And still the question won’t leave: Is this actually from God, or did I just want this so badly that I convinced myself it was Him?
If you’ve been sitting with that question, you’re not alone, and you’re not faithless. In fact, I’d argue that asking it at all is a sign you’re taking your calling seriously.
But let me offer something more useful than “just keep praying.” Because after 25 years in ministry and discipleship, and now working with Christian entrepreneurs who are building from their calling, I’ve noticed that this question usually isn’t really about the idea. It’s about something underneath it.
Why the Question Is So Hard to Answer
Here’s the thing about discernment: God rarely sends a certified letter.
He tends to work through the slow burn of desire, through the pattern of gifts you didn’t choose, through the pain you keep running into, through the thing that won’t leave you alone no matter how many times you try to move on from it.
Which means distinguishing “this is from God” from “this is what I really want” can feel nearly impossible because sometimes, they’re the same thing.
Psalm 37:4 says He gives us the desires of our heart. Not as a blank check, but as a clue. The longings He planted in you are part of the evidence, not a disqualifier.
So step one is to stop treating your desire as suspicious. The question isn’t whether you want it. The question is whether the desire is pulling you toward Him or away from Him.
Three Things That Point Toward a God-Given Calling
I’m not going to give you a checklist to score yourself on. But I will tell you what I’ve seen consistently in the entrepreneurs I work with, the ones who are genuinely building from calling, not just building:
1. It requires more than you have.
A God-given calling will almost always feel bigger than your current capacity. Not in a paralyzing way, but in a this is going to need Someone bigger than me kind of way. If you can pull it off in your own strength, it might be a good idea. If it genuinely requires faith, that’s often a sign something holy is at work.
2. It keeps coming back.
You put it down. You pivot to something safer. You tell yourself you’ve moved on. And then six months later, it’s back, still asking, still waiting, still there. Ideas from your own ambition tend to fade when they meet resistance. Ideas from God tend to have a staying power that defies logic.
3. It’s connected to what you’ve been through.
Your calling is rarely disconnected from your story. The pain you’ve walked through, the problem you understand from the inside, the gap you’ve seen everywhere and wished someone would fill, that’s not accidental. Romans 8:28 isn’t just a comfort verse. It’s also a clue about how God assembles a calling.
What It Doesn’t Mean
Here’s where I want to push back on something I see all the time:
Confirmation doesn’t always feel like peace.
Sometimes it feels like fear. Like Gideon asking for a second sign because the first one wasn’t enough. Like Moses making every excuse in the book before he finally said yes. Like Esther needing three days before she could walk through a door she knew she was supposed to walk through.
If you’re waiting to feel fully confident before you take the idea seriously, you might be waiting a long time. Confidence tends to come after obedience, not before it.
And unclear calling doesn’t mean absent calling. Sometimes what feels like fog is actually just the distance between where you are and where God is taking you. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. You just have to take the next step.
The Real Problem Most Christian Entrepreneurs Face
Here’s what I’ve found: most of the entrepreneurs I work with aren’t struggling because they have no calling. They’re struggling because they have clarity about what God put in them but no framework for how to actually build from it.
They know the what at some level. They’re fuzzy on the how. And that gap, between calling and execution, is where most people get stuck, start to doubt, and eventually wonder if they heard God right in the first place.
That’s not a faith problem. That’s a foundation problem.
The vision is real. The strategy just hasn’t caught up yet.
A Starting Place
If you’re sitting in that tension right now, I think this is from God, but I don’t know what to do with it, The Waiting Room was built for exactly that moment.
It’s a free community for Christian entrepreneurs who are serious about building from calling, not just tactics. Inside, you’ll find the Daredream Calling Canvas, a framework that walks you through the three core questions that clarify your calling: What are you passionate about? What pain do you understand from the inside? And what are you genuinely proficient at?
Where those three things overlap is usually where God has been pointing all along.
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