16.Apr.2008 The Extent of Your Life is Determined by Your Vision
When we want God to move, we have to shift our minds off of the disaster and on to God. God will move on the disaster, but he is not the disaster. When we dwell on the pain and dwell on the negative, our minds go there. Half of the battle is in our minds. When we focus on God and on the positive, it actually starts us moving and gets us on the journey towards breakthrough. When we move in faith on this journey, we open up the door for God to move in our situation and we take our situation to the place that God is. God moves on our natural situation, but we have to stand on the supernatural promises of God and bring them into play.
Proverbs 29:18 – Where there is no vision (revelation or dream) the people perish. But he that keeps the law, happy is he.
We can’t partially by into the vision and God’s will for our lives. We can’t say, “God I will give you this part of my life, but not this part of my life.” If we aren’t fully invested in chasing God and His purpose for our lives – if we don’t fully buy in and fully surrender our hearts to God – we can’t get what we want out of life and fully realize our dreams. We can’t get a revelation of what God has for us.
Where there is no revelation, the people perish. You can have vision, revelations and dreams, but not allow them to engage in your heart. You can stop God from bringing things to pass by not going on the journey and not submitting to God. God gives us the strength to go the distance and accomplish our dreams. He walks along side us and guides us on the journey. But we miss out if we expect God to do everything and refuse to submit to him and do our part.
There are four parts to vision:
1. Identifying the vision
2. Commencing the vision
3. Adjusting to the achieving of the vision
4. Completion of the vision
Vision is a lot like marriage. We identify the one we are going to marry. We commence on our journey by committing to do life together and committing to accomplish our dreams together. But the whole path we start off on with our vision doesn’t exactly go the way we plan. But that is the reality of vision. Vision is like our salvation. We get saved, and it’s all so exciting. But then it moves into this curve where if we want to move forward, we have to shift and make changes. Sometimes a marriage doesn’t work because we identify it, but we don’t make any shifts or changes to make it work. We have a vision, but we don’t make any adjustments to bring it to pass.
Salvation is the starting point. From there we have to move forward. The wedding is the identification. The commencement is your life together. Your adjustment is the battles you fight to take your marriage to a different level and share more of your lives together. The completion is the goal when you have done life together and succeeded. Vision is no different. The vision can’t just be written down on a sheet. We give it to God, but there are still adjustments that we make along the way. God blesses us in it when we are willing to take the journey and do our part. God wants to know what we are willing to do to bring our vision to pass. Vision involves faith.
Faith is required to get us through the journey, and get us through the hard times on the way to achieving our vision. That’s when we need to look to our God, look to the positive and look to the outcome he has for our lives. Faith is a major part of vision. When we identify a vision for our lives, we have to move to faith and focus on what is possible in our God to bring us through, bring us to victory and bring that vision to pass. On the other hand, not having vision doesn’t do us any good either because, as the scripture says, without vision we will perish. It’s normal to get upset and have complaints in our lives, but it’s what we do about them that counts.
The extent of your life is determined by the vision you carry for your life. If your life is ruled by complaint, and it’s a continual thing that comes up, that is the vision for your life. If that is the extent of our lives, we need to shift. We don’t want complaint to determine the outcome of our lives. We need to identify it and get vision to change it. Vision provides energy, flow and movement. It provides answers and direction for change. Complaint is associated with people who don’t achieve much in life because nothing is ever good enough for them. Complaint focuses on the negative, but God is not a negative God. You have to take yourself to God’s word and allow yourself to shift. Vision is positive as God is positive.
What are you going to make the center of your world – complaint or vision?
