You Were Never Called to Disappear

[lying in bed in Dubai, writing this one on my phone instead of the laptop.]

A man wrote me this week … I’ve known him a long time … and he’s a good man, doing real good in the world. And somewhere in his email he said, almost proudly,

“I’ve given up everything for the calling.”

I sat with that line for two days, because I used to say it too. In that same exact tone. It took me almost dying to now fully understand what I was actually confessing when I said it.

So this Sunday, I want to touch the most disguised idol in the building.

Purpose.

Calling.

The two things nobody’s allowed to challenge.

We’ve been handed two definitions and told to pick. The first: purpose is impact. What you were born for. The millions, the reach, the dent you will make in the world. The second sounds more spiritual and is somehow worse: calling is self-denial. Disappear into the mission. Empty yourself for the work, for God, for the people. Lose yourself and call it obedience.

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I built a church at twenty-three. A thousand people. I wrote sermons at three in the morning through real tears, for a real God, with a real love for those people.

And I will tell you something I could only say now, on the other side of it.

A great deal of what I called my calling was the most sophisticated hiding place ever built.

I poured myself out week after week and underneath the pouring, I was … drowning. The work let me be wanted by thousands at once without ever being known by one. I called it sacrifice. But it really was avoidance.

Here’s what I want to scream from the mountain top, and it’s the whole reason for this letter.

God’s first word to a person was never go do.

It was “come”.

Before servant, son.

Before assignment, belonging.

I keep going back to the old story in Luke 15. The one we all call the prodigal son.

The funny thing is, the word prodigal does not even mean what most of us were taught. It does not mean lost. It does not mean backslidden. It does not mean rebellious.

It actually means extravagant.

Wastefully lavish.

Recklessly spending without restraint.

That alone gives the whole scripture a different shape.

Because if we are honest with the story, the son is not the only prodigal person in it.

The son was prodigal with money. But the father was prodigal with mercy.

The son spent recklessly. The father forgave recklessly.

The son squandered an inheritance. The father squandered his own dignity.

In that culture, fathers did not run. Men of honor did not sprint down dusty roads toward disgraced children. Yet before the boy could finish his apology, before he could negotiate his way back into the family, before he could prove he had changed, the father ran to him.

He spent his reputation the way the son spent his money.

So which one was really more prodigal?

I will be honest with you about something. After I had sat with this for years, I found out a pastor named Tim Keller had seen some of the same things in the text. He called it the prodigal God. I came to it through my own wreckage. He came to it through study. Same story, different trails. I will tell you the part of the trail that is only mine.

Because there is something else hiding in plain sight.

Jesus never called this story “The Prodigal Son.” That title was added much later.

In Luke’s account, the story sits beside a lost sheep and a lost coin.

Lost sheep. Lost coin. Lost son.

But by the end of the story, the younger son is not the one who is lost.

He is inside. Back at home. Having a party.

The elder brother is the one standing outside now.

The younger son comes home afraid to enter because of what he has done. The elder son refuses to enter because of what the father has done. One is ashamed of his failures. The other is trapped by his successes.

And that is where I think we have missed the deepest part.

Most sermons treat the brothers like opposites.

I think they are twins.

One runs away trying to become himself. The other stays and obeys trying to become himself.

One says, “If I leave, I will find life.” The other says, “If I work hard enough, I will deserve life.” Both are looking for the exact same thing.

Identity.

However, both misunderstand the father. Both are trying to earn what was already theirs.

The younger brother finally admits he is broken. The elder brother never does.

That is why the most heartbreaking line in the story is not spoken by the younger son. It is spoken by the older one.

“I have slaved for you.”

Slaved.

For his own father.

The younger son said he wanted to become a servant. The elder son already believed he was one.

The younger brother wasted his inheritance in a far country. The elder brother wasted his sonship in his own backyard.

And I believe that is truly the real tragedy. Because a person can be far from home and know they’re lost. But a person can also be standing in the Father’s house for years and never realize they're lost because they’ve been relating to love like an employee.

The son’s anger wasn’t really about the party.

It was about grace.

Because the moment he saw his brother being loved without earning it, his entire identity was threatened. If sonship can be received, then all those years of striving were unnecessary. If the father gives freely, then the whole system he built his life on collapses.

A lot of what we call purpose or calling is the elder brother’s resentment with a mission statement.

So let me say this plainly. The way your mama would understand it and a billionaire would understand it in the same room.

You were never called to disappear.

The work was never supposed to be the place you go to earn what you were already given for free. Real purpose does not flow towards becoming someone worthy. It flows from a self that already knows it is loved. You cannot pour from a cup you never let anyone fill. And the man who empties a self he never actually met is not holy. He is hiding. And he has dressed the hiding in the one costume no one is allowed to confront.

If your calling requires you to abandon yourself to fulfill it, then it is not your calling.

The elder son thought he was called to be a servant. So he abandoned being a son. He abandoned himself.

The most radical, terrifying, holy thing a high-performing person can do is not to give more. It is to come home first. Be a son before a servant. Be known before being useful. And then, from fullness instead of from fear or competition, go and do your work.

That is a different kind of purpose.

It cannot be measured in millions. And it is the only kind that will not leave you at the top, successful in public and a complete stranger to yourself in private.

And if I am honest, that is why this story will not leave me alone.

Because I remember that moment in life when I did not see myself in the younger brother anymore.

I saw myself in the older one. The builder. The worker. The achiever. The one who kept showing up. The one who secretly believed love must be earned. The one who knows how to sacrifice but does not know how to receive. The one who can lead thousands and still cannot sit at the table without feeling guilty.

Maybe that is you too.

Maybe you are not exhausted because you are carrying too much. Maybe you are exhausted because you are carrying a version of yourself God never asked you to be.

Maybe nobody ever asked you to disappear. Maybe nobody ever asked you to prove your worth. Maybe the pressure, the striving, the endless need to become something, is not coming from God at all.

Maybe the father has been saying the same thing to you that he said to the older brother all along.

“Son, you have always been with me. Everything I have is yours.”

Not will be.

Is.

Maybe the life you have been chasing is already sitting in arms reach, waiting on you.

And maybe the invitation was never to work harder, sacrifice more, build bigger, or become someone else.

Maybe the invitation was simply this.

Come in.

Welcome Home.

I’ll write you next Sunday.

Gold,

P.s. stop trying to prove your worth to people who are still trying to discover their own worth.