The End of a God-inspired Vision is God...

"God's vision for you and me is maturity. Spiritual maturity is measured by how readily we respond to the person of God rather than the promises of God. It involves coming to the place where who is asking is more important than what we are being asked to do. Your vision is an avenue God will more than likely use to bring you to that place...The end of a God-inspired vision is God."

It has now been nearly two months since I began to build my team of financial and prayerful ministry partners in order to go and serve God for a term of 11 months in Panama in August. And it has not been nearly as simple of a task as I think I was originally envisioning it to be. In fact, truth be told, it has been very trying for me. I think I thought that my lifetime involvement with my home Church in Peterborough, my Christian family, and my involvement with Campus for Christ over the last four years would combine to make the fundraising fairly painless. At the same time though, in the back of my mind I knew that it was for that very reason that God wouldn't allow it to be quite that simple. And it hasn't been. I have struggled with making phone calls to potential supporters, balancing another part-time job, realizing my priorities were in the wrong order way too late and having to make significant changes, not being allowed to actually meet in person with many potential supporters, being rejected by potential supporters, and in at least one case, actually feeling insulted and appalled by potential supporters.

That's not to say that there haven't been any encouragements at all. In fact, most of the people who have allowed me to get together with them in person have been hugely encouraging, even if they were not able to give as much as they would have liked to! And there has been a great deal of growth in my financial support over the last couple of weeks, especially! But still, being more than halfway to the ideal date for reaching 100% (Aug. 1st) and having reached 21.8% of the total financial goal so far, there's a long way to go, and not as many people left in my current network to contact as I would like.

However, I was recently brought back down to earth, or maybe more appropriately lifted above it, by a book I've been reading called Visioneering by Andy Stanley (highly recommend!). He discusses toward the end of the book the reality that the end of every God-inspired vision is God Himself! In essence, God desires to call attention to the fact that all of the impossible tasks we face in our lives can only be accomplished with His help! That's why He so rarely allows things to happen easily and quickly. He uses the impossibility of our visions and our circumstances to show us that it's all about Him, and to bring us to a place of authentic worship and complete surrender!

"If you are pursuing a vision God has birthed in your heart, there will be moments along the way when you will find yourself standing in awe of what He has done on your behalf. In those moments your attention will be drawn away from the work of your hands to the faithfulness of your Heavenly Father."

What this means is that we shouldn't be motivated by whether we think the task before us is assailable or even by the promise of God's faithfulness, but by who God is Himself. After all, God's character is the reason we can trust in His promises in the first place.

I cannot even count the number of times and the variety of incredible ways that God has shown up in my life in indescribable and awesome displays of His power and presence! From Divine appointments with non-believers to erasing certain thunderstorms so the Jesus film can be shown outdoors in a Panamanian village to striking down thousands of small flies amidst a spiritual attack to providing a way to share the Gospel with my entire journalism graduating class. Unfortunately, we tend to forget about these things all too quickly, which just goes to show how important writing them down in a journal can be (as Stanley urges us to do)! The point is that in every single one of those situations, the odds of arriving at these outcomes seemed impossible, or actually were, and yet God came through on every single one. Why? Because they were visions from Himself--they were of His will and for His glory. God has called me to Panama. Why shouldn't I believe He'll come through on this one? God has called you. Why shouldn't you believe He'll come through with yours?

God bless you all!

-Wes

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