Introduction
This is not a book of answers; this is a book of questions. This book is an invitation to embark on a journey with God. The God who has called us out of darkness into light desires for us to understand, who He is calling us to be.
I love questions. I love questions because Jesus loves questions. Answers are easy; questions are difficult. When God asks us questions, He is not looking for an answer. He already knows all the answers. Questions are invitations. God is inviting us into a deeper relationship and fellowship with him. Questions are the place we meet God. Questions are the place we meet ourselves.
- Who are you?
- Who is God call you to be?
- How do others perceive you?
- How do you perceive yourself?
- How does God perceive you?
This book is designed to help you clarify and define the two most important questions in your life: What you think about God, and what God thinks about you. It is only when we clearly see the answer to these questions that we are ready to move forward in our walk with God. God is a disruptor. He loves to intervene in the lives of His children and change those lives that are off course. My prayer is that this book will disrupt the course of your life in glorious ways. This book is an invitation to embark on a journey of discovery. This journey will help you both discover and define God’s plan for your life and walk with Him.
God has an intricate and glorious plan for every part of His creation. You are the greatest part of that creation. You were designed and intended to live and flourish in a relationship with the most amazing person in the universe. There is no aspect of your life that should be excluded from the influence of God’s plan. God is a planner. God is a visionary. God has never done anything by accident, and has never been surprised by anything. He does not live in reaction or response to anything other than His glorious plan. Everything in heaven and earth is working together for the good of those who submit to and connect with God’s plans and purposes for their lives (Romans 8:28). There is no greater calling for our lives than to discover, define, and enter into God’s plans. I believe that there is, in heaven, a blueprint of God’s perfect vision and plan for your life. The goal of this book is to unveil that vision and bring it to you.
============
I believe there is a knowledge planted deep in the hearts of every person: that we are on this earth for a purpose. There is, in each of us, a deep longing for significance. In every child born upon the Earth, there is an innate desire to hope and dream. Nobody has ever had to teach a child how to dream. It would appear that God has planted the ability and capacity to dream deep in the heart of every person. The sad reality is that we often teach and train our children not to dream. We mentor them to be realistic, to only engage with the practical realities of life. God is a dreamer, a planner, and a visionary. I believe that through the pages of this book, God is inviting you to reconnect with that inner child, and to dream again.
This world is filled with blind men walking. The Bible says where there is no vision the people perish (or cast off restraint) Prov. 29:18 The world is full of sighted people with no vision. It is filled with emotional vagrants who wander aimlessly without plan or purpose. Someone once asked the famous blind innovator, Helen Keller, if there was anything worse than being blind. Keller immediately replied, ‘Yes, to have sight and yet to live without vision.’ As an experiment, find a safe and secure environment, perhaps with a friend to assist you. Close your eyes and imagine being blind for the next 10 minutes. Move around an area, even if it is one you are familiar with, without relying on your eyesight. When we experience blindness, our ability to function in the world becomes limited. We become vulnerable to natural hazards and potential attacks. In a state of blindness, we are unaware of the opportunities life presents as we navigate through it. Perhaps most tragically, if we are blind, we miss out on experiencing the beauty and magnificence of life around us. If this holds true for physical blindness, consider how much more profound it could be for those who are spiritually blind to the vision that God has for them.
Nature abhors a vacuum. When we live without a personal vision, we simply default to the vision and values of the world around us. It is vital that we discover the personal plan that God has for our lives and not simply live out a secondhand version of somebody else’s vision for us. A person without a vision is a ship without a rudder. A person without a vision is a person without an identity. Our identity is defined and determined by our vision. Without a vision, we cannot see God. Without a vision, we cannot truly see ourselves, or indeed others. The person without a vision will never become the man or woman that God has truly destined them to be. God has designed each and every person to fulfill a specific role in His glorious design for the universe. It is only when we allow the Holy Spirit to unveil the vision He has for us that we can fully enter into that plan and rejoice in it.
============
Vision releases passion, purpose, and motivation. We have all experienced seasons in our lives when we are overflowing with these things. There are days when we rise with a sense of expectation and anticipation for the present and the future. And yet, there are all too many moments when we feel listless, rudderless, and without direction. In the depths of most people, there is a gnawing sense that they are not living the life that God has intended for them. This void can eat away at them on the inside as they watch the clock of their lives tick by.
This book contains the answers to those challenges. While it will not solve every problem in your life, if you engage with the truths presented here, this book will help you to establish a personal vision and roadmap for your life with God. God desires to move you from living by accident to living on purpose, to move you from the assumed to the defined. There is no greater purpose than fulfilling the destiny and call that God has for your life.
The aim of this book is to serve as a practical tool and guide, aiding you in discovering and defining a personal vision for your life. This book serves to give you a framework around which you can take a season to meet God and ‘enquire of the Lord’ about His plans and purposes for you. This book will challenge you to reflect and seek God’s heart about the main pillars of your spiritual life and then turn those thoughts into a written vision. We are all guilty, to a greater or lesser degree, of avoidance. It is inherent in our nature to avoid lifting up the foundation stones of our lives and seeing what is truly underneath. God calls us to be circumstantially insecure, and yet relationally secure. At times, we mask that avoidance with busyness or focusing on other areas of our lives. As you journey through this book, allow the Holy Spirit to challenge you to lean not on your own understanding and invite Him and His thoughts into specific areas of your life. We cannot change our past. This book is an invitation to lay the past to rest and to live in the space between the now and the future that God calls you into. To do this, we want to allow God to define and clarify that future in a vision that is clearly accessible to us
In this book, we will explore ten foundational areas of our walk with God. Our goal is to have a written vision for each of these
- The New Creation
- Word of God
- Faith
- Understanding Our Soul
- The Life of Worship
- The Holy Spirit
- Kingdom Finances
- Kingdom Relationships
- Hearing God’s Voice & Guidance
- The Disciplines of the Kingdom
Throughout the Bible, God would invite people to leave the past behind and walk with Him into a future that He would define for them, only as they continued that journey with Him
12
(Hebrews 11:8)
When God called Abraham, His invitation was the following:
I will show you I will make you I will bless you
Genesis 12:12
At junctures in our lives, there are moments when God desires to encounter us and shift our perspective. In many instances in the Bible, God would take someone aside, often to an elevated place, and show them the territory He had called them to possess. There is a shift in our thinking when we behold the landscape of our future. When we see our future, we also see our identity. God was speaking to them about the person they would become and the relationship He would build with them on this journey. This book extends an invitation to ascend to a spiritual summit with God. It beckons you to open yourself to God’s perspective, igniting your heart with a vision for the comprehensive plans and purposes He has for your life. It invites God to reveal the person He desires to mold, change, and transform you into, enabling you to inherit the promised land He has designated for you.
This book is an invitation to meet God and allow Him to define your life for the now and for the future. It is an opportunity to lay to rest the ghosts of your past and become part of that new generation that will possess the promised land. We will be inquiring of the Lord and asking Him to give a clear, precise, and written vision for each of the most important areas of your life. Certain books in our lives become companions on our life’s journey. There are books which seem to demand periodic revisits. Have you ever revisited a book from a previous phase of your life? You may find that the book appears entirely different when read through the lens of your current experiences. Though the book remains unchanged, you have changed and grown.
Come on a journey and allow God to change you.