Luke chapter 2
Today we are walking in: Be Directed by a Clear Vision
Habakkuk 2:2
And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
VISION
Today we look to the word VISION- H2377 chazown- vision(in ecstatic state), visions (in night), oracle, prophecy (divine communication), vision (as title of book of prophecy) from H2372; a sight (mentally), i.e. a dream, revelation, or oracle:—vision. to see, perceive, look, behold, prophesy, provide, to see, behold, to see as a seer in the ecstatic state, to see, perceive with the intelligence, to see (by experience), to provide
The Torah testifies........
Numbers 24:4
He hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision H2377 of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:
Numbers 24:16
He hath said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision H2377 of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:
The prophets proclaim.........
1 Samuel 3:1
And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days;there was no open vision H2377.
Jeremiah 14:14
Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision H2377 and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
The writings bear witness.........
1 Chronicles 17:15
According to all these words, and according to all this vision H2377, so did Nathan speak unto David.
Psalm 89:19
Then thou spakest in vision H2377 to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.
Principle #1:
Be Directed by a Clear Vision
To fulfill your vision, you must have a clear guiding purpose for your life.
The first principle of vision is that you must have a clear guiding purpose for your life. Every effective leader or group of people in history has had one thing in common: They were directed by a clear vision. Remember that Moses, Joshua, David, and Nehemiah each had visions that drove them and motivated their actions. The first thing Yah gave to Abraham was a specific vision. He showed him the Promised Land and said, “That’s your vision. You're going to take your offspring there.”
I cannot stress enough the need for a guiding vision in life because it is perhaps the single most important key to fulfilling your dream. You personally, as an individual, must have your own guiding life vision. This vision must be absolutely clear to you because, otherwise, you will have nothing to aim at, and you will achieve nothing.
As I wrote earlier, when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish, that is purpose. When you can see it in your mind by faith and begin to imagine it, that is vision. You cannot contribute to Yah’s greater purpose if you don’t know your personal vision. If you have no sense of focus, you will just drift along. I like what Yahusha said in Luke 2:49: “I must be about my Father’s business” (kjv). There were many other businesses Yahusha could have been about, but He identified a specific life work that was His own and that motivated everything He did.
Whether you are young, middle-aged, or older, if you don’t have a clear purpose, you are going to be distracted by every other business in the world, because the world is an extremely busy place. You must realize that when you set your mind on what you want to do, all the other business of the world will try to get in the way of it. Having a clear guiding purpose will enable you to stay on track when you are tempted to be distracted by lesser or nonessential things.
The What and the Why of Existence
One of my undergraduate degrees is in education, and I had to take a course in biology for a full year as part of my degree requirements. I really enjoyed that course because it was extremely detailed. We studied the neurological and circulatory systems of the human body, the bone structure, the brain cells, and all the intricacies of how the body works. At the end of the class, I received an A. I was very proud of myself. Yet while I was looking at my grade, boasting to myself about what a good job I had done and how much I had learned about the human body, a question burst into my mind: “Now that you know what the human body is, do you know why it is”? Education can give us knowledge, but it can’t always give us reasons.
I discovered then that the key to life is not only knowing what you are, but also why you are. It is more important to know why you were born than to know the fact that you were born. If you don’t know your reason for existence, you will begin to experiment with your life, and that is dangerous. You must capture a meaning for your life, a clear vision for your existence. You should know who you are—that is, your origin and purpose in Yah—as well as your abilities and plans for the future.
Let me ask you some difficult but necessary questions: Have you changed jobs several times in the last few years? Do you keep changing your major in college? Do you do one thing for a time and then go on to something else because you are bored or dissatisfied? If so, you lack vision. You were not created to be bored and dissatisfied. For the last thirty years, I have been praying that Yah would give me an extra day in the week so I can do more work toward my vision. I can’t wait to get up in the morning, and I don’t like to see the sun go down. Why? I want to squeeze everything I can out of each day because I have a vision that keeps me passionate. Proverbs 6:10–11 says, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.” Lazy people are visionless people. Bored people are those who haven’t yet found their purpose.
You must choose where you want to go in life and then be decisive and faithful in carrying it out. Don’t put off the decision or be afraid of it. Moreover, when you’re deciding, make sure not to sell yourself short. Shooting for the clouds is too low. Instead, make the clouds your cushion in case you fall.
Remember that a vision is not the same thing as a goal, such as building a house, buying a sports car, or having a million dollars in the bank. Having a purpose and vision has to do with your life existence. It enables you to answer the question,“Why was I born?” While you can’t know all the ramifications of your life, which Yah may reveal to you in eternity, you should have a good idea of the purpose He has given you to accomplish on earth. Without it, all you’re doing is existing.
A Job versus a Vision
I want to illustrate for you the difference between simply having a job and having a clear guiding purpose by looking at the life of Nehemiah. Nehemiah had a job as the cupbearer to Artaxerxes, the king of Persia (Nehemiah 1:11). This seems to have been an important position that may have included both serving wine to the king and his royal guests and tasting the king’s wine to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. Yet being a cupbearer meant much more than this. Nehemiah was in a top position in the king’s court and was a highly regarded, trusted, and influential advisor to the king.
As prestigious as Nehemiah’s occupation was, it was simply a job for him because his mind was occupied with something else. Nehemiah was a descendant of one of the large number of Hebrews who had been carried into captivity by the Babylonians. The Babylonians were subsequently defeated by the Persians, and that is why Nehemiah was serving a Persian king.
At the time of the Babylonian captivity, the city of Jerusalem had undergone terrible destruction. Yet, when the Babylonians were defeated seventy years later, fifty thousand Hebrews had returned to Judea and had rebuilt the temple. Then, an effort to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was thwarted by opposition from neighboring peoples who had convinced King Artaxerxes to issue a decree to stop the work. In the first chapter of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah heard that “the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire” (v. 3). Some believe this destruction refers to the original devastation of Jerusalem, while others think it is a reference to this particular opposition to rebuilding the wall.
Either way, the news filled Nehemiah with grief. When he heard that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and that everything was in disarray, he “sat down and wept. For some days [he] mourned and fasted and prayed before the Yah of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4).
Your True Work Is What You Were Born to Do
I like to think of Nehemiah’s cupbearer job as his preliminary occupation, or his “pre-occupation,” because he was born to fulfill another, much more important role. Your true work is what you were born to do. Your job is what you do only until you are ready to fulfill your vision. Yah had placed in Nehemiah’s heart a vision of rebuilding the wall: “I had not [yet] told anyone what my Yah had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:12).
Nehemiah 2:1 reads, “In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before.” The implication here is that Nehemiah was doing fine on his job until he heard about the wall. Then he had the idea to rebuild it. He went to Yah in prayer about it, and Yah told him to go back and reconstruct it. This was the compelling vision of Nehemiah’s life. His desire to accomplish his life’s work then began to interfere with his job. He was employed by the king, but his yearning to rebuild the wall began to wear on him, and he became depressed. The king said to him, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart” (v. 2).
When Yah gives you a vision and confirms it, nothing can stop it. If He tells you to build, start, invest, create, or manufacture something, then it will bother you deep inside; you will become depressed until you do it. This is a “sanctified” depression, however, the kind that says,“I won’t be satisfied until I complete my
vision.”
Is your true work—your purpose—making it uncomfortable for you to stay in your present job? That was Nehemiah’s situation. He was continually troubled until he was able to take action on his vision. People who know what they are called to do seem to be possessed by their visions. In a sense, they are. They are possessed by the things Yah has given them to accomplish. Nehemiah saw the wall completed in his mind’s eye before he started to work on it, and that vision drove his passion.
What Do You Want?
When the king saw Nehemiah’s sadness, he asked him one of the most significant questions anyone can ask a person: “What is it you want?” (Nehemiah 2:4). What is equally significant is that Nehemiah was able to answer it specifically. He said,“Let [the king] send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it” (v. 5). Nehemiah knew his clear guiding vision, and his plan was so specific that he was able to give the king a
time frame for completing it. You need to seriously ask yourself the same question: “What is it that I want?”
Do you know what you really want out of life? Some people just want to indulge in self-serving activities. Others think life begins at retirement, and they miss out on practically their entire lives. Some people just want to own a house. Yet once they get their house, then what? They want to buy a nicer car. Fine. Then what? They want children. Yet once they have children, then what? There has to be something more to life than the things we accumulate. In Luke 12:15, Yahusha said,“A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Your true vision is not a house or car or even children, since sometimes we treat our children as possessions. There is something more important in life than the “trophies” we like to gather around ourselves. In order to find your vision, you must be in touch with the values and priorities of the kingdom of Yah. Your vision should be something that lives on after you’re gone, something that has greater lasting power than possessions. People’s lives should be changed by your vision. What do you want? The King of Kings is asking you this question today, and you must be able to give Him an answer.
How do you answer His question? First, you ask Him to confirm what He has put in your heart for you to do. Nehemiah’s first response to the problem in Jerusalem was, “Let me go to Yah in prayer.” He had a passion for Yah and His ways, and he cried out to Yah to give him clear direction about what he should do. He had a burning passion within him to address the problems of his people. Perhaps you know what this burning is like. Y ou feel frustrated about certain things you see in your neighborhood and your country. You have a strong desire
to see change, and you have prayed, “Yah, something’s wrong with our country, something’s wrong with our neighborhoods, something’s wrong with our marriages.” Nehemiah went to Yah, and Yah heard his prayer and answered it by confirming what he should do. Y our vision uniquely belongs to you as a person called by Yah. As you pray, it will become clear to you.
Vision Is a Preferable Future
Your vision is a clear conception of something that is not yet reality, but which can exist. It is a strong image of a preferable future. This means that the present is not enough; something else is needed. You should never settle for what you currently have. In fact, a true visionary irritates those who want things to remain as they always have. Vision is always pushing the envelope. It demands
change by its very nature.
This is a very important point. Because of the fact that vision is often clarified through the desire to solve a problem, as in Nehemiah’s case, many people don’t realize that vision is active even when times are good and things are in a positive state. Why will Yah activate a vision when things are going well? To stir up your life so that you will move forward and progress rather than becoming complacent. When everything is going along as it always has been, and you are getting used to your situation, you may forget about your vision. Yah may then use a vision to shake you out of your indifference. A vision will always take you from good to better and from better to best.
Vision is always future-focused. Sometimes, people say, “Let’s go back to the good old days.” Yet if we do that, we will not progress in what Yah has planned for us. We need to build on the past, but we cannot return to it.
I confess that the temptation to focus on the “good old days” has been one of my challenges in life. Vision does not mean regaining what you had; it means moving forward to gain what you have never had. Vision doesn’t try to recapture the good old days; rather, it desires to create days that have not yet existed. If you’re going to pursue vision, you have to be careful how you use tradition and memories of good things. Sometimes, memories can prevent you from seeing miracles because they keep you stuck in the past. Yah wants to do great works in our lives, and we have to be careful not to miss these opportunities by a false view of what has come before.
When you are very close to a visionary, or very close to a vision, you’re constantly going to be driven to change. To go to a new place, you have to go to a new location. You also have to think in a new way. That sometimes causes
discomfort. Vision can constantly keep you unsettled, but it also keeps you fluid and mobile, ready to take the next step toward your vision. This truth is essential to understand because, when you keep company with Yah, you have to keep moving. When the Israelites were traveling in the desert, they would put down their stakes and set up their tents, but soon the pillar of cloud would move again, and they would need to follow it. Yah keeps us going so we don’t become stagnant. A clear vision gives us a passion that keeps us continually moving forward in life.
Action Steps to Fulfilling Vision
Have you truly answered the King’s question,“What is it that you want in life?” Write down your answer.
What things in your life are distracting you from the real “business” of your life?
Chapter Principles
1 You must have a clear guiding purpose for your life.
2 The key to life is not only knowing what you are, but also why you are.
3 Your true work is what you were born to do. Y our job is what you are doing just until you are ready to fulfill your vision.
4 When Yah gives you a vision, it will bother you until you do it.
5 One of the most significant questions we must each answer for ourselves is “What is it you want?” (Nehemiah 2:4).
6 Your vision should be something that lives on after you’re gone.
7 Your vision is a clear conception of something that is not yet reality, but which can exist. It is a strong image of a preferable future.
8 A vision demands change by its very nature.
9 A vision is active even when times are good and things are in a positive state.
10 Vision doesn’t try to recapture the good old days; rather, it desires to create days that have not yet existed.
11 When you keep company with Yah, you have to keep moving.
12 A clear vision gives us a passion that keeps us continually moving forward in life.
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