This morning at the church we’re attending I heard a message that really hit home with me. I’ve been accused of being ahead of my time and to forward thinking. So to hear some encouragement about seeing beyond the here and now. The message was based on Numbers 13 & 14 and the 12 Spies trip into Canaan and their and the people’s reaction to what lie ahead of them.
The introduction to the message was “Vision is the ability to see God’s presence, to perceive God’s power and to focus on God’s plan in spite of obstacles.” He went on from here to say that “Christians with vision are endangered species”. I completely have to agree with him to many times I see Christians and especially church leaders cannot see more than the next Sunday in front of them let alone 2 years, 5 years and 10 years ahead them.
In order to be a person with vision you must posses three things:
-Awareness, the ability to see
-Attitude, the faith to believe
-Action, the courage to do
Only a minority will see things as God does, and that vision almost always goes against the flow.
-The majority see the problem, people with vision see potential (Numbers 13:1, 17-20, 27-20)
This is what separates the people God calls to be leaders of His church and that people in our faith communities need to follow those leaders and trust they follow God.
- The majority exaggerates difficulties, people with vision magnify God (Numbers 13:31-33)
We in the church doubt I’ve always wondered where the verse “to Him who can do immeasurably more” or “nothing is impossible with God”. Why even show up on Sunday if you don’t trust God to do great things around you?
-The majority listen to critics, people with vision listen to God’s word (Numbers 14:1)
Why do we listen to critics? Why do we allow people to gossip and spread negativity around the people?
-The majority glorify the past, people with vision point to the future. (Numbers 14:2-4)
Their is a lot of good that comes from our past, and those in the past have word extremely hard to get us where we are but we forget they did what they did to help us grow in our faith and we have a commitment to do the same for future generations.
-The majority is fear based, people with vision are faith based. (Numbers 14:5-9)
It saddens me to see all the fear good church people allow to get in the way of following God where He is leading. It irritates me to see people in the church use fear as a tactic to stop the forward movement of their local church let alone the whole kingdom.
-The majority see obstacles, people with vision see God (Numbers 14:10-11)
God is visible we just have to know where to look (Matthew 25:31-40) and getting on board with the things God is already blessing or blazing trails scriptures calls to blaze is seeing God and just following.
The Difference Vision Will Make-
-With problems in my life
-Power in the church
-People in my path
-Potential in my path
Lack of vision is plaguing the American church as we’ve become more like the Israelites that wanted to go back to Egypt in stead of forging ahead to the next great adventure God is calling us to. A story that was used as an illustration this morning really fits the current state of a lot church’s and church leaders. “About 350 years ago a shipload of travelers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a town site. The next year they elected a town government. The third year the town government planned to build a road five miles westward into wilderness. In the fourth year the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway? Here were people who had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to see even five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision.”
Italics above are my opinions and thoughts based on the point being made
