When God gives us visions of what He wants us to do, we’ll often have to go against the flow of the world to achieve them. Society is often resistant to change, not because people can’t see the benefit, but because the status quo is familiar, and it takes more energy to change than to stay the same. They want what was, not what can be. They look for safety and simple answers. So, we need to give ourselves permission to go a different way, to break new ground. Paul said, ‘I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.’ It was his consuming passion and the central focus of his life. He got up every morning thinking about it and went to bed every night thinking about it. And at the end of his life, he could say, ‘I have finished the race…Finally, there is laid up for me the crown’ (2 Timothy 4:7-8 NKJV). No one achieves greatness by being unfocused and general about their vision. Whatever our vision, whether it’s to build a great church, or a great business, or a great ‘anything’, we’ll need focus to get there. Author Harry A. Overstreet observed: ‘The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.’ Not every area of life needs deliberately focused thinking time. We can be selective, asking ourselves questions like these: What has God called me to do? What’s my role in it? What skill sets do I need to sharpen? What knowledge do I need to get or grow? What relationships and connections do I need to build? The first question Paul asked when God gave him his vision was, ‘What do You want me to do?’ (Acts 9:6 NKJV). And today that’s the question we need to ask God, too.
