The Radical Truth About Vision
What The Goal-Setting Gurus Won't Tell You...
If you were God and you wanted to change the world forever, you'd hardly set out to do it through an obscure itinerant preacher who only twice or three times travelled more than 30 miles from his home, a small village of around 500 inhabitants.
You'd hardly want your world-changer to spend all his lifetime in an insignificant country that measured just 126 miles north to south and 46 west to east.
You wouldn’t choose someone who had no university education and no official status in society. In short, you wouldn’t have set up a plan to change the world through someone like Jesus of Nazareth.
But you’re not God -- all of this was part of God’s vision to save the world.
No one can change the world like a visionary; but no-one can change the world for good, forever, like a Godly visionary. A Godly visionary can build a great deal from very little.
So much is said & written about vision these days. We have entire bookstores where shelves are lined with volumes on goal-setting & vision-casting.
There are seminars costing hundreds of dollars where motivational speakers tell people how to unlock their inner dreams. We have so-called company evangelists who preach the vision of their corporations, winning converts to their cause. And lifestyle gurus teach people about unlocking a sense of calling/vocation in life.
Vision has always been a subject on which notable people have had something to say. Jonathan Swift wrote that, ‘Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.’ Helen Keller said: ‘The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.’
Theodore Hesburgh, the former head of Notre Dame university remarked: ‘The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.’
Proverbs 29:18, in the traditional King James reading, says: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish…’
In the midst of all the modern hype about vision, it’s easy to think that nothing more needs to be said about vision. Yet this simple sentence from a book of ‘wisdom literature’ written almost 3000 years ago, cuts through all of the self-promotion and hype and lays before us a whole new idea of what vision is about.
On the surface, it seems innocent enough: ‘Without vision, the people perish.’ But if we dig a little deeper, taking into account the context of the verse, and the original language in which it was written, it turns much of the other teaching about vision on its head, for it says something like this:
‘Where there are no redemptive revelations of God, the people lead undisciplined, unfruitful, wasted lives.’
This verse is clearly not talking about looking inside us to find the vision within; it’s not talking about setting goals either. It’s talking about Godly Vision. The vision God has for your life is something entirely different to your goals, wish-lists.
So, what is Godly Vision? Where does it come from? How do I appropriate its benefits in my life?
Many dictionaries define vision as the art of seeing, of having sight. Let’s use that word S.I.G.H.T. as our starting point.
S – SPIRITUAL
Spiritual vision is much more than a goal-set, a wish-list or a to-do list. Goals are born out of human motivations; spiritual vision is born out of divine revelation.
Spiritual vision is above all else a revelation of God’s nature, character & purposes.
In Matthew 16:16-17, Peter makes his bold assertion that Jesus is ‘ the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And in reply, Jesus tells him this has come as a revelation direct from the Father. What’s more, Jesus describes for Peter what he is to become, a rock on which God can build.
Despite the claims of self-help authors and human potential movement thinkers, It’s only when we’ve been confronted by a revelation of who God is that we can see clearly enough to know who we are.
The revelation God gives is:
a) Philanthropic:
God doesn’t have to share himself with us. He does it purely as an act of grace. Grace is an attitude that includes those who were previously excluded.
At salvation, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – the Triune God of the Bible – brings us into a relationship from which we were previously excluded, because he chooses to.
b) Purposeful:
The revelation God gives of himself is designed to be lived out by us in such a way that it redeems aspects of our world for the Kingdom. When we live out the revelation, we bring aspects of our world back under the loving rule and protection of Christ.
For example, if you’re a business person and you start to find ways to act on what you’re learning about God, you will bring a change to the business culture around you.
You will begin to become salt and light and people will notice a positive change in things you’re touching. You will act redemptively – because the vision is redemptive.
In Acts 26:19, Paul gives defence, in chains, before King Agrippa. He shares his experience on the Damascus Road, including his life-changing vision of Christ.
‘I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven,’ he says, ‘[but] preached that [people] should repent…’
Paul understood there was a purpose in the revelation he’d received. As he submitted to that purpose, he redeemed people & situations around him, to such a degree that he changed the world.
Writing in a well-known British newspaper, one journalist said:
‘Paul is the intellectual forbear of anyone who was brought up within the framework of once-Christian Europe. He is one of a handful of towering figures who formed our way of thinking and when you read his letters you are going back to your roots.’
It wasn’t Paul’s goals that changed world – it was a divine revelation. It didn’t start with Paul, but with God’s decision in grace to make himself known.
c) Progressive:
My good friend author and evangelist Winkie Pratney says: ‘You can’t have a digital download from an infinite transmitter to a finite receptor.’
If God were to reveal himself completely to any one of us, we’d be dead in a nanosecond. How can our brain matter, as wonderful as it is, possibly take in the enormity of the One who made the universe – and, if you believe the science journals, possibly other universes – with a word?
So God has to reveal himself to us, as the Scripture puts it, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’.
Receiving spiritual vision is a progressive journey not an instantaneous event. God builds vision line on line. If your vision is same as it was five yrs ago, it might be time to get on your knees.
We are never more truly human – in the way God created us to be – than when we’re seeking God, reaching out to him in a quest for truth.
As you keep yearning after God’s presence, he will reveal aspects of himself to you, progressively building on the picture over time. As that happens, the revelation or vision will stretch you to accommodate more of God.
Abram received a revelation of God as ‘El Shaddai’, the All Sufficient One, the One who is more than enough. But this stretched him; in fact he had to become Abraham (father of a multitude) to truly see it outlived in his situation.
In Part 2, coming soon: Vision is interactive.
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