New Year, New Vision: How Writing It Down Unlocks God’s Best for the Year
We currently live in a hurting world that is spiraling out of control, and there is a desperate need for believers with God-sized visions to bring faith, hope, and deliverance.
In other words, God’s power to deliver will be made manifest in our lives.
Psalm 119:18 in the Brenton Septuagint Translation says, “Unveil thou mine eyes, and I shall perceive wondrous things of thy law.”
I’ve never been a Shakespeare person, but I came upon a quote from his play Julius Caesar, and all these years later it’s never been more appropriate.
Our legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day; we, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.
—William Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar
Does this not sound like America right now? Legions are large military units. We have a lot of adversity set against us in the United States. We’re at war, and most people don’t even know it. When he says “our legions are brimful,” it means they’re overflowing. That is most certainly the United States of America. There are certain opportunities we have in the body of Christ right now that we must seize. If we don’t seize them, there could be a very bleak future for America.
When it comes to vision, we must understand that there’s a part we play that God cannot and will not do because we are co-laborers together with Him. There’s a part that only God can do, and He doesn’t expect us to do His part, but we must work in conjunction with Him.
How can we discover and develop the vision God has for our lives, articulate it, and bring it into being?
Habakkuk 2:2 (KJV) says, “The Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision.” You must write down the vision— the things God speaks to you—because in the moment God reveals things, we believe it is so alive, so anointed, and so fresh we won’t forget it. But the fact is, we will forget it. It has been said that the palest ink is better than the best memory.
When my wife and I first got married, we rented an 800-square-foot apartment. The walls were so thin we could hear our neighbor next door cooking breakfast in the morning. He would turn his radio up and fry the bacon—we could hear everything through the walls.
We were believing God for a house. We looked and had no success. It became frustrating, and I finally said, “You know, if the Lord wants us to have a house, He’s just going to have to reveal it.” But one thing I did before I understood the importance of writing things down was get a piece of paper and begin articulating the desires of my heart in writing. I wanted to be on a cul-de-sac. I wanted a large lot. I wanted an awesome view of Pikes Peak. I put some other truly unique things on that paper. In different parts of the country, many don’t have basements in their homes, but in Colorado, virtually all the homes have them. Where we were at the time, the basement of our rental home was so cold. I tried and tried to heat it, but we never could get it warm down there.
I wrote down that I wanted a house where the basement stays warmer than the rest of the house, which sounds like something that probably wasn’t very likely. I wrote all those things down. I even put in there that if we needed to change things like carpet, paint, and all that kind of stuff that was fine. I wrote it down on an ordinary piece of paper, put it away, and pretty much forgot about it.
One day, Linda came home and said, “Honey, I found this house in the for-sale-by-owner section of our local newspaper. I drove by it today. Let’s go look at it.”
I thought, Why not? So we drove up on this cul-de-sac, and the most interesting thing happened. As I was walking up to the house, I began to feel a peace on the inside of me. Within 30 days, we closed on that home and moved into it. We moved everything into the garage, and when we started unpacking, I took a box of my old office things down to where my office was in the new house. As I was going through it, I found that piece of paper. I had been a bit frustrated when I wrote down all the things I wanted, and I had forgotten that I wrote it, as well as what I had written. Eighty percent of what I wrote down on that paper was true about that house! It was uncanny.
The basement in that house would stay warmer than the rest of the house. It was well taken care of, but it had avocado-green shag carpet (the really long kind) and harvest gold carpet in another room. It had old wallpaper we needed to remove and undesirable colors, but the bones of the house were good. We lived in that house for about five years, and we spent those five years replacing the car- pet as we could. I learned a very big lesson through this. Whatever you want, make sure you are very specific. I made a decision right then and there that I would never move into another house that needed remodeling.
Writing down your vision and being very specific is critical; it’s a biblical principle.
And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry (Habakkuk 2:2-3 KJV).
There are times and seasons in all our lives—appointed times. I’m convinced that some of those times we cannot expedite because there are particular seasons the Lord has ordained for us to come into. Many other factors come into play because we are part of the body of Christ. It’s not just about us; it’s not just our world; it is a much bigger picture and because of that, there may be unexpected seasons of waiting. This is a kingdom principle and initiative that the Lord wants to bring to pass.
I want to share a quote from Peter Daniels about vision. He is a wealthy entrepreneur who just turned 91 years old at this writing. He visited us at Church For All Nations in 1998 and came back in October 2013.
One of the things he said about vision was:
Remember that you or your organization must give life to the mission through the dynamics of vision, commitment, and energy, which provide the fuel that will give it life.
So, let me share three things I consider to be a three-fold cord that’s not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12) and are critical to accomplishing your vision:
Know your mission.
Write your vision.
Develop strategies.
You must understand your mission (or the mission of your organization). At Church For All Nations, our mission is to empower locally, send globally, and reap eternally. That’s why we exist. It is kind of like the foundation of the house.
Develop your own personal mission statement as an individual. I developed my mission statement as a man of God years ago. I got before the Lord and asked, “Why did You create me, Lord? What am I on this Earth to do?” And I wrote down my mission statement. Picture it like the house you’re in right now. It has a foundation that holds everything else up, and no building is any better than the foundation it rests upon. Just as every house is fitted to its foundation, so your vision must be fitted and aligned with your mission in life.
Discovering your mission in life—why God put you on this earth—is important, and yet it’s something people have rarely, if ever, heard they need to discover and write down. I never knew I was called to be a pastor until I started seeking the Lord. I began following and pursuing Him, and I made this discovery: Pastoring is not what I do. It’s who God made me. Psalm 139 is one of my favorite psalms. I encourage you to read multiple times and from different translations of the Bible. It reveals that God wrote a book about you and every day that He has appointed for your life is already planned out and written down. This will stir your faith to press into the Lord and discover who God created you to be.
Discover your mission, write your mission statement, and then write your vision.
Your vision is what you will accomplish in life—the things God has called you to do. Make it very clear. Be sure you understand that you’re a human being, not just a human doing. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28 KJV). God loves you as His child, and He knit you together in your mother’s womb before the foundation of the world. He predetermined what He created you to be and to do. There are gifts, callings, and talents He put inside you, and it is truly liberating to wake up in the morning and know why God put you on this planet. Your mission and your vision are a discovery process rather than you deciding or figuring out what you want to do with your life.
Consider the following thoughts on vision. They will help you define and explore this subject.
First, your vision should be a natural outgrowth of your mission. In other words, when a foundation is laid for a house, it’s laid. It’s designed and constructed to support the house. So when you get before the Lord, discover your mission, and write it down, it will be perfectly suited to be the foundation because it’s from God.
Your vision is really just a written account of what God wants to accomplish through you on this Earth to advance His kingdom. The beautiful part of this is that what you and I do here on Earth is not going to end when we die. It will reverberate throughout eternity. You will have an eternal impact when you discover your vision and write down what God has called you to do.
As humans, we are goal-oriented. We need to have something in front of us that we can go after. It’s like a GPS. You have to plug in a destination. I like to think of a GPS as “God’s Positioning System.” You plug the vision that God has for you into your heart and mind, and you follow the prompts along the way. Even if you miss a turn or divert from the path, it will recalculate and you can continue to just follow the prompts if you have the destination plugged in.
Your vision statement will be totally unique to you. Just as your fingerprints, your retinal scans, and your voice patterns are all different from everyone else’s, your vision is unique to you.
Wherever you are today—whether you’re in hot pursuit of God’s plan for your life or you have veered from the Lord and been drawn to come back—God still has a plan for your life. He has a vision for you. And He said, if you ask, it will be given. If you seek, you will find. If you knock, the door will be opened to you (Matthew 7:7). Myles Munroe had one of the best definitions of vision. He said, “Vision is starting what God has already completed.” I want to encourage you to lay hold of the vision God has for your life, write it down, and pursue it with all your heart.
