This sermon series is based on the book “visioneering” by Andy Stanley. Parts of this sermon are taken directly from the material contained in his book.
Vision – Part 1
March 16, 2003
Life is a journey and every journey has a destination. Everybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose.
A clear vision, along with the courage to follow through, dramatically increases your chances of coming to the end of your life, looking back with a deep satisfaction and thinking “I did it. I succeeded. I finished well. My life counted.”
Without a clear vision, odds are you will come to the end of your life and wonder what you could have done – what you should have done. And like so many, you may wonder if your life really mattered at all.
Vision gives significance to the otherwise meaningless details of our lives. It’s not always about what we’re doing, but rather why we are doing it.
How many of you would be excited to spend all day today filling bags with dirt?
How many of you would be excited to spend all day today filling bags with dirt to build a dike around your city to keep it from being flooded?
There’s nothing glamorous or fulfilling about filling bags with dirt, but saving a city is another thing altogether. Building a dike gives meaning to the chore of filling bags with dirt.
The same is true of vision. Too many times the routines of life begin to feel like shoveling dirt. But take those same routines, those same responsibilities, and view them through the lens of vision and everything looks different. Vision brings your world into focus. Vision brings order to chaos. A clear vision enables you to see everything differently.
Granted, we have all heard or read about vision before. There are plenty of self help books out there that tell us how to set goals and have vision. They teach that if you can believe, you can achieve.
Read “Oh the places you’ll go” by Dr. Suess
While the average person may have the right to dream his own dreams and develop his own picture of what his future could and should be, we as followers of Christ have surrendered our lives to follow Christ and His plan. We gave up our right to be in charge when we accepted Christ and agreed to follow Him.
Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”
God has a vision for your life. Why would you want to think up and do your own thing? What could be more fulfilling than the plan that God has for you?
In Andy Stanley’s book Visioneering, he says - “Without God’s vision, you may find yourself in the all too common position on looking back on a life that was given to accumulating green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them. Accumulating money or stuff is a vision of sorts. But it is the kind of vision that leaves men and women wondering. Wondering if there was more. Wondering what they could have done – should have done – with their brief stay on this little ball of dirt.”
As Christians, any vision that we can think up, will always fall short and leave us wondering.
We serve an intensely creative God. We talk about the fact that no two snowflakes are alike, but God has never made two of anything alike. God’s vision for you does not include trying to fit into someone else’s mold. Unless you discover God’s unique vision for your future, your life may very well be a rerun.
Over the next several weeks, we will be looking at 20 essential building blocks for vision. These come from the book “Visioneering” by Andy Stanley that I mentioned just a moment ago.
We will also be looking at the life and vision of Nehemiah, in relation to these 20 building blocks. The one thing I find most encouraging about the story of Nehemiah is that he was just a regular guy who caught a divine glimpse of what could and should be. And then went after it with all his heart.
What is vision?
Where does vision come from?
A Vision is born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be. Anyone who is frustrated, or brokenhearted about the way things are, in light of the way they believe things could be, is a candidate for vision.
In fact, that is how the vision for this church began. I was on staff at a good church, but was becoming more and more frustrated with the way things were, versus the way I believed things could be. God was giving me a vision for a new church.
However, vision is more than simply what could be. After all, what could be is simply an idea or a dream. Vision also carries with it a sense of conviction. It’s not only what could be done, but what should be done. It’s something that must happen. It moves you from passive concern to action. Conviction is what gives vision a sense of urgency.
Vision always stands in contrast to the world as it is. Vision demands change. But a vision also always requires someone to champion the cause. It takes someone who is willing to put his or her neck on the line. Someone who has the courage to act on an idea.
This brings us to the story of Nehemiah and the 20 building blocks that we will be looking at today and over the next three weeks.
Around 587BC the Babylonians invaded Judah and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, along with Solomon’s temple. This was the third of three campaigns into that region. About 70 years after the first Babylonian invasion, Cyrus, King of Persia, gave the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Under the leadership of a man named Zerubbabel, these exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. Things were looking up for while. It seemed as if Israel was on the verge of becoming a blessed nation once again. But the people refused to turn away from the very sins that God had judged their ancestors for. The temple was not being maintained. Sacrifices had ceased. The Jews continued to adopt the religious practices and culture of the surrounding nations. By the time our story begins, the political, social, and spiritual conditions in Jerusalem were deplorable.
Meanwhile, back in Persia, a Jewish man named Nehemiah heard about the condition of his homeland.
Let’s look at Nehemiah 1 verses 1-4.
Nehemiah was so moved by what he heard that he wept. It’s not that he was weak, or emotionally unstable, but instead that he was burdened. In fact he was so burdened that it says in verse 4 he mourned and fasted and prayed for days. Little did he know that these deep feelings were the initial birth pains of a vision that people would be reading about thousands of years later. Notice that Nehemiah’s vision didn’t start out as a vision. It began as a concern or a burden for his nation and it’s people.
Building Block #1 – A vision begins as a concern
A God ordained vision will begin as a concern. You will hear or see something that gets your attention. Something will bother you about the way things are or the way things are headed.
Unlike many passing concerns, this will stick with you.
You will find yourself thinking about them in your free time.
You may lose sleep over them.
You won’t be able to let them go because they won’t let you go.
Nehemiah’s concern over the condition of Jerusalem consumed him. It broke his heart. Thoughts of what was, as opposed to what could be brought tears to his eyes. This was not just a casual concern…it was a vision in the making.
So what did he do?
He didn’t steal away across the desert in the night. He didn’t fabricate a reason to leave Persia. He didn’t even share his burden with other concerned Jews.
But he also didn’t allow his daily responsibilities to distract him from the burden that had gripped his heart.
No, Nehemiah chose the third and most difficult option. He chose to wait. Nehemiah knew what so many of us have a hard time remembering.
What could be and should be can’t be until God is ready for it to be. So he waited.
Habakkuk 2:2-3: “Then the Lord said to me, “write my answer in large, clear letters, on a tablet, so that a runner can read it and tell everyone else. But these things won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.”
This brings us to the second building block.
Building Block #2 – A vision does not necessarily require immediate action.
A lot of people have good ideas. Many times God may be in the process of birthing a vision in their hearts. But most of the time, they want to start NOW!
But the story of Nehemiah, along with numerous other Biblical accounts, illustrates the truth that a clear vision does not necessarily indicate a green light to begin. Too often when a person with an idea that seems to be a God ordained vision charges out of the gates too early, the result is failure, discouragement and disillusionment.
A vision rarely requires immediate action. But it always requires patience.
Many people ask, why wait? After all, there are people to rescue. Why not just plunge ahead?
Because developing and discovering a vision is a process. Sometimes it’s painful and agonizing. But it is always worth every bit of the agony along the way.
Waiting often seems like a waste of time. The assumption is, since we aren’t moving ahead, nothing’s going on. But that is not the case at all. Some important things are taking place while we wait.
While not every good idea is vision material, every vision begins as an idea.
Not all burdens are vision material, but every vision begins as a burden.
Waiting gives us a chance to examine our emotions and sort out minor concerns from major ones. If what concerned you yesterday is of little concern today, odds are that it was not vision material.
Just as you cannot rush the development of a child in the womb, you cannot rush the development of a vision. God determines the schedule for both.
Acting too quickly on a vision is like delivering a baby prematurely.
They are always weak. And in some cases a preemie cannot survive the rigors of life outside the womb.
So it is with vision. Immature visions are weak. They rarely make it in the real world.
As we wait, not only does the vision mature, but we also mature and become ready for the vision.
Many times the tendency is to assume that since I know what I am to do, I’m ready to do it. But God has to grow us into our vision. Just as a vision must be God ordained, it must also be done according to God’s timetable.
Philippians 2:13-14 says “For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him. In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing.”
Everything you do, includes waiting. Yet, we often complain about waiting, and argue with God that our timing is better.
Have you ever met someone who had a good idea but bad timing?
Remember Moses? He had the right idea, but his timing and methods were terrible. His vision was to free his people from Egyptian slavery. And that was a God thing if there ever was one. So what did he do? He went to work and killed an Egyptian. If Moses had sat down and calculated how long it would take him to kill all of the Egyptians, he would have realized that it would take several lifetimes. So, what did God do? He sent Moses to the University of Sinai to study in their wilderness program for 40 years. It took Moses 40 years to grow into the vision that God has designed for him.
Nehemiah, on the other hand, had it pretty easy by comparison. He only had to wait four months before the wheels started turning. But working for the King of Persia was still somewhat of a desert experience for him. Nehemiah was a man with immense leadership ability who awoke every day to do a job that tapped little or none of those skills.
Can you relate? Do you wake up every day to circumstances that seem to have nothing to do with the vision you sense God is developing in you?
Then you are in good company.
Joseph reviewed his vision from an Egyptian dungeon.
Moses spent years following sheep.
David, the teenage king, spent years hiding in caves.
And Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the king whose ancestors had destroyed the very city he longed to rebuild. Be encouraged. God has you where He has you for a reason.
Not only does the vision need to mature, and we need to mature to be prepared for the vision, but God is also working behind the scenes to prepare the way. This is why it is so important to wait on his timing.
Remember that the vision God has for our life is only a small piece of the entire puzzle. God’s vision for your life is much bigger than you. Apart from his intervention and preparation, you and I are incapable of pulling off even our small part of the operation.
Time of Reflection?
One of the most difficult things related to vision, is distinguishing between good ideas and God ideas. We all have good ideas. Everybody is concerned or burdened about something, but how do you know which ideas to act on?
1. If it is God who is giving you a vision of what could and should be, over time you will begin to sense that not to follow through with it would be an act of disobedience. As the burden in your heart grows, you feel compelled to take action. Your only alternative to following through is to say “No! I refuse to move in that direction!”
2. A God ordained vision will be in line with what God is up to in the world. There will always be a correlation between what God has put in an individual’s heart to do and what He is up to in the world at large. As a believer and follower of Christ, there is a larger, more encompassing context for everything you do. After all, it wasn’t the condition of the walls that broke Nehemiah’s heart, it was the spiritual condition of his people. If the idea you are mulling over is from God, it will become apparent how the thing you feel compelled to do connects with what God is up to in this generation.
Next week, among other things we will take a look at what Nehemiah did while he was waiting.
