Foundations of Leadership VIII, Vision, How to Get It And How to Keep It

Praise the lord. All right. I hope by that you didn't mean now that the spirit of the Lord is leaving, we can go on. You didn't mean that. Oh, okay. Praise the Lord. First of all, how many of you were able to be here for seven or eight weeks? God bless you. Isn't that great? Let's give yourselves a hand. This is for you. Now, I don't think that that means that we're any better than anybody else. It just means that we were able to understand that we launched into a commitment. And I think God honors commitment, don't you? I really believe that the disciples in the book of Acts were found praying in the temple at the hour of prayer, which says to me that they knew the value of a disciplined life and beloved the church, and this church is one of them, is just so easily pulled away from that. If it feels like it's right, then I'll go after it kind of mentality, even when it comes to the Christian disciplines. And nobody ever really gets very far in Jesus who succumbs to that kind of mindset. I think most of us know that. But boy, doing it is another thing, isn't it? With all of our responsibilities and so on, I just want to affirm tonight who you are in God's plans. I think as I've been thinking about it and sharing with Fred and Blaine and the elders, just into my heart, this group of people represents the future ministry of North Way like no other does. And as we go through tonight, a little bit, you'll see the significance of your participation in the vision that God's unfolding before us. Now, just by way of review, this is the eighth week so far, in case you weren't here all the time or gee, you wonder what we did all the way back. We began week number one with the focus of ministry study. And we. We talked about the fact that the ministry of Jesus Christ was a ministry to what people and specifically to individuals. Remember that? We talked about the fact that God just didn't go out or Jesus didn't go out to the crowds and make this mass appeal only, but he went right to people and he dealt with many, many individuals. And we talked about your ability to move people in that focus of ministry sheet. Remember that? From needing care to all the way to being willing and able to care for somebody else. I wonder if you've seen any growth in that in your own ministry in the last eight weeks. Roman numeral two, developing discernment. Remember how we talked about the need, how we can Waste our time, God. Waste our time if we get caught up in some activity that just wasn't the will of God. And we talked about the need how to discern what God's really in, how to discern situations in people and to not go after the symptom but after the root. You remember that so important to do that. Number three, we talked about how to be a caring leader. We symbolized or said that care was the symbol over every other symbol of how a leader should respond to the needs of his people. And you know, let me just say before we go on that, off of that one, the tendency is so much to get either activity oriented or even responsibility oriented. I'm talking now to people who have specific responsibilities and not really care. You know what I'm talking about it. If you fulfill your function, you figure you've done what you needed to do, but you haven't really cared. There's such a difference. And people will come and go from North Way every week who need care but won't find it. The body at large needs to know that. But you as leadership need to know that more than anyone. There's no substitute for that. People will flock to you and to a church that cares for them. They'll flock to it because the world doesn't. Okay, Fourth was talking about the Holy Spirit and his anointing. And remember that was the week that we started and never got to the notes and we ministered to people and there was just a real upside downsy kind of time. And yeah, I think the Holy Spirit broke right through. And I know some people received filling of the Spirit that night and some were released from some other very binding attitudes. The fifth week was on personal discipling. The difference between helping someone to grow in Jesus and just simply giving them all the goodies. It's a big difference, isn't it? All right, go ahead, Gene, please. We talked about faith, the key to pleasing God. And how many of you have for the last two weeks been able to remain somewhat true toward praying through your faith goals? Anybody put them up again, put them way up there. Somewhat true. Alright, that's a good percentage. I'll tell you what, if you can get through the first month of anything in a discipline, you're going to have it. First month is the hardest, right? Kind of like fasting. The seventh one is ministry of the Word. And we spent quite a bit of time in our circles talking about things that had to do with ministry in the Word and the Lord who remembers what the Holy Spirit decided was the most important thing last week. If you want to be effective in sharing the word of God with another. Teaching the word of God, doing a lesson in a home, group, whatever. What's the key principle, Doug? Remember? Who remembers? Not exactly. You have to become one with that word. Okay? That's the thing that the spirit of God seemed to really put his finger on and say. You can go through all the mechanics, but if that word doesn't come alive in you, you'll never be all that God would have you to be in terms of communication. We're going to talk now about vision. And I have to say to you, this is going to be an unusual night. Because. I don't know of any subject that's occupied my own personal thinking more in the last six or nine months than this one. And yet I'm not really sure what the Lord wants to say completely tonight. I have an outline here which may give you some idea. But I'm not sure about that either. Okay, Dan, One of these. Okay. While we're passing out the papers. Who wants to share one victory? You've seen the Lord work in the last week. I know there's a lot of testimonies seething under the surface. Who's seen a victory in the last week that they'd just like to share while we're getting the papers passed on? Okay, Al. Any area wide open I've just seen in my life. The Lord's really free me from perfectionistic. Or legalistic thinking about what I am. It's kind of the difference between being driven and being called. Some people are driven. And they'll never really attain what they're out after. But if you're called to the Lord, you simply walk in obedience. I appreciate that Al is in seminary and has almost a full time job on the side. I guess just a blessing to have him growing here with us at North Way. Fitting in where the Lord's placing him. Let's pray a minute, Father. In just a few minutes that we have this evening, how we pray for your heart to be open to us. And I pray, Lord God, for an unveiling of our own hearts. First of all, Lord, unless we be deceived, Father. And then, Lord, an unveiling of your plan and purpose. Lest, Lord, somehow we would be caught into a trap of activity with no anointing. Thank you, Lord, for each one. And I just pray for the same spirit which raised Christ Jesus from the dead. To quicken our mortal bodies. Now the fleshly bodies, the weakened bodies from a day's work and give us life, Father, in Jesus name. When churches fail by fail failing, we're talking about a stagnation that produces critical introspection and eventual disintegration of its ability to fulfill the mission. What's the mission of the church? What's the mission of the church? I'd say it's probably the Great Commission, all right? To make disciples of all nations. That's our mission. The church fails when it becomes unable to fulfill that commission. This is what one leader, and I guess you could say a very successful person in understanding the church's fulfillment of the commission would be. He says the root causes. Is the leadership's lack of vision for the church, which stems from not having fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The root cause is the leadership's lack of vision for the church by failure to fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We can blame it on a lot of things. We can blame it on somebody else or some lack of provision or something that didn't happen the way we thought it should. But you know, I believe he's right. I believe he's right because you know what I found? That vision from God is what keeps your heart attitude right. Let me say that again. Vision from God is what keeps the attitude of your heart pure and right. And one thing that I've noticed here in this ministry and other places that I've been privileged to serve the Lord, the attitude of people, the heart attitude of people becomes the measurement whereby God can pour out his Holy Spirit. And when the heart attitude of people becomes hardened, critical, self serving, introspective and so on, the Holy Spirit's not poured out and the church inevitably will rise to a certain level and then begin either tail off or in most cases begins to just devour itself by its own introspection. Vision is key to maintaining a pure heart attitude. You want to know why you have struggles, some of us, in your particular area of ministry? It's because the vision hasn't been clear enough and therefore the heart attitude has not been able to be maintained. Why was the church, why was the early church so able to move ahead in such power and just affect the whole world so that the Bible says that the whole world was turned upside down by their testimony. Why was it able to get past? Certainly they were like you and me, they saw our weaknesses. They realized that those apostles were just men. They realized that they had struggles with authority and women speaking in the church, all these things. But why did they keep going on? What was it that kept them from just being a little band that that Just sort of hung around and served itself for decades and then centuries. What was it? They had a vision. They had a vision. Jesus had appeared to them and said, this is what I want you to do. Now, that vision begins with you. If you don't have a vision for your own life, then I don't believe God will entrust you with a vision for his church. Do you know what I'm saying? If you don't have a vision, if you don't see yourself as God sees you in his word, and I'm talking here about a mature, lovely creation, new creation in Christ Jesus, reconciled to God. If. If your image of yourself is defeated and useless and status quo, maybe the worst. If that's your vision, I don't believe God's going to give you a vision for his church. And really, this is just a bit of a takeoff of what I was talking about on Sunday. We have, for the most part, brothers and sisters, fallen prey to the tactic of the enemy to deceive us about who we to see our own faults. That when we look in the mirror, what do we see? Well, we see ourselves as we really are. Would you turn to second Corinthians 3 for a second? When we look in the mirror, what do we see? Businessman. Career woman. Mother. Homemaker. Construction worker. What do we see? 2 Corinthians 3. Now, the Lord is the Spirit, verse 17. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. That should be your scripture caption every time you walk in this place to worship the Lord. And we all, with unveiled face beholding, or more correctly, in the Greek, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree to glory to another. Read that verse again. And we all, with unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord. What should you see when you look in the mirror? The glory of the Lord. The glory of God. You are the glory of God. His spirit in you. You are his crown, his glory. Now, I'm going to come back to this over and over again because I'm convinced that for the most part, I'm not talking about what we think of our earthly talents. A lot of us think a lot of ourselves. That's fine. You know, I have this ability and I'm this. I'm successful this way, and I've made enough to do this in my own business or whatever. We think a lot. But church, we spiritually think that we're useless. What difference can I make? When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself reflecting the glory of God? Do you Say hallelujah. The Lord's made me the way I am and I see his glory in me. We sing a chorus, don't we, that says that I see in you the glory of my king and I love you with the love of the Lord. Would you encourage one another with those words? Just say that to someone. I see the glory of the Lord in you. Go ahead, somebody. Turn to someone and tell them, I see the glory of the Lord in you. And mean it. Some of you are laughing like, Right, we know our limitations. But beloved, let's start. Let's start dealing with each other. Let's have a vision for ourselves that's worthy of the God that lives in us, Is that. I don't know what that is for you, but I don't want my life when I'm packing it all in to say, well, God, you know, we made it and we survived the struggle. And it is a struggle. But I want to be able to say, lord, I lived a life, as Paul said, worthy of the calling to which I've been called. Listen, we're not many people compared to the need, but by the grace of God and the strength of God in us, beloved, we can do miracles. We can move mountains. We can glorify God in this earth. And I believe that if we'll hear the word that was given tonight, that for some of us you may just see the little cloud, the tiny little hand in you and say, this is all I have, God. But if you'll run to that, if you'll grab a hold of the reality that that Holy Spirit in you, if you just see it as him, as this small little, he's going to burst forth and bring new life in your spirit. And you tell me that a hundred people with their spiritual image strengthened and active in faith isn't going to make a difference. I want to. I'll differ with you See, what the church lacks are people who believe that God wants to use them as a church. The church has a lot of glorious kinds of ministry of individuals here and there, but it doesn't have many examples where a church where one after another. What would happen if you were all 20 watt light bulbs and we turned all the lights out in this place? What kind of light would we have? A real. No, we'd have a real nice light. You just get a whole series of small light bulbs and you get a glowing, warm, but effectual light. In fact, much more warm and glowing than one real bright one. And I just believe that God wants us to be a church like that just little 20 waters, okay? A couple of 40s and 75s here and there. But if you're just a 20 water, listen, you're reflecting the glory of God and it's going to keep coming in you. You know, I just. I know that this is so important because if your image of yourself is down this chute, then just forget about the vision of God for the church. It's the same principle, beloved as 1 Timothy 3, where the Lord says through the Holy Spirit, says through Paul, don't have a man ruling in the church who can't rule in his household. It's the same principle. Don't have a man or a woman bringing vision to the church who can't have a vision for their own life. So let it begin with you. Could you ask the Lord just to show you his vision for your life? I'm not talking about necessarily your career. I'm just talking about who you are in Jesus right now, today. I just want. I urge you to do that because it'll make what you believe about yourself will change what you believe that God can do through his church. You are his church, right? Don't shout hallelujah for North Way and great things God wants to do. But for me, I'm just, you know, I'm a two water. I can barely burn. I'm of no value. And pray for us. Pray for us who've been given the responsibility to give account for your life, that we know how to release you into that ministry, because that's a difficult thing. Some people feel they have ministries that are from the Lord and they're really. They're not hearing well yet. And we need to learn when to encourage and when to say wait. And that takes a lot of grace from God. And you can pray for that for us now if you will. Embrace God's vision for you ambassadors for Christ. 2nd Corinthians 5 says, Then let's look at this green sheet and real quickly, I'll run through this outline and get down. Fred's going to share a couple of specifics corporately for us here. How do you come into a vision? How do you discern vision for your life? How do we discern vision for our ministries? Okay, Keep in mind this is. This thing has application, whether you're just doing it for you or your family or your ministry or the body of Christ here at North Way or whatever your realm of concern. All right? This is a. It makes general application. The first thing you got to do is wait on the Lord for your vision. Now I said on Sunday, I think in one service and forgotten the other one, that waiting on the Lord isn't simply a dulled kind of. I don't know, Waiting has the connotation of red light at the railroad tracks, right? Waiting, waiting, waiting. Doing nothing but waiting. Let it have the connotation in your mind of serving as a server, waits on tables, waits on a master. And I just share that because I think that when you actively serve God according to his calling, more vision comes. You think it's wasted 15 minutes there. We could have been studying. I want to tell you something. That's where God speaks to his people. Wait on the Lord, and he'll begin to show you things about your life and about your ministry that you never, just never saw before, you never realize. You mean that's the way I come across, Lord? And this is what you want to make me? The Lord will show you a circumstance in your job and you'll say, you mean, Lord, if I do this, that you're going to bless it. I know a brother that started a Bible study that way. The Lord gave him a vision. Not a, you know, an appearance in his spiritual eyesight, but he saw basically that there was a need in his workplace for Bible study. And that vision has become a reality because he was willing to do the next steps. Let's look at it. Second step. Test your vision. Test it. This is important because some of us are young in our discernment and you might have a vision. I recently heard from a brother that said, I have a vision to buy 22 acres of land and to build a big church that would touch thousands of people not too far from us here. And as I heard him share, I loved his boldness, but I recognized that in my spirit, that wasn't from the Lord for now. That might be from the Lord ten years from now, but it's not from the Lord for now. Because everything that has to do with a foundation for a vision like that is lacking. And you know, I spent time with the man, so I know now this can happen to any of us. We can think, well, God's given me a vision, too. And we just go. And if we don't test it, if we don't go to our brother here or our sister here and share this is what the Lord saying to me. What do you think about that? Have you ever done. Have you ever had someone who loves you enough to say, I think that's off the wall in love? You know, they. Not their opinion, but they seek the Lord saying, brother, I don't know that that's really what God's saying right now. I want you to go back to the Lord. Now, I've had times when I've submitted something to people and they said, that's not the Lord as I see it. And I took it back to the Lord again and went back again that after two or three times, I realized it was from the Lord. And, you know, you have to know when that is. But I would never, the first time around say, well, this is what the Lord said, and that's the way it's got to be. There's an arrogance about that that I don't think is born of God. Test your vision. Let others hear what it is that the Lord's giving to you and share with them. But I would be very, very selective about that. I'd ask the Lord who to go to, because you'll have people that would be happy to put the fire hose on your fire. They like to put out what God's put in your heart because their own need, or in some cases, they haven't even don't have a vision of their own. And without their own vision, it's difficult for them to affirm you and your vision. I've experienced that before. All right, the third thing. I'll tell you what. Before you let me just mention these two things. You can ask about every vision as a test yourself. Does it exalt Jesus? Will the fulfillment of your vision exalt Jesus? And the second question I'd ask about the vision is, does it promote the unity of the body or of the place where you're going to apply that ministry? For example, in your home group? If God gave you a vision for what that home group could become, would that vision exalt Jesus and promote unity? Okay, third thing. Cultivate your vision. Cultivate it. Once the Lord has given you an idea of what it is that he wants to do with you and through you. Oh, yeah, we have that, don't we? There we go, Gene. Okay, there it all is. How about that? Okay. It's basically what you have in your sheet. I just needed it because I couldn't find my own notes. Cultivating your vision. When you have an idea in your spirit of what God wants to do in a situation or with you, I said earlier I used the illustration of your faith goal. The easiest thing to do, beloved, is to simply say, well, that was a great idea. And three weeks later it goes down the tubes and you don't have it anymore, and there's no more Vision, It may take years. I have to confess to you, it's difficult for me to persevere for years in a lot of things that I feel God's showing me as his vision for my life. How about you? Do you have a vision to get a college degree, but you haven't the wherewithal to go full time, so you'd have to go at night. And it's going to take six years or so of night school. You ever. And you know, that looks like a long road of God. I don't know if I can. And then you lose the vision. You start out and you lose the vision. You see, God puts these visions in our hearts. He puts them in there. And if we don't cultivate them, we don't feed them with the word of God, with fuel from the Word, with encouragement from others, they'll die. I believe that we're going to be. One of the things that's going to hurt us in heaven is when we see what God could have done with us if we'd only clung to the vision that he's given. One reason why North Way is where God has brought us to this point is because there is a vision. I had a vision, and it was as close to a literal vision as I've ever had. One evening in my garage, I just pulled the car in and come back from some meeting or something, and I was worshiping the Lord. I had a tape on and pulled in the garage and I was just thanking the Lord. I remember to turn the engine off and was just worshiping. And the Lord showed me this Wexford area. And I. In a flash, I saw that and I saw a body of people. And it was a big company of people. It was not a small group of people. And I recognized that that entire body of people was in worship, was in praise. All of them had their arms raised, their hands raised to the Lord and were singing to the Lord. And I remember that there was a delight in the spirit of the Lord when I saw that vision. That was in 1978 or 9. Didn't know what that meant, but prayed about that. In 1980, things began to happen in my life that precipitated what happened in 1981. Now, an astounding thing took place to confirm that vision, which was a little high school girl coming back from a. We did a service or something up in Zianopol, and I took some of the youth up with me, coming back down on Route 19. And I had just accepted the call to go to New York or was Just about to. And the kids were praying about this. And this was. If you don't know this story, this was how the Lord had to move to get me to wake up to see what he wanted to do. And this gal, I think she was about 15 or 16 at the time, came up in the front of the van and she said, you know, I really. I just had the strangest thing happen. She said, I had a dream last night, and you were in Wexford, and there was a big group of people and they all had their hands raised and they were praising the Lord. And she said, now I don't know what to do with it. And she knew that I was about ready to go to New York. I'd already told them that's what I was doing. And you know what I did? I said, well, you know, that's. I was starting to break up inside because I knew that's what I wanted with all my heart. But I knew that God had seemingly led circumstantially for me to go. And it was just a few months after that everything changed, and here we are. So that little gal was really a beautiful gift from God at the time, that cultivated my vision and caused me to hang in there. Remember Trish Crawford? Remember her? That's who it was. Number four. After you've cultivated. After this thing is pregnant inside of you, then you've got to give birth. And you give birth by implementation. This is the part that requires something of us that sometimes we're not willing to give. Yeah. Ray, you want to mention something? I appreciate it. That's right. Sometimes just a word from you is all it would take for someone else to. To get over the brink. There. I agree with that. Encouragement is such a need. All right, again, the fourth implementation. This is when you've received the vision by fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit, being with God. And I don't know how many of you do that with any consistency, but you need to do it. You need to do it. Whatever you're doing, you need to spend time saying, holy Spirit, speak to me. I want to love you and I want to know your will. I want to know your heart. You've tested your vision. You've tested it in terms of the things that we were talking about and maybe with another person or two. You've cultivated it by feeding into it by just reading the Word and looking for God to make it alive and by circumstance and by all kinds of things that the Lord will use to feed that vision. And finally you implement it. This involves speaking the Vision. Once it's alive inside of you, you've got to speak it out. Now, this is the thing. Listen to me. Most of you, and I'll say us, most of us who've come from nice, safe evangelical churches, we got all turned off by positive confession. And we used to make fun of the Name it and claim it crew for their faulty theology, which is in a lot of ways faulty. But I want to say tonight we have lost the power of the confession. Why does the Bible say the power of life and death is in the tongue? Why? Why does it say that this little rudder can turn the whole ship? Because it's that powerful. Because it's. Because God spoke creation into being. You know what? The image of God at work in us has the same power to speak. And I've needed to repent in my life for putting down the confession. Part of the teaching that I used to just kind of write off as being a little bit unacceptable over the brink of propriety. Positive confession. Amen. Absolutely. If God has to make the first move, Well, this is where your word becomes creative. You see, when I'm saying speaking, I'm talking about the willingness to declare with your mouth that which, you know, God's birthing in your spirit. And it literally becomes a creative force. A lot of things that I've read and people I've talked to, and even in my own life, when I've. When you do that, you run a risk. What's the risk? I could be wrong? I've been believing God for this. And. People laugh at you when you tell them what you're believing God for. Sometimes they don't laugh really at you in a haughty way. They laugh at you out of what I would call a condescending kind of a way. Oh, you sweet thing. Blessing God for that, you know, Positive confession. And it begins, might I say, all the way back to where I began tonight, about who you are. If you'll start confessing who you are in Jesus. I am the righteousness of Christ. The righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I've been just meditating on that God. Is that really true? I mean, me and all my own failures and pride and all that stuff. Amen. It's true of your vision. Okay, let's go on. I don't want to dwell on this too much. Wait a second. I'm sorry. Okay. After you speak it and you begin to speak it consistently, lay plans, put the plans together. If this vision is going to happen, God's going to use you to do it when he took Abraham out, all right, and he showed him the stars of the heavens, and he said, look up, Abraham, and what do you see? I see the stars as numerous as the sand of the seashore. The Lord said to Abraham, so shall your descendants be. And Abraham believed God. And. And the Bible says that he counted to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6. He believes God believed the promise and he began to live like it. And in fact, he so planned on it, he so wanted it to happen, that what did he do? He took things into his own hands after a while and created Ishmael. But even then, you see, even then, in his failure, God still said, this isn't the one, but keep believing. And we know from Romans chapter four, you ought to read that carefully. Romans chapter four. Even in the midst of having everything looking against him and looking like it was awash, God moved in and blessed him and honored him and gave him the descendants that he promised. So you make plans, you prepare to do what you need to do. And then you just walk in belief. You walk in faith. Now, the other side of this is Roman Numeral 2. What do we do to keep our vision? I think the first thing is recognize the lies of the enemy. What authority does Satan have to rob you of the vision that God puts in your heart? Why does he then? Because we believe a lie. We believe his lies that we can't. We believe his lies that it will never happen. Here I've thought that sometimes when the enemies come to me, and I've had a burning desire in my heart to see people in a certain mode of ministry and power and seeing the Gospel changing their lives and transforming lives through them. And then it says, that will never happen to them. And I realize what a lie that is. That's like saying, God, you just can't change, brother. So and so they'll never change. The enemy lies his way into our visions and dreams and robs us of them, takes them away. So recognize it, expect it to come. Expect him to come and lie and say to you, as John Wimber said so beautifully, hath God said, was that really the Lord? That's where it'll start. That vision really wasn't God. If it was really God, then. Second thing, cease negativity. We have enough people telling us what we can't do, what won't happen, what isn't appropriate. I would. We had a little staff meeting today at. At the North Way office. And as we went around the room, we were just sharing in little parcels. What's God doing in your life and the door was open to go, well, I'm having a real struggle or I'm having a real victory. And it was just wonderful to go around the room and have each person share, you know, I've never been more encouraged. God's just doing some beautiful things. And to hear that positiveness, God's doing what he said he was going to do. It just lifted us up. By the time it got, you know, around to me and I was just like floating. I could share my struggles and not worry about it at all. You know, the positive word, it means so much. It means so much. Any of you ever done something and wondered if you did a good job and you were just praying that someone come up and say to you, boy, I was blessed by that and nobody did, or someone came up to you and said, I was a little long brother? What, does that squash your spirit anyhow? Cease negativity. Quit telling yourself why the vision will never happen. Number three, feed the vision that God's given you that comes by exposing yourself to people of like vision and the people who have experience like victory. If you don't read Christian books, you're cutting yourself off. If you don't listen to tapes. How many of you travel for a living, to and from a living? Okay, My life, my Christian walk was significantly changed by the fact that those little cassette tapes fit in my car and I could turn off Bill Steinbach and put on Jack Hayford, or you name it, Fred Steele. Alright? Amen. Why waste 30 minutes when God could be feeding you, feeding your vision? Number four, again, this is just a reiteration, but if you want to keep your vision,