The Problem with Vision-Casting

Today is my 10th anniversary of joining the staff at BCC. Actually, I was the only staff at BCC at that point. And I’m not sure exactly what the lord is saying by ordaining that this anniversary would always land on April fool’s day, but…

In order to reflect, I took time one evening this week to pour over 20 years of journaling. Amongst declarations of spiritual progress and prayers of thanks, were brutal reminders of the challenges and heartaches that God has brought me through.

I would never, in a million years, have looked forward and tried to motivate myself toward spiritual progress with such a turbulent tale of trial and test and yet this is how God’s goal of holiness is brought about. The problem with human vision-casting is that we imagine what we would like and forget how God works.

We imagine successful ministries and a full house of happy maturing church-goers, a picture that will fulfill us and satisfy us and make us content with ourselves, when from one angle, what we get is broken lives relying on stretched-thin resources in a world designed to fail in order to point us to the age when failure will be no more.

When we vision-cast, we can be like the Peter who said “This will never happen to you!” or the false prophets who only ever prophesied good, despite the punishment that was coming (See Jeremiah and Ezekiel) telling the people what they want to hear rather than maintaining God’s vision of holiness and warning of the discipline, (both corrective and strengthening) that will be required to accomplish his goals.

No one wants to hear that. We want to hear romantic notions of how everything is going to work out just fine. We would rather put our trust in these, than trust God who works out all our planned pain for his purpose, conforming us to the image of his son who also suffered. We paint marvelous expectations for ourselves and then can’t figure out why we are disappointed when our visions don’t come true. (Or when they do come true, but fail to deliver satisfaction as we imagined.)

I rejoice in the overflowing cup of blessing that God has granted in these last 20 years, the last 10 especially, but recognize that these blessings have sometimes been delivered by less than desirable means.

God use our pain and failure as well as our success and fulfilled dreams to make us holy. Accomplish in us what you envision and use our disappointments and our success to bring us to that end.

Proverbs 16:9 We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.