Called and Equipped: Stepping Into Supernatural Success for Your Life
“Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19 KJV).
Ephesians 1:18 (NLT) says, “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand.”
Seeing and understanding are related. You cannot doubt what you see—in the natural or the spiritual.
Without spiritual light for your spiritual eyes, you’ll wander around blind. Without spiritual light, a person will be alienated from the life of God.
You should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart (Ephesians 4:17-18 NKJV).
The good news is that when believers have their hearts flooded with light, it will shine through them to people who are in darkness. In Matthew 5:16, the Lord instructs us to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify God.
As we study the power of vision, it’s important to note we are not talking about merely setting bigger goals of more money, a better car, or a bigger house. Quite honestly, the Lord wants you to have these things and more, but He wants you to follow kingdom-ordered priorities so that when these things are added to you, they don’t dis- tract you or become idols that turn your heart from Him. At this very moment, God has reserved a glorious des- tiny for you. His plan for your life will make your greatest plans pale in comparison. The apostle Paul referred to it in Acts 26:19 as the “heavenly vision.” When you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you position yourself for God to safely and abundantly add all the “things” in your life everyone else is dying to get.
According to Psalm 139, there’s a book written about you, and it contains an intricate, opulent, and individualized plan designed specifically for you. It is written by the Omnipotent (all-powerful), Omniscient (all-knowing), and Omnipresent (all-present) God. He wrote out a schedule of appointments for every single day of your life!
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were appointed for me, when as yet there was not one of them [even taking shape] (Psalm 139:16 AMP).
When I was meditating on this scripture the Lord asked me, “Mark, have you ever missed an appointment?” I thought of how many appointments I had missed in my life. It became clear to me that even though God has an awesome, glorious life planned for all of us, we must seek His face and hearken to His voice so we don’t miss what He has planned for us.
Never forget we have an adversary who wants to interrupt God’s glorious destiny for us. Thank God for His mercy and grace. When we miss it, He continues to work in our lives patiently and diligently. He always will, no matter how badly we mess up.
God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9), but the good news is we have a standing invitation to join Him by going to higher levels in our thinking, seeing, and doing. As I mentioned previously, Myles Munroe defined vision as “starting what God has already completed.” The Lord isn’t trying to figure out what to do with your life. From the foundation of the world, He knew you intimately, planned out your life, and perfectly designed and suited you for His plan. The requirement to discover His plan is to seek the Lord with all your heart and walk in obedience to Him (Jeremiah 29:11-13).
Saul (later, the apostle Paul) was expending all his energy on what he thought was God’s will. Yet he was sorely misguided. He knew the scriptures well, but until he discovered the heavenly vision for his life, he was on a path of destruction, wreaking havoc.
Here are a few things to remember as you seek the Lord and His vision for your life:
God Equips the Called
This helped me early on. God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called. In the early days, I compared myself with others and thought, Lord I don’t have what so and so has or…. From there, just fill in the blanks. The highest honor anyone can ever have is to serve the Lord, and yet I hear so many people complain about it, find excuse after excuse, and handle His call carelessly.
When I gave my life to the Lord, all I wanted to do was serve Him, but I felt ill-equipped and inadequate. Then, I discovered in His Word that He would never call me to do something He has not equipped me for. That would be wrong or unfair.
Until I began to study the Word of God and find out who I was in Christ, I thought I would have to muster up the ability to do what God was calling me to do. Then I came upon this scripture and discovered there is a priceless treasure inside every born-again believer:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7 KJV).
The Greek word for power in the previous verse is dunamis, which means “inherent power, strength, power for performing miracles, ability.” It refers to the equipping the Lord has provided for us. Our job is to develop what He’s deposited in us, being mindful that it’s His power working in us.
After the resurrection, Jesus gathered His disciples and gave them what is called “The Great Commission.” It is a co-mission—God and man working together. It’s the Lord working in and through His body—the body of Christ.
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen (Mark 16:15-20 KJV).
In pursuing the heavenly vision for my life, three things helped me and I believe they can help you as well. We must:
Discover
Develop
Deploy
The Discovery Process
As simple as it seems, the word discover helped me immensely in pursuing the will of God for my life. Once I realized I did not have to try and figure out what I was supposed to do to serve the Lord, it lifted a huge burden off me. When you are in the discovery process for something, you simply need to understand that it already exists. You are merely searching for it.
Acts 17:28 (NKJV) reveals what our relationship to our Creator was designed to be: “For in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’”
We are in Christ, and He is in us. In Him, we find our very existence and from this flows life. Out of that life proceeds our every movement, and in the life of God, we have our being. In other words, we are not “human doings” trying to keep our God from being angry with us but rather the essence of our lives is found in Him and Him alone.
The discovery of the heavenly vision God has for your life begins and ends in your relationship with the Lord. Jesus is the living Word, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and the Author and Finisher of our faith. The most important part of discovering God’s plan for your life is going to come from your time in His Word. I have talked to numerous people over the years who confess they don’t get anything from reading the Bible. I believe these three things are absolutely necessary to get all God intends for us from His Word:
Read the Word.
Study the Word.
Meditate on the Word.
Barna Research along with the American Bible Society came out with a report representing one of the largest data sets on how the population perceives and engages the Bible in America. It was very disheartening to read. When compared with the founding of America and the place the Bible held in the lives of families and our founding fathers, it’s a miracle America is still standing as a nation.
Anytime we desire help from the Lord, deliverance from evil and destruction, or we need healing in our lives, the Lord sends His Word to accomplish this (Psalm 107:20). Today, the Bible has little to no place in Ameri- cans’ lives. However, reading the Word is only the beginning; we must also study the Word (2 Timothy 2:15). It wasn’t until I began to study the Word of God diligently that I began to grow spiritually. Even though I had a full- time job and a lot of responsibility, I made time to study the Word. It was spiritual hunger that drove me to study. When someone says they don’t have time to study the Word, they simply aren’t hungry.
We don’t need to look up statistics to know Americans spend a ton of time watching TV, on computers, emailing, texting, and watching YouTube and TikTok videos. Can you imagine if just a portion of that time was spent reading and studying the Bible? I found one source that says Americans spend around eight hours daily with digital media! The next time you are in a restaurant, mall, or airport, just observe how many people are glued to their mobile phones.
Finally, we come to the most vital of the three—meditation on the Word. This is not merely my opinion. It comes from what I refer to as “the Master Key to Good Success” God gave to Joshua.
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success (Joshua 1:8 KJV).
God gives Joshua a very simple plan anyone can understand to have good success. After all, not all success is good success. As a pastor for over four decades, I’ve seen lots of people “succeed” only to crash and burn, losing everything. Many of them, including businessmen and women, ministers of the gospel, worship leaders, and a whole lot of people who genuinely loved the Lord were devoured by the enemy. It’s not the plan of God for you to only experience short-term success or breakthroughs. His desire is for your fruit to last into eternity.
