The Power Of Vision
If you were to take a train trip, the first thing you would have to know is your destination. You would have to know where you are going. And you have to go to the station, you have to show up there on time, which means before the train leaves. You have to have to have bought your ticket or buy your ticket before the train leaves. But the most important thing is that you've got to get on the train. Cause if you've done all the previous things, yet you don't get on the train, you'll never get to your destination.
And what we are talking about in this series is simply getting on board of God's train. That means understanding and embracing the destination that God has for His church and for your life. And how you get on that, helping you to understand that and to discern that. The goal is to equip you to carry out God's call on your life.
The verse we're using as a theme verse for this series is Jeremiah 29:11. And it says this: "For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. Plans for prosperity and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."
God has a plan. So far we have looked at two things last time. God does have a plan for you and that plan is not for calamity but it is to give you a future and a hope. God has a future for you. God actually has a plan. And this is the first thing that we have to come to grips with is that God really does have a plan for me. I'm not an accident and I am not a mistake. I didn't just show up one day and slip through God's hands. God actually did plan me.
And we looked at that word, "plan" and that word, "plan" and that word means an ingenious plan, it's thought out, it is intentional in nature. God planned you. He said, "I know the plans that I have for you" and the word, that phrase, that verb, "that I have for you" there, it is talking about that He has woven. We looked at this word picture of how somebody weaves fabric with purpose and intention. One strand at a time, putting you together. God designs you. He fashions you. And He did so because God has a hope and a future for you.
Understanding that there is a plans is part of looking at vision and the power of vision. We are going to see that God designed you to fit His plan for your life. God designed you in such a way that you would fit the plan that God has in store for you.
Psalm 193:13-16 says, "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and nit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed."
The bible affirms this that when God made you, He planned you. He designed you. Every bit of you he designed. He created you and He created you perfectly to fit His Calling on your life.
Now I know if you could have designed things, you may have designed yourself a little bit differently. You may say, "Well I would have liked to have been 3 or 4 inches taller or maybe 3 or 4 inches shorter. I'd like to have a different bone structure. I think I would have liked to have had maybe different color skin or something of that nature, different color hair or different color eyes or something."
There is a lot of things that you cannot change about yourself which you probably wouldn't have put in on the order blank if you had been able to choose them.
There's also a lot of things about your life that you didn't have any choice over. You did not choose your parents. Most of you didn't at least. You had those parents of yours. You didn't choose the day that you were going to be born. You didn't have to choose the culture that you were going to be born in. There's a lot of things. You didn't choose any of this stuff.
What we read from Psalm 139 is that God chose all that stuff. He designed you, He formed you, He shaped you. You were just like He made you because He has a reason that He made like He did. And the very first step in being able to understand God's purpose and God's plan for our lives is that we have to be at peace with this. We must get over being mad at God for all the circumstances of our lives and the things that we don't like about ourselves. And the things that we don't like about our family and the things that we don't like about the time that we were born or the culture that we were born in... we need to get over that and come to grips with the fact that this is the way it is.
We need to understand that God did this on purpose. And He didn't do it to get a good laugh, to get a good joke. He didn't do it just to make us miserable or anything. God did what He did because He has a wonderful plan for your life. And God may have allowed some things to happen in your life, but if He did, it's because God's going to fulfill a purpose and plan in your life. And so you have to come to peace with this. You will not be able to go on until you come to peace with this.
The first step is knowing that God designed you just like you are to fit His plan for your life. What happens is we look at someone else and go, "Why can't I have their life? Why couldn't you have made me like them? Why couldn't I have had their parents?" You know God made you just like you are. And you have to like yourself just like you are. Mr. Rogers does. One time a lady told me, "You know I always used to watch Mr. Rogers every once and a while because I always liked to sit once in a while and have somebody tell me, 'I like you just the way that you are.'"
And we need to come to grips that "I am how I am and I need to accept that." You will not be able to move on until you do. You must come to terms with the fact that God designed you this way to fulfill His purpose in your life. Then you will be to move on. You will be able to declare, "I am God's wonderful creation. I am planned by God. I've been woven together by Him for a specific purpose."
And some of you are saying, "But, I can't say that." Well, you are God's wonderfully made creation. So I want you to repeat this after me, "I am God's wonderful creation. He planned me. He designed me. I am who I am because He made me this way."
Now Psalm 139 says that you are God's wonderful creation. Are you like the Psalmist who says there, "Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-and how well I know it." How well do you know it? Or have you rejected it?
The second thing is God wants to give you a vision for this plan of His. God wants to give you a vision for the plan that He has for your life. Let me give you a working definition for the word "vision". Vision is the ability to see through the eyes of God your part in building the kingdom. I am using the word "vision" from the Old Testament. The word is used several times. It is a word that is used to describe mental sight not physical sight. It is that which comes through revelation or that which comes through a dream.
But vision is the ability to see with spiritual eyes into a spiritual reality that one day will become physical. And it may not be apparent at all in the physical. Vision is the ability to discover and discern where we personally fit into God's overall plan. It is a direction to go in. It is a passion to pursue. It is a perspective to be gained. We are to be people of vision. And God wants you to know His plan for your life and He will impart that through a vision and He will give you the vision.
Now there is a lot of people who have definitions for vision. I came up with these out of a book by George Barlow on vision. He's quoting other pastors and ministers and he says, "A vision is seeing the invisible and making it visible. A vision is an important bridge between the present and the future. Vision is sanctified dreams."
God wants to give you a vision. A vision for your life. Why? So that you'll know where you are going. So you'll not wander aimlessly. So you will have an understanding of your destination. You don't always need to know what's between this point and your destination. God wants to give you a vision for that destination because that road getting there may have some detours. Sometimes we'd like this road to be a straight line but it's not always that way. God sometimes moves us off the track a little bit to get us to the destination. But the key point is we need to have a destination because if you know where you are going, you can always ask directions along the way.
Directions without a destination are meaningless. It's like going to the gas station attendant and asking, "Could you give me some directions?" He says, "Sure. You go fifty miles this way and then you turn left and go thirty miles." You ask, "Well great, where will that take me?" He replies, "Well I don't know but it's the directions."
We don't just need directions for the sake of having directions. We need directions to get us to a destination. And as long as you have your destination out there, no matter how far you get off the course, you can always come back on course because you know the destination. God wants you to know where you are going and He wants to give you a vision out there of what He is calling you into so that you will not wander aimlessly. He also gives you a vision so that you will keep your life focused.
Elements of Your Vision
A very familiar passage that speaks of vision is in Proverbs 29:18 and it says this: "Where there is no vision the people are unrestrained." Some of you are more familiar with the King James version where it says: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Other translations would say this: "Where there is no vision, the people wander." And in another, it says: "that they run wild." Another one says: "that they become uncontrolled."
And basically it means that there is no boundary. You're going from here to there. When this verse says when there is no vision the people run wild, that's a picture then. There is no direction. They are just going where the wind is blowing it. It is going around in circles and it's not really going any place. It's not focused. You see, whenever you don't have a vision, you're just like that balloon filled with air moving around not going any place. That is the picture of that particular verse. It is saying that the people are simply unrestrained, no pattern.
But on the other hand, if you have a vision, you will be focused. You will still have a direction. It's like a road. It's like a pavement. It's like a highway. It's like something to stay on. There's well defined boundaries on the highway. You get off, you can go in the pasture if you want, but it is a lot slower than staying on the highway. There are boundaries on that highway. And that is what a vision is like. It is having something where you can stay focused, not where you are wandering aimlessly so it helps you focus your life. That's what a vision does.
God gives you a vision so that you can keep your life focused. He also gives you a vision in order to motivate you by creating within you a passion because vision creates passion and passion motivates you and it's very motivating. It is something that you will be very passionate about cause you will be passionate about something. We can be passionate about God. We can be passionate about His will. We can be passionate about what He wants you to do and what happens whenever the Lord gives you a vision, that passion rises up and there is excitement with that. It is exciting. It is stimulating. It is motivating.
There are certain things that keep you up at night with anxious anticipation. What's keeping you up? It's it God's call? Is it God's purpose? What is it?
I'll tell you whenever you get a God's vision, it will be motivating to you. You will be willing to pay the price. You will be willing to sacrifice. You will be willing to give it up. You will be willing to go through hell and high water to get it done because that is there. You are co-operating with the Creator of the universe who molded you, shaped you, fashioned you for that very thing. And when you know that you are co-operating with the one that made you and fulfilling something that is going to have eternal impact, that will never cease in its influence, that is motivating. It is! It is exciting because you are co-operating with God to do something that that is important to Him.
Your vision will include certain things. First of all it will include your family. You can't exclude the vision for your life without bringing in your family cause your family is a part of you. If you get a vision from God and your family is not included into that (unless your happen to be single), that is not a vision from God. If you are married, your family is included in God's vision for you. They're part of it. You're not excluded from your family. I've got three sons. They're part of that vision. I spend my time. I pray for them. I try and discern, "What is God's call on their life?" I pray for them and try and find out what does God want them to do. Now it is their choice, their decision. God gave them free choice. I just simply have to be faithful in including them in bring them up. The same thing is true for my wife. I pray for her. She is my partner. There is no higher covenant on this earth besides my covenant with God. After that then it's my covenant with my wife. She is my co-laborer. She is my co-partner. I love her very much. And, I say, "Lord show me how I can love her, how we can be best friends and how to include her in that." Because there is a sacred covenant that is here. There is not covenant more sacred besides your covenant that you have with the Lord. And I am not going to defy that covenant at all. It is important to me, so whatever I have in my vision, it has to include my family. It has to include my wife and it has to include my kids in some way because they are my first ministry.
God's vision will also be something personal for me even though it will be inclusive and it will be affecting other people, it is still personal to me. It is God saying something to me. It is something that God wants me to do. So even though there will be other people included into this, still it is what God is doing in me. What does God want me to do to build His kingdom.
You will also see it will come about in light of the church. Your vision will include how you fit into the corporate vision of the church in God's kingdom. See we are a member of the body of Christ. We have relationships within the body of Christ. The church is the body of Christ. The church is the manifest presence of Christ, not just the kingdom. You need to understand about the kingdom -- the rule and the reign of the Lord -- and the "church" or the "universal church" is manifested in the local church. This is where it is manifested. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where it comes out.
So I had to begin to realize that whenever God begins to speak to me about my vision, there's going to be a connection and there is going to be a relationship with the will of God in the church. This is because my personal vision, my personal calling, will fit what God is doing in the local church that He has placed me into.
Let me give you some characteristics of that vision when God gives it to you; when God gives you your vision for your life.
- It will be spiritually discerned.
- It is not humanly possible, but only divinely attained.
- It will be stretching.
- It requires sacrifice to self.
- It will be progressive in nature.
Let me share more detail on each of these characteristics.
First, it will not come through natural means but it will be spiritually discerned. In other words, it won't be because you read it in a book. It won't be because somebody just told you. It will come because the Spirit of God begins to reveal it to you in your heart. As He begins to reveal it to you, God will speak to you through it. And we each have the capacity to hear God and to hear His voice and to hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying.
In 1 Corinthians 2:13-16, there is a comparison between the person who is lost and doesn't know the Lord to the person who does know the God and it says this: "When we tell you this we do not use words of human wisdom. We speak words given to us by the Spirit using the Spirit's words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren't Christians can't understand these truths from God's Spirit. It sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means. We who have the Spirit understand these things. But others can't understand this at all. How could they? Who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who can give Him counsel? But we can understand these things for we have the mind of Christ. You have the mind of Christ."
You have the Holy Spirit. You can understand what God is up to. You can understand and discern that because you've got the Holy Spirit within you and so you have the mind of God within you and God is wanting to reveal to you His will, His purpose, His plan. God wants to do that and it won't come because you read it in the bulletin one Sunday. It will come because God is speaking to you in your spirit.
Another thing. It is not humanly possible but only divinely attained. In other words, it is not something that you may even see yourself doing. It is God given and divinely attained. It is not attained by human means.
You know what we do? Many times, if left to us, we make decisions on what we think we can do. We develop a vision on our possibilities. We try to be realistic about things. We don't always keep in mind that God is out there wanting to do the seemingly impossible. Mark 10:27 communicates that "what is impossible with man is always possible with God." And we put limitations. In fact a lot of times when we set a vision for ourselves, we will put it in parameters that are comfortable for us. Things that just stay within these certain boundaries, which leads me to the next thing.
God's vision for you will be stretching. If you have a vision that is not stretching, it probably not a vision from God. It's probably one from your flesh of what you think you can do and you can attain.
Sometimes we don't go there because we don't want to fail and there's a great fear of failure. I don't want other people to think I am a failure so I will do what I think is safe. But let me just tell you this. That vision will not be about staying in the status quo. Vision is not about that. It will stretch you. It will expand you. It will push you beyond what you think that you can do.
Change will be inevitable and risk will be unavoidable. It will come. You can't stop that. There will be a lot of battles ahead, but understand this. God will not send you into a battle that He doesn't intend to win so you will win. But you will be stretched. You will find that God will call you to do things that you never thought you would be doing. In fact, some of you are already doing those things now. If somebody told you five or 10 years ago you would be doing this you would have said, "You're crazy, not me!" And what do you think you're going to say five years from now? We can't even tell you what you'll be doing because you'll say, "Not me." But God is going to stretch you.
A part of that stretching will be crisis. You will not achieve this without crisis and a lot of times when this crisis comes up, you think it is going to stop God's plan and God's vision. It's a hurdle. It's a barrier and you don't think that you are going to be able to get to the other side. And you will have crisis. You will not walk out God's vision without having crisis. There is also a type of crisis that will come close to derailing or thwarting God's vision or plan for your life. But that is a part of God's plan because that strengthens you and that brings you a whole new resolve within you. In fact it is the vision often in times like that that will carry you through that crisis to get you to the other side. And it will come. It will be stretching. And a lot of those things you thought were barriers and obstacles, you will go through them.
It requires a sacrifice of self. In other words, it is not a place of self-promotion. If you vision promotes self, it is not a vision from God. It requires the surrender of personal ambition. And this is hard because sometimes we don't always see how much we are involved in something for us rather than for something for God. You see a vision is supposed to give glory to God, not give glory to man. It is supposed to lift up the Lord not lift up a person. And sometimes we basically receive the glory and receive the credit but it is not for you. It is for the Lord and for Him only here. If you grasp the call of God and what God has planned for your life, you will see that God is going to be at the center of this. It won't be you. It will be Him. He will be at the center of this and this vision will focus upon Him and not upon us. It will touch others. It will impact others but the truth is it is not for us. It is for Him.
Another characteristic is that it will require work. It is not one of these things that will happen automatically. It will require one's labour. It is not necessarily a done deal just because God has a plan. You have to co-operate with that plan and you have to work with that plan. You have to work with Him. God has a future out there and God owns the future. But the truth is that we have the ability to shape that future through Him. The future belongs to Him but you have to get involved. You can't be complacent. You can't be a couch potato. You have to get involved. You have to do something. It's going to require work on your part. And if you are lazy you will never see the fulfillment of God's call on your life.
And the last characteristic is that it will be progressive in revelation. It will be progressive in revelation. Which means God doesn't just dump the whole load on you at once. He doesn't just back up the truck and dump it all at once. Little by little He dumps it. He throws out a little pile at a time and you're able to sort through that and that's the way God works. Look at Abraham. God was very progressive in His relationship with Abraham. God didn't tell him the whole story up front. He just said, "Leave". So Abraham left and he just had a little bit of direction at a time. And as he was obedient with what God had told him, then he got the next step. And that's the way it works. As we are dealing with one step, we are able to move to the next step and God doesn't throw out the whole thing. What happens whenever we develop a vision, about the whole thing, it usually has visions of grandeur and it usually won't come about like that at all. And God will even clarify that and bring clarity to that vision little by little. Little by little. It will come about and God will bring it about.
Habakkuk 2:3 says: "For the vision is yet for the appointed time. It hastens toward the goal. It will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come. It will not delay."
How Vision Is Developed
God's vision will come, but sometimes it takes longer than we like. We ask God, "When, when, when." And God says, "Wait, wait, wait. Not yet." But He gives you a clear mental picture of it to motivate you and to keep you in there and to keep you in the fight. And you hang in there with that. After a while you see why God says, "Wait". There is a divine timing to this. Had you run ahead of God you would have gotten into big trouble so you wait on Him. And then He reveals a bit more and you say, "Oh thank You for the clarity." And then you are able to move a little bit more.
God has a vision. Let me tell you how we develop that vision, because I want to help you understand God's vision for your life. First you need to see what God is up to ultimately. You need to have an understanding of God's overall plan, because God's plan for you it will fit into His overall plan. That overall plan is what God is up to on planet earth. What does God want us to do?
The truth is that in the bible. There is a lot of do's in there already, isn't there? Some of you may feel that we have enough do's in here to do without trying to figure out something else to do. Often times we say, "Lord show me what you want me to do." And He goes, "I've got plenty of stuff for you to do. It's just right in My word, the Bible." And we just need to start doing that. We understand what God is up to by reading His word. We also understand what God is up to by looking around.
What is God doing on planet earth? What is God up to on planet earth? What is the season that we are in? You know the bible talks about the sons of Izhar in the Old Testament. They knew the times and they knew the seasons. In other words, they knew what was going on. And God wants each of us to know what is going on around here.
If you think that God has called you to do something and it doesn't fit within God's overall plan, you've missed something. So you need to know, what God is up to. So start looking at the big picture. Don't start by focusing on the question of "What does He want me to do?" First, look at the big picture and then you will be able to get a better glimpse of what you are supposed to be doing.
Secondly, look at the church. Look at the role of the church. The kingdom is very broad in nature, but the church is a local manifestation of God's kingdom. And God established the church as the avenue for the expression of God's kingdom. And it is through the church that God fulfills His plan. Christ died for the church. He loves the church and the universal church is expressed through the local Church body. God will fulfill His plan through the body of Christ. And the church is a local manifestation of the body. So you need to understand the call and destiny that God has on the local body where you fellowship, because that is a part of the context for His plan for you personally.
Your personal vision will be developed as you understand how God uniquely designed you and shaped you. God will use what He made: your gifts, your talents, your abilities or your lack of. Do you sometimes find yourself thinking, "I am missing some things here. How can God use me?" Well God made you the way you are because He wants to use you in ways that He can't use the people who have those certain gifts and abilities. God made you. He's in charge of this deal. Examine your passions. Examine your dreams.
Earlier, we talked about the word, "future". We looked at the Old Testament word, "future" in Jeremiah 29:11 and that word, "future" is the picture of moving ahead by looking back. It is the rower who is rowing the boat. His eyes gaze on a fixed position, but he is not going backwards. Rather, he is going forwards. He is able to understand the future by examining the past. God took a lot of time to burn a lot of things in you and He doesn't want to have to reteach you. He's burned some values and belief systems into you. It took over a period of time for Him to do that.
He doesn't want to have to repeat that process. He will if He has to, but He doesn't want to have to do that. You need to look at that how God made you and how God's shaped you so that you will be able to see what your future is based on what you have been through in the past. Not only your gifts, your talents and abilities, but also the experiences you have had in your life as well.
You have to be willing to make a time investment and a sacrificial commitment because it is going to be time consuming. It is not an automatic thing. You don't get a flyer in the mail describing your vision. You have to work for this thing. It is labour intensive. You have to have a commitment to know God. You have to have a commitment to hear from God and you can't be worn down by the wear and the tear of the process. You can't let that defeat you cause there are times that you will be discouraged. There are times it's going to take effort and it's going to take labour. Everyone who God uses has to go through that time and effort. Just be glad that you are not like Moses. It was eighty years before that guy was able to walk out his vision. Forty years in Pharoah's court and another forty years in the wilderness just before he is able to go fulfill his purpose.
We can go through a lot of illustrations in here. Even Abraham. He was an old man before God told him to first leave. He wasn't some young, spry chicken of thirty-five or forty-five. Abraham was already an older man before he was at a place where he could be receptive when God asked Him to pick up and move. It takes time for God to develop our characters so that we can fulfill our vision. You have to be willing to work at it.
Once you have grasped onto God's vision for you, there will be affirmation by others. Other people will see it in you and speak it into your lives. God will speak to others too and there will be prophetic voices that will affirm what God is doing and what God is saying. If you're the only voice, it may not be God. God usually confirms through two or three witnesses. God will bring witnesses to confirm it. And it may be another person. It may be another situation. Another circumstance. But God will bring affirmation. If it is a genuine call from the Lord, a genuine vision from God, others will affirm it as well. They will.
So God wants you on His road. He wants you to have a very focused life. He doesn't want you to be like that balloon and be scattered all over the place. Not going anywhere, running around in circles, finally running out of air and falling to the ground. God wants you to be on His track. He wants you to be on His route and He wants your life to be focused. The very first step for that is to come back to the very first that that we talked about the other day.
Can I accept the fact that God made me like I am, designed me like He did, because it fits into His plan for my life. Am I angry with God over that. Am I always complaining to God. Am I always looking to somebody else's life and saying, "I wish I had that one." Looking at them and desiring something that is different. Or am I at peace with who God has made you to be?
I think the first thing that the Lord wants to deal with in our lives is "Am I at peace with the way God made me? Am I at peace with the culture that God's put me in? Am I at peace with the color of my skin? The color of my hair? The size of my feet? Am I at peace with the way that God made me? Am I at peace with the fact that even if I may not have chosen it, God gave me the parents that I had. I didn't' choose them, but I'm going to accept them."
God's not asking you to understand. God's not asking you to figure it out. God's simply asking you to say, "God, I'll accept that Your wisdom and Your knowledge is much greater than mine. And I am going to come to peace with that."
For some of you this is the first step for your coming into understanding God's call on your life. You just need to say, "God, OK I accept it. I can't change it. I'm going to accept it. I'm going to refuse to fantasize about something different. I am going to accept it and move on to try to understand Your call on my life." For some of you that is the very first step.
Others of you, maybe you can't accept it but the problem with your being able to understand God's call on your life is that you're spiritual ears are all plugged, got a little wax in them, kind of your not hearing clear. In fact some of you may be even be putting your fingers in your ears and trying hard to ignore what God is saying. You may think to yourself, "No, I don't want to hear God because if I hear Him, I might have to do something with what He says. And if I don't I'll feel guilty that I am not doing anything with it." So do you want to hear what God has to say? Because if you hear, you will have to do respond to what He says to you.
Now I know the right answer, OK. We all know the right answer: "Yes God, I want to hear." But examine your heart; do you really? Do you really want to know? You know if you hear, He might require a few changes. He might require you to give up something or to take on something. Some of you may be saying to yourself, "I don't know if I am ready for that or not. As long as I am ignorant, I won't feel so bad."
Today, the Lord wants to unplug the spiritual ears. And if you've got your fingers in them, you need to take them out. If it's a wax coating that's in there because of sin or something like that, then ask God to forgive you and He'll irrigate them. He'll clean them out. Whatever is clogging your spiritual ears, say "Lord take it away. Take it away."
You are a person of destiny. Whether you believe it or not, you are a person of divine destiny. God made you. Before this world even came to be, God planned you. He designed you. God extends an invitation that says, "Will you come and join Me?" The key to obeying God is to just finding out what He is doing and just joining Him with it. Will you join the Lord? Will you get on board? Will you do your part in finding your place in His kingdom?
Let's pray:
Lord Jesus, I just pray that You will just put a passion within us to want to know Your will. Lord, I pray that You will create a hunger. Create that hunger within us that is really starving to know Your plan for our life. Give us that craving from within. Give us that vision, Your vision. Give us that want to.And Lord Jesus, I just pray for those who have been mad at you for all these years because they just didn't like the way You did things. They didn't like the way that you give them their parents or that You made them the way that they are. Lord I just pray that they will understand.
Lord, You can trust them with that situation and You felt You could. Lord that is a part of being trained up to fulfill their destiny that You've chosen for them. And Lord, we just pray that everyone will come to peace and say, "I am as I am because You made me," and be able to take the next step and say, "Okay Lord, I am at peace within. Now let's see what how You are going to use what You've made. Lord, we just want that."
Keys To Fulfilling Your Vision
The series that we're is talking really about getting a vision for your life. God has a plan for your life. You're not an accident. You're not something that's a leftover. You're not something that God didn't think of. You didn't just pop upon the scene and God looked at you and said, "Where did you come from?" No, God planned you! God knew you. The scripture verse that we've been looking at has been our theme verse is in Jeremiah 29:11, which says, "'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for prosperity and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.'" (NASB)
God plan for you has a future and a hope. And God knows that plan and God wants you to know it too. God will take you through a process to help you understand His plan, He will give you discernment and spiritual understanding of what His plan for you is. And we call that "vision", God is giving you a vision for your life. He is birthing something down in your spirit. Vision is seeing through God's eyes what your part is in building God's kingdom. That's what vision is. Vision is the ability to see with spiritual eyes into a reality that is not apparent to the physical. It is that ability to discover and to discern where we fit in God's overall plan; the direction to go, the passion to pursue, obtaining God's perspective. It is seeing the invisible and making it invisible. Vision is an informed bridge between the present and the future. Vision is sanctified dreams. It is seeing a future reality from God's perspective. It's the capacity to see life and circumstances from God's viewpoint in order to know and to follow God's calling on your life. Is is the ability to understand what God is saying specifically about you in your life so that you can fulfill the purpose for which He created you and placed you on this planet.
Vision lets you know where you are going. And God may not give you all the details up front, but He gives you a direction in which to begin to follow. He does so that you will help your life focused so will keep it directed, so you will not get off the track. Vision helps place you on the course so that your life can be a very focused life. Vision creates passion in you and that passion motivates you.
We're going to look at a life in the Old Testament to help us understand more about vision. We will consider Abraham. I want to look at his life and simply just learn some things about vision; how Abraham received His vision from God and carried it out. Let's look at Genesis 12:1-4:
Then the LORD told Abraham, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you." So Abraham departed as the LORD had instructed him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
Now catch a vision of your life just looking at what we can find with Abraham's life. There are two things I think that are very important to gain our vision for our life. Those two things are a listening ear and an obedient heart.
First, have a listening ear. And Abraham had a listening ear -- he was listening for God. God spoke to him and told He told him to leave. Verse 1 says that the Lord told him "Leave your country". How did he know that God told him that? He listened to God so he heard when God spoke to him. This the key and it is a very important thing. If you look at the people in the bible who had a vision for their life, they were people who heard God. They listened to God and God taught them very early. Some of them later and some of them earlier like Samuel. 1 Samuel 3 tells how Samuel got started. He heard this voice and he couldn't distinguish whether that was Eli or God. He didn't know what God's voice sounded like at that time, so he thought it was Eli. But Eli helped to understand that it was God speaking to him. So at a very young age, Samuel began to hear the Lord. And you've got people like Isaiah. People who heard the Lord. Everybody who got a vision for their life were people who heard God.
This means that if you are going to want to understand what God has for your life, you're going to have to get it from Him. And there are some very general things we can find in His word, right? There are some very general things that fit everybody. There aspects of obedience in here that fits every believer. But you are a unique person and God has a specific thing for you. And if you want to know that plan, you are going to have to hear God. You're going to have to pursue the voice of God. You have to listen to God. Sometimes all you will have to go by is what God has said.
I wonder how this story looked from Sarah's perspective. One day Abraham comes home and the conversation goes something like this...
"Guess what, honey? God spoke to me today."
"Oh really, what did He say?"
"We're moving."
"Great. Where are we going?"
"I don't know. Isn't that wonderful?"
"Peachy. What are we going to do when we get there?"
"I don't know. Let's pack!"
I just don't see Sarah getting really excited. I suspect she was wondering, "How do you know we're supposed to be going?" And all Abraham could tell her was "Because God spoke to me." Sometimes that's not enough, but that's all Abraham had. And that's all Sarah had: "God said". God spoke and they left because of that.
This brings us to the second point, when God speaks to us, we are to obey Him, just like Abraham and Sarah did.
You've got to have an obedient heart. Your obedience will build your confidence in God and make the vision become clearer. If you want to know more about what God has called you to do, you need to have a life of obedience. If you want your vision to become clearer, obey the Lord and more will come to you. As you begin to obey God, trust will begin to rise up. You see Him meet you as you obey Him in something, and that gives you more faith for next time He asks something of you. If you are going to obey God, it's going to depend on how much you trust God. And your trust level begins to grow as you obey. If you don't trust God very much it's because there has been a lack of obedience. The more you obey, the greater you will be able to trust the Lord. You will see that He always comes through with His promises.
So God said to Abraham, "Abraham, get up and let's go." And Abraham got up and he went. There obviously had been enough go on between Abraham and God for him to build this trust level so that when God says, "Go", he went. Faith is developed this way. It is developed through positive experiences in faith.
As you begin to obey God, you see God does come through. God is not a liar. When God makes a promise He comes through with it. You get experiences with God under your belt to give you confidence, your trust grows. But it starts with you believing Him, extending yourself, taking some risks. And when you do so, God always comes through because He said He would, and you'll trust Him more.
There is one question this passage does not address: Why did God wait until Abraham was 75 years old before He extended him this kind of invitation? Was it because God is sovereign in this thing, that He wanted to a miracle with a woman who had been barren all of her life and even past child bearing years? Was God into something there? Well obviously, God was into something there. But the other thing that I have to keep kicking around in my mind is this: Did Abraham have a stubborn heart where it took God 75 years to work in him the point where he would say "Yes?" I don't know if that is true or not, there is nothing in here that tells us that he had a stubborn heart. But sometimes God has to prepare us to have a willing heart.
For example, look at Moses. God used Moses to release the people of Israel out of Egypt. How old was Moses when he went before Pharaoh? He was 80 years old! He wasn't really young. Why did God wait until Moses was 80? It was because God had to work in his heart. Moses spent 40 years in Egypt; 40 years in the wilderness tending sheep. God had to get him ready to say Yes. He wasn't ready to say Yes to God at first, and God had to prepare his heart, to help him become willing. This tells me that God will do whatever it takes in order to you to the place where you have a willing heart. God will allow you to go through whatever it takes so you will have a willing heart. He will get you there. God allowed Moses to go through quite a bit to have a willing heart.
I don't know about Abraham about all he had to go through to have a willing heart. But I know this. God took him through whatever was necessary to get him to the point where he would say "Yes" when God said "Go." And God worked that in his life before He asked Abraham to pick up and "go." And God will also bring us through experiences of being willing. I think about the prodigal son. At first he wasn't willing to go back to his dad, but when he depleted himself of all of his resources, when he was slopping pigs and he was hungry, he got willing. God brings us to those places so we will just say, "Yes".
An obedient heart does what they already know to do. So, the question is: Are you doing what God has already told you to do? When God begins to speak to you, He expects your response to be, "Yes" followed by actually doing what He tells you to do. It is not OK to say Yes and then not do it. You need to be a doer of the Word.
Jesus gives us a comparison between hearers and doers in Matthew 6. He tells of one man who built his house on the rock and the other man who built his house upon the sand, and He compared these two. He said that they both were those who heard the word, they both listened to the word. But one did it and the other one did not. The one who did it had his house built upon the rock. The one who did not do the word had his house built upon the sand. God puts a great emphasis upon being doers of the word. The question is, "Are you doing what He has already told you to do?" Are you faithful with what He has already asked you to do?" The scripture says this in Luke 16:10, "Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won't be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities." (NLT)
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