You must actively cultivate a clear vision from God rather than letting it fade into distraction or inaction. When you sense His call, respond with immediate obedience to ensure that purpose is fulfilled rather than lost in the wilderness. Take the step today to plant the seed of that vision in your life and trust Him to bring it to pass.
It's awesome to to see you all this morning. I have 1 little small correction to pastor David's story. It was actually my wife who led Blake in the prayer of salvation the other morning. I was getting donuts with Timothy, which I think was actually led by the spirit because that's not something we typically do. Timothy was up first in the morning.
I was up. I said, hey, bud. Let's go get donuts. And we came home. Blake meets me at the door.
He says, I'm on Jesus' team now. And so Christine was laying in bed with him that morning and she said that she was awake and it was quiet in the house and she asked the Holy Spirit, what do you wanna do? And he started putting the gospel in her brain and the only person around was Blake. So she just started telling him, and he was ready. So, it's it's awesome.
It's great to be here this morning on this stage. I do wanna just say the reason why I'm on this stage, some of you are new here. I I'm not the pastor of this church. Pastor David that was just on the stage is the pastor. I'm on the stage because pastor David read *Ephesians-4* and he decided to do it.
For those of you who who aren't familiar with what I'm talking about, it says that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers to equip the saints for the **works of ministry** to build up the church. Pastor David said, if that's what the bible says, it's probably a good idea to do. And so as the pastor of the house, you could argue that he's even gifted more strongly in some of those others, but that he said it's my job to equip the believers of this house for the works of ministry to build up the church. So that's what's happening this morning is pastor David has equipped me for the works of ministry, which is this, for building up the church, which is all of you. So you're seeing that picture in action this morning, and that's why I get to be on the stage.
Before we dive into it, I did also wanna just pause for a moment to honor my mom and my dad. My mom who's here, my dad will be listening to the podcast later. The bible says, "train up a child" in the way he should go. Even when he's old, he won't depart from it. Just like pastor David took that verse seriously, my mom and my dad took that verse seriously.
And they trained me in the Lord. They prayed for me. When I was just a baby, when I couldn't even understand the Lord yet, when I couldn't even walk and talk for myself, my parents would pray for me. I found out as an adult, my dad used to sit by my crib when I was a baby, and he used to he used to pray for me at night and told me that he would pray that the Lord's hand would be on me all the days of my life and that I would accomplish great things for the kingdom and for his glory. And so for church, for for anyone in this room that my life has touched, that my life has impacted, I want you to know that that started in my parents' prayers.
So I would could you join me this morning church in honoring my father and my mother? Thank you. So when pastor David asked me to speak, it was a few months ago he gave me today's date, and I asked him, okay. So what are we talking about? And he told me it's from the heart.
Whatever God tells you to speak on, that's what we're gonna speak on, which is actually a little bit harder, in my opinion, than just giving a topic. Then you just say, okay. I'll study that. I'll see what the Lord wants to pull out. But it's a very typical pastor David response.
Go ask him. Do whatever he says. Right? And in that, it's really healthy. I'll tell you church, it's very healthy to seek the Lord and say, what do you want?
What are you trying to do? And how do I come alongside and join you in that? After he gave me the date, my first thought was, well, maybe I'll jump into the Corinthians series. Right? That's what pastor David says.
When we don't have another topic on the on the schedule, we'll dive into Corinthians. So I was like, maybe I'll do that. I thought, maybe I'll take a whole chapter. We could we could shave like 6 months off the Corinthians series. It'll be awesome.
You know? For those who aren't laughing, find someone that is laughing and ask them about that later. They'll tell you they'll tell you all about it. Probably half the church wasn't here when we started that series. That thought, I'll tell you, that didn't come from the spirit.
That was that came from me and that is not what we're gonna be doing this morning. It's funny as I started to pray and seek the Lord on what what are we doing this morning. Long story short, we're gonna cover 1 verse today. So we're right on track. We're right on track.
And that verse is something that God has put in my heart over the past, I don't know, 5 years ago. He started to to unwrap the scripture for me and and show it to me in in new ways. And it really has become kind of like a guidepost in my life where it's it's a reference point that I keep coming back to. And it's informed a lot of the decisions that I've made, the thoughts that I've had. And the beautiful part we'll get to the verse in a second.
Don't worry. The beautiful part about the Lord shaping this message is that I believe this message is designed for today. Right? I'm not smart enough in my own just sitting by myself and thinking to know who was gonna be in this room this morning, who's gonna be sitting in these chairs. I could have guessed a few of you, but I I don't know.
I wouldn't have known who was gonna be here. Even if I knew who was gonna be here, I'm not smart enough to know what you're going through this morning and what word from the Lord you need to hear. But he is that smart. Right? He is that wise.
And so when we seek him and say, okay, God, what do you wanna share? We end up with this perfectly crafted message for the people that are here, for the situations that they're walking through, for this particular time. So I believe that's what we have this morning, and I'm really excited to share it with you. So the verse that we're gonna jump into is *Proverbs-29* verse 18. Like I said, this is a verse I've heard most of my life.
A lot of my life, I've heard this verse, and I've I've heard it worded something like this. Where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keeps the law, happy is he. And I've heard this verse over and over again. Heard this verse. Heard this verse.
About 5 years ago, God was bringing this verse back to my mind. And I was looking at it, and I was kinda like, what what does that mean? What does it mean that if I lack a vision or for lack of vision, the people perish? Like, that seems kind of extreme. Like, people stop seeing and they just die.
Like, that doesn't totally match with my with my experience, with my observations. It didn't quite fit. So a really helpful tip for you if you're just kinda starting to read the bible is is when there's a verse that maybe doesn't quite fit, doesn't quite make sense, a lot of times looking that verse up in another translation, the wording will be just a little bit different and will help shed light on, like, what's going on here. So if you look at that same verse in another translation, in this case, the ESV, it it reads very similar but just a little bit different. And it says, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
So the last part, very similar. But that middle part, from the first 1 *perishing* to the second 1 casting off *restraint* is different. And again, my first thought was, okay. That doesn't what does that mean? Perishing is equivalent to casting off restraint?
That doesn't that doesn't totally track either in my in my mind. And so I was asking the Lord, and what he began to show me is that those 2 things are very connected. And the more I feel like he drew it out for me, the more connection that I saw, I was reminded in preparation for this morning when I was putting this this part together, he reminded me of the Garden of Eden when God spoke to Adam and Eve and he said, you know, don't eat this fruit. In the day you eat of it, you will surely die. Right?
Similar wording there, surely die and perishing. And if you know that story, you know when they ate the fruit, they didn't physically die immediately. But in a very real sense, they did start to die on the inside. *God* God's word in that moment was true, and when they ate of it, they began to die. They began to perish.
And I think we see that same thing here in this verse with casting off restraint. As we begin to lose vision, we begin to cast restraint off of our life, and we begin to perish and die in that same sense of when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and began to perish. And so in this verse, we see, wow, how significant is vision? Because I don't wanna die. I don't wanna "cast off restraint".
And you look at this verse, and on 1 half, you see this casting off restraint, the perishing. On the other side of the verse, it says, but blessed is he who keeps the law. Happy is he that keeps the law. And so you say, okay. Well, I wanna live on that side.
Right? Who does who if you had to choose, who would not choose, like, let's live on the happy and blessed side and not on the, like, perish and die side. Right? Like, everybody would make that choice. And the problem is that it's it's just it's not that simple.
It doesn't work. The whole Old Testament, they had that promise of keep the law and you'll be blessed. Keep the law and you'll be blessed. And for, you know, thousands of years, you can't do it. You can't just keep the law by yourself.
You fall into this spot of casting off *restraint* and perishing. And when God was really starting to break down this verse and draw these truths at, that's where I felt like I was in my life. I felt like I was in this spot of I want to keep the law. I was genuinely born again at this point. I was following the Lord.
But there was this tension between I want to keep the law. I want to live this way, but I keep kind of finding myself casting off restraint in various areas where the *discipline* is is like, want to be disciplined. I want to have restraint on my life, but I keep kinda casting it off. And what God was showing me is it it's this vision. Now, like you saw in that last section, it says prophetic vision, which if you've been around here for a while, that probably is kind of comfortable language to you at this point.
But if you're not, you might say, what is that? And so I'll just very simply prophetic vision. And if you look it up in the amplified, it clarifies. Prophetic vision is really *revelation* of *God* and revelation of his word. And so what we see is when we don't have a revelation of God and we don't have a revelation of his word, we begin to cast off that strain restraint in our life.
And that's where I found myself. You know, if you've read Romans-7, Paul talks about, you know, this war within me of the good things that I wanna do, I can't do, and the bad things that I don't wanna do. I keep finding myself doing those things over and over and over again. And how do I solve this problem? And that's really what God was showing me in this verse.
So we're gonna go into it in a little more detail. I've got some examples and other things. Before we do that, I just wanna take a moment to pause and pray because I believe God wants to do some things this morning, and so I wanna invite him in to be able to do what he wants to do. So Holy Spirit, we just thank you. We thank you for what you're already doing.
*God*, thank you for this word this morning. Thank you, God, for the life change that you're gonna bring out as we catch this vision, Lord. As we catch what you're trying to communicate to us in this verse, we grab hold of it, and we run with it, Lord. I just pray for everything that you're trying to do this morning that it would be accomplished. Holy Spirit, we just we welcome you into this place.
In Jesus' name, amen. And so where I wanna go with this is I think there's 2 main traps that we can fall into when it comes to trying to walk this thing out. And these are these are the things that God was showing me. The first, which I'll talk about first, is a lack of vision. The second is a lack of action.
And so both are important, but I'm gonna start with vision because that's where this verse starts. And this is where I would say the real, if you wanna call it a breakthrough with this verse came for me, is God took this verse where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint, and he flipped it around for me. And instead of reading where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint, if you flip it around, the verse says, where there is vision, revelation of God, revelation of his word, the people put on restraint. And that flipped in my brain, where there you can see that, oh, if I lose vision, I cast off restraint. But what he showed me is when you catch vision, you put on restraint in your life.
And that was kind of this, like, this key moment. And if you think about he showed me this picture of an Olympic athlete that's training for this medal, or we've got Keith Lynch training for a marathon. Right? They put on extraordinary levels of discipline and restraint in their life because they have this *vision* of achieving a gold medal or a certain time in a race. Right?
They wake up before the sun is even, you know, risen. They work out sometimes hours a day. They count every calorie, every gram of protein, every gram of fat. Right? They're so meticulous and disciplined because they're so captivated by the vision.
That Olympic athlete that puts on that restraint for years because they have that vision of a gold medal. There's a story about Michael Phelps, who's a famous Olympian. You probably all know him. There was a 5 year period in his life where he trained every single day, 365 days a year. I guess if it was 5 years, there's a leap year in there too.
So that year, he trained 366 days. Right? Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday, every day he trained because he was so captivated by that goal of the prize. But my question for you and the question kinda God asked me is, for me, if I have no vision of winning a gold medal, if I have no vision of running a marathon in 2 hours and 45 minutes like Keith, right, There is no way that I would be able to carry the same *restraint* and discipline in my life that they're carrying. If I tried to say, okay, I'm gonna leave the vision over there.
I don't have that vision. But I'm gonna write down everything they do, and I'm gonna start doing it. I'm gonna copy their their life. I'm gonna set my alarm for 4AM. I'm gonna count every carb.
I'm gonna do every single thing that they're doing. How long do you think that that would last? How long would I be able to do that? Probably like less than a week. Right?
Like maybe 2 days and I I hurt and I quit and I'm dehydrated and in the hospital. Right? It's like without the vision, we cannot hold the weight. We can't hold the restraint. We can't hold the discipline.
It's too heavy. But when we catch vision, and again, in this sense of the vision we're talking about is when we catch a revelation of *God* and when we catch a revelation of his word, we willingly put on restraint in a way that it's not heavy. Right? It's not we don't just cast it immediately back off because it's coupled with a correspondingly big vision. And so we see this same athletic imagery in first Corinthians, and you should see this on your screen.
This is Paul talking. He says, do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only 1 receives the prize? So "run that you may obtain it". Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
So I do not run aimlessly without vision. I do not box as when beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself would be disqualified. And so most of you have figured out where I'm going with this. Probably all of you have figured out where I'm going with this.
Just in the same way that in in the physical sense, it's very easy for us to understand. Okay. Mark is not an Olympian. He will not live like an Olympian. Right?
It's very easy for us to see in the physical that *vision* and discipline are closely coupled. In the spiritual sense, it is the same way. We must catch this vision of the Lord, this revelation of who he is, this revelation of what he said about us and who we are, this revelation of his word and what he's calling us to accomplish so that we can hold the corresponding discipline. Right? And I've sat I've myself been here, and I've sat with other men who said, man, I just feel so undisciplined in my life.
I want more discipline. You know, I I'm I'm lazy, or I watch too much TV, or I spend too much time in recreation. I want more discipline. And the problem is when we try to put more discipline on ourselves without vision, we throw it off every time. So we have to start with vision.
Pastor David shared that I I I shared this message on Thursday night. I practiced at Bart's house. Alex David and and pastor David were there. And Alex told me, he said, hey, you gotta remember, statistics say that people are only gonna remember about "2 to 5%" of everything that you say on Sunday. And I was like, thanks to you, Alex.
That's very encouraging to me. So we got a Barnabas over here, just a son of encouragement. But if you are going to remember 2 to 5% of this message, let this be 1 of that maybe this is 1 of the percents, is *discipline*. Instead of being super focused on discipline and wow, I'm lacking discipline. I add need to add more discipline.
Let that casting off restraint in your life be like a little "check engine light" in your car that says something's off. Right? And the answer that your first thought, what it probably is right now is I'm undisciplined. I need to add more discipline. I want us to recalibrate that when that check engine light comes in, wow, I feel like I'm casting off restraint.
I need to be more disciplined. That our our thinking changes to know, I need to catch a vision of God. I need to have a deeper revelation of him. I need to have deeper revelation of his word because the problem is not primarily a discipline problem. The problem is primarily a vision problem where if we saw him clearly, if we saw him who he is in all of his glory, in all of his beauty, in all of his worth, right, as we sung this morning that he is holy and our lives can sing this over and over again, when we see him like that, we add the discipline to our life and it's not heavy.
Right? Even this week preparing for this message, right, if you look at the if you look at the screen time on my phone, you look from 1 week ago to this week, it dropped like 40% or something. Right? I wasn't trying to look at my phone less, but I knew what God wanted to do this morning. And so I put discipline, extra discipline above and beyond what I normally carry on my life this week so that I could be prepared, that I could be ready, that I could meet God in what he's already doing.
And the *discipline* was added to my life, I'll say without me trying. I wasn't thinking about that. God brought it to my mind during boiler room of, hey, check your screen time. And it wasn't bad before, but you could visibly see the discipline, but it came from vision, not from me trying to be more disciplined. So that's the first point.
Right? Is that let that be that light check engine light in your car that says, I need fresh vision. I need to see him. The second trap that we can fall into well, actually, before I move to the second trap, I wanna paint you a little bit of a picture. We're gonna use a couple bible characters.
We're gonna make a little spectrum of vision across the stage here. So on this side, we're gonna say, this is like the "no vision side". This is the perishing, the death, the no fun side. And we're gonna say Samson is standing right here. Alright.
Samson in the bible, for those of you who know, before he was even born, says the angel of the Lord came to his parents and told him, I'm gonna use this man to save the people of Israel from their enemies. He had great vision and purpose spoken over his life. But as he began to grow and walk it out, he lost sight of God and of that vision. There were very specific instructions placed on his life of what you cannot do, what you need to do and not do because of the correspondingly heavy vision. Samson lost sight of the vision, and he became spiritually blind, and he started casting off each 1 of those rules, each 1 of those special things that was placed on his life to match the vision that he was given, he began to cast them off 1 at a time because he lost sight.
It goes to a point where we I believe we have the verse on the screen. It gets to the end of the story. This is after his hair was cut, the last restraint was cast off. And Delilah says, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. Says he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.
But he did not know that the Lord had left him. He had become so spiritually blind that he was not even aware that the presence of God was gone. Right? And we know that eternal life is knowing him. Right?
So he was not living. He had not seen God maybe in years. Right? Because he wasn't even aware when the spirit left him. So he was blinded physically first.
He cast off restraint. But then if we move to the next verse, it says, the Philistines seized him. So that's the enemy of God's people parallels today to the spiritual enemies that we face. Seized him, gouged out his physical eyes, blinded him physically. He was spiritually blinded first, blinded physically second, and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in prison.
And so, physically, on this side of the stage, the no fun, no vision side, right, we see spiritually and physically blind Samson in bondage to the enemy, spending his life walking around in circles like an animal. Right? Perishing, like that verse said. If we move to the other side, we'll call this kind of the vision side of the stage. Nothing to do with you and the audience.
Just I'm just you doing the example up here. I think you get that. On this side, it was coming to my mind thinking about Moses. We look in Hebrews-11, and it talks about Moses. And it says, by faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God.
So he chose restraint. He put on that he would be mistreated rather to than to cast off restraint and enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt not being afraid of the anger of the king. And this is the part that stood out to me.
For he endured as seeing him who is invisible. It says Moses endured because he saw *God*. He saw God and he endured. If you look to the next chapter of Hebrews, we see the same very similar thing in Jesus himself. It says, this is probably familiar to many of you also.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that was set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And so we see this same thing in Jesus. It says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured. It's the same concept of that vision that when we see the vision, when we see God, when we see the purposes he's put in our life, we can endure the hardships. So that's the first kind of thing is that we that we endure.
And so I wanna ask you, kinda church, based on the spectrum, to think about in your mind, you don't have to shout it out, where you feel like you land. You know, on this side, maybe you feel that I have no vision of God. I feel like I'm walking around in circles every day. I feel like I'm in captivity to the enemy. I feel like I'm a slave, and I have no vision of God.
I have no way to break out of this. I just feel stuck here. You know, maybe some of you do feel like you're over here on this man, I see him. I have the clearest picture of God I've ever had in my life, and I'm running the race that's set before me. And that's an awesome place to be.
And my encouragement is to bring those that are on this side, bring them with you because it's so fun. I would say a lot of us, either now or maybe at our times in the past, have found ourselves sort of in this middle space. We'll call this middle space maybe like the King David space. Right? Where David, at certain points in his life, was so captivated by God.
Right? He looked a giant in the face, and he said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine who dares come across come against the armies of the Lord? He knew. He said, I've watched God. He's used me to kill the lion and the bear, and so who is this giant?
I'm gonna kill him too, and he did. Right? Then there's other times where David kinda turned his face this way. He lost he lost sight of the Lord. He he lost he stopped living on mission that he was called for.
There's that story where his men were out at battle, and he was supposed to be out at battle, and he stayed behind to enjoy the luxuries of of his kingdom. And he he began to compromise and cast off restraint. And in that story, we see him committing adultery, having this woman's husband killed in battle. Right? Really bad day in the life of king David because he lost vision and he cast off restraint.
And so we see in the life of David, and this, some of us feel this way. Many, I would say many of us have felt this way where we see *God* and there's like, it's awesome and we're we're living on mission and we're seeing him move and then we get distracted. We get caught up in the cares of the world. We get, we we just we get distracted. We lose vision.
We lose sight. We don't have a a new and and clear revelation of God and his word, and we start to cast off restraint and slide to this side in our life. And so, if you're in kind of this place, my encouragement is 1, you're in good company. The bible still described king David as a man after God's own heart. And my encouragement is when you feel yourself here, like that little check engine light, a little 1% I asked you to remember.
When you feel yourself here, let it remind you to turn back to Jesus and renew the vision so that we slide towards this side of the stage, not towards the no vision death side. Right? So when we find ourselves here, let it be that pressure in our chest where we say, I need him. I need to see him and let it make us turn. Right?
Amen. So the second thing, that's part 1, vision. Step 2 is putting on the restraint. So like I said, it starts with vision. It always starts with vision.
But it has to translate to action in our life. The principle is there. Where there is vision, people will put on restraint. It's a good principle, but we actually have to do it. We actually have to take the step of putting the restraint on our life and taking the action steps that God has called us to take.
And so the quickest way to kill vision is to do nothing with it. When we receive a word from the Lord and we do nothing with it, the enemy comes in and they'll snatch it right back. Right? There's a quote that says, vision without action is delusion. Right?
When we get vision from the Lord, we must translate it to action. And so the story that I have with this is is in the book of Nehemiah. For those of you who are going through SLT, it's gonna be very familiar to you. I never really thought about Nehemiah that much before I went through spiritual leadership training with doctor Leon, but he talks about it often, and now I think about it often. So in the book of Nehemiah, the Israelites were taken away to captivity before Nehemiah came on the scene.
They were in captivity for a while. The walls around the Jerusalem were completely destroyed. A remnant came back into Jerusalem, and they were living in Jerusalem for, like, 13 years. The wall remained broken down. The enemy was able to come in at will, "steal, kill, destroy".
It was a bad situation. They had no *vision* to rebuild the wall. It lay in ruins. But then Nehemiah came on the scene and he had this vision for rebuilding the wall. He communicated it to the people in such a way that they were able to grab hold of it and it says that they put their hands to the good work and they did action.
They caught the vision, it caused hope to rise, and they thought, wow, that would be great if we did have a wall. But it didn't stop there. If it had stopped there, there would still be no wall around Jerusalem. They the people grabbed the vision and it moved into action. And it says, they put their hand to the good work and they rebuilt the wall in 52 days.
And then the enemy could no longer come into their city, steal, kill, destroy. They had protection from the enemy because they received vision, they took action, and they rebuilt the wall. This is similar when when God started to to break down this verse for me. When I started coming to Real Church, there were areas of my life where my wall was broken down. Where the enemy was coming in, stealing, killing, destroying.
Right? There were temptations that I just didn't have an answer to. The wall was broken, and the enemy could come in and just do whatever he wanted. That's the way it felt. Through real church, through some of the people that are here, and this is take note of this, *God* uses his body to restore vision.
Right? So like the Israelites, they had no vision in themselves to rebuild the wall until Nehemiah came and he spoke the vision. So in the church, sometimes we're sitting there with no vision, and someone in the church speaks the vision, and our heart leaps with hope. Maybe for some of you, that's happening right now. Maybe that's happening this morning for some of you.
When I came to real church, I I had areas that were broken down, And there were men in this church that loved me well. First 1 that comes to mind is Jerry Hunter. Right? Jerry, you guys, Jerry has made such an impact on this church. I remember sitting with Jerry Hunter.
Those of you who met with him, you knew his little table in the corner over at Vino Tinto in Safety Harbor. I was sitting there at that that table with him early 1 morning. We opened the bible, Romans-8:1. I've probably read that verse a 100 times in my life, but it was like the first time I ever read it sitting there with Jerry. It says, there is therefore now no *condemnation* to those who are in Christ Jesus.
And the revelation of God and the revelation of his word washed over me. And that that accusation, that condemnation that the enemy had been bringing against me was defeated, like, in a moment. And I'm sitting across from Jerry Hunter, man, I saw the Lord. And that wall in my life was rebuilt because I he spoke vision to me, and I saw it, and I caught it, and the wall was rebuilt, and the enemy wasn't able to come into my life anymore in that area. Few months later from that, I was sitting in this this section right here.
Gabriel Mullens was standing on this stage, 2022. He preached a message called structure equals function. In that, he was talking about righteousness. And he said, righteousness is really 2 parts. There's **right being** and there's right doing.
And when we focus on the doing to try to get the being, it does not work. That is not how it's designed. That is not how it works. We have to start with the right being. We have to be able to stand before God and say, I know what you've said about me.
I know that I am righteous. I know that I'm the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus because of what you have already done. That it's not my right doing that yields my right being because I am already right. And then the right being flows out of a life. The right doing flows out of a life that is in right standing before the Lord.
And that word, again, I saw God in a new way, and I saw his word in a new way, and it rebuilt the wall in part of my life that I didn't have that vision before until Gabriel spoke it. And it awakened hope in my heart, and I rebuilt the vision in my life. Over the past few years, walking with pastor David, I've seen a life modeled after hearing from the Lord and saying, "yes, Lord". Right? Hearing him speak, asking him, being spirit led and spirit filled.
I've seen him model that. I've seen him model walking in integrity. I've seen him model all of these these things that it's like, man, God, I didn't have vision for that before, but now I saw it and I see it and I understand you more clearly and I wanna go run for it. And the wall was rebuilt in my life. Each there's probably 20 more examples that I could give you.
Another 1 that that really comes to mind, a big shift for me was when pastor David, pastor Courtney, the other leaders put Christine and me into leadership. Where that was a new weight, a new vision, a new thing that I had to that I wanted to carry. And I put on restraint in my life that I had never put on before so that I could carry the weight of the mission that God wanted me to live out. And so when we get these *revelations* of God, it should raise hope in us, and then it should translate into action. So the walls of our life get rebuilt, and the enemy does not continue to come in and steal and kill and destroy.
But we have a choice. When that new vision is spoken, we can choose, do I act on it? Like pastor David was talking about a minute ago. We go into this valley of decision. Am I gonna act on it?
Or am I gonna say that was nice? And go right back to what we were doing before and we have to choose that. Day by day, step by step, we have to choose that. And we have to remember that the discipline, if we say that action, it's my responsibility, we put on discipline for discipline's sake. It will be too heavy to carry, and we will cast it off.
We start with vision. It translates into action, and we get to walk in freedom just like he said that his "yoke is easy" and his "burden is light" when it starts from that place of revelation of him and of his word. So I've got 1 more important thing before I close. And this is in leading up to this message, *God* began to just place a burden on my heart. And what I felt like he shared was, there's people that are gonna be sitting here this morning that are like, I got it.
Hear the vision. Put it into action. If I don't act, the vision's gonna die. And you feel like in your life, you have received vision for something. Maybe it's you're gonna go live on the mission field.
Maybe it's gonna you're gonna write this huge check to the church. Maybe it's you're going to see a family member come to know the Lord. There's some, like, vision that's placed on your heart, And you feel like maybe through circumstances, maybe through disobedience, maybe through something else, you feel like that vision has died. You feel like, man, God birthed this thing in my heart. I used to look at that thing and smile.
I used to daydream about, God, what is this gonna look like? And and you had excitement associated with that thing, but then it never happened. And now when you think about that thing, maybe there's sorrow or regret or or maybe you don't even think about it at all. Maybe you just said, hey. That thing's dead.
I'm gonna leave it over there, and I'm just I'm just not gonna get to experience that on this side of eternity. And it's it would have been nice, but it's dead. And that's been weighing on me because I believe there's people that are hearing this that feel that way about something. At boiler room, about a month ago, *God* gave me this picture again. But I saw this pile of dry bones next to the road, and I heard him say, I wanna breathe "fresh life" into those things.
I want those bones to get back up. I'm not done with that vision. I spoke that vision. I wanna fulfill that vision. I don't want my people to let it die.
I want them to hope again. We shared that word that night, and there were multiple people who I heard testimony afterwards with a very specific thing that said, that dream that I had, that vision that I had had died, and God breathed life back into it. And so I believe that that word was for that night, but I believe he gave me that word that night as a preview for today. That there's people that are sitting here that have something, and you know what it is. If you know if you feel something in your heart, you know what I'm talking about.
There's something there that has died that God wants to breathe life back into. I wanna tell you a quick story. About 2 months ago, I was with my my 2 boys, my 3 year old and almost 5 year old. We were at Legoland. There was a big wishing fountain right in the middle of the the the park, and there were a bunch of coins in it.
My son's asked me, what's the deal with the coins? So I told him, I said, if you find a coin, you throw it in the fountain, you make a wish. They're like, oh, that's cool. So we found a penny, and I gave it to my 3 year old, Blake. We walked up to the fountain.
I said, alright, buddy. Make a wish and throw it in. And he's just he kinda froze. He's like, I don't know what to wish for. I've got a penny.
That's pretty cool. But, like, I don't know what to wish for. And so I whispered in his ear. I said, buddy, wish for cotton candy. He got this huge smile on his face.
He said, I wish for cotton candy, and he threw it in the fountain. And then he looks at me. Where's my cotton candy? You know? And I laughed because there was a process.
There was a there was a process that had to take place. We had to go to the store. We had to buy the cotton candy. We had to get the cotton candy. I had to give them the money.
They had to give me the receipt. Right? There's like a process that had to take place from him throwing the penny in the fountain and then holding cotton candy in his hand. But he didn't understand that process. I told him, you know, we gotta go buy it.
So we're riding around in a stroller, and he's looking at every store. Can we go in there? I said, no. They don't have cotton candy there. Can we go in there?
Nope. They don't have cotton candy there. He eventually fell asleep in the stroller without any cotton candy. On on our way out of the park, the last store before we left, I said, I'm buying cotton candy. Right?
So when he woke up in the car on the drive home, I said, buddy, cotton candy. Right? But there was a period of time between when that vision was birthed in him and when he was holding the thing in his hand. Let me ask you this though. How weird would it have been if I didn't get him cotton candy?
Right? I was the 1 who told him to wish for cotton candy. He wasn't even thinking about cotton candy until I told him to wish for cotton candy. So how weird would it be as his father to put that vision in him to, like, then to not do it. It doesn't it's like it doesn't make sense.
And so when what what God was showing me with this story is some of you, there's vision that's been put in you. He put it there. So it would be weird for him to not ever give you the thing that he told you to wish for in the first place. It doesn't make sense. But there's a process between when we have that vision, we get that hope, we make the wish, the prayer, whatever you wanna call it, and then when we're holding the promise in our hand.
And so church, don't get discouraged if you're still in that process, but take hope. Know that he is the 1 who put it in there, that he is a good father, who when we ask him for bread, he doesn't give us a snake. That when we ask him for a good gift, that he put the desire in our heart to start with, he will do it. There may just be a process. So as church, don't get discouraged this morning, and please resolve in your heart.
Whatever that thing is that's coming back to your mind, that's burning in your chest, resolve in your heart that you will not die and go into the grave with that vision unfulfilled in your heart. The Israelites walked around in the wilderness for 40 years because of unbelief and fear and they never went in. They died in the wilderness, never going into the promise that God had for them. Church, please do not be like that. Take hold of the promise, resolve in your heart that you're not gonna perish in the wilderness, you're not gonna go into the grave with that unfulfilled vision.
So I'm gonna close really quick, and then we're gonna pray. So where do we go from here? The first thing is we need to cultivate this vision of God in our life. If you think about this sermon as bread, right, you just had a nice meal. Maybe you're feeling really good, you've got vision kinda coursing through the veins, right, your stomach will be empty by the end of the week unless you find a way to cultivate that with the Lord.
Where you find a way and you determine in your heart that, God, I'm going to see you, and I'm gonna find a way to see you regularly because I do not wanna walk around on an empty stomach. I do not wanna walk around with no vision casting off restraint in my life. We have to develop that habit, and it's gonna look a little different for each 1, but we have to develop that habit in our life that when we start falling into this middle space, we look back to him, and we get captivated by that fresh vision. The second thing is that when we catch that vision, we must act quickly. Right?
Delaying will lead to distraction, lead to inaction, will lead to that vision dying. We must respond quickly. 1 of the most significant things David has pastor David has said that that's affected me, most of you have heard this, **obedience is our success**. That changed me from the inside out where fear of man began to fall off. Other things began to fall off, and I said, God, what is the thing that you said to do?
And let me do it quickly. And so church, I encourage you when God speaks, when you do part 1, you get the vision, then you're on part 2. You've gotta do what he says. Even if it seems small and insignificant, we say, yes, Lord. We respond in obedience.
Right? We're in the business of planting seeds, not full grown full grown trees. We say, yes, Lord. We plant the seed. He does the watering.
He does the growth. But we say, yes, Lord, and we plant each seed as he tells us to. So I'm gonna invite the altar team to come forward. And there's 3 groups of people that I wanna pray for specifically this morning. And I'm gonna ask the altar team to kinda spread out The 3 specific people that I wanna pray for is those who feel like they're hanging out over here with Samson, that they have no vision in their life, that they are bound and chained by the enemy.
They have no power in their life to overcome. They're just walking around in circles. If that's you, if you feel like that I just described you and your life, I encourage you, challenge you to respond to this call of vision with action. And come to the front and the altar team will pray for you. I'll encourage those who wanna pray into that to come on to to this right side of the stage over here.
The second group I wanna pray for is this kind of middle that you know, man, there's areas of my life I've been casting off restraint. I've been trying to add more discipline and it's not working. And you need fresh vision. If that's you, I'd like you to come forward and find yourself kinda somewhere here in the middle, and we'll pray for you. The third group is those who resonate with the vision that has died, that you had a word from the Lord, and you believed it for a season, and now there was such a period of time between praying and holding the promise that you've gotten discouraged and you said, it's just not for me.
If that's you, I'd encourage you to come forward and go to this left side over here. So church, I'm gonna close. I'm gonna pray. I think pastor David's gonna close. Please, if this is resonating with you, remember part 2, we must respond to vision with action.
If we don't respond with action, the vision will die. So church, I encourage you, if this is resonating with you, to come forward. I'm gonna pray. Holy Spirit, thank you for this morning. Thank you for what you did.
Thank you for what you're going to continue to do. We love you, Lord. Help us to see you more clearly every day. Whenever we find ourself casting off restraint, feeling undisciplined, feeling like we're we're giving in to to the temptations or whatever that looks like in our life that we feel like we've lost vision. God, let us turn back to you and see you clearly, that we would get a fresh revelation of you and a fresh revelation of your word, and then we'd respond with, yes, Lord.
We thank you in Jesus' name.
Let's just honor what God spoke. Thank you, Jesus, for how you use this man of God today.