To be honest, I’m not “the vision guy.”  I’m not the guy with a 10 year vision for every area of life… and, to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to be!  I find it exciting to follow the leading of God and walk through the doors He opens.  But I also know that, without vision, I will often walk through the wrong doors and end up 6 months+ down the wrong path!  

Vision gives Direction, Motivation, Passion, and Purpose, and if we are ever going to live a life that says, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” then we’re going to need to have a vision for life.

God has been impressing on me lately to become a person more led by vision than my own feelings for the day.  And I believe that, if we would truly become people with a vision for life, then our generation (who is largely without a vision for life) would stand up and follow.

We talked briefly about this last week (head over to www.fusionatl.org/downloads to listen to the “Follow Me – Vision” message), but I want to expound on it a little bit more here.

In becoming a person of vision, you first off have to know what vision is!  There’s a lot of confusion in terminology floating around.  Your purpose & your vision & your goals are different things.  This might help…

Your PURPOSE is the sun and your VISION is the planet(s).

Your PURPOSE is the reason you exist.

This should go without saying, but without a purpose, you can’t have a vision to help you fulfill that purpose.  So, no purpose = no vision.  If you are a Christian, whether you know it or not, your PURPOSE is to bring glory to God.  So, the next question is, “How do I do that?”  Well, that’s where your VISION comes in.

Your VISION is what you do with your life.  Vision is the strategy behind the fulfillment of your purpose.  Your vision(s) circle around your purpose like the planets around the sun.

Andy Stanley said, “Vision is a clear mental picture of what could be, fueled by the conviction that it should be.”  If you’re looking for a vision, you often don’t have to look far beyond what your “burden” is.  What gets you upset in life?  What makes you slam your fist on the table?  What is a source of discontentment in your heart?

Granted, there are going to be differing areas of life that there is discontentment in, but that’s probably b/c you should have vision for different areas of your life: Life in general, relationships, finances, work, etc.

What’s something that could be that absolutely SHOULD BE!?!  Your answer will be different than mine… and that is a good thing.  We are created by God with different passions.  What’s yours?

Next, you accomplish your VISION by creating short-term GOALS to keep you on course.

Your VISION is the planet and your GOALS are the moons.

The famous painter Van Gogh once said, “I dream my painting and then I paint my dream.”  His vision was the completion of paintings, each uniquely different from the other.  How he accomplished his vision was a series of short-term goals, i.e.- brush strokes.

Like Van Gogh, when you close your eyes, what do you see that could and should be in the world?  Okay, open your eyes.  It’s now time to set up some Goals to accomplish that Vision.  What are your brush strokes to accomplish your Vision?

Maybe a few examples might help:

Perhaps one of my burdens is that people are struggling financially.  And, if my purpose is to be a shining light of Jesus, one of my vision’s might be to be a radically generous person.  And, in order to accomplish that vision, one of my goals might be to give away $1,000 this next year to someone to bless them.  Now, my next step is to come up with a strategy to accomplish that goal (but that’s the subject of another blog!).

The burden was that 42, 314,296 20-something’s in America are without Jesus.  And, since our purpose is to bring glory to God, our vision was to create a place to engage that generation with the Gospel of Jesus.  We believed that a relevant ministry to 20-something’s COULD and SHOULD exist.  So we set up a series of goals to accomplish that vision, the first being a small group of 20-something’s in ‘98.  And now here sits Fusion, engaging 20-something’s with the good news of Jesus!

But do we just sit back now?  No!

The accomplishment of your vision can be the launching pad of your next vision.

We still have the same purpose and the same burden, but since we have accomplished one vision, we move further down the path God has for us.  Thanks for being a part of the next step of the vision.

I DO my goals to ACCOMPLISH my vision to BE my purpose.

Be a person of vision.  Pick up your brush and start painting.