Working the Vision

“…I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.” Acts 26:19

I’ve heard it said that good ideas are easier to find than sand on a beach. If you talk to a visionary, a leader, or a dreamer, it’s likely that you won’t be able to keep track of all the wonderful plans or thoughts going on inside of them. There is no shortage of people who feel they have heard things from God that, if put into practice, would change the world.

So why isn’t the world getting changed? If ideas are everywhere, so are people who don’t execute those ideas. Paul wasn’t going to be one of those people who wouldn’t follow through; he called it being obedient to the vision from Heaven. He received a picture, and then spent the rest of his life passionately pursuing the completion of that target.

In business and the arts, this follow-through is often what separates those who dream about getting things done and those who actually get things done. In the Kingdom, it is what separates those who are obedient or disobedient to God’s voice.

Do you have a vision—a God-given picture of something that will change your world? Start putting your energy into seeing that happen. Pray, plan, pursue and promote that thing. If God is in it, He will provide the resource to make it happen, but we are still called to work. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3 that God makes a seed grow, but we are responsible to plant and water and cultivate to create conditions for healthy growth to happen.

And what if you think you have a vision from God, but you find out later that you somehow “missed” it—you were wrong? I’ve always said that I would rather give my whole life to following the voice of Jesus even if I find out later that I got something wrong, than to think I’m hearing Jesus and not respond to what I understand as His voice, even if later I discover it wasn’t Him. In other words, I believe God will honor attempted but misdirected obedience, but He will not honor those who think they are hearing but who don’t respond to those impressions.

The Holy Spirit changed the world through Paul because he was available to follow God at every turn, and was totally sold out to everything he understood he was hearing from the Lord. I don’t think it’s rocket-science: We obey what God says (the vision) the best we possibly can…and then God makes it grow!