Reaching the Vision

Isn’t it great when God speaks to us? Isn’t it fantastic when the God who made the Universe makes a promise to us? We get inspired, we cry tears of joy, we’re moved, we’re so grateful to God. We go home, we go to bed, we wake up and God’s message to us warms our hearts. Maybe that inspiration lasts a few days, maybe a week, maybe even two weeks, but slowly the inspiration wears away and disappears. All we’re let with is a distant memory.

The inspiration and the promises of God are wonderful, but many times we find that it fades away before we see those promises fulfilled. Sometimes the pressures and challenges of everyday life take over, and we lose faith and lose hope and find that we are far from the promises of God for our lives.

If that’s where we are now, we need to take some steps to implement change in our lives. Making changes isn’t easy, because some of our habits and thinking have been built-up over years. As well, we may find that we need some resolve to deal with friends or relatives that may want to keep us where we are now.

Four Areas to Consider

Dee Hock suggests four areas to think about to help with decision times like this:

How Things Were

What was the situation when God first spoke to you? How did it feel? What did you think? What really inspired you? Did you step out in obedience and experience God’s blessing on your life? Did you start to taste some of his promise?

How Things Are

Once we’ve reminded ourselves of how things were, we need to take a serious look at how things are: the current reality. We mustn’t avoid it or ignore how things are at present. We need to be honest about where we are today.

How Things Might Be If Nothing Changes

What happens if we don’t make any changes? What happens if we just carry on with our lives as it is at the moment? We need to remind ourselves of the consequences of doing nothing. There will be some short-term consequences, some long-term consequences and eternal consequences. We need to remind ourselves of this, because this is the price we’re going to pay if we walk from God’s word to us.

How Things Ought To Be

This is the really exciting part! Imagine if we got our lives back on track. Imagine that we started to experience the promises of God. Imagine that the glow of God’s presence was shining on our lives. Is that how things ought to be? Is that what God wants us to experience.

Turn Vision to Action

Once we’ve worked through those questions for our lives, it’s time to make some decisions. The longest journey begins with the first step. So what step are we prepared to take? What one thing could we do, regularly and consistently, to move us closer to God’s promises? Once we’ve identified it, we need to turn our vision into action.