Vision For Your Life And Ministry

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.

1. It will be spiritually discerned.
2. It is not humanly possible, but only divinely attained.
3. It will be stretching.
4. It requires sacrifice to self.
5. 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."