245. When Someone Judges Your Faith: Why Your Call From God Is Not a Conference Call
My family triggered me this week. Yep. Years of recovery, a coaching business, a whole podcast about this stuff, and one comment from someone I love still got under my skin.
I was down in LA helping my parents, doing the daughter dance, and I ended up having a faith conversation with a family member. (I have a big family, two brothers, their wives, lots of kids, cousins everywhere. So no, you're not going to figure out who. Honestly, he wouldn't even care.)
I'm telling you this story because I think it might give you your power back.
🎧 Listen to the episode: Your Call From God Is Not a Conference Call → danisumner.com/ep245
He Called My Faith "Diet Coke"
My family has every flavor of faith you can imagine. Some are really Catholic, some are more Catholic than others (if you know what I mean), and we've got Greek Orthodox, Protestants, and a few spirituality people too. I'm all for it. Faith is a personal relationship with your higher power, and mine is Jesus.
Here's where I land on theology: I don't die on very many hills. Baptism, communion, the Eucharist? People much smarter than me have been debating that stuff for centuries. We’re not going to settle it over dinner. What I care about is helping people meet God and meet themselves.
So I asked him point blank. "I'm getting the vibe that because I don't fight about some of these things, you think I have half a faith. Am I reading that wrong?"
He said no, no, no. Then he said, and these are his words, that he has "the fullness." He was Coke. I was Diet Coke. Pretty close, but a couple of ingredients were different.
Friend. As a Coca-Cola person, do not call me Diet Coke.
I told him that was arrogant and condescending. We have the kind of relationship where I can be that direct. How dare anybody judge my faith because it doesn't look like theirs?
The Part I Didn't Want to See
Then I went to bed that night and started thinking. And I realized something I didn't love. I was judging him just as hard as he was judging me.
Here's the truth. If Joe Schmoe off the street told me my faith was Diet Coke, I'd laugh. I wouldn't even care. It only hurt because I love and respect this guy, so his opinion of me matters.
Maybe it matters a little too much.
And that's the thing I want you to sit with. It's okay that other people's opinions matter to you. But you cannot surrender your voice or your life to them.
Your Call From God Is Not a Conference Call
Last week one of my students was sharing that they want to step into life coaching in this next era of their life. They've built a beautiful career already, and their family thinks they're nuts. "What am I doing?"
I said it on the call to all of them, and I'll say it to you. Your call from God is not a conference call.
It's push in your heart. It's the Spirit, and it combines with your gifting and your heart and who you are. So if the people in your life don't agree or don't see it, who cares? It's none of their business. Their job is to support you, not poo-poo your dreams.
(I think this needs to go on a t-shirt.)
When Other People's Opinions Win
I lived under the tyranny of caring what people thought of me for a long time. Family, people at church, people in the community. I wanted everybody to be proud of me, so I lived small because it felt safe. Meanwhile, I had this deep desire to help people burning in me the whole time.
A couple of years ago, another client gave me permission to share his story, and I'm still hoping he'll come on the podcast and tell it himself.
In his early 30s, he was at the top of his game in an industry where most people don't get that far until their 50s or 60s, if they get there at all. He was also working 20-hour days with no off button. Eventually his body shut him down. Emotional, mental, physical, the whole thing. He walked away from an amazing career, and people thought he'd lost his mind.
We worked together intensely for about six months. He was taking care of himself for the first time in his life. And what came up was that he'd felt called into ministry since he was a kid. Priesthood, maybe, or becoming a pastor. He just wanted to help people. (Fun fact: he was also one of the first people who told me I needed to start certifying life coaches. He planted that seed years before I did it.)
Then the pressure came. Family, friends, and colleagues all basically told him he was an idiot for walking away. Their opinions of his life ended up meaning more to him than the call on his heart, and he got pulled back into business.
I love this guy. He's phenomenal, he's open to what's next, and his story isn't done being written. Some of these things take five, ten, thirty years to work themselves out.
His story hits me so hard because I have one just like it. At 16, I felt called into ministry. I went to a priest, God bless him, and he didn't know what to do with me or my life. Basically, he told me to get my act together and that I wasn't called. His word meant more to me than my own intuition and more than what God had told me.
Looking back now, it's so clear that was God's direction. I was made for this work. I just let that priest have more authority in my life than God and my own knowing. (If you want the whole story, I shared it way back in one of the podcast's earliest episodes.)
Hearing the Still Small Voice Again
This isn't about shame. We give our authority away out of our brokenness and our wounding. We all do it. That's exactly why we're doing this holy and hard work of getting honest about who we are, where we are, and where God is leading us.
Sometimes it's hard to hear from God because we've got everybody else's voices in our head.
Scripture talks about God speaking in "a still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12). I want you to hear that voice again. Not only God's still small voice, but your own. Everybody else is loud and mean, and that is not God's voice. It's not how you'd choose to talk to yourself either.
A lot of the pushback you get isn't even about you. The people who weren't on the call with God are scared for you, so they project their fear. "Don't start that real estate business" often means "I would never start that real estate business." That's their fear talking, not your call.
If God gives you a vision, your job is to steward it and to do the work to carry it out.
Get Your Counsel From the Right People
Counsel is good. "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed" (Proverbs 15:22). But get the right counsel.
You wouldn't ask your pharmacist about your ankle. You'd ask them about your amoxicillin. Advice works the same way. Seek it from people who have gone where you want to go.
When I started building my certification program, I didn't ask my well-meaning friends and family how to do it. They've never done it. I went to people who have built certification programs and are helping people well. If I want a better marriage, I'm talking to someone who has walked that walk.
I'm not taking advice from people who play small. The people I go to for counsel are playing big, going after it, and seeking God.
Turn the Trigger Into Purpose
Could I have stayed bitter and resentful all day after that Diet Coke comment? Absolutely. Instead, I'm grateful. A decade ago, those words might have crushed me and sent me spiraling into "maybe my faith isn't as good as his."
I know my faith isn't watered down.
So keep going. Whatever God put in you, whether it's helping people, painting, or something only you and the Holy Spirit know about, you get to follow it in motion. Most of us don't get two or three years off to figure ourselves out, and that's okay. I figured myself out in motion too.
Other people's opinions of you are none of your business.
If you're ready to quiet the noise and trust your own voice again, that's the work we do together in 1:1 coaching. And if you feel called to walk other people through this kind of freedom, my Life Coach Certification might be your next right step.
I'm in your corner, my friend.
Dani
