Your Future Is In His Hands
Whether you are 19 or 91, God has a vision for your life that you need to fulfill. That vision will make it possible for you to wake up every day knowing what He wants from you, instead of guessing what you should do.
You may think, “God doesn’t have anything planned for ME. I’m not intelligent, talented, pretty, or spiritual enough to be used by God.” Satan is the one who tells you those lies. God’s truth is clearly spelled out in Jeremiah 29:11, where He says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
God’s “expected end,” or vision for your life, does not include pain, suffering, or poverty (those are the devil’s plans for you). God envisions you experiencing peace and knowing your purpose.
You may think, “That may be true for other people, but I’m always messing up. God’s mad at me because I blow it all the time. I haven’t been tithing. I haven’t been reading my Bible and praying like I should. I have been cold towards Him. So, of God has any plans for my life, I bet they are bad. He wants to pay me back for all the bad things I’ve done.” That is WRONG because as a child of God, He called you to achieve wonderful things even before He created you!
If you want to catch God’s vision, ask the Holy Spirit causes people to dream dreams of their future and have visions of God’s goals for their lives. Don’t become discouraged if the vision isn’t revealed right away. Wait on God! “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” Jeremiah 29:13.
God’s vision will give you direction. Knowing where you’re supposed to go and what you’re supposed to do is important because “Where there is no vision, the people perish…” Proverbs 29:18. Without God’s vision you won’t achieve the things you need in order to fulfill His purpose for you.
Even the apostle Paul lost his way when he didn’t wait for God’s leading. Although his first missionary journey produced signs and wonders and a crop of new churches, he nearly flopped at his second journey because he didn’t wait for God to tell him where to go. Everywhere he went the door was slammed in his face. But then one night he dreamt of a man asking him to come to Macedonia—he finally received the direction he needed. And when he followed that vision, God blessed him by opening Europe to the gospel.
Faith Builders
Many people ask me why it seems like some Christians have an easier time obeying God than others. The answer is these people have a vision from God inside them, and those visions produce the faith they need to do what God wants them to do! When you catch hold of God’s vision, the word “quit” is erased from your vocabulary and you can say, “My dreams will come true because God gave them to me. He’s given me this vision, and I believe it will come to pass!”
It had to be hard for Noah to spend 100 years trying to explain what he was doing to a world full of people who had never even seen rain, let alone a flood. I’m sure people took their families out by Noah’s Ark for after-dinner strolls just to laugh at him before they went to bed. More than likely he lost friends, his family questioned his sanity, and the neighborhood complained about the monster-sized boat in his front yard.
But even with 10 decades of persecution, Noah continued to build and believe, preach and pray. He could have become depressed and discouraged, and given up; but he kept at it because he had caught ahold of God’s vision and His vision gave him faith that survived and surpassed the trials he faced.
I’ve learned over the years that even the smallest portion of a vision will produce faith. This is important because God sometimes doesn’t give you the entire vision at once. Consider Abraham. When God called him out of his father’s house and his native land, He didn’t tell him the vision He had for him. God simply said, “Go.” Only when Abram arrived at his destination did God show him His vision of being the father of a multitude (see Genesis 12, 13).
The vision was so important to Abram’s life that God changed his name, which means “father of altitudes,” to Abraham, the “father of multitudes.” Imagine having God change your name to reinforce the power of His vision for your life!
However, even after Abraham’s faith was greatly energized by his encounter with God, I’m sure he started to second guess God when nothing happened for 11 years. After a couple of years, Abraham went along with Sarah’s plan for him to make a baby with her servant, Hagar.
There may be times in your life when your vision seems to die. I’m sure that by the time Abraham and Sarah entered their 90s and still didn’t have a baby, they thought, “God, it’s physically impossible to bear a child. It’s too late.”
I think most people do that. The vision is exciting and fresh when they first get it, but after a period of time they begin to wonder if the vision came from God after all. They say, “God, forget it, it’s too late for your vision to come to pass. It won’t do me any good now.”
Abraham and Sarah’s vision of a family still had not come to pass. But when it was too late for them to have a baby, God took over and created life supernaturally. He may do the same with you. If you have a tendency to give yourself the glory when good things happen to you, God may keep your dreams out of your reach so that when you finally say, “I can’t do it, Lord,” He can hand you a miracle.
Do you feel like you could do so much for God if you could only change your personality? Are you too shy, too fearful, too mean, or too proud? Well, the good news is that visions can change your personality. They can literally change your attitude! They can change the way you talk, the way you think, and the way you act.
Moses was raised to be Pharaoh. He was probably pretty arrogant, expecting people to serve him and do his bidding. But one day, God spoke to him out of a burning bush and gave him a vision, and that vision changed him from a haughty prince into the “meekest man on earth” (see Number 12:3). Moses changed so much that he was able to put up with two million murmuring people for 40 years. That takes a big change!
Pray and Obey
When God gives you a vision, your part is to pray and obey—He will bring the results! One time the Lord spoke to me and said, “When you pray, you always try to answer your needs by yourself. Marilyn, you do the praying, and I’ll do the answering.”
If you obey God’s vision, God will do supernatural things to bring the vision to pass. If you start “taking over” for God, trying to get things done in your own timing, then you will miss out on opportunities to receive His blessings and miracles.
Every year I ask God for a Scripture for the New Year. One time God gave me Proverbs 9:21 “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge and discretion.” The vision He put in my heart was witty inventions (or creative ways) to reach the lost.
Part of my vision was to pray over the nations of the world every day. Shortly after I began doing that, some unique things happened at this ministry with foreign countries. The first was an extremely large order for books and tapes from Kuwait. Now, that is a miracle because Kuwait is nearly 100 percent Muslim!
When I caught hold of God’s vision for creative ideas and obeyed His leading, He brought a supernatural situation to pass. And as I continued to obey, He brought more and more miracles to pass for us all over the world.
When God gives you a vision for your life, follow that dream. If you’re not doing what God want you to do, you will be unhappy and frustrated. When you do what God wants, your dreams will come true. Trust in the Lord and delight in His plans and goals for you so He can give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). Then you will have godly success.
Please pray with me, “Dear heavenly Father, I ask You to clear my mind of earthly desires and free my heart of worldly weights. Holy Spirit, please bring Your visions for my future into my heart and give me the faith to follow through with Your plans for my life. Thank You, Lord, for my peaceful, joyful, expected end. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
