The Power of Vision

It was summer and I was sitting with Barbara under a hot tent in Frederick , Maryland, the home of AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). The session that had us sweltering under the tent was on mid-air collisions...something every pilot gives more than a little thought to.

The presenter was a physician. He was talking about why we as pilots have so much trouble SEEING our fellow pilots and their birds.

He threw out a term that caught my full attention…empty field myopia: when there is nothing on which to focus the human eye tends to focus about 20 yards directly ahead.

You can imagine how that would affect a pilot approaching an airport. If he or she doesn’t work to identify traffic in the pattern, it’s not hard to fly right into them and not see them until its too late.

I immediately thought of the local church and the value of vision. Show me a church with no vision and I’ll show you one in a slow predictable descent toward death. The same is true of us as people. Without a clear vision for our lives, we’ll just drift ever slowly into nothingness. And just like the optical condition, without a clear, identifiable, ownable vision, churches (AND people) tend to focus on things at hand…survival and personal comfort.

No wonder Proverbs 29:18 speaks to this. “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint but blessed is he who keeps the law.” The King James used the word vision for revelation, but you get the point.

Without vision, we tend to pursue our own interests rather than the interests of God. The result is that the church loses the power of unity and single focus. We just do whatever WE choose. And we don’t necessarily serve the interests of the Kingdom.

Its true of church, its true of our own lives…if we haven’t thought of what God’s vision is for OUR lives, once again, we’ll settle for whatever WE come up with.

How do we discover God’s vision for us? Micah 6:8 “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” His vision for us begins in our character…to act justly, to love mercy, and to approach our relationship with God in humility.

Beyond that, identify your passions. What is it in life you get so jazzed by that you’d practically work for free if you could just do THAT? That’s a clue. Something within your wiring placed there by God. Something that points to His vision for you.

If you’ve never given personal vision much thought…let me encourage you to engage two great books…Wide Awake by Erwin McManus, and Life On Loan by Rick Rusaw. Both will keep you awake at night dreaming of what life could be.

This I know…life is too precious and too short to fail to live it to the fullest.

So get out there…discover God’s vision for YOUR life.