Covenant Christian Center

A Message by Pastor Timothy Ikinya

IMPORTANCE OF VISION

Habakkuk 2: 1-4

Life was designed by God to be inspired by purpose and fueled by vision. Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Seeing that purpose in your mind is what we call vision.

Vision is a clear mental image of a preferable future, imparted by God to His obedient servants and based upon understanding of His word, time and circumstances.

It is simply a mental sight or seeing from the inside.

Jonathan Swift said in 1699 that vision is the act of seeing the invisible. It is vision that will cause you to reach the unsearched. Vision will make you to bear a testimony. It is true that visions lay buried, forgotten and dismissed because those that had them did not think of how it would be. They only thought of how it is by now.

Ephesians 4:10 says for we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared before hand that we should walk in them.

We need to have vision for our families, ministries, nations, countries, continents, businesses etc.

Helen Keller once said that there is something worse than being blind: it is the worst thing in this world to have sight and lack vision.

When you have vision you have a sense of purpose in life. It is found in the scripture that God has a plan for each one of us. It is our responsibility to walk in faith totally depending on Him. God has chosen you to fulfill a certain plan in your church family or the world, and you need to catch the vision to accomplish this. The problem that we have is that we want satisfaction now by sacrificing our future’s greatness. Most of us have been unmindful of the future. We do not want to plant a seed that will grow into an oak tree but we want to plant today and harvest tomorrow.

Sometimes we need to step out of the stream and look to where we are going.

Seneca, a Roman philosopher once said that you must know where you are going in order to catch the right wind. Vision shows you who to become and enables you to choose the right vehicle to take you there otherwise, you can waste everything and die hopeless.

Job 21:23 says that one dies in His full strength being wholly at ease and satisfied while another dies with a bitter soul.

2 Sam 16:5_14 says that David died in shame and in pain.

Gen 25:8 says that Abraham died honored and with joy.

The choices you make today will determine your future shame or honor. Let your vision dictate your choices today.

You don’t need to walk in conformity to the world but you need to pray that God will give you vision that will make you to choose things with clarity. The things those are helpful to you.

Conformity leads to compromise, then mediocrity, then sin and wasted life. Visions dictate your direction. It is like a six sense and through it you begin to grasp the unseen.

People that powerfully and permanently influence this world are seers. These men have seen more and further than the others have. They are men of faith.

Elijah saw more than Gehazi. Every man of God must have insight into things that are spiritual. He must be a man of revelation and must be able to see now and then.

Charles Cowman the founder of the Oriental Missionary Society was a man of vision and saw what the world of his time could not see. He saw wider and fully than the men of His time and for this he was called the man of far horizons.

Vision causes you to see both now and the future. It causes you to see the result of the formulas and the methods that you use.

Eyes that see are common but the eyes that see are few.

Somebody somewhere saw something and pursued that vision and that is why we are what we are now.  Seeing is the fulfillment of what they saw because they did not give up through their many years of wilderness or valley experiences.

Before anything is seen in the natural, it is first seen with the eyes of faith.

Every great move of God had its beginning in the hearts of some child who listened and obeyed His will.

Moses to delivered Israelites, Joseph delivered the house of Jacob, David lead the Israelites from being a shepherd boy.

What has God spoken to you? Are you tempted to think this as silly? Whenever vision comes your way, it makes you to scheme.

Vision was given to Abraham, Jacob Moses Samuel Nathan Isaiah, and Paul etc. Gen 15:1, 46:1-4, Exodus 3:2-3

Many visions come because of prayer. Through prayer God’s will for His people is made known that we can only do what He intends. You need visions to go with your time. Being visionary you will never be behind your time. You will never be behind your time. You will catch new horizons now and then. Vision prepares your mind to be receptive to new Ideas in a time like this when people are allowing things to take their own cause.

Men of Vision look to the future of their spouses, children family, and ministries.  Its men of vision who will influence their generations for they always see further than their colleagues will. Men of great spiritual insights searching into the matters of the Kingdom are able to see and to interpret what God has put in place.

Men of vision see what the crowd cannot see. They see more than the men of their day and these are the people that make good leaders

Men of Vision put their ears on the ground and know what is coming. They interpret what they hear to be what they see. They are men who see the whole world while their colleagues only see some meters away. They see the end of the things right from their beginnings. They are men who concentrate on the goals. They are large men and their schemes are large.

Vision is what comes in before great things happen. Great men are driven by vision to practice towards becoming great. Their imagination of how they will be causes them to practice more.

It is vision that gives direction and gives birth to logotheraphy, paradigm, and planning.

Our vision for future does always fight with our current reality. There is always this tension but men of vision can bear this tension for they understand whom the will becomes.

Vision causes choices and without vision you have no choice. Vision is what you want to do or to be or have. It’s vision that makes the coming generation start in a better position. We should not pass our problems to the current generations. Men of vision have no false start. Therefore, they don’t keep on repeating things with no meaning.

Vision is a picture of the end result. It makes us to know where we are going. Without vision we beat about the bush, go to all places but end up nowhere. Vision dictates acts and penetrates emotions.

Gen 15:1, The obedience and the following of your vision is what will give you followers. The vision of Abraham was the start of a great nation. It is vision that buys your tomorrow today knowing very well that buying tomorrow will be much expensive. Those that bought their today yesterday can sell their today at their own desired prices.

Today we need people who can see beyond the obvious.

We are only a revelation away from our success. Vision is the revelation. All that Solomon did came out of revelation.

Vision means sight. You can look above, look within, look around, look behind, look to the future and even to the past and the more you see the better you are.

THE VALLEY PHASE OF VISION.

Every vision is like a journey, has a starting point and a finishing point. A times you go through dryness, sometimes your going gets sloppy, it seems as you can fall any time, sometimes you go though your own wilderness and your going seems to be though mountains and valleys. It seems like you cannot make it. Satan tempts you to despair because he is the enemy of every good thing. It is in such time many give up only to regret on realizing how close they were to their victory. When tempted to give up please remember that that Christ is faithful.

For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last piece of wood has been thrown in the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it is then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm.

Gen 11:2, I will open rivers upon the slopes and will make fountains in the midst of valleys, the wildernesses, the wildernesses a pool of waters and the dry land springs of water. Isaiah 41:18. This is said to those who are ignorant, and those beyond the knowledge of faith.

Valley phase means a time of ignorance, lower things. Valley means places of attack, a place of fear. When God takes you out of the valley then he brings you to places of joy.

Valley is a place of trouble, devastations, and mourning but you need to go on, knowing that the vision you have will happen.