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Ep. 13 - The RISE Framework: A Fresh Way to Discern God’s Calling
10 Plays8 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire and Patrick Lowndes unpack the RISE Framework—a practical, biblical way to discern your calling at work. They tackle the false belief that your calling is downloaded in an instant, replacing it with a more freeing truth: calling unfolds as you walk with God. Drawing from Scripture and real-life examples, they share how you can take meaningful next steps toward clarity in your purpose.
Resources Mentioned
- Clarity of Calling Assessment - explore.frontieroperators.com/calling
- Frontier Operators Community – A space to explore your calling and join live workshops: frontieroperators.com/community
- Christians for Impact by JD Bauman – Cited for the idea of 80,000 hours invested in a career.
Timestamps
- 00:00 – Revisiting the conversation on calling and setting up part two of the series.
- 01:00 – The Myth of Instant Clarity: Why calling isn’t a one-time divine download.
- 02:30 – Biblical Examples of Calling: How Abraham, Paul, and Jesus reveal God’s step-by-step guidance.
- 05:00 – The RISE Framework Overview: A tool for discerning your next faithful step.
- 05:20 – R: Research – Taking the posture of a learner to explore industries, problems, and opportunities that align with God’s heart.
- 07:30 – I: Intimacy – Deepening your relationship with Christ to understand what moves His heart.
- 09:45 – S: Support – Seeking mentors and communities already leading in your area of interest.
- 11:20 – E: Engage – Taking action through small, faithful steps and trusting God to guide and redirect.
- 13:27 – Final Thoughts: Calling unfolds through relationship, not revelation—walk with God and move forward in faith.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:08
Patrick
Welcome back to Buried Talent, the show for young professionals that tears down false beliefs about faith and work so you can unbury your God-given talent right where you are. I'm Patrick Lowndes.
00:00:19
Patrick
With me, my co-host, Ken Freire. And today we are talking about the RISE framework, a fresh way to discern God's calling. And this is like part two of a two-part little series, a one-two punch. So if you didn't already listen to the previous episode,
00:00:34
Patrick
episode 12, you'll want to listen to that and then jump on into this one. But Ken, we're just going to kind of go right into it. You can catch our check-in from the last update, but maybe get us started here on a fresh way to discern God's calling and what false belief we're really getting after today.
00:00:51
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, so the biggest thing that we talked about in the last episode, just real quickly, is the difference between a general calling and a specific calling. And when it comes to the false belief in the general calling, the last episode we talked about, it was this myth of we feel like calling is all about ministry, but that's not the truth.
00:01:10
Dan Sanchez
The other part of another myth that we find lot of times when it comes to calling is that we treat calling kind of like an app download, right? Where it's like quick, it's got to be clear, it's got to be complete.
00:01:22
Dan Sanchez
Like we just expect God to just download the whole thing into us and we're going to have the whole roadmap for the next 50 years of our lives.
00:01:30
Dan Sanchez
And there's so much paralysis because of that. And you get frustrated because you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And people even use this language. I want to be in the center of God's will.
00:01:42
Dan Sanchez
Like in some ways, if you're not in the center, you must be out of it. So they feel stuck and then they're waiting for clarity.
00:01:49
Dan Sanchez
And because that clarity never comes, what ends up happening is they just walk away and they just feel frustrated.
00:01:55
Patrick
Yeah. And it's a little frustrating, especially when you have people, especially like, know, your pastor might say this or you might have guest speakers or whatever, and you hear them talk about and like with such conviction and such clarity, the thing that God has called them to do.
00:02:08
Patrick
don't know about you, Ken, but like there have been many times where in my 20s and even even my 30s, just get jealous. Like you get calling jealous. You're like, man, that guy like really understands exactly why he or she is here.
00:02:19
Patrick
And I think it's good for us to come back to reality. Yeah, someone might have some clarity and conviction. Many times that is the result of a long time, a long process. And we think like we try to map out what do we think happens as people are shifting from that, from kind of having a vague sense and trying to get more clear on that.
00:02:37
Patrick
And we think it matters because like Christians for Impact, JD Bauman, there talks about 80,000 hours you'll put into your career. So like if you're just getting going your first year or two, like it's your first couple thousand, 10,000 hours, maybe you want to make sure the other 70 are like are going to matter. The other 70,000 hours are going to matter. So let's start just at the beginning with some examples. Like where do we even see this?
00:03:01
Patrick
Try to anchor you a little bit in what God has already told us in the examples in his word. So let's maybe hit on a few of them real quick. I'm just going to rattle off a few. But think about like Abraham saying, you know, God saying, go to the land I'll show you.
00:03:14
Patrick
Right. How's that for getting specific? You're like, really? Like over there?
00:03:17
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:03:19
Patrick
Like imagine God saying to you, like, hey, you're in Dallas, like go to the East Coast where I show you. Like how many people would be like, sweet, I'm going to go cancel that rent agreement. I'm just hop on a plane and a bus and I'm just going to like, no, like Abraham's like, OK.
00:03:34
Patrick
And he takes his whole family. It was it was not like a one man show. was like literally, OK, cool. I'm going to follow you. Right. And then Paul, same thing, evolving assignments. Right.
00:03:45
Patrick
Like first it's like, hey, man, like no vision, like you're blind, like just now, like literally follow me until I give you your sight. And then it was just like progressive. Hey, go spend two or three years in this other city, like just just getting prepared like that. He didn't have clarity on where he was going yet.
00:04:01
Patrick
He just knew like he needed some work. Got to put in some time. So those are a couple examples. And the last one I'll just, I'll mention here is Jesus. Like 30 years of like doing what before public ministry, like before he stepped into more of his calling, like you don't hear about Jesus at 22.
00:04:19
Patrick
What was he doing from 22 to 29, 30, right? And just imagine all the forming and shaping that happens, all the quiet conversations of prayer. So there's just, we see this a lot, like prominent examples, Ken, of not having the full story, right?
00:04:34
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, and the reason we bring those up, because it's okay to not have the full story.
00:04:39
Patrick
Yeah.
00:04:39
Dan Sanchez
What you need is the next steps on what you're supposed to do, right?
00:04:42
Patrick
Yeah, it's good.
00:04:45
Dan Sanchez
And that's why even throughout scripture, talks about the Lord, you know, directs our steps, right? He makes, I'm thinking about Psalms, right? He lights our path. He directs our next step.
00:04:54
Patrick
Mm-hmm.
00:04:55
Dan Sanchez
That's what we want to do.
00:04:56
Dan Sanchez
So in the Bible, it doesn't give us five-year calling plan.
00:04:56
Patrick
Yeah.
00:05:00
Dan Sanchez
They go to one next step. And that's what the RISE rhythm, the RISE acronym that we have, the framework, is supposed to help us with. It's just figuring out how do clearly discern the right next step.
00:05:14
Patrick
That's right. And it's not about, again, just trying to have it all penciled out beautifully. This is more about relationship with God. And you're see this come up as we describe this. So number one is R, right, for RISE, research.
00:05:25
Patrick
And you can see this too. When you get a little bit passionate about something or just want to learn more, like we got to take the posture of a learner and learn. And so thinking in context of your marketplace calling, because we're young professionals, like we're listening to this podcast,
00:05:40
Patrick
As a professional, you should start asking the question like, man, like what? I mean, generally people start about this when they have to pick their major. Like, okay, I'm going to major in this in school. And then they start thinking about what is that first job or industry.
00:05:51
Patrick
But I'd also challenge you to say, what is industry that you think is solving problem in the world that matters lot? We talked about this, I think, in episode four. Yeah.
00:06:01
Patrick
But think about what are some of the things you can research industries? Maybe there's like challenge. There's a lot of companies that have been started in the last five or 10 years solving specific meaningful challenges.
00:06:13
Patrick
Like you don't have to just go and use your finance skill set at some big accounting firm just because that's what everyone is pushing you towards through the internship. You might find like you can do some really cool accounting work for like a startup that's actually like changing the world in some key industry.
00:06:29
Patrick
industry, but first you have to research. And so research can take a lot of different things. And Ken, you can talk about intimacy in just a second, but I'll just wrap it up. It could be like reading through books and reports or interviews, yet you could certainly do a chat GPT like you know, like a deep, a deep research project and just try to figure out like what are the things that are going on?
00:06:51
Patrick
You could in like two hours, you could like canvas a whole topic in an industry and have like 50 or 100 pages of research. So would just challenge you it's researching is so much easier than it used to be given these days. And so I would start with taking the posture of a learner and learning about one particular area.
00:07:11
Patrick
And then it kind leads into like this next topic, which Ken's going unpack with I for intimacy.
00:07:18
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, so as you think about this, guys, we want you to learn for every step of the way of what to do. And if you're wondering like, oh, Patrick just gave a couple of good examples of Rise or of research.
00:07:32
Dan Sanchez
And you're trying to figure out like, how do actually do this specifically? And we have a proper framework for each one of these letters, man. Come check out the live community where we do regular live workshops with you on Rising Into Your Calling.
00:07:46
Dan Sanchez
So if you're interested in that, go check out the community.
00:07:48
Dan Sanchez
It's going to be in the show notes. It's going fantastic time where we get just to ask you a lot of questions and help you walk through this process.
00:07:53
Patrick
That's right. This is like the appetizer. The main course is over there. So I should have said that at the outset, yeah, thanks for catching me on that.
00:08:00
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, and that is just important. This is kind of big, broad overview, but we want to really help you hone in on it, which leads me to the second one, which is intimacy, right? This is all about you becoming intimate with Christ.
00:08:15
Dan Sanchez
And here's the reality. For some of you, you may not have a deep, intimate relationship with God. And quite frankly, you might be like, that's kind of weird. You've never used that language before, right? You might say like, hey, I have a good relationship with God.
00:08:28
Dan Sanchez
But at the end of the day, you want to make sure it's such a deep relationship with him that you're like, man, I know what's in God's heart and he knows what's in my heart. You want to figure out what are those things that truly break him?
00:08:38
Patrick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:43
Dan Sanchez
Because when you are in a deep relationship with someone, you are going to care about what they care about.
00:08:49
Dan Sanchez
And you may actually be in a place right now where you're like, don't know if I'm in a deep, intimate relationship with God. And guess what?
00:08:58
Dan Sanchez
That's okay for you to acknowledge that because it's a good next step forward of just saying, hey, well, what if I learned what that looked like? How do I actually get to a better place where I'm truly growing in my relationship with God? And what does that even look like?
00:09:12
Patrick
Yeah.
00:09:12
Dan Sanchez
So again, if that's something that's interesting to you, man, check us out in the workshop.
00:09:17
Dan Sanchez
It's free, but you can just come through all of these sections and see what can help you build and grow for the glory God.
00:09:25
Patrick
Yeah. And it can be super practical. We're going to give you some just ways to do that there too.
00:09:30
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:09:30
Patrick
But let's go to S for support. So we've done research, intimacy, which is really like prayer and really processing a lot of this with God and his heart. And then S is support. This is where you want to think about who's there, who's already leading in this space.
00:09:45
Patrick
They've already pioneered right some area of interest usually that someone's five or ten fifteen twenty years down the path further than you in some calling some some specific uh cause and you it's your job to like go learn from them so part of your you might even find these people in your research part of support is how can how can i receive support from them? How can I learn from the people around them? Quite frankly, can you even get to the point where some of those people, those leaders, those influencers, how can they mentor you in what they've learned? How can they help you carry the banner forward with them in that space? Now, it might be someone that's like,
00:10:24
Patrick
you maybe a very famous or prolific figure, right? There's lots of usually place, you know, people that can be a part of these organizations, these networks, these communities, but you'd be surprised just showing up, right?
00:10:36
Patrick
And say, how can I support you? Is there anything that you could do to support me? Because I kind of want to go deeper in this. Support is such a key way. It's not just about a transactional, like, just going to network with people.
00:10:46
Patrick
It's about how can I try to find a way to add value, support you, but also receive value. You'll find that there's a lot of ways to do that. We'll unpack that a little bit deeper.
00:10:56
Patrick
Ken, bring us home. What's the E?
00:10:58
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, so E is about engage. And when we're talking about engagement, this is all about transforming your calling from theory into mission. And the way you do that is by practicing, right?
00:11:10
Dan Sanchez
Your calling becomes clearer as you practice it. And this is where I think most people get stuck, right? Because like, if I don't do the right thing now,
00:11:17
Patrick
Yeah.
00:11:20
Dan Sanchez
I'm going to get in trouble. God's going to beat me over the head or I'm going to ruin something. There's fear of failure, fear of rejection, all these different types of things that come up. But like recognize God knows all your insecurities. God knows all your human.
00:11:35
Dan Sanchez
He knows that. He knows you're not fully sure about what to do. But the way he's designed our world is for you to take action. And the more you take action, the more things become clearer.
00:11:48
Dan Sanchez
So ask yourself, what's one small step you can take this week that you can say, I'm going to do this thing. I believe as best as possible, this is where God's going to take it, where God wants me to do.
00:12:02
Dan Sanchez
And here's something that became super reassuring with me.
00:12:02
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:05
Dan Sanchez
And I'll wrap it up here. And Patrick, you could close this out.
00:12:08
Dan Sanchez
When I started thinking this way about God, as a guide, guides us, right? He shows us the path. I all of a sudden realized that if I'm just walking, he's going to be a good enough God to kind of point me in the right direction.
00:12:25
Dan Sanchez
And if I'm going in the wrong direction, he's going to close those doors.
00:12:27
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:29
Dan Sanchez
He's going to gently nudge me. He's going to gently push me towards where he wants me to go. But the only way that happens is if I'm moving.
00:12:35
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:37
Dan Sanchez
So I just take great care. I'm like, God, I'm going to go this way. And if it's the wrong way, you're going to kind of show me very quickly.
00:12:45
Dan Sanchez
And I'm like, OK, praise God. He did that. Awesome. And sometimes I get really wrong and I'm like, whoops, wrong way. Right. OK. I'm like, my bad, God. And I keep moving.
00:12:56
Dan Sanchez
And it's like, man, thank God that he's very gracious to us in those times.
00:13:00
Patrick
That's so good. And I'll just kind of put a bow in it again, just like we like to try to do. So again, like this false belief, this myth out there, like your calling is not downloaded one time, right?
00:13:11
Patrick
And it's discerned over a period of time. It's a relationship that unfolds as you walk with the Lord. So Ken, I love how you said that. That was beautiful. And so as you think about that, we want to help you in that. That's why we do this show.
00:13:23
Patrick
We're not just trying to be talking heads up here. We want to roll up our sleeves with you and find some other like crazy passionate people trying to do that as well. Young professionals are like, I don't want to just sit on the sidelines of this conversation or wait till I have gray hair and a good story to tell.
00:13:37
Patrick
Right. Like, let's make the most of our life now. And so what that could look like is researching, finding out what breaks your heart, breaks God's heart, spending time, marinate that in prayer, marinate that in intimacy with God.
00:13:48
Patrick
and then invite mentors in, find support for yourself, and then be able to engage and actually take practice shots on goal, right? And you're going miss You're going whiff some. That's all right. That's all part of the process.
00:13:58
Patrick
So that is a little bit of an overview of the RISE framework. Catch the full meal deal. That was just like the little appy, little appetizer there. Catch the full meal there with us each month in that RISE into Your Calling workshop.
00:14:12
Patrick
And we'll catch you next time on Buried Talent.