What is your Vision? What is your Vision like? Why are you doing what you are doing? What are you trying to accomplish?
It’s so sad to see young people and adults who have no vision of their spiritual life, no vision of their future, no vision of work and their lives are stagnant.
“Where there is no Vision, the people perish.”
Proverbs 29:18 KJV
Without vision you will get nowhere. Without a vision you will abort the plan of God for your life. What is your Vision for your spiritual life, your professional life? What is your Vision for your marriage, for your children, financial life and your heath?
People who fulfilled their purpose in history did so because they saw things that were not there. Vision is seeing the future before it comes into being. You need to see farther than your eyes can. If you live based on what your eyes see every day, you will be depressed.
For you to find your Vision you need to find the Lord and be near Him.
1 “I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected.
2 Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the VISION And make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it.”
Habakkuk 2:1-2 NKJV
What happened with Habakkuk is that he positioned himself properly so that he could hear from God.
Is God’s voice in my Vision? Vision comes from God’s voice!
In the first part we learn that we have to receive a vision from the Lord, we have to write the vision down and keep coming back to it. (Read it)
Because if there is a plan on paper, that vision will become a reality.
Speak the Vision
We have to speak our vision. When the vision becomes a reality the vision will become a voice. When a house is built from a plan and it becomes real, you don’t have to come and say: that’s a house!
A house will speak every single time anybody passes by. “I’m a house”.
The vision will speak but at the beginning, you must speak to the vision.
Once it’s on paper you have to speak it to life, you have to pray, you have to declare it, you have to decree it.
When it comes, it will speak by itself, but until it speaks we have to speak the vision into life.
Speak to the dry bones. Let the weak say I’m strong. Speak to the dry valley. Speak to your sick body.
Many are speaking about their nightmare, their reality, their feelings, how somebody treated them and how hurt they are.
Don’t give your reality more attention than it already has earned.
Please don’t elevate your reality higher than the Vision that you have.
If you’re sick don’t declare I’m sick and I’m going to die. Say : I’m healthy and I’m fighting this illness.
Instead of saying I’m weak and struggling, say I’m strong and fighting weakness.
I’m not poor trying to get blessed, I’m blessed and fighting poverty.
I’m not cursed trying to be blessed. I’m blessed and I’m fighting curses.
“The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.” Proverbs 18:21 NLT
That means my mouth has both life and death in it but I choose life.
You know when you have a tap in your house with hot and cold water.
That’s what your mouth is. It can go either way. We decide which way we go.
Some people like to keep it just warm enough. God wants us to keep our mouths hot.
Write the vision, read the vision, speak the vision into life.
Vision is a gift from God. I want to talk now about how vision helps you to make decisions. The greatest gift that God gave humans is the power of choice, the ability to make decisions!
This is the greatest gift but also the greatest curse. Because it also gave humans the power to decide against God.
You’re not a robot, you are a free mortal that has the power of a will. It’s a gift from God.
The most dangerous responsibility given by God to humans is the power of choice.
If life came with a manual, we would have no problems. It doesn’t come because God gave you a free will. You will decide about your life.
The most difficult thing in life is to decide among the alternatives that are in front of you! This is the hardest thing in life.
The Bible says that God has good plans for us, and if you seek him and depend on him and have a good relationship with him then He will show you what is the right decision, but you yourself will decide.
Everyday you are deciding things about your life. Experts in the human mind says that everybody makes at least 7,000 decisions every day. That includes simply opening your eyes in the morning, and some of you don’t.
You know sometimes you plan to pray in the morning, but when the alarm goes off, you remember that it is cold outside, or you’re sleepy them you decide to stay in bed.
Life is filled with decisions, deciding to wake up, to get up, to go to the bathroom, to brush your teeth, to have time alone with god or to check your social media, to go to school.
Decide what to wear, what to eat and how to use your time.
How to make decisions among the alternatives and that’s the hard part!
The most challenging task in life is not making decisions but knowing which decisions to make! Is that true?
Everybody, everyday is a decision maker, even the decision not to decide, is a decision. It’s impossible not to ever make a decision.
The difficulty in living on earth is deciding what to decide. I have seen people spend their lives wasting time because they made decisions that were not relevant to their pursuit.
The reality of life is that You are the total sim of all decisions you make every day! That’s what you are!
You’re nothing less and nothing more than all decisions you have made!
That’s why it is important to make decisions in the right way, make them at the right time , with the right people, because what you decide becomes your life!
An alcoholic is a man or woman who decided to take their first drink 40 years ago.
A smoker is a man or woman who decided 50 years ago to smoke their first cigarette.
A doctor is a boy who decided to be a doctor when he was in secondary school.
Every decision determines your future.
Do you know why you’re listening to me? Because God wants you to make some adjustments in your life, so you don’t keep making the same mistakes, the wrong decisions and wasting your life!
I want to read a powerful verse from scripture that gives us revelation about today’s teaching. You need to highlight and underline this verse in your Bible. Because this verse has guided my life and decisions since I was born again. I’m going to give you the secret that is protecting the life of your pastor.
“Everything is permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything”
1 Corinthians 6:12 AMP
God said: Anything is permissible, you are allowed to do anything, all things are lawful to you but not everything is beneficial!
God said through Paul the apostle: I can do anything I want, I’m a free will person and no one can control my life and I can decide whatever I want!
But look at the second part of the verse: But not everything is beneficial.
Your life should be controlled by what is beneficial!
The question is: How do you know what is beneficial to you? That is what Vision is all about.
Everybody, everyday has to deal with it and decide. This is the challenge: what do I decide to do? Where do I get the foundation for my decision making?
Vision disciplines you to make decisions correctly. The quality of your decisions is based on the quality of information that you have.
So if you want to make good decisions, you have to get good information.
If you want to make better decisions, you have to have better information.
Your decisions can only be as good as the information you have. This is why you need to have knowledge because the more knowledge you get the higher your quality of information to make better decisions.
You have the power to decide whatever you want so therefore you need to make sure that what you know is what you want.
Why is decision making so important? Because Discipline is created by the power of choice.
Paul says: I will do nothing that is not beneficial.
Beneficial means anything that contributes to the fulfilment of your vision.
Example: if your desire this year is to lose 20 kilos. That’s your desire!
The first thing you need to do is to have a vision of that desire. Maybe you’re wearing size 18 and you need a vision of wearing size 12.
Once you have a vision of what you want then you need to discipline yourself.
If you want to be a person who knows the scripture and wants to be used by God, you need the discipline to study the word of God every day.
If you want to hear God’s voice and be intimate with him, you will have to discipline yourself and have a life of prayer every day.
If you want to be a successful professional, you have to discipline yourself and read and study and qualify for the labour market.
That means if you are invited to a friend’s place for dinner and there you see a big table full of good food. There are a lot of choices, then you say: help me Jesus!
Because on the table there are many different kinds of meat, pork, beef, chicken, sausage, ribs and lamb. Two different kinds of rice, lasagna. Also there was another table full of desserts: shortcake, a lot of cupcakes, apple pie, brownies, ice cream, butter cookies and chocolates.
What to do? What did Paul say?
Everything is permissible! When someone invites you to their house, everything is permissible!
The point is: Never wake up and go into your day without a vision of your future.
Never enter a restaurant without a vision of the size you want to be.
Your flesh says: All things are permissible!
Your spirit says: But not all things are beneficial!
Your decisions are totally based on your vision. Because you have no vision for your future you keep making dumb decisions.
Beneficial means there are some things you won’t permit in your life.
What is discipline?
Disciple is self imposed standards and self imposed restrictions that you put on yourself that are motivated by a desire that is greater than all the alternatives.
Discipline is when you police yourself because there is something that you want to achieve that is more important than the other temptations.
Self discipline is the highest order of living. A man or woman who has no self discipline is guaranteed to fail.
Discipline is self imposed. When a person is not self disciplined they will be other disciplined.
If you can’t discipline yourself then life has a way of having others discipline you.
That’s why God gave you your parents. Why did God give you these old people?
Because God knows you have no discipline as a child, so He needs to give you external discipline until you learn personal discipline.
There are people who are 20, others 30 or 50 years old and they are still children. No self discipline.
Before I was born again I wasn’t a disciplined person but I learned in the church with my pastors, my leaders and with the Bible.
It takes discipline for you to work in a job for 20 years, it takes discipline for you to be good student, it takes discipline for you to be a great professional, it takes discipline for you to be a good servant of God, it takes discipline for you to have a good marriage, it takes discipline for you to know the plans of God for your life!
Without a vision you will have no discipline.
Seek the Lord and be near Him for you to find your Vision.
Write your Vision, Read your Vision, Speak your Vision and have discipline because your life should be controlled by what is beneficial for your Vision.
Your Vision will lead you to your destination.
God bless you!