People perish for lack of vision.
Skillful Living Series – Message #9
The message today is Vision – seeing how things will unfold for you.
Many people fail to learn to live skillfully because they never learn to act today based on something inspiring they see in their future. They are reapers more than they are sowers. They wake up each day and go out looking for the manna they need to satisfy their current need. They don’t see a time where they can live off all the land offers because they have no vision beyond today’s manna.
Remember, Purpose provides meaning and reason for our lives. Vision then provides us with the inspiration we need to live out that Purpose and meaning in a skillful way. Purpose is why we live; vision is how we live.
In the book of Habakkuk, God had a conversation with the prophet Habakkuk. He gave Habakkuk a vision of many great things to come. In chapter 2:2 Habakkuk asks what he should do with the vision. God tells him this. “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, it will not lie.”
God has a lot to say to us about the power of living by vision. He knows we are not omniscient – or all knowing. He knows that for us to live skillfully, we must be able to know more than what we can see. Vision helps us to do that. People who are more skillful at life understand the power of living by what cannot be seen.
Scripture tells us the just shall live by faith and not by sight, 2 Corinthians 5:2. Perhaps this is telling us we must learn to live by the reality of the things we do not see as much as live by what is seen. The most skillful people do not just react to what is seen, they respond and live for what is not seen.
So, what now? Skillful living is found in living with Purpose and Vision. How do we stop ourselves from living for the manna we gather each day, and learn to enjoy the feast that is there for us because we learned to sow the things that would give us a bountiful harvest later?
Proverbs 29:18 tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” When we do not have a vision of where God is going with us, we will tend to go where we can take ourselves. We will try many things – so many that sometimes we try and fail more than we succeed. Vision helps us to restrain ourselves and to learn to wait on the Lord to provide what we cannot provide.
God has provided us with all that we need be skillful in how we live out who we are. Here are a few things vision can do for us all in helping us learn to live more skillfully.
- Vision will help you see how your life will unfold. When you can see the result of a decision today you may make a better decision.
- Vision helps you see the end before you begin. If you can see how things will end it may change for the better how you choose to begin.
- Vision will help you make unseen connections that are critical to success. You will learn to see what is visible but hard to see.
- Vision helps you live inspired by a journey more than living to take a vacation.
- Vision helps you see what can be possible. You learn to live and to perform with excellence.
- Vision unites the hearts of people. You learn to think together; dream together and to act together.
- Vision gives life to Purpose. We learn to live fulfilling a shared Purpose.
- Vision helps different people see common ways to live and work together. We see beyond what we saw before; we see more than we saw before, and we see what we didn’t see before.
- Vision helps us see where we belong. It inspires how we should live so we live inspired lives.
If you are living without a vision, you are living without a sense of what the future can hold for you. God wants us to believe the unbelievable; He wants us to imagine the unimaginable; and He wants us to believe the unbelievable and unimaginable things He has in store for us.
You cannot live skillfully tomorrow when you have no idea of what tomorrow will be like because you are so focused on making it through the day. Discover a vision for your life and you will learn to skillfully live out that vision in all that you are today.
Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
Live Delivered 