Different Walk but Same Calling

Sometimes God asks us to lay something down, and we assume that means the season is over. We begin making peace with what we think we are leaving behind, only to discover that God wasn’t taking away the calling at all. He was changing the way He wanted us to walk in it. That has been much of my journey over the past several months.

In May, I made the difficult decision to step away from teaching Bible studies at my church. Teaching God’s Word had become an important part of my life. I loved studying Scripture, preparing lessons, and walking alongside people as they grew in their faith. But somewhere along the way, I began to recognize that I was becoming spiritually dry. I was spending so much time preparing to pour into others that I wasn’t allowing God to pour into me. Even my time in Scripture often had a purpose attached to it – a lesson to prepare, a question to answer, or something I needed to give someone else. I knew I needed to step away, not because I had stopped loving God’s Word or the people I taught, but because I needed to remember how to simply sit with Him again.

At the time, I believed I might be stepping away from teaching for quite a while, and surprisingly, I began to find peace with that. I would use this season to focus on my own relationship with God, promote my book, and perhaps eventually write a sequel. That seemed like a good plan. But as I spent more time with God without the pressure of preparing the next Bible study, I realized the desire to teach hadn’t disappeared. God wasn’t asking me to abandon that part of who He created me to be. He was asking me to release my expectations of what teaching was supposed to look like.

The same was true of writing. I had connected being a writer with publishing books – finish one, promote it, and eventually write the next. But what if writing didn’t always have to become another book? What if teaching didn’t require standing in front of a room? What if I could use both gifts to create resources that helped others open God’s Word, ask deeper questions, and grow in their relationship with Christ? What if I had placed limitations around a gift God intended to use differently.

Those questions became the beginning of One Cup Ministries. Instead of focusing on publishing another book right now, I began reimagining and rebranding my website as a place where people could find Bible studies, devotionals, reflection questions, and other tools to help them learn and grow. I began to see that God wasn’t asking me to choose between teaching and writing. He was bringing the two together in a way I hadn’t considered before.

There has been something freeing about realizing that One Cup Ministries doesn’t have to come from a place of having everything figured out. I am still learning, still asking questions, and still opening God’s Word and discovering more about Him and myself. The resources I create can come from that place—not as someone who has arrived, but as someone walking alongside others who desire to grow too. I can simply say, Come learn with me. Let’s open God’s Word together and see what He wants to teach us.

Looking back, I can see that what felt like an ending in May was actually a redirection. I needed to stop producing long enough to remember that my relationship with God was never supposed to revolve around what I could prepare, teach, write, or give to someone else. Before anything I do for Him, He wants me to be with Him. It was in returning to that quiet place that He began giving me a clearer vision for what might come next.

I am learning that our calling and the way we live out that calling are not always the same thing. We can become so attached to the way God has used us in one season that we assume He must use us the same way in the next. Sometimes what feels like a closed door is actually an invitation to release our expectations and trust Him enough to follow where He leads.

I don’t know exactly what One Cup Ministries will become, and I am learning to be okay with that. There are ideas still forming, resources still being created, and plenty for me to learn. What I do know is that God used a season of spiritual dryness to draw me back to Himself. What I thought was an ending became an invitation to slow down, listen, and allow Him to reshape my understanding of the gifts He had given me…one cup at a time.

What gifts has God given you, and how might He be inviting you to use them differently in this season? What would it look like for you to stop trying to figure out every detail of what comes next and simply trust God with your next step? Where might God be inviting you to slow down so you can hear His direction more clearly? Please share in the comments.