These are not noble quests, but they are quests. You can, you can lie to yourself and be like, oh, I’m doing great. Even though you may be dying from the inside out, or let’s say life, the flow of life brings you to where you once had this amazing sounding job.
This job that you felt like really meant that you were somebody. And all of a sudden it’s changed. And now your job title doesn’t sound as prestigious or as powerful as it once did. Does that mean that you have less value and worth? Well, if you believe that you are your occupation, you’re going to be in trouble. And millions and millions of people are. I have these conversations all the time with people, whether through be, through the podcast or Somewhere out where I’m speaking is people. I want to know what God’s call is in my life. And you know, I want to, I want a job that really makes a difference.
Right. I can’t really do something great for God unless I’ve got a job or an occupation that is really powerful, that is somehow divinely blessed. So I don’t know what makes those like, well, if you’re a teacher, you’re really changing kids life. Well, you’re a pastor, you’re really doing great things for God. Well, if your job, you’re a first responder, then you’re on the front lines of doing something great.
And you have all these words. Yeah, I’m not saying there’s not some careers that may seem more honorable or have an opportunity to be more life on life with people there are, but you can have those careers and still not actually fulfill your destiny or what. I want to introduce you to this idea of your vocation, not occupation, but your divine vocation. The core root word there is this idea of calling.
I believe that you have a divine calling on your life that has very little to do with your occupation. It defines you. It’s who you are. And what I want to do my best to do in this episode and then when we coach people along in the rogue way is help you get really, really clear on that is what defines me. What is my vocation from God? Because once you get clear on who you are, it doesn’t matter what uniform you wear because you’re in the flow.
Does that make sense? I mean, it makes me think about Jesus a little bit, honestly. Let me get some coffee. Because. Because right. Is if I were to ask you what was Jesus’s main occupation? What would that be? And you may say, well, we know he was a carpenter. Yeah, he was, he was a carpenter. But you could also say he was a teacher, he’s a rabbi, he’s a carpenter. Wouldn’t be wrong to say he was a winemaker.
Right. Like you go through all the different careers, you could probably say that Jesus had jobs, but none of them defined him because they were not his vocation. He had a destiny. And so do you. And so what we do is we go through the coaching of this idea of your destinies. We hope you get clear on that and take steps to actually begin to move in that direction. And here are two scriptures that you know. Some scriptures I’ve used a lot here on the podcast and I don’t know that I’ve ever used these two. And I just found them in the past month and I think they may show up from time to time and I love them.
The first one is second Thessalonians 1, verses 11 and 12. It says this because we know that this extraordinary day is just ahead. We pray for you all the time. Pray that our God will make you fit for what he’s called you to be. Pray that he’ll fill your good ideas in acts of faith with hit with his own energy so that it all amounts to something. If your life honors the name of Jesus, he will honor you.
So good. So good. That’s my prayer for you and understanding and stepping into your destiny. Right? That he will make you fit for what he’s called you to be. He’ll make you fit for your destiny. And that he’ll fill your mind with good ideas and acts of faith, with his own energy as you step into the flow. So that your life amounts to something. Not just a chasing after things that are that aren’t noble. Not just chasing after power or possessions or popularity, but your life would honor that your life would respond, that your life would flow with what Jesus is doing in you, what he is saying to you.
And not only would that honor him, but he will honor you stepping into your destiny, living the rogue way. And then Galatians 6: 4 and 5 says it like this. Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself and don’t compare yourself with others. Such good truth. Because he says this as he goes on the Apostle Paul here in the book of Galatians, each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
I love that. Make a careful expression of who you are. Next, exploration of who you are, not what you do. Right? First and foremost, your vocation, what you’re called to, who are you? And then the work you’ve been given to do. And then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Right? Don’t be arrogant, but at the same time, don’t compare yourself with others and live with envy. But step into the flow.
Each of us taking responsibility for doing the creative best we can with our own life. I think both of those scriptures could be summed up into something I’ve said 10 billion times. And I’m going to continue to say is that you were created on purpose and for purpose. And what I want to do, what I’ve been trying to do with this podcast and with spiritual DNA and now with what we’re doing with Rogue Collective is help you become who you were born to be, living into your destiny, understanding that you’re so much more than any job you have, but unpacking your ability to step into the flow of what God’s spirit’s doing so that you can fulfill your destiny.
And if you don’t know what that is yet, that’s okay. We want to help you get together with a band of others and begin to discover that and respond to that day by day. That is the first of the four noble quests, destiny. And we’re gonna talk about the next one on the next episode, which is going to be freedom. Until we have that conversation, remember this, God’s for you, not against you. He’s near you, not far away, and he’s created you on purpose and for a purpose. Talk to you next time right here on the Daron Earlewine podcast.