Obediently Working the Vision

Note: This month I’m posting a series of devotional thoughts from Acts. Many of these are reposts, some are new. I’m “working out the kinks” for submission to a compilation of short, pastoral writings in Acts to be published later this year. If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please let me know!

“…I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.” Acts 26:19

I’ve heard it said that good ideas are easier to find than sand on a beach. If you talk to a visionary, a leader, or a dreamer, it’s likely that you won’t be able to keep track of all the wonderful plans or thoughts going on inside his or her head. There is no shortage of people who feel they have heard things from God that, if put into practice, would change the world.

So why isn’t the world getting changed? If ideas are everywhere, so are people who don’t execute those ideas. Paul wasn’t going to be one of those people who wouldn’t follow through; he called it being obedient to the vision from Heaven. He received a picture from the Lord, and then spent the rest of his life passionately completing the assignment God had given him.

In business and the arts, this follow-through is often what separates those who dream about getting things done and those who actually do it. In the Kingdom, it is what separates those who are obedient or disobedient to God’s voice.

Do you have a vision—a God-given picture of something that will change your world? Start pouring your energy into it. If God is in it, He will provide the resource to make it happen. But we are still called to work. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3 that God makes a seed grow, but we are responsible to plant and water and cultivate to create conditions for healthy growth to happen.

And what if you think you have a vision from God, but you find out later that you somehow “missed” it—you were wrong? I’ve always said that I want to give my whole life to following the voice of Jesus, even if I find out later that I got something wrong. In other words, I believe God will honor attempted but misdirected obedience, but I don’t believe He work’s much through the lives of those who think they are hearing Him, but who won’t respond to those impressions.

The Holy Spirit changed the world through Paul because he was available to follow God at every turn, and was totally sold out to everything he understood he was hearing from the Lord. I don’t think its rocket-science: We obey what God says (the vision) the best we possibly can…and then God makes it grow!