Navigating a Quarter-or Mid-Life Crisis

I therefore, prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says,

When he ascended on high he led
a host of captives,
And he gave gifts to men.

– Ephesians 4:1–8

The past few years have been hard for seminaries across America, but I was encouraged to hear recently that here at Covenant Seminary, and at other seminaries around the country, the downward trend in enrollment seems to be turning around. This was particularly encouraging to me because seminary was such a seminal time for my theological and spiritual formation, as I’m sure it is for many of you.

I didn’t know anything when I went into seminary, and while my classmates were eager to graduate and go off to do ministry, I, when I was graduating, felt like I needed another three or four years to study. I felt like I was just getting my bearings. If there’s one word I’d use to describe myself at that time, it would be “lost.” I felt lost. I saw my friends planting churches. Some of them became senior pastors right away. Other friends were working in the business world and making tons of money. As for me, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I felt lost. And I found myself at the age of 30 experiencing what I call a “quarter-life crisis.”

Experiencing the Crisis of Lostness

What do you do when you have a quarter-life crisis? Well, I learned how to ride a motorcycle. I got my permit and started riding a bike with a friend. And what’s the other thing that you do when you’re young and you have no idea what you’re doing with life? You go back to school. So I went back to school yet again, doing doctorate work at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.

During that time that I was studying I also worked at my friend’s father’s warehouse mopping the floor after Hurricane Sandy. I was all by myself and this large warehouse. I was also a cashier for my friend’s car wash and I was terrible at it. Tuesdays were Senior Citizen Day where everyone over a certain age got discounts. You have no idea how many people I offended by giving them a discount. And on top of that, I was a sportswriter for The Bleacher Report and some other sites about the NBA. But I was lost. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do ministry. I just wasn’t sure of myself as a whole. And that was hard for someone like me who likes to plan things.

The majority of my life up to that point had been quite linear. I went to college, I moved overseas as a missionary, I went to seminary. Everything was going according to plan. But then after I graduated from seminary, things weren’t linear anymore. It was like this crazy roadmap, and I just couldn’t get my bearings. So I experienced what some people would call a crisis.

Maybe some of you here today feel the same way I did. You have no idea what you’re doing with your life. And chances are, if you feel like that you may think to yourself, “Well, I know I have at least one or two more years of school left. At least I know that much.” But you’re not sure what happens after that.

Eventually, at one point or another, all of us, will feel lost.

Someone once defined a crisis this way. They said a crisis is an internal experience of confusion and anxiety to the degree that formerly successful coping mechanisms fail us and ineffective decisions and behaviors take their place. As a result, the person in crisis may feel very confused, vulnerable, anxious, afraid, angry, guilty, hopeless, and helpless.

Do any of you feel that way today?

If so, the good news is that you’re not alone. All of us will feel that way at one point or another in our lives. But the even better news is that if you feel stuck in your lostness like a traveler always traveling but never arriving, you can get unstuck. You don’t have to be in that space forever. And I think that the key to stepping out of our quarter-life crisis or our mid-life crisis is to step into our calling.

Taking Another Look at “Calling”

If you’ve grown up in the church, you’ve heard this word “calling” a lot. But there is a sense in which we need to demythologize what calling is, and to do that, I want to take a look at Ephesians 4:1–8. Take a look at verse 1: “I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Years ago, Os Guinness wrote a book on calling which I found very helpful. He said that there are two kinds of calling. Both are important, but we have to get them in the right order. The first is our primary calling—which is to simply be a beloved child of God. It is to simply have a healthy relationship with God and to reflect Jesus and walk with Jesus. Our secondary calling is not who we are in Jesus, but what we do for Jesus. Both callings are important, but again, we have to get them in the right order.

What’s very interesting that the word “calling” is used 51 times in the New Testament. And what’s surprising is that approximately 49 out of those 51 times that the word “calling” is used, it has to do with our primary calling to simply be with Jesus. Only two times is it talking about what we do for Jesus. What that means then, is that God cares far more about who we are becoming than what we are doing.

This is especially interesting to me because in the city where I live we tend to idolize work. I have people in my congregation who work 90 to 100 hours a week. That’s crazy! The first question that we inevitably ask one another when we meet each other is, “What do you do for a living?” And based on that, we measure and size one another up. As a society, we tend to care a lot more about what we do than who we are.

If you had asked me when I was in seminary what my metrics were for success, I would have told you things like: going to seminary, maybe getting some kind of doctorate, planting a church—and not just any church; it had to be a big church. Maybe writing a couple of books. Speaking in Chapel at Covenant Seminary. Then I would really be someone based on what I do.

But take a look again at verse one and then verse two: “I therefore a prisoner for the law, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”

Paul’s metrics for success were not based on what he did. They were based on who he was becoming. Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love—for Paul, that was success. That was his primary calling in life: who he was becoming. This is why I routinely say to my two daughters, “I love being a pastor, but what is one thing that I love more than being a pastor?” You know what they always say? “Being our daddy.” And that’s exactly right. I love being their daddy far more than I love being a pastor. And this is also why I routinely remind our congregation, “If God called me to something else besides ministry, if he called me to become a high school basketball coach, if he called me to pursue my dream of being a B-list actor, would that be okay with you? Because that would be okay with me.”

Ministry never stops. But our primary calling is not to be faithful to ministry. Our calling is to be faithful to Jesus. That’s the primary thing. And we can’t make the secondary things eclipse the primary things.

Your most important call in life is not to the ministry. It is to the person of Jesus Christ.

Walking Faithfully With the Master

Take yet another look at verse 1. I want to emphasize a different phrase there where Paul says he urges the Ephesians “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” It’s interesting to me that often the Bible describes our relationship with God as a walk.

We are told that Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. Micah 6:8 says to “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” It’s interesting that the Bible talks about a relationship with God as a kind of walk, and we use it in our everyday colloquial language as well. We say, “Don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.” The idea is that there has to be a match between what you believe and how you live. There can’t be a mismatch. There has to be some kind of connection between what you believe and how you live your life.

I got my driver’s license in the nineties. For those old enough to remember, one of the things that we used to do was to put fish logos on our cars. It was a way of saying, “I’m a follower of Jesus.” One of my close friends who would often take me to church, however, refused to put a fish logo on his car. The reason that he drove like the devil. He was a reckless driver. I don’t know how many speeding tickets got. He flipped over cars multiple times. One day we were talking about the fish logos and he said, “I would never put one on my car because I know that the moment I do, everyone around me will know I represent Jesus. And there’s a disconnect between what I believe and how I drive.”

When you’re in ministry, you live in a glass house. Everyone can see into your life. And it is imperative for us as ministry leaders in particular that what we believe should match how we live our lives. This is why I’m emphasizing our primary calling to follow Jesus more than our secondary calling.

Some of you may watched the memorial service for pastor Tim Keller earlier this year. One of the interesting things about the service was that Tim was such a colossal figure who did some colossal things. He wrote New York Times best-selling books. He planted a large church in New York City. He was not only one of the 50 best pastors in the world, but also one of the 50 best leaders in the world, period. He had the ears of presidents. He was just a titan, a mammoth of a figure. But during the memorial service not one person who spoke mentioned any of his accomplishments. Not one. They all mentioned who he was—as a father, as a friend, and for many of us, as a spiritual mentor. I think the reason for that is because Tim understood better than any of us the importance of making our primary calling primary and our secondary calling secondary. I say this to us in particular because there are many of us here who are very gifted and talented. But if we don’t walk straight with Jesus, we will have a crooked relationship with our gifts. The only way to have a non-distorted relationship with your gifts, to have a straightforward relationship with your gifts, is to have a straightforward relationship with Jesus as well.

Keeping the Primary Thing Primary

In this passage, Paul mentions seven “ones”: one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one hope, one body, one Spirit, one God and Father of all. There’s a lot of sameness here. But in verse 7, Paul talks about something different. He says, “But grace was given to each one according to the measure of Christ.” This grace Paul is talking about is not a saving grace. What he’s talking about here are the gracious gifts of God. For some of you, he’s given one set of gifts, for others of you, he’s given another set of gifts. We all have different gifts in the body of Christ. But what’s imperative for us, especially if we may have a lot of gifts, is that if we don’t have a straightforward relationship with God, we will have a crooked relationship with those gifts. These gifts are given to us not to build our own kingdom and platform. They are given to us to serve the greater kingdom and the body of Christ.

Nobody understood this better than Jesus himself, whose calling was not to be served, but to serve. His calling was to live a perfect life. His calling was actually not only to be born, but to die for us, for our sins. His calling was to rise from the dead. His calling was to ascend to the father. All of that was his calling. But Jesus understood better than any of us that that was not his primary calling. His primary calling was this: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God” (John 1:1). He was just with his Father. And the reason why he faithfully did everything for us was because he first was simply with his Father as a beloved son of God. He kept the primary things primary and he kept the other things secondary.

Similarly, we are called to do the same.

I’ll close with this story. When I was first getting a license to preach, the first question the leadership development team asked me was to compare Meredith Kline's eschatology with Geerhardus Vos’s biblical theology. That was the softball question. It only got harder from there.

The first question my elder asked me when I got ordained in the Korean Northeastern Presbytery was: How are your quite times? How is your devotional life? How is your private life? I remember walking out of that meeting thinking, “Why did I even study for this? That was such a joke.” But now, hopefully, I’m a little bit wiser and more mature.

What do you think is the more important question for you in your life and ministry? Is it Meredith Kline's eschatology and Geerhardus Vos’s biblical theology. Or is a more important question: How is your devotional life? How is your prayer life? Are you walking with Jesus? you tell me. What is more important?

For the students here, tuck this away in your heart. For those of us here who have been in the ministry game for a long time, tuck this in your hearts, too. And when Jesus finally says to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” may we be reminded that it’s not because we built a big church that he says well done, but simply because you walked faithfully with him to the end. Let's pray.

Oh God, it is in our nature to do a lot more than to simply be. Sometimes being still and recognizing who we are can be very difficult. Often, we get caught up in worldly metrics instead of gospel metrics. So please give us clarity, discernment, and wisdom every day to know that our chief and is not only to glorify you and to enjoy you, but also to realize that we are deeply loved as sons and daughters of God. Imprint that on us every day, and thank you for simply letting us be your beloved sons and daughters. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Note: This sermon was delivered in the Robert G. Rayburn Chapel at Covenant Theological Seminary in November 2023 and was adapted for the spring 2024 edition of Covenant magazine. Get your copy or subscribe to Covenant here.