Making the Most of an Abundant Life: Vision

Making the Most of Life: Vision
Matthew 10:5-15

INTRODUCTION:
From 1923 to 1985, Robert Woodruff was president of Coca-Cola. He wanted Coke to be available to every American serviceman around the world for five cents, no matter what it cost the company. That was a bold vision! But it was nothing compared to the bigger picture he could see in his mind’s eye. In his lifetime, he wanted every person in the world to have tasted Coca-Cola. When you look deep into your heart, and soul for a vision for God’s glory, what do you see?

A US advertising executive named Bill Backer and songwriter Billy Davis took a song from Great Britain by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and created a song for Coca-Cola titled “I’d like to Buy the Word a Coke.” It came out in November 1971. That ad became one of the best loved and most influential ads in TV history, according to Campaign magazine in 2007. Coca-Cola received 100,000 letters praising the ad campaign.

In Psalm 115:5, the psalmist speaks of idols and states, “They have eyes, but they cannot see.”

That is the explanation of many failures in life. Eyes that cannot see!

Some people are intellectually blind - though they look, they do not see. The trouble with others is that their eyes are in the back of their head. All they can really see is the past; they have no vision for the future.

God sets many wonderful things in front of us - glorious occasions, lucrative opportunities, worlds to conquer - if we will open our eyes and see them. The one whose vision extends the farthest is often the one who outlives the other.

Having a godly vision can give us a new perspective on the world. The great possibilities that are just ahead. It is the ability to see something big come from what seems little and inconsequential - this is seeing opportunity.

Discernment - used 40 times in the Bible - is the ability to draw conclusions based on an impartial comparison. It is also the ability to see with independent ideas, which guards us from the rut of blind prejudice. It is also the faith which sees the unseen! It gives us the power to see a new beginning for every ending we experience in life. We call that “hope.”

GODLY VISION CAN GIVE US ANOTHER WORLD:
An old Indian legend about a father and his three sons. He pointed to a high mountain many miles away and ordered the boys to climb up the mountain as far as they could and to bring back something from their adventure. One son returned with an unusual flower. The second came back with a rare rock. The third returned and said, “I climbed to the top and I brought back a vision of the sea.”

That really is the most important of all. If you have vision, you can cultivate flowers and collect the rocks. For these Native Americans, it led them to build canoes and sail to a more fruitful and habitable island. If they had not had vision, their lives would have been restricted.

When Christopher Columbus’s crew threatened to take his life and turn back, he swore that he would show them land if they would wait a few more hours. Before the time expired, land appeared on the horizon. Was it luck? Not at all. It was the reward of a character of determination and brilliant observation. He had noticed bits of grass floating on the waves, and he knew they could not be far from the land that grew the grass. Discovering the new world was not a stroke of luck, but rather the culmination of vision, courage and observation. Those are the roots of all great achievements.

Jesus was, of course, the most visionary man the world has ever known. His vision embraced the whole world for the sake of the world. He said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature…” (Mark 16:15). That is vision! The kind that will provide a new world! How are we going to carry that vision into Swartz Creek in 2024?

WE NEED GODLY VISION:
The Bible says, “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…” (Gal. 6:10). But it takes vision to see the opportunities. We actually “create luck” when we see opportunity.

Charles Goodyear suffered many disappointments in his experiments to make rubber usable. Once, people were ridiculing him, and he threw a handful of the sticky gum mixed with sulphur onto a hot stove. When he attempted to scrape it off, he found that it had charred. He had made weather-proof rubber! It is one of history’s most famous accidents. But Goodyear maintained that the incident had meaning only for the man “whose mind was prepared to draw an inference.” That’s vision!

There is an old saying that “Fortune favors the bold.” But the bold can’t do anything without vision. No one can honestly say, “I’ve had hard luck all my life.” There was good luck ahead, but that person likely failed to recognize it. If so, it seemed so far beyond his reach that he wouldn’t shorten the distance by stepping toward it. Vision is valueless, if it is unaided by courageous aspiration.

WE NEED TO SEE IN ORDER TO DISCERN:
The Bible teaches us that we need to have our “senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:14). We need God’s insight to see beyond external appearances.

In another Indian story, the chief held out an acorn and asked his son what he saw. The son replied, “I see an acorn.” The father continued, “Where you see an acorn I see an oak.” There is a saying in missions studies and evangelism that you can count the seeds in an apple but you can’t count the apples in a seed. Perception should be applied to all the affairs of life.

The world has its good and its bad; and the ability to distinguish one from the other, especially in its early stages, is a needed, practical insight. Adam and Eve failed because they could not see past the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:6). They did not have the vision needed to obey God.

WE NEED TO SEE WITH UNBIASED EYES:
In Matthew 13:15, Jesus quoted from Isaiah 6:10 in referring to the Jews of His generation and said, “they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes.” Prejudice had closed their eyes and put them into a spiritual rut. But it is easy to see the truth when there is no commitment to error.

General Lew Wallace wrote Ben-Hur and before he did so, he made an intense study of the Bible. He said, “I was in quest of knowledge, but I had no faith to sustain, nor creed to bolster up… my vision not being clouded by previously formed opinions, I was enabled to survey it without the aid of lenses. I believe I was thorough and persistent. I know I was conscientious in my search for the truth. I weighted, I analyzed, I counted and compared.” He continued: “…at length I stood firmly and definitely on the solid rock…convinced… of the divinity of the lowly Nazarene who walked and talked with God.” Little Visits with Great Americans, pg. 303-304.

In was this vision that ennobled the Bereans and handed them down to immortality (Acts 17:11).

VISION IS SEEING THE UNSEEN:
It is through faith that we see the unseen. This was the vision of Moses of whom the Hebrew writer said, “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen” (Heb. 11:27). Moses will never be forgotten in the history of mankind - he could see a new world, new opportunity, the unseen.

Family, we need to open our eyes to what Swartz Creek church of Christ can do for others in the new year. We need to open our eyes to who and how and when and where the Swartz Creek church of Christ can share the gospel of Christ with those who need to hear it and obey it.

JESUS AS A VISIONARY:
With Jesus, the vision started within. He had come to earth to teach men how to honor God. He began teaching and people started following Him, so then He called a dozen of those men and gave them powers and sent them out with His vision. Let’s look at Matthew 10…

1. Focus - Notice verses 5-7.
2. Be equipped - Verse 8.
3. Trust - Verses 9-10.
4. Don’t wasted time on infertile soil - verses 11-15.
5. Understand the challenges - verses 16-20.

To find and fulfill your vision as a member of the Swartz Creek church of Christ, in addition to what we see in Jesus’ commission to the Twelve, let me suggest…

1) Measure yourself. What is your vision? What are your gifts or talents that God has given to you? Ask people around you to verbalize what they see your gifts are.

2) Write it down. Writing always clarifies our thinking. Write down your vision. Evaluate it, whether it is worth of your energy and skills and whether it glorifies God and His Son. Then pursue it.

3) Do a reality check. What impacts you on the inside? What makes you cry? What makes you dream? What gives you energy? What do you see in the Swartz Creek church of Christ that “isn’t,” but that could be?

2024 can be a great year for the church here, if we have all our members putting their vision into focus and then acting on that vision.

Take home message: What is your vision for your contribution to the health and growth of the Swartz Creek church of Christ? Let’s put it into reality.