“When you are in the place of your purpose, your needs will be drawn to you.”
– Pastor DR. David Kennebrew
Called, Not Just Capable
There was a season when I built my business using what I knew. My education and experience are what I relied on to guide my clients to get organized and prepared to scale. I worked with small businesses, entrepreneurs, and leaders who needed someone to think with them and someone to bounce ideas off of and help hold things together during seasons of transition. It didn’t matter what type of business they had. If they needed support, we showed up and I used everything I had learned through education and lived experience to help them navigate.
The work was good, the people were great and my clients were happy, but I was tired. Not always physically and not even necessarily emotionally. I was tired in my spirit and was often overwhelmed with the weight of needing to show up well for everyone, no matter how I felt or what was going on. The truth is, I was trying to build in my own strength and while it was productive, it wasn’t pouring back into me.
I wasn’t fully aligned with my purpose and “my people” and when you build outside of alignment, even good work will drain you.
The Shift
Then came the shift. I heard the call to work exclusively with mission-driven organizations and purpose-driven leaders. I said yes out of obedience, not really understanding the reason and that decision changed everything.
The Real Difference
Here’s what I soon began to understand. There is a difference between being capable and being called. Capability allows you to produce results but calling sustains you as you produce. It matters because if you are simply just producing and nothing is pouring back into you, burnout is inevitable and even more importantly, you can easily lose your passion for something you were actually called to do. We are not machines. We were not made to simply produce.
Capability will draw anyone who needs help but calling draws the people you are assigned to serve. When I narrowed my focus, something beautiful happened. The work started pouring back into me because I wasn’t just solving problems anymore, I was stewarding purpose. That assignment was clearly much bigger than me and knowing that allowed me to release the rhythm of hustle and grind and lean into the rhythm of faith and grace.
Obedience Is the First Step
This is why the first step in the Noah framework I now use with my clients is Obedience.
Before clarity, strategy, systems, growth, training or development is simple obedience. I know, from my personal experience, that everything that you are trying to do in ministry, in business, in moving your mission forward, must begin with you.
Noah’s first act was not to build anything, his first step was to simply accept the call and start walking in obedience. Before money, measurements or materials and with zero evidence that there would be rain, he accepted the assignment and then waited for instructions on how to proceed and who would be impacted.
That’s where alignment begins. It sounds simple, but it’s really hard, especially when you realize that your first mission, message or ministry is for you to consume it first. As my spiritual mom always taught me, “you must eat what you serve”.
Chasing ends and trust begins
Many leaders exhaust themselves trying to draw anyone and everyone. Expanding the audience.
widening the offer, pushing harder to create traction and feeling responsible to make momentum happen. But obedience doesn’t just narrow your lane, it releases you from the pressure to manufacture what has already been assigned to you.
My pastor once said something that reshaped my leadership posture: “When you are in the place of your purpose, your needs will be drawn to you.” That statement shifted how I think about growth. It doesn’t remove responsibility of leadership, it reframes it. It removes the responsibility to just keep working harder and longer and replaces it with the blessed assurance that what is supposed to be drawn to you, will be if you simply obey and do your part.
When God called Noah and Noah obeyed, his assignment was clear:
Build.
Communicate.
Invite.
He was not instructed to chase the resistant and he was not told to convince everyone. Then even when it came to the animals, he wasn’t told to gather them either. He was told that when the time came, they would simply come, two by two. Strategically, that detail matters.
Purpose-driven leadership is not about constant pursuit. It is about obedience and preparation. When you answer the call with a YES and are aligned with your assignment a few things will begin to happen:
- Your messaging sharpens.
- Your systems clarify.
- Your energy stabilizes.
- The right partnerships become recognizable.
As purpose-driven leaders, our responsibility is obedience and preparation.
God’s responsibility is provision and alignment. So build what you’ve been assigned to build. communicate it clearly and invite others into it. Then just let it be. That’s the real shift.
Release the need to be everything to everyone and the need to go after what isn’t yours; letting obedience narrow your lane and then trusting that purpose attracts what it’s meant to sustain.
The Invitation
If you’re tired, not because the work is hard, but because it just doesn’t feel like the right fit, it may not be a capacity issue. It may be clarity.
Before you abandon ship and start building something else, go back and reflect and remember what you were assigned to build. Recommit to that and let your obedience lead even when everyone thinks you are crazy (don’t worry, they thought Noah was too). Build anyway, then stop chasing, stop forcing things, stop grinding to no end and just trust that what belongs in your assigned space will meet you there.
If you’re in a season of narrowing, realignment, or rebuilding with intention, this is the work I do with mission-driven organizations and purpose leaders every day.
You don’t have to figure it out alone. We want to build with you!