Vision For Your Life And Ministry

"For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11 NASB).

God has a destiny for your life. As Jeremiah 29:11 says, he has a plan to give you a future and a hope. It's that word "future" that I want to focus on.

The Hebrew word for "future" here - there's a couple of pronunciations I came across in my studies -- depending on which commentary or bible dictionary you're reading. One is "Achariyth", which has a little guttural sound and the other one is "Ahari." Basically these mean "the last, the end of the reward". It is talking about that God has something out there to finish well with.

It's interesting how the root word of this word "future" -- the root word of this word "future" -- comes from the word which means "from the high back or away from". You see the future is essentially saying as one looks back; as one looks into the past. It is the culmination of the events of the past.

It is a word picture of someone looking in the past but going forward or going forward looking backwards. It's a picture of one that is rowing a boat. The rower rows forward by having this fixed point. You see the future comes as you look at what God has brought you through in the past. You see we move into the future backwards and we need His reference point. As that rower is rowing he is looking at the place and he's fixed his eyes there and he know that they are going in a straight line because he is gazing to the back. That is the picture of this word here. Moving forward by looking back. Every good vision for the future will be anchored in the past. If you can't see it in your past, it probably isn't in your future. Your past has shaped you to who you are. Your past has shaped you to where you are going. Both your successes and your failures are things that God has used to shape you, to use you and to mold you into who you are and you can understand a lot the call upon your life or where God is leading you by looking where He has brought you from. This can really be illustrated in the life of Israel. What word did God give Israel over and over again in order to keep them on track? It was the word "remember".

Deuteronomy 32:7 says, "Remember the days of old. Consider the years of all generations. As your father and he will inform you; your elders and they will tell you."

God said, "Remember". He told them to remember what they'd experienced. In Joshua 4 they were getting ready to enter into the promised land. As they got right on the edge of it, they came to the Jordan River. The river was swelling over its banks, it was at the flood stage. And God said, "You are getting ready to cross the Jordan." So he had the Ark of the Covenant carried by the Levites and they went and as they walked into the water, the waters parted and all the water downstream just went down to the water upstream. And the bible says the water built into a wall and the whole nation of Israel as the Ark stood in the middle of the river. The Jordan river dried up and this whole nation, millions of them, crossed over to the other side. And God wanted them to remember that.

He said this in Joshua 4, "When all the people were safely across the river, the LORD said to Joshua: 'Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell the men to take twelve stones from where the priest were standing in the River of Jordan and pile them up on the place where you camped the night.' So Joshua called them together, the twelve men and he told them, 'Go into the middle of the Jordan in front of the Ark of the LORD your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it out on your shoulders. Twelve stones in all. One for each of the twelve tribes. We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask, 'What do these stones mean to you?' And you will tell them, 'They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the LORD's Covenant went across.' These stones will stand as a permanent memorial among the people of Israel.'"

"So the men did as Joshua told them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River-one for each tribe-just as the LORD had commanded Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there." Verse 19 continues, "The people crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month; the month that marked their exodus from Egypt. They camped at Gilgal, east of Jericho. It was there at Gilgal that Joshua piled up the twelve stones taken from the Jordan River. Then Joshua said to the Israelites: 'In the future your children will ask, What do these stones mean? Then you will tell them, This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground, for the LORD your God dried up the river right before their eyes and He kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when He dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so that all the nations of the earth might know the power of the LORD and that you, the people of God, might fear the LORD your God forever.'"

These stones were stones of remembrance. They were stones to remind them as to where they had been and to show them that God would be with them as they went into the land and conquered the land. And these stones were things that would keep them on track; things that would be stones of remembrance to remind them what God had done.

You see, we remember in order to build confidence in the future for the future. Not that we would build a memorial to be worshipped. God wants us to remember in order that we will have the confidence and we will have the faith to move on into the will of God. Not that the things we have experienced in the past would be the things that we would worship. We are not to memorialize to the point that we would lift those things up. These stones were not to honor man. These stones were given in order to honor God for the purpose as it said in that 24th verse. The purpose was so that the nations would know the power of God that that you would fear the LORD, your God, forever. That's what they are there for, to remind you of that.

Men like to worship the past. They like to worship experiences. They like to worship events, like the transfiguration. You're familiar with that particular story in the gospel. Jesus always went up to pray and when He went up to pray He took his disciples usually part way with Him. He didn't take them all the way. He said, "Let's go pray." He would get to a place and He'd say, "You guys stay here." And then He went on to pray. Because they would always fall asleep and I imagine it would be very distracting. Here He is trying to pray and these guys were snoring. So Jesus would go on to where He could be by Himself. And He would pray. He did this one day with Peter and James and John. And all of a sudden these guys looked up and saw Jesus and they could see Moses and Elijah. And the Glory of the Lord was there. And the disciples got so excited they couldn't wait and Jesus came down and this is what they said.

Luke 9:33: "As it came about, these were parting from Him and Peter said to Him: 'Master, it is good for us to be here and let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah'; not knowing what he was saying."

Oh, Peter. He just kind of jumped out there and he really looked stupid after a while. It's not uncommon to want to worship the experiences of the past. It is not uncommon for a church that had a glorious past to basically remember that and worship that. For instance people say things like:

"Yea, I remember when old pastor so-and-so was here, boy we had the best Easter program you've ever seen."

"Oh, we had such a great time. We had all these children's programs and these choirs and stuff like that. Yea, those were the best days this church has ever seen."

Did you hear that curse in there?

The past is the past. But people worship the past because they can see the past. The past is comfortable. You can look back and you can see that. The future is not so comfortable. It is unseen. But the past is something you can see. That is why people worship the past. They worship their experiences.

And these stones were not there to worship Joshua. They weren't there so people could say, "Well, you know, Joshua, he was the best leader we've ever had. Nobody's ever led us like Joshua did. You know, that guy, he really knew how to lead a nation, didn't he? Yea, Joshua sure did. He brought us into war and we won a few times. And we've just never been the same since Joshua left."

These stones weren't there to worship a man or to worship an experience. They were there to remind them of God. That's why these were there. God would say this to Joshua, in Joshua 1:9: "Have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not tremble or be dismayed for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

Three times God would say in those first nine verses, "Be strong and courageous." See to be able to fulfill the will of God you have to have courage because it is frightening. The future is uncertain. It is not seen. The past you can see. The future you don't and there is a lot of great risk and there is a lot of uncertainty and to be able to move into the future, you need to know that God is there. You need to have courage. So what these stones were simply to be a reminder to them in order to build faith in what God had done.

That's what the purpose of these stones were. They were to remind them that just as God parted these waters, then He had parted the waters at the Red Sea. They would be reminded of how God delivered them of the Egyptians. They would think about that. Just as He parted the waters then, He parted the waters back with Egypt. They would be reminded of that. They would be reminded of those years they spent in the wilderness. They would be reminded of how God provided for them; that everywhere they went, God had a provision for them and as God opened up the waters there. This was to give them confidence that God would open up doors for them as they go into the land.

They needed to know that. These stones were stones of faith. They were stones of confidence. They were stones of strength. You remember what God has done in order to give you strength to move ahead.