Visions of Vocation

Visions of Vocation

Common Grace for the Common Good

Read by Steven Garber

Visions of Vocation
Downloadable audio file
  • Length: 7 hours and 53 minutes
  • Published: August 26, 2025
  • Imprint: IVP
  • ISBN: 9781514015575
  • Available at all major retailers!
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Foreword Review's Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist

Outreach Resource of the Year

Christianity Today Award of Merit

Leadership Journal Best Books for Church Leaders

Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore

Is it possible to know the world and still love the world?

Of all the questions we askabout our calling, this is the most difficult. From marriages to international relations, the more we know, the harder it is to love. We become cynics or stoics, protecting our hearts from the implications of what we know. But what if the vision of vocation can be recovered—allowing us to step into the wounds of the world and for love's sake take up our responsibility for the way the world turns out?

For decades Steve Garber has come alongside a wide range of people as they seek to make sense of the world and their lives. With him we meet leaders from the Tiananmen Square protest who want a good reason to still care about China. We also meet with many ordinary people in ordinary places who long for their lives to matter:

  • Jonathan who learned he would rather build houses than study history
  • Todd and Maria who adopted creative schedules so they could parent better and practice medicine
  • D.J. who helped Congress move into the Internet Age
  • Robin whospends her life on behalf of urban justice
  • Hans who makes hamburgers the way they are meant to be made
  • Susan who built a home business of hand-printing stationary using a letterpress
  • Santiago who works with majority-world nations in need of capital
  • George who has given years to teaching students to learn things that matter most
  • Claudius and Deirdre whose openhearted home has always been a place for people
  • Dan who loves Wyoming, the place, its people and its cows

Vocation is when we come to know the world in all its joy and pain and still love it. Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Garber offers a book for everyone everywhere—for students, for parents, for those in the arts, in the academy, in public service, in the trades and in commerce—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.

"Visions of Vocation will be considered a classic of our time, inspiring many to care more deeply and live out their own passions with vitality and integrity."
"Steve Garber has a way of making me feel spiritually rich. What he thinks and says is what I need. I realize this because he does both sowell. His exceptional biblical insight and profound humanity increase my hunger for God and the ways of God. I am left seeking God?s calling into a more genuine human life and believing God intends this as part of the common good for which we are made and redeemed. Feast on this book and be fed."
"Visions of Vocation asks the most compelling and human questions about how to love the world once you come to truly know it. These pages are packed with stories of wisdom and grace, serving as a vocational compass for anyone seeking true guidance in the midst of a complex world. I am grateful for the mentorship of Steve Garber's words, and I know you will be too."
"Steve Garber is one of the few consistent sources of wisdom that I rely on personally for my journey as an artist and as a Christ-follower. Like Magi's stars to the weary travelers in faith and culture, Visions of Vocation is a clear manifestation in the dark skies of our complex times that points to an integrated source of wisdom, delight and hope."
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CONTENTS

Introduction. On Learning to Be Implicated
1. To Know the World and Still Love It?
2. If You Have Eyes, Then See
3. The Landscape of our Lives
4. Knowing Is Doing
5. Come and See
6. Vocation as Implication
7. TheGreat Temptations
8. Learning to Live Proximately
Epilogue. But Are You Happy?
Prayer for Vocations
Acknowledgments
Notes

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Run Time: 473