The 3 Essentials: All You Need for Success in Life (10 page)

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Authors: Casey Treat

7
Big Vision, Big Dreams
V
ision is a life force. It is a spiritual power that gives us the ability to move forward in life, to rise to the next level, and most important, to receive the fullness of what God has for every one of us. In the King James Bible, Proverbs 29:18 reads, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This is an amazing thought, if you will stop and meditate upon this. God is telling us the vision we have inside of us is the very essence of our lives; it determines the quality
and
the length of our time here on Earth.
The apostle Paul was an incredible man of vision. From the Holy Spirit, he received a vision to preach the gospel to the Gentiles and anyone else God placed in his path. He was fearless in his pursuit and nothing was going to stop him. At one time, the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem gathered forty men to try to kill him, but they were unsuccessful. Paul was the Rambo of his time! Even Satan sent a messenger to harass and to attempt to hinder Paul’s ministry, but through it all he only grew stronger. Another time, a crowd attacked him, stoned him, carried him out of the city, and left him for dead. He arose from his deathlike state and immediately walked back into that city preaching the same gospel! The vision for his life was so powerful; it would not let him die. Nothing can stop a Christian with a God-given vision.
On the other hand, the ultimate expression of a person with no vision (or actually, it is more accurate to say, a person who is blind to their vision) is one who is suicidal. He thinks he has no purpose to live, he has no hope for his future, and he feels completely helpless to change it, so he desires to end his life. Where there is no vision, people perish. Sometimes it’s a quick suicide, but for many others, they live on a slower, more passive-aggressive path to suicide. They feel no real purpose for their lives, so they have horrible eating and exercise habits, or they damage their body with excessive drugs, alcohol, and smoking. If we cannot envision a good life, a prosperous life, a fulfilling life, then we will die on the inside, and sooner or later our health will follow.
In the New King James Version, Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” In other words, when we do not have a revelation of God’s Word and His will for our lives, we live careless lives. We don’t understand the eternal purpose for our lives and so we live selfishly, excessively, and loosely. We have no discipline or direction. Our priorities get all messed up, we feel confused, and we run amok. Let’s not run amok! Let’s learn to release the intense power of vision in our lives. If we will build a good vision, we will have a good life. If we will establish a large and prosperous vision, we will experience a large and prosperous life.
In the last section, we learned about faith and how integral it must be in our lives. But without vision, faith will always be elusive. Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is vision! It’s seeing as reality dreams and hopes that have not yet been manifested in the natural realm. Vision and faith are dependent upon each other in order to produce results. Remember, what we see and what we truly believe is what we will get. And no matter how incredibly God wants to bless us, our vision will determine what we will actually receive.
Faith is vision! It’s seeing as reality dreams and hopes that have not yet been manifested in the natural realm. Vision and faith are dependent upon each other in order to produce results.
Psalm 78:41 says, “Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.” Because the Israelites forgot all God had done for them—how He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, miraculously parted the Red Sea for them to flee to safety, and how He had supernaturally provided for them their food and shelter—they
limited
God. He was unable to bless them and provide the abundance He desired for them because their vision had shrunk down to minuscule proportions. They could have been living in a land flowing with milk and honey, and instead they were wandering around a mountain in a hot and dry desert, with no Starbucks in sight.
Is your vision limiting what God wants to do in your life? When you close your eyes, do you see a prosperous you? An overcoming you? Is your vision such a driving force in your life that, like the apostle Paul, it could even prolong your life?
Pluck It Out
In Matthew 5:29, Jesus makes a striking remark: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.” What in the world was Jesus talking about here?
Luckily for us, Jesus was not speaking literally; otherwise most of us would look like we just stepped off the production set of a pirate movie. He’s not talking about our physical eye, because our physical eye does not directly cause us to sin. He’s referring to the way we see life. If our attitude, our outlook, and the things we see in our future cause us to compromise, to quit, or to sin, we need to change it. In addition, if the things we are focused on, even in the natural sense, cause us to draw back, to think negatively, to shrink our visions, then we need to change those things, too. Jesus is trying to help us to understand the vital importance of our vision, and what we are seeing in both the natural realm and the spiritual realm. Our eyes are controlling our lives.
The enemy, who is the devil, understands this. He knows if he can keep us focused on our failures, our mistakes, on our pasts, and on anything else that is negative, he can hinder our lives. He is fully aware of the principles of God, and knows what people are consistently seeing is exactly what their futures will produce. So he works overtime to fill you with negative images, to bombard you with everything that’s bad, and to keep your mind preoccupied by the mess of the world. We can see a perfect example of this in the book of Job.
In the Old Testament, there is the story of a man named Job. He was a very prosperous businessman, with wealth and a full family, but somehow Satan got a hook into this man’s vision, and very soon, Job tragically lost everything: his business, his wealth, and his family. While he was lying in his poverty, grief, and sickness, he began to question how this could have happened to him. In Job 3:25, he cried out, “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.”
At that moment, he unwittingly stumbled upon the truth of the matter. For a time, maybe many years, Job had been holding on to a strong fear that one day he would lose everything he had. And what he saw in his vision is what he actually made happen. Now before some of you start freaking out about some of the fears you have had, thinking they are all of a sudden going to start manifesting in your life, notice what Job said. He didn’t say he had a little inkling of a fear that popped up every once in a while. He said the thing that he greatly feared and dreaded came upon him. This isn’t a fleeting thought or a scary scenario that he entertained a few times. He
greatly
feared and dreaded it. Dread makes you think and focus your attention upon something over and over. He meditated upon it; he imagined the terrible scenarios repeatedly. They became his vision and what he truly believed would happen in his life—and so it did.
There is a good ending to Job’s story, however. The entire book of Job only spans a portion of Job’s life, and once he repented and completely surrendered his life over to God, within just about nine months, everything started to turn around. He began to fully trust God and build his vision around that trust, and at the end of his life, he recovered everything: family, business, wealth, and relationships. In fact, in the last few verses of the book of Job, it tells us the Lord blessed Job with twice as much as he had before and lists an amazing collection of his wealth.
Too bad Job didn’t “pluck out his eye,” which was causing him to sin, to shrink back, and to compromise. If he had been able to recognize that even in his abundance he was expecting great catastrophe, he could have changed his outlook on life to something more positive. He would have been able to prevent the tremendous loss he experienced, and simply continued to move to a higher level in every area of his life, but his accidental vision had become so normal to him; he didn’t even know he possessed such a negative one until it was too late.
All of us must get sincere about our vision and what we are truly focusing on. We need to get serious about the promises of God and make sure the ingredients of our visions are of those promises and not of the stuff of the world. Just like Job, it is possible to change and to see a future with God all over it and His will being done in our lives. Let’s not wait until we are in a place of despair and destruction. Let’s purposefully focus on our faith (instead of our fears) and learn to meditate on a vision of hope and prosperity.
Day and Night
Joshua is a much better example for us than Job. He is a man who was able to embrace the huge vision God had for the nation of Israel and to lead them into their Promised Land. It did not come without some work, however.
In the first chapter of the book of Joshua, we see God giving Joshua the mandate to lead His people after Moses had died. As we read what God specifically instructed Joshua, we can see he probably had a few fears and some self-doubt about his ability to become Moses’ successor. In just a few verses, God repeats Himself three times commanding Joshua to not be afraid and to be strong and very courageous. Then God gives him the formula on how to accomplish that confidence: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Joshua 1:8).
God needed Joshua to walk in extreme authority and confidence as a leader, and He provided him the way to achieve it. He told Josh to keep the entirety of his focus on the promises and ways of God (after all, it was the people’s refusal to do so forty years ago that caused them to be wandering aimlessly in this desert for so long). Joshua meditated on God’s Word day and night, he spoke it out of his mouth every chance he got, and he envisioned his way to be full of prosperity and good success. How do I know Joshua heeded God’s advice? Because we can see the fruit of it in his life.
In chapter 6, Joshua leads the people to cross the river Jordan, and they come up to the first city they are going to have to fight. It’s Jericho, and it’s a massively fortified city with strong inhabitants. It’s the same city that caused the Israelites to run like grasshoppers four decades before. This city is ready to engage in battle. But God says to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hands, its king and the mighty men of valor” (Joshua 6:2).
Joshua could have said, “Are you crazy? Look at that big city and those big walls! They’re so thick they’re riding chariots around on top of them. We are just a band of desert gypsies—how are
we
going to defeat
them
?” But this kind of response did not even occur to Joshua. His vision would not allow it. He was so drenched in the confidence of od’s Word that he was able to embrace the command immediately. He understood the importance of vision, and that if he simply “saw” the victory, he would be able to achieve it. And he did.
If we will keep our focus set on God and His Word, we will be able to achieve everything we know God has planned for us.
If
we will meditate on His blessings and His ways day in and day out,
then
we will make our way toward prosperity and we will experience success. But we must be consistent. We will not be able to build God’s vision for our lives by thinking about it once a week while we are sitting in church. It’s got to be something we do every single day of our lives, because every single day of our lives the world is coming at us through radio, television, billboards, newspapers, and magazines. We can be like Job and spend our days fearing and dreading negative circumstances and everything we don’t want to happen, or we can be like Joshua and fill our minds each day with the good things of God’s Word.
If we will keep our focus set on God and His Word, we will be able to achieve everything we know God has planned for us.
Every day I speak God’s Word over my life, the very ones I have given you in the Faith Manual. Thousands and thousands of times I have gone to the Word to see my true self, to define my vision, and to encourage myself with faith to overcome my fears. I have built my vision around what the Word of God says, not the lies the enemy would try to make me believe. As a result, I have been able to experience a rich and fulfilled life, and my life is not even half over! You can do it, too.
Any
area of your life you are dissatisfied with, you can build a vision through God’s Word and begin to move your life toward that vision, but first let’s talk about a crucial component that will determine your ability to go for the destiny God has designed for you.
8
Vision Killers
W
endy and I had seen many pictures of the famous Sistine Chapel, but it was not until we were actually walking through this amazing church ourselves that we realized no photograph could ever do it justice. The arches and the domes were so much larger than we had imagined, and we could never have anticipated how it would feel to look at some of the most famous artwork in the world. As I stood gazing up at the ceiling, I could not help but wonder how Michelangelo was able to complete the massive work of painting twelve thousand square feet of ceiling space in a matter of only four years. Talk about having a vision . . .
When an artist like Michelangelo is planning to create a master-piece, I think it would be safe to assume he doesn’t just whip out an 8½ × 11-inch piece of paper and start sketching. When a painter is looking to produce a work he is hoping will become significant, he looks for the perfect canvas. The quality of that material is of utmost importance, and he will wait until he is able to find a complete and whole canvas before he starts to express physically the creative vision he has in his mind. He understands no matter how vivid the vision, without a great canvas, the end result will be flawed.
Just as the result of the artwork depends upon a strong and high-quality canvas, so our vision is related to our heart. The determining factor of how much of our vision actually manifests in our lifetime is a whole and healthy heart. The book of Proverbs expresses it this way: “My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the center of your heart, For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh
. Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it springs the issues of life
” (Proverbs 4:20-23, AMP; emphasis added).
The determining factor of how much of our vision actually manifests in our lifetime is a whole and healthy heart.
The Bible tells us to guard our hearts with all vigilance, and above
all
that we guard, because the heart is actually what births everything in our lives: emotional and physical health, finances, and relationships. In one translation, it says that out of the heart flows the “borders” of life. In other words, the borders of our lives—or the extent to which we see our visions come to pass—are dictated by the condition of our hearts. Our influence, our experiences, our possessions, our impact—are all determined by the quality and the health of our hearts. Just like the painter with the canvas, no matter how big of a vision we can imagine, if our hearts cannot contain it, we will not be able to achieve it.
This is why many Christians are living frustrated. They hear the message of faith, they begin to read and to speak God’s blessings over their lives, they start to envision a life of abundance in every area, and then they cannot seem to make what they see in their minds happen in their lives. They feel like they’re stuck in the mud with all the intention of going forward but without the ability to do so. It’s all because they have overlooked one vital component of walking an extraordinary life with God: the wholeness of their hearts. What is the condition of your heart? What’s going on inside your heart?

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