Vision: Gathering It Up and Giving it out

Did you know that studies have shown it is almost impossible to give a dog and ulcer? Do you know why? Because dogs hardly ever try to be anything but a dog.

-Steve Brown

Proverbs 29:18 reads, "Where there is no vision the people perish". John Haggai contributes to our understanding of this verse when he reminds us that the "true meaning of these words is, that without vision, the people cast off restraint. When a group is under the direction of a person who has no vision, the result is confusion, disorder, rebel ion, uncontrolled license, and -at worst- anarchy.

I believe that Most dynamic leadership is always fueled by vision as the word is defined in Scripture. How do you get vision? Where do dreams come from? Karl Jaspers was an existential philosopher who taught that ll living, to be meaningful, had to touch some "axial point." This axial point may come as a crisis of personal pain. But even periods of pain may bring us a new vision that redefines our lives.

But PAIN may be too mild a word. Often vision comes as the result of some tearing circumstances by which we come to an end of our own ability to make life work. In the darkness of such times, we may achieve a breakthrough. It may be a laser of hope that, slices through your gray existence and illuminates some new direction - a clear glory you had not been able to see before the pain came!

Here are some ways I turn reversals into opportunities in my life...

1. Nothing happens to us by accident; all reversals are God-given challenges sent to transfer our complacency to Passion!

2. never sidestep challenges. Grab every charging bull by the horns and slap him twice across the face. Remind him that God is in charge of you, and you're in charge of him!

3. Love people, use things. Never, ever revers this order or you have become unworthy of the high character of God's servants! The Lord is all about us loving others ... always remember that true joy comes from : Jesus first, others in the middle and you last :)

Surely Christ is the fount of our best imagination and vision! I must sound this word of warning. God does not shout His best vision through hassled christian living. It is in the quiet that He gives the most delivering visions of life!

The more electric and driving a vision is, the more it will inspire greatness in all those who hold it!! So hold onto your VISION ... Gather it up, and GIVE it out!