If a vision is worth having, you will have to fight for it. By its very nature, vision sees beyond what currently is, pointing the way from where we are to where we could be. Yet, the steps that lie between here and there can be risky and often painful. The greatest visions will require of us the faith and endurance to defend them.
That’s how it was with patriarchs like Abraham. They endured all sorts of challenges, conflicts, disappointments, and failures while pursuing “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10 ESV). They were seeking more. More than what they had known before. The kind of more that God alone can provide. “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13, 16).
In fact, the only way to achieve God-given visions is through total reliance on Him. The Apostle Paul was a man who – whether in or out of the body, he wasn’t sure – had been caught up into paradise itself, and even he had to learn this (2 Cor. 12:1-4). “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor. 12:7). Pain often accompanies vision. Change is hard, and God is working to change the world through Jesus Christ.
Yet, the struggle is not without meaning, as Paul learned from pleading with the Lord for relief. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). The difficult things we go through in pursuit of Christ’s vision for our lives aren’t simply obstacles to get through: He makes them into opportunities to draw closer to Him and experience His power.
Seeing this, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfect of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:1-2). In Christ, God has given us a vision worth defending. Let’s go after it.
Learn how to know and to go where God is leading you through our series Be Thou My Vision.