The Necessity of a Real Vision

The Necessity of a Real Vision
Proverbs 29:18
About 350 years ago a shipload of travelers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a town site. The next year they elected a town government. The third year the town government planned to build a road five miles westward into the wilderness.
In the fourth year the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway?
Here were people who had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to see even five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision. With a clear vision of what we can become in Christ, no ocean of difficulty is too great. Without it, we rarely move beyond our current boundaries.
Lynn Anderson.

Many preachers surrender to preach with a vision for lost souls and leading God’s people in service to Him. In the midst of a committee meeting far, far away, that flame, that fire of vision for the Lord’s work begins to die out. Friends, if we fail as the leadership of the Lord’s churches to have a vision, not our own mind you, but God’s vision for us, we will be like the people in this illustration. We will lose our pioneering spirit. We will become grumblers. We will become ineffective.

I. VISION IS: THE ABILITY TO SEE: AWARENESS.
A) Webster: 1. The faculty of sight, 2. Unusual foresight, 3. A mental image produced by the imagination, 4. The experience of the supernatural as if with the eyes.

B) To see like Joshua and Caleb did Num 14:6-9
1) Optimist or Pessimist? I read about a schoolboy who brought home his report card. It was heavy with poor grades. "What have you to say about this?" asked his father. "One thing for sure," the boy replied, "Dad, you can be proud. You know I haven’t been cheating!"
2) Having a vision is more than just looking on the bright side. It is looking on God’s side. Finding the vision God has for us takes time and prayer. Excited about Interstate Missions program….time of training is time of prayer seeking God’s location.
3) What if the vision God gives is not the vision we would have chosen?
Bro. Joel Slayton said "Bloom where you are planted."

II. VISION IS: THE FAITH TO BELIEVE: ATTITUDE
A) Steve Goodier says " Both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do.

B) Satan’s greatest attack on the vision that God gives each of us is our attitude.
1) An attitude that says "No body else cares so why should I."
2) An attitude that says "No body appreciates anything I do so let’s see what they do when I don’t."

C) I started to find several illustrations of faith in the Bible to share with you. But instead I want you to picture the person or event in Scripture that