VISIONARY PLANS

"Where there is no vision, the people perish…" (Proverbs 29:18 KJV)

Vision. It is essential for survival. It is spawned by hope, sparked by imagination and strengthened by enthusiasm. It is greater than sight, deeper than a dream, broader than an idea. Vision encompasses vast vistas outside the realm of the predictable, the safe, the expected. No wonder we perish without it!

Ask God to stretch your vision today… to encourage you with visionary plans as you walk in His presence. 

-- Charles Swindoll in “A Quest for Character”

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‘WHAT-IF?’ PEOPLE

Cheryl Forbes once said people who live imaginative lives are ‘what-if?’ people. They respond to ideas and events with a ‘what-if?’ attitude. They behave in ‘what-if?’ ways. ‘What-if?’ is a big idea, as big as God, for it is the practice of God. Our God thinks, “What if I make the universe? What if I make people in my own image? What if, when they sin, I don’t give up on them?”

Jesus comes to people and invites us to be ‘what-if?’ people. He said to His early followers, “I want you to imagine a kingdom -- the real magic kingdom. Imagine a kingdom where the last are first, the least are greatest, the servants are heroes, the weak are strong, and the marginalized are loved and cherished. Imagine a world where outsiders become insiders, where people who lose their lives end up finding them, where people who die to themselves and their guilt and their sin and their selfishness end up being brought to life. Imagine that your little broken story can become part of a larger story that ends well.”

Then in the most unimaginable moment in human history, Jesus said to Himself, “What if I die on a cross and take on Myself all that sin and all that suffering and all that pain and all that guilt and all that death that now crushes the human race?” And He did it. They put His body in a tomb, and three days later God said to Jesus, “Now what if You get up?” He got up, and death has never been the same. Life has never been the same.

-- John Ortberg in “All the Places You Go”


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PRAYER AND IMAGINATION

As we age, either imagination overtakes memory or memory overtakes imagination.  Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.  Prayer and imagination are directly proportional: the more you pray the bigger your imagination becomes because the Holy Spirit supersizes it with God-sized dreams.  One litmus test of spiritual maturity is whether your dreams are getting bigger or smaller.  The older you get, the more faith you should have because you've experienced more of God's faithfulness.  And it is God's faithfulness that increases our faith and enlarges our dreams.

There is certainly nothing wrong with an occasional stroll down memory lane, but God wants you to keep dreaming until the day you die.  You're never too old to go after the dreams God has put in your heart.  And for the record, you're never too young either.  Age is never a valid excuse …

If you keep praying, you'll keep dreaming, and conversely, if you keep dreaming, you'll keep praying.  Dreaming is a form of praying, and praying is a form of dreaming.  The more you pray the bigger your dreams will become.  And the bigger your dreams become the more you will have to pray.  In that process of drawing ever-enlarging prayer circles, the sphere of God's glory is expanded.

-- Mark Batterson in The Circle Maker

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