Ephesians 3:14-16 (NLT): When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.
Colossians 2:19 (NLT): and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.
Matthew 9:37 (NLT): He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.

Paul had three revelatory visions in regards to the church. Two were focused on the Church functioning as a body with Jesus as the head. The Head of the Body is where all the thoughts, actions, reaction, dreams, and visions arise. And when the body is working in agreement with the will of the head, things happen!

In Colossians, Paul is warning the church not to become disconnected with the head. Change cannot occur if the body is disconnected. Jesus saves your soul; He does not change your behavior. It is when you come into alignment with the Head (Jesus) through the function of the Body (your place in the church) that change occurs. This principle is true for both achieving change in your life and in changing the world. When the church is in alignment with what Jesus has planned, the world changes. (That is what we as leaders try to do–pray and seek the will of Jesus and then enact His will.)

When the “body” becomes disconnected with the “head,” abnormalities arise. In the medical field, this is known as cancer–the lungs stop working, cells turn on the organs, the brain stop functioning. In the church, cancer materializes, per example, as crossing your arms and refusing to help because someone hurt you. What change can occur when the body is fussing amongst itself? There is no forward motion!

You see, God’s will is always in motion. He will accomplish His plans with or without us. He finds willing vessels. His will gets done! The challenge to us as Christians and to the church for 2011 is will you take that step? Will you enter into the journey of God?

The train is moving. Will you get on?

John 1:1-5 (NLT): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

For 2011, get a word from God about your life. Not a lot of words, not a sentence, but one word. One word that stays in your life and can’t be moved. Think about what word God has dropped in your spirit and meditate on it. Pray about it and let the word settle in your spirit. Let it marinate.

When you get the word from God, you will know because everything will align. Focus on that word. When we get a word, it changes everything. We can think of “this” and make plans about “that,” but when you get a word, it fits and things start to happen.

The difference between an advanced life in 2011 and a stagnant one is a word from God. Excitement motivates us to think about plans and the future, but excitement only gets you excited. A word moves you into the miracle zone. A word bridges the gap between us, the natural, and God, the supernatural.

Faith is finding the word God has already spoken over your life and believing it. It may challenge us and maybe even scare us, but we are safer in the unknown of the word than we are in the safety of the “known.”

Excitement won’t allow you to reach your goals for 2011, but a word from God will. It will bring life to your world. Pray about it and get your word from God for this year. Let it grow and keep it alive. It has power but you have to have faith and believe it.

As God is three in one–God, Jesus, Holy Spirit–so, too, is humanity. We are created with a body, a soul, and a spirit. All three parts are sanctified when we accept Christ as our Savior. We commune spirit to Spirit with God through the relationship established by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead. It is in our spirit that we feel God the most. However, there are days when we don’t feel particularly spiritual. That is when we engage all three parts to seek God again.

All things of God engage all three aspects of who we are. The human body struggles to submit to the spirit. The soul is the battle ground where we battle our broken sin nature with its corrupted thoughts and propensity to lean towards the ungodly with the new nature God gave us upon Salvation. These two aspects of who we are, the parts we sometimes feel is what makes us less godly, are parts that have also been sanctified by God. And when we feel less spiritual, we engage these two parts to stir the spirit: We go to our God Zone.

The God Zone is prayer. We pray. We physically take ourselves to a place of solitude. We pour out our souls before God. We pray and seek Him; we seek His will. And our spirits are revived. God said in Joel that He
would pour His spirit out on all people, and they would Prophesy! In the God Zone, we engage that gifting. All three aspects of humanity come together in prophesy. The spirit stirs–whether upon hearing bad news or seeing something tragic or whatever else–and the body and soul engage.

Prophesy is speaking out truth into your world or into the worlds of others. You literally speak. The power of God manifests in speech. God spoke and the world came into being. When we speak, we change our worlds. Good or bad; believer or non-believer; as long as you have faith in what you are saying, it will happen. This principle goes across the board. Imagine what would happen if you align your words and belief with God’s Word? The Word of God is the Power of God. When we align ourselves with His Word and speak HIS truths into our worlds, great things happen. What He promises comes to pass.

When you speak His truths over your world, your world is changed. You can speak His truths over the worlds of your family and friends, over your situations, over your finances, over everything! That is prophecy. Speaking into the future changes the future for the better! Speaking GOD into your future opens the doors for HIM to do what He does best: Be Awesome! He will go above and beyond your expectations! So, speak out in faith! Believe it! Engage your body, soul, and spirit, and let God move.

Vision is what drives us. If we don’t have vision, we go nowhere. As a man thinks, so he becomes.

You can only go so far without Divine power. Man’s wisdom only goes so far. When we reach our limits, and don’t want to accept defeat, we need to go to prayer. The only thing that can do anything is God, and we have his power inside of us when we give our live to Christ. There is nothing more powerful spiritually than when you give your heart to God.

The doorway into the power of God is the understanding of the promises of God- the Bible. If you don’t understand the words of God, then you will not understand the power of God. It is our job to get into the Bible, and get to know what God says about our lives. Stuff is going to happen in our lives; we are going to get challenged. We need to put the promises from the Bible into practice in our lives. When we step over into the supernatural, we are unstoppable.

Nicodemus came to Jesus soon after Jesus had cleared the Temple. He was a member of the Pharisees–a group who ran the Temple and profited from the not-so-holy business dealing that were going on within until Jesus came and drove everyone out. It seemed to be his hope to win Jesus over before this new stranger could cause any more trouble. He tries to butter him up by calling him “Rabbi” and talking about his miracles. It is then that Jesus hits him with this: “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

Huh? That came from way left field! It is a statement that has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Now, we modern day Christians understand the importance of this statement. Salvation or “being born again” is a fundamental basis for Christianity. But for Nicodemus, the statement was a bit absurd. He was trying to win Jesus over, and yet Jesus was changing the subject. Why would he do that?

It is because Nicodemus came to him with an agenda, and Jesus was going to have none of it. We often come to God with an agenda–deliberately or not, hoping He will accept it and do things the way we want them done. However, we must be prepared for the consequences. If we come to God with an agenda, He will answer us with something that will blow our minds! This story is a perfect example; it poses the questions, “What will you do when God has another agenda?”

As this new year begins, we all make plans and resolutions. It is common. We also seek vision for what we should do. This time presents a unique opportunity where our agenda and God’s plans meet, and we have a choice to either hold to our plans or submit to His will. It is like walking a dog. A dog gets excited at first over the walk, willingly accepts the leash, and lets the human lead. Then, after some time, the dog tries to take control of the walk by going this way or that, forcing the human to tug on the leash to correct the dog’s path. Then, inevitably, the dog takes a stance of refusal, digging paws into the ground so as not to move any further.

We as humans act in much the same way. We lay aside our agenda to follow God’s vision for the year. At first, we are excited. We follow God’s lead. We let Him take control. Then, after a few months, we begin to try to take back to the control. We want to go another way. God brings someone into our world to speak to us (a “tug on the leash”) and set us back on the right path. Then, more time passes, and we reach a point of stubbornness. We don’t want to go this way any more, so we drag our heals. At this point, God does two things. First, He tugs on the leash once. He gives us a chance to submit. Fiances get tights, so we stop tithing. He sends a “tug.” We get into a relationship that may not be best for the time being. He sends a “tug.” Any number of situations come up where our pride gets mixed in and we stop following God’s lead; He sends one tug. And if we do not submit, He let’s go of the “leash.” He frees us to do what we want–regardless of the consequences He knows will happen as a result– because He cannot and will not control us.

Inevitably, disaster strikes. Can we look at God and ask why He lead us here? Sure, but it was not Him who lead. He let go. We went our own way. But God is merciful. We come back and submit to His lead again, and He will lead us. He promises in His Word to lead us through the good times (“by the still waters”) and the bad (“through the valley of the shadow of death”). He leads us no matter what. He is always there beside us if we lower our agenda and let Him take the lead.

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?