This podcast is the New Years edition of Light On Life. January is the time of the year where people think about things like resolutions, goals, and direction for the upcoming year. Soon after the completion of Disney World, someone said, “Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this?” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios, replied, “He did see it—that’s why it’s here.” ¹  Vision is seeing things invisible. Do you have a new vision for this new year?

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Podcast Notes

Acts 26:19 (KJV)
¹⁹ Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:

Defining the Power of Vision: What Is Is

• The degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man.

On Seeing the Big Picture

• A pastor on the East Coast shares the following story.

I was pastor of a little church of 140 members in New Jersey at the foot of the Orange Mountains in Montclair. The church was nestled on a little-used street. On the top of Eagle Rock, one of the Orange Mountains, there was a lookout. On a clear day, I could look east across the Hudson into Manhattan. And I could look south to Trenton, New Jersey. And I could look north into Connecticut. I would look out there and say, Gordon, 10 percent of the population of the United States is right there in your view. I was just that young preacher with 140 members in a little spot that you could hardly find, but it gave me a big feeling. It made a difference in Gordon Johnson.

• Vision is seeing and joining in what God wants to do.
• It’s getting God’s big picture.

Vision Is a Picture of What God Desires to Do

• It is a picture of what God will do in His church if we get out of the way and let Him do it.
• The word means to see
• This word seeing is not a natural seeing.

2 Corinthians 4:18 (ESV) — 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

• If you can see your dream in the physically, that means vision is not needed.
• You are already there.

Vision Is the Art of Seeing the Invisible

• Vision is one of the church’s most desperate needs.
• Without it, people wander in hopelessness.
• But, when you get right down to it though, there are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly.
• They do so because they can’t see the answer.

Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) — 18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: But he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

 Proverbs 29:18 (TMWB) – 18 If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.

Vision Is an Active Ongoing Process

• It is a continual search for what God is doing and wants to do.
• It is an active process of following a dynamic God.
• Vision comes by a revealing.
•  And, revelation only comes by diligent search.
• The causal minded never get a vision.

Vision Is an Inside Job

• You must be able to take the journey in your heart before you ever launch out in reality.
• You have to lift your eyes upward to see.

Genesis 13:14 (KJV) — 14 And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:

• Often the difference between success and failure, life and death, is the direction we’re looking.

Two Men Who Couldn’t See What Was Right in Front of Their Eyes

A Colorado man moved to Texas and built a house with a large picture window from which he could view hundreds of miles of range land. “The only problem is,” he said, “there’s nothing to see.” About the same time, a Texan moved to Colorado and built a house with a large picture window overlooking the Rockies. “The only problem is I can’t see anything,” he said. “The mountains are in the way.” People have a way of missing what’s right before them. They think it’s always going to be the way it’s been.

Vision Is a Journey

• It is not a destination.
•  It is an unwrapping or an uncovering of what God wants to do.
• God will never tell you everything at once.
• He unwraps it little by little for you.
• For you as a family as a church etc.

Vision Has an Element of Risk

• You don’t have a vision just because you have an idea.
• If you don’t have some risk, you only have an idea.
• There is no shortage of ideas, but there is a shortage of people that will do something about the idea.
• An old Italian proverb says.

Between saying and doing many pairs of shoes are worn out.

• Ideas must have legs.
• Vision involves the risk of doing something and doing involves the risk of failing.
• One of my favorite quotes along this line is this one by Teddy Roosevelt.

It’s Not the Critic Who Counts

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; and who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

• Teddy also added this quote on the subject of risk.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

• The Christians who have turned the world upside down have been men and women with a vision in their hearts and the Bible in their hands.
• And, coupled that by stepping out into the unknown knowing that God would lead them.

Vision Takes You into the Realm of the Unknown

• Stepping into the unknown is often not the first choice.
• It’s not what you want to do.
• But it’s necessary to avoid stagnation.
• The seven last words of any dying church, family, or person are,

We have never did it that way before.

The Wright Brothers Took a Risk

In the year 1870, the Methodists in Indiana were having their annual conference. At one point, the president of the college where they were meeting said, “I think we live in a fascinating age.” The presiding bishop said, “What do you see?” The college president responded, “I believe we are coming into a time of great inventions. I believe, for example, that men will fly through the air like birds.” The Bishop said, “This is heresy! The Bible says that flight is only for the angels. We will have no such talk here.” After the conference, the bishop, whose name was Wright, went home to his two small sons, Wilbur and Orville. And, you know what they did with their father’s vision.

• The success of any vision is the result of people getting behind it.
• It is the result of you getting behind it.
• Are you willing to take the risk?
• You have to be honest about these things.
• Lip service to these ideas doesn’t get it done.
• Remember, often what God wants you to do is something you never did before.
• This is where character comes in.
• Who you are determines what you see; what you see determines what you do.

It Takes Faithfulness to Pull Off Vision

Proverbs 20:6 (KJV) — 6 Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: But a faithful man who can find?

• The title ‘faithful’ describes many Bible characters.
  • Abraham – Gal. 3:9
  • Tychicus – Eph. 6:21
  • Epaphras – Col. 1:7
  • Moses – Heb. 3:5
  • Nehemiah – Neh. 9:8
  • Paul – 1 Tim. 1:12
  • Daniel – Dan. 6:4
  • Onesimus – Col. 4:9
  • Timothy – 1 Cor. 4:17
  • Lydia  – Acts 16:14-15
  • Our Lord Jesus – Rev. 19:11
  • God the Father – 1 Cor. 10:13
• Faithfulness is a characteristic of those who are with Jesus in heaven.

Revelation 17:14 (KJV) — 14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

• True Faithfulness does not differentiate between what men consider big or small, important or insignificant.
• True faithfulness seeks only to diligently complete all vision with excellence.

A Pastor’s Definition of Faithful

• A pastor was once asked to define “Faithful Attendance at Worship,” and this was his reply.

All that I ask is that we apply the same standards of faithfulness to our church activities that we would in other areas of our life. That doesn’t seem too much to ask. The church, after all, is concerned about faithfulness.

Consider these examples:  If your car started one out of three times, would you consider it faithful? If the paperboy skipped Monday and Thursdays, would they be missed? What if you didn’t show up at work two or three times a month, would your boss call you faithful? If your refrigerator quit a day now and then, would you excuse it and say, “Oh, well, it works most of the time.” And, if your water heater greets you with cold water one or two mornings a week while you were in the shower, would it be faithful? If you miss a couple of mortgage payments in a year’s time, would your mortgage holder say, “Oh, well, ten out of twelve isn’t bad”? And what of your spouse? What if she is faithless once every 90 days would say 89 out of 90 isn’t bad?

If you miss worship and attend meetings only often enough to show you’re interested but not often enough to get involved, are you faithful?

Call to Action:

Are you faithful to the vision which the Lord has dropped in your heart? If not, there’s good news for you, 2019 is a new year a new beginning. The good news is God is right where you left Him. Go back and pick up where you left off. Maybe you are faithful, but now you are wondering what the next piece is to the vision for your life. Ask the Lord to share the next part of the vision with you.

Question: How did the Lord drop vision, a piece of your life’s purpose, into your heart? Please leave a comment in the comments section below.

Just Who Is Jesus to You?

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