The Vision

vi·sion

[ˈviZHən]

NOUN

The act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be…

I have been praying and thinking a lot lately about VISION… and in particular about the VISION that God has for Piper and my future.  I have always been one to look out into the future and dream about the vast possibilities out there in the coming years.  My last real vision after Bible College was to come home to California, move up north and start a church.  I had much of it planned out and written down in a very organized flowchart and timeline.  If you were to walk into the office in one of the back rooms in the little cluster house we rented upon our return from Oklahoma, you would have seen all those pages of organized and typed plans taped to the closet doors with an ever-growing smattering of hand written additions and/or refinements scribbled all over.

After having been in the organizational stages and leadership of some five or six new churches over the years, I had a lot of knowledge of what would work… and maybe just as important… what wouldn’t work.  If you combined that with my Bible and Pastoring classes and experiences at school, along with the various successful churches with different worship formats that we visited while in Oklahoma, you could say I was "locked and loaded" and ready for action!  I thought that I was ready for just about anything… EXCEPT for the depth of the attack on my lovely wife’s health!

Those initial visits to the Brain Health Center in San Francisco definitely caused me to put the brakes on all of our plans.  At that point the only thing that mattered was Piper, her needs, her care, her protection and everything I could do to see the Lord’s VISION of healing manifested in her.

So here we are today, some eight years after that first trip up and down the hills of San Francisco, and the VISION… well, it has slowly become like the experience of trying to see the bay through the fog that was slowly rising and blurring our vision from the medical offices at the top of the Hill at 45 Castro Street in the City.

So yeah… I’ve been talking to God a lot about my attempts to catch even a fleeting view of the VISION that He has for us in the months and years to come.  Then to add to the jumble, we will be saying our farewells to our oldest daughter and her husband as they pack up and head off to their new home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma at the end of this week.  We’ve known about the potential of the move for quite some time and in reality, are quite happy for them.  I strongly believe that it is a good move for them and the future plans that God has for them.  They will be moving in close proximity to our younger daughter and her husband and only an hour or so away from our youngest son and his wife who live near Oklahoma City.

We’ve always said that even though our family has been spread out all over the country for the last twelve years, that some day “soon” we would all be living near each other again.  I was just kind of praying that it would be here in North Carolina!  But we shall see!

As for Piper and me… well, I have NO leading and/or peace, or desire to leave what I consider to be our new home on the east coast.  That could very easily change in the future (I remember saying that we would never leave California again, and look at us now!), but for today we are here to stay!  I really like living here.  I like almost everything about our home and property, our neighbors, the small friendly country towns around us and the wonderful support group for Piper and I that we have developed here.  I also do not think it prudent to move Piper in her current condition… The thought of another physical move and all it entails also tends to send shivers up and down my spine!

So… what about a VISION for our future?  Like I said earlier, I’ve been spending much time in prayer and fellowship with Papa God to get HIS view on our future… because HIS is the only one that really counts for Piper and me!  Following a night of prolonged honest and open conversation with the Father the other night, I was talking to Piper at breakfast when I suddenly saw in my mind’s eye, the words penned by EW Kenyon that I had recently read in his book “In His Presence.”  They read: “Faith will lead you where reason cannot walk.”  And were followed by the thought that “Reason has never been a mountain climber. (But) Faith, like a mountain sheep, can scale the loftiest mountain peaks without fear.”

Well, to say that those words were like drinking an ice-cold bottle of Gatorade after mowing our property on a hot and muggy summer day would be a vast understatement!  As I meditated on those words and then repeated them aloud for Piper to hear, I was filled with a sudden calm and peace… that “peace, which goes beyond anything we can imagine, (that) will guard your thoughts and emotions through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7 God’s Word ©) 

Whew!  What can I say after all that?  For while I still didn’t have any particular directions or answers to the multitude of questions that I had been talking to God about… I had HIS word that it was going to be HIS perfect plan, direction and VISION for us to follow!  I was also encouraged and comforted at the same time in knowing that it was going to be a plan that defies reason as we walk, once again, in faith into new places where reason cannot follow… Hummm… here we go again!

So… we’ll see, won’t we?  But what about you and HIS plan and VISION for your future?  Where are you at in knowing and following HIS leadings for you in the years to come?  I’ll give you a little help… check out and begin to meditate on a scripture found at the end of the book… in Revelation 12:11.  We’ll talk about the answers it gives to us in our next post, as we seek to be right in the middle of HIS best for you and me

Have a great rest of the week, and as you do, keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting God’s VISION of my future to be?”