Developing A Vision For Your Life

Developing a Vision for Your Life

The Power of a God-given Vision for Reaching Your Maximum Potential

INTRO:

- We have an incredible imagination

- Our eyes can take in 4 million bytes of information every second.

- The moment we take it in, our imagination processes it, and forms a 3D color picture and then immediately puts it into motion.

o The imagination is very powerful

- We all think in pictures

o ILLUS: If I say, “Big Black Dog” You don’t see the words, your imagination shows you that image. We are visually oriented.

- Every one of us in our imagination has a picture of ourselves, our family and our future.

- How we see ourselves is the way that we are going to become.

- You will never rise any higher than the image you have of yourself.

o You will never accomplish anything that you first do not see yourself accomplishing.

ILLUS: Walt Disney. The most popular tourist attraction on the planet. In 1998, forty-two million people went through the turnstiles at the Disney World theme park alone. Sits on 43 square miles. Walt Disney died before it opened. In Oct. 1, 1971, Grand Opening Ceremony. Someone turned to Mrs. Walt Disney and said, “Isn’t it a shame that your husband couldn’t live to see this?” Her response, “He did see it—that’s why it’s here.”

REMEMBER: God’s Vision for Your Life is Two-Fold:

1.) God has a Vision for What He Wants You to Accomplish

2.) God has a Vision for What He Wants You to Become

PROP: I want to give you 5 goals that I hope that you will begin to develop in your life as it relates to vision.

I. DEFINE God’s Vision for Your Life

- We have to understand that the idea of vision didn’t come from some get-rich quick scheme or motivational speaker but it came from God Himself.

Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision the people perish, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

WORD STUDY:

- “Vision” = Chazown: it means mental sight, dream, revelation or enlightenment.

- “perish” = para: released from protective and productive restraints

- “Law” = torah: Biblical principles and precepts

- “happy” = esher: blessed, successful, and joyful

HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE VISION?:

- The ability to see in our minds God’s destination for our lives – both present and future, partial and whole, individual and corporate. (It is a mental blueprint)

- Vision is the bridge between the past and the future

- Vision is the eye of faith to see the invisible and the decisiveness to make it visible.

- Vision is adopting an action plan that will enable you to do what God has told you to do spiritually or in service to Him.

- Vision is the inward fire that enables you to communicate to others what the future could be like.

- Vision is a “sanctified dream” of the future.

- Vision is foresight with insight based on hindsight.

- Vision is the ability to sense God’s Presence, to perceive God’s Power, and to focus on God’s Plan in spite of the obstacles.

o For me, it is the capacity to allow God (through His creative powers) to create within us dreams and plans for the future that will help others and bring glory to Himself.

- Some of you are thinking, “Pastor, why should I bother listening to this message…why should I be a visionary?

I’m just an ordinary person, with and ordinary job, and an ordinary family

o I think God would disagree with you this morning.

- Your ability to dream and imagine is a God-given ability that He has given to you in order to reach your maximum potential and become a Champion for Christ.

- I believe God would have us to know this morning that vision is a character trait that can be stimulated and developed in each of our lives.

OBJECT LESSON: Puzzle Box Top. A vision is the puzzle box top…it is where we want things to end up. When you have acquired God’s vision for your life, it makes fitting together the pieces of the puzzle of life much easier. “If you have THIS (box top) with enough time and thought, you can do THIS (fit pieces)

NOTE: vision limits your decisions (simplifies)

II. DETERMINE to See Through Your Eyes of Faith

Matthew 6:22-23, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

- This isn’t talking about out physical eyes, but what we see through our eyes of faith.