Vision

Try to imagine what life on the ark must have been like for Noah. He probably didn’t get much sleep. He was feeding, cleaning and caring for thousands of animals around the clock. And it must have smelled to high heaven. Did you know that African elephants produce 40 kg of waste per day? It was smelly and messy. And that’s a pretty accurate picture of what obedience sometimes looks like. It’s hard work, and it gets harder. The blessings of God can complicate your life. But unlike sin, they bring a level of joy and fulfilment you have never known (see Proverbs 10:22). No matter what vision God has given you, it will take longer and be harder than you ever imagined. Noah offers a little reality check, doesn’t he? If a decade sounds like a long time to patiently pursue a God-ordained passion, try more than ten!

It’s amazing what God can do if you just keep hammering away year after year! (…) Be a planner and a plodder. Planners see into the future and cast a vision; plodders put one foot in front of the other and keep going one day at a time. Success is not just about getting where God wants you to go, it’s about who you become in the process.

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 16/12/2017 adapted from Mark Batterson, All In

“It’s all in the mind,” says Arnold Schwarzenegger. A multimillionaire, successful real estate tycoon, movie star [turned film producer], body-builder – five times winner of the Mr. Universe title, [and latterly Governor of California]. Arnold has it made. But it wasn’t always so. Arnold can remember back when he had nothing except a belief that his mind was the key to getting where he wanted to go.

“When I was young, I visualised myself being and having what it was I wanted. Mentally I never had any doubts about it. The mind is really so incredible. Before I won my first Mr. Universe, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. The title was already mine. I had won it so many times in my mind that there was no doubt I would win it. Then when I moved on to the movies, the same thing. I visualise myself being a successful actor and earning big money. I could feel and taste success. I just knew it would all happen.”

Source: John Kehoe, Mind Power, 1997, Vancouver, Canada: Zoetic Books, p.13-14

Visualisation: there is always a time delay from setting out to arriving: When you look up into the sky and see the stars, what you are actually seeing is the past because some of those stars may no longer exist. This is possible because stars are hundreds and thousands of light years away, meaning that it takes their light, travelling at 186,000 miles per second, hundreds of thousands of years to reach earth. Thus the light we see from a star a hundred light years away is actually light it emitted a hundred years ago. That particular star could have exploded and disintegrated twenty-five years ago, but we still see its light, and will continue to see its light for another seventy-five years, even though the star itself has longed ceased to exist. Similarly with our visualising: The point is, there is always a time delay from our setting out to arriving.

John Kehoe

Source: John Kehoe, Mind Power, 1997, Vancouver, Canada: Zoetic Books, p.65

There is a story told about a local church that was built around 1000 A.D. When the church was around 200 years old it became necessary to replace the roof and so the original plans were brought out of the archives to be studied. To the amazement of the parishioners, on the original drawings there were details and a map showing the location of a dense wood that had been planted at the same time as the original construction of the church. The wood was discovered in exactly the place where the plans had stated, and the 200-year old trees, were not only the same kind of wood as the original building and roof supports, but now the timber was also mature enough to do the job. What foresight or vision those original builders had, coupled with a desire to make a lasting difference.

Source: adapted from Paul J. Meyer, Unlocking Your Legacy, 2002, Chicago Illinois, Moody Press, p.19

Does God still speak to us through dreams and visions? (Visions are sometimes referred to today as ‘pictures’.) In a word: Yes/Sometimes. Do you ever dream; ever had a nightmare – a bad dream? Are all dreams from God? No. What then causes us to have dreams? It could be too much cheese before you went bed; or it could be that you are overly tired, anxious or worried and your imagination is playing overtime in your sleep. Ecclesiastes 5v3 tells us: “A dream comes when there are many cares.” A bad dream could be an attack from the enemy to create fear, or it could be because you have watched something ‘unhelpful’ on the TV before retiring – and you opened yourself up to wrong images and bad thoughts playing on your mind! OR… a dream could be from God; a way of God communicating with you, maybe to warn you. How can we tell which is which?

Joseph, the gifted-interpreter of dreams, was at pains to point out that “interpretations belong to God” (Genesis 40:8). Joseph’s comment completely wipes out explanations coming from mediums, spiritualists or dream-interpretation books, as well as astrology, horoscopes, clairvoyants and the like, as a means of gaining spiritual insight or divine guidance. Church, stay away from such things! They’re not harmless; they are deceitful and dangerous, and leave people wide open to all sorts of dark and evil things. It’s worth noting that in Scripture, whenever anyone experienced a dream from God, God always made the meaning of the dream clear, whether directly to the person, through an angel, or a prophetic word. When God wants to speaks to us, He makes sure His message is clearly understood.