Are You Living Called or Driven?
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In my previous post, God is Patient: A Year in Review (2020), I wrote how 2020 was the year I burnt out. However, after burnout, there was, and continues to be, healing and soul rest. Like any physical injury, it is crucial to ensure you don’t injure yourself again by going the same thing. One must learn from their mistakes or end up back at square one.
In the age of social media, though it has been an issue throughout the ages, much emphasis is put on how you look in public. The private world — soul and mind — is often ignored. Unfortunately, too many times, we have seen the results of a disordered private world even when the individual seems to have it all together; burn out and moral failure.
In Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald describes, “In those early years I gave people more of the spiffy leader and less the man Jesus intended me to be: deepening, loving, quiet-spirited and gentle (p. xix).” We are often preoccupied with the public world that we often forget about the private world until it is too late. It is also easy to naively assume that the more publicly active or larger the audience, the more spiritual and blessed. I will explore how I ordered and continue to order, my private world in a future post.
The Driven Person
Would people describe you as a driven person? Do you know someone that you would describe as driven?
The Oxford Dictionary defines driven as “(of a person) relentlessly compelled by the need to accomplish a goal; very hard-working and ambitious.” There are many leaders of schools, churches, businesses and nations that are lead by driven people.
Gordon MacDonald outlines eight symptoms of a driven person in Ordering Your Private World. Driven people are not all bad, they accomplish and build great things, but their drivenness can create unfortunate results. Unfortunately, I can relate to all of the symptoms MacDonald outlines.
A driven person is gratified (and gratified temporarily) only by accomplishment.
A person begins to reason that if one accomplishment resulted in good feelings and the praise of others, then several more accomplishments may bring an abundance of good feelings and affirmations. (p. 20)
A driven person is quick to flaunt the symbols of accomplishment.
There is generally a concern of ones notoriety. Who, the driven person wonders, knows about what I am doing? How can I be better connected to “the greats” of my world? These questions often preoccupy the driven person. (p. 21)
A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion.
They are usually on the move, seeking the biggest and best opportunities. They rarely have anytime to appreciate the achievements to date. (p. 21)
A driven person is gratified (and gratified temporarily) only by accomplishment.
Preoccupied with the need for success and achievement, they have little time to stop and ask if the inner person is keeping up with the outer process… [they] often become progressively deceitful… lie to themselves about motives; values and morals are compromised. Shortcuts to success become a way of life. (p. 21)
Driven people are not likely to abound in people skills unless it’s the ability to manipulate or intimidate.
The driven person gets things done, but he may destroy the people around him in the process… The ironic thing, which cannot be ignored, is that in almost every great organisation, religious or secular, people of this sort can be found in key positions. Even though they carry with them the seeds of relational disaster, they often are indispensable to the action. (p. 22)
Driven people tend to be highly competitive. They see each effort as a win-or-lose situation.
Winning provides the evidence the driven person desperately needs that he is right, valuable, and important. Thus he is likely to see others as competitors or as enemies who must be beaten — perhaps even humiliated — in the process. (p. 23)
A driven person often possesses a volcanic force of anger, which can erupt anytime he or she senses opposition or disloyalty.
Tragically, many good people who surround the driven person are more than willing to absorb the impact of such anger, although it desperately hurts them, because they reason that the boss or the leader is good at what he or she does. (p. 24)
Driven people boast of their busyness. They have forgotten how to play. Spiritual activity seems a waste of time.
They operate on the precept that a reputation of busyness is a sign of success and personal importance…The worst thing that could happen to them would be if someone provided them with a way out [of their busyness]. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if there was suddenly less to do… They find it enjoyable to complain and gather pity, and they would probably not want it any different. (p. 25)
Many leaders of organisations and churches are driven. ‘We have created a system that rides on their backs’ (p., 25). There is, if I may be so bold, a drivenness pandemic that has continued to snowball throughout the ages. We see peoples personal development and spiritual formation often overshadowed or sacrificed by accomplishment and accumulation.
We can see the demise of the driven person through the life of King Saul in the Bible. See 1 Samuel 9 onwards. From being anointed as the first King of Israel, Saul quickly fell into selfish ambition, who (although anointed by God) saw his power and kingdom as his own. Seeing himself as a significant person, Saul went beyond his limits and performed a reserved sacrifice for the prophet Samuel to perform. Due to this act, God sought a man after His own heart to be king, ultimately taking the kingdom away from Saul’s linage. After David was anointed to be the future king, he often sought to kill him.
An inner life fraught with unresolved drives will not be able to hear clearly the voice of Christ when He calls. The noise and pain of stress will be too great. (p. 30)
The Called Person
To what are you called? How would you feel if that calling changed or God asked you to give something you pioneered or built up to another?
In Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Plan for the World, Timothy Keller states “A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfilment and self-realisation slowly crushes a person.”
“Driven people… may not always end well, but a person who has lived in the centre of God’s call tells a different story” (p. 45). MacDonald contrasts Saul (driven) with John the baptiser (called). They both had a moment where their identity and sense of “vocational security” come under attack. Saul became violent towards David, almost instantly, when the anointing was transferred.
John, however, did things very differently. When questions were asked of him about his dwindling popularity as the crowds, and some of his disciples began to follow Jesus instead of him, John says;
“A person can receive only what is given to them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3: 27–30 (NIV)
Gordon MacDonald outlines what living as a Called person requires.
Called people understand Stewardship
Called people never assume ownership of their work or the people of that work. (p. 50)
Called people know exactly who they are
Knowing who he [John] was not was the beginning of knowing who he was… John had no illusions of his personal identity… (p. 50–51)
In contrast, those whose private worlds are in disarray tend to get their identities confused. They can have an increasing inability to separate role from person. (p. 51)
Called people possess an unwavering sense of purpose.
The purpose of the best man is simply to stand with the groom, to make sure all attention is riveted on him…The best man has fulfilled his purpose most admirably when he draws no attention to himself but focusses all attention on the bride and groom. (p. 53)
Called people practice unswerving commitment
A called person — because he is a steward, because he knows who he is, because he is purposeful- anticipates the day when it is time to step back and let go. (p. 55)
It is easy to fall into drivenness and lose sight of being called. Living out of “calledenss” requires the private world to be invested in and the private life to be continuously consecrated to God.
What is given into our hands is not our own. It is God’s and will always be His. Ultimately it is His burden to carry and His right to give or take to whom and from whom he pleases.
Live within calling.
