Your Individual Vision

by Mac Hammond | Uncategorized

The Bible tells us we are the people who have been chosen to rule and reign with Jesus. We are the Church which has been mandated to evangelize and disciple the world. This vision applies to everyone who is a part of the family of God.

There is also the matter of individual vision and destiny and callings which relate to your uniqueness as a human being. No two people have the same combination of gifts, talents, abilities and anointings. Yours are completely unique to you.

Therefore, God’s calling for you is different from His calling for anyone else. But we have to understand the general truths, the big picture we just talked about, to keep us on track.

What about your individual callings? The Bible does not record whom you should marry, where you should live, whom you should work for, what your vocation should be, whether you should attend college or not and if so, where or what you should study. Those things are not in the Bible, but they are just as crucial to your effective functioning as a leader in the body of Christ.

You have to have answers to all of these specifics before you can meaningfully contribute to God’s overall purpose and communicate direction to anyone else. But if the Bible doesn’t tell you the answers, where do you go for them?

Getting Your Vision
How are you going to get the vision for your life, and how will you fit into the larger vision of God’s plan? Paul answered the same questions for the Corinthian believers: But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him (1 Cor. 2:9).

Paul is saying that you cannot even imagine or comprehend, naturally speaking, the things God has prepared for you. He has a marvelous destiny planned just for you. It is so unique that He says no eye has seen it nor ear heard it.

In other words, you are not going to discover this divinely appointed destiny in college or at a business seminar. Your best friend will not be able to advise you on what it might be. Even your parents do not have a clue. Because eye has not seen it and ear has not heard it, you cannot even imagine it. That is how magnificent God’s plan for your life is. It is mind-blowing, I know, but we need to have our minds blown.

“Well, Pastor,” you say, “if we cannot even conceive of it, how do we discover it?”

Verse 10 says, But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s ministry in your life lies primarily in the revelation of God’s plan for you. And that is the only way it will come – by revelation of the Holy Spirit. It will not come through any natural channel, through a book, a person or through any institution we as humans have cultivated or developed. It will come through the Holy Spirit.

In a nutshell, you receive the plan of God for your life as you yield to the Holy Spirit’s ministry: as you pray in tongues, as you sit before Him quietly, allowing Him to pray through you, combining and interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language. Remember, it is the Holy Spirit’s ministry to reveal God’s plan to you.

Spending The Time
Many management gurus from some of the largest corporations in the world mandate a period of time each day for their young, up-and-coming executives to engage in creative thinking. The world has learned the value of letting the imagination paint the vision on the canvas of the mind. How I pray the body of Christ would catch the importance of this principle – something the world has been using successfully for many years.

For the Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit, during your “creative thinking,” or meditation, God speaks to your heart about your life. It is when He will show you the things eye has yet to see and ear has yet to hear, and neither has entered the heart of man. It will blow you away.

His plan for your life is great and grand and wonderful. Only within the scope of His plan will you find the greatest measure of contentment, the greatest measure of satisfaction and the greatest measure of success in life. But you have to have the plan first. And that comes only by spending time with the Lord.

So if the vision for your life isn’t clear, simply spend more time quietly in the presence of the Lord, yielding to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and it will become clear. He might not show it to you all at one time. That would probably blow you out of the water! There may seem to be gaps here and there, but be faithful to take what He does give you and believe it. You will receive it.

Mary Had It Right
Believing what God shows you is as important as believing the written Word of God. We have little trouble looking at the Scriptures and saying, as Mary did, “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). But when we are in the prayer closet and He gives us ideas by the Holy Ghost, we may start second-guessing ourselves.

We may say, “I don’t know if that’s really God. That’s pretty big. I don’t have that much education. I don’t know if I have that kind of clout.” We begin questioning what is just as important for us to receive by faith as the written Word of God.

When the Holy Spirit begins to reveal God’s plan, say, “Be it done unto me, Lord, according to Thy Word. If You say that’s for me, then I choose to believe it.” You might say, “How do I know that was from God? It could have been my flesh. Maybe I just thought it up. Maybe it was the devil!”

Well, there is a really easy test to determine whether or not what you are sensing is from the Lord or from your carnal nature. Those are the only two possibilities. It comes either from your carnal mind, which is at enmity with God (Rom. 8:7), or from the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Gratification and Glory
How do you know which is which? The way you can always tell if you’re sensing God’s Spirit or your own carnal nature is by how much self-gratification is involved. If the desire or the idea is intended to benefit principally you, then it is not from the Lord. If, on the other hand, it has a wider impact that reaches out to touch others and change them, taking the gospel to the world, then it is the Lord. It’s that simple.

I am not suggesting that God will never lead you in a direction which benefits you personally. Healing falls into that category. But why do you want to be healed? The Bible says, Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts (James 4:3). Once you have asked in faith, you still might not receive what you have asked for if your motive is purely self-concern.

If the only reason you want to be healed is to be a comfortable couch potato with no pain, or so you can go out and do a little partying, then you are asking with the wrong motive. God wants you to be healed so you can testify to others of His goodness and His love, influencing them for the cause of Christ.

Why are you asking the Lord to prosper you? Is it so you can retire early and buy what you want? Or is it so you can truly have a greater impact for the Lord, supporting missionaries or feeding the poor?

What are your underlying motives? If you really want to know whether the things that come to you in your quiet time are truly of the Holy Ghost or not, ask yourself, “Who does it primarily benefit? Does it bring glory to me or to God? How will it affect souls?” Be honest with yourself, because God knows your heart.

If the honest answer is, “Lord, this is something I see bringing increase to your Kingdom,” then it’s of Him.

A Purpose and a Destiny
As you pray in the Holy Spirit and open your heart to God, you have to have the understanding that there is a divinely appointed destiny for each one of us. You have to be looking for it.

That is why many Christians, Spirit-filled people, never seem to know where they are going. They do not realize that this is one of the primary ministries of the Holy Spirit – to reveal God’s plan to them so their vision is meaningful.

As you pray in the Holy Ghost in your private devotional time, expecting Him to show you things about your life – where you fit into ministry, what your role should be and so forth – ideas will start coming to your mind. A dream will start forming in your heart, a dream that will propel your life and motivate you the way nothing ever has before.

If this were a process all Christians deliberately pursued, there would be a lot fewer of them getting in the wrong place and being disappointed, failing here because they missed God or failing there because nothing came together.

The Holy Spirit is faithful to reveal His plan to you. He will make that dream so real on the inside of you that you can’t stand it. It will become etched on your heart in a way that drives you toward your goal. You will have supernatural impetus behind you.

I am saying all this because I have met so many people who loved God and were filled with gifts and talents and abilities. They desired to be a meaningful part of what God is doing in the earth but never seemed to fit, never seemed to succeed, because none of these principles were clear to them.

You have to understand vision; you have to see the big picture. You are being groomed for eternal administration and management of God’s creation. Dispensationally, we define our administrative efforts within the framework of evangelism and discipleship, and you have a specific place to fit into that plan.

You are not going to know where you fit, however, unless it is revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. You must spend time on a regular basis, sitting in His presence, praying in the Spirit, letting Him reveal the dream as well as His plan for unfolding it. When you do that, you will be prepared to take steps in the right direction.

Source: Positioned For Promotion by Mac Hammond
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers

Mac Hammond is the senior pastor of Living Word, a large and growing church in Brooklyn Park (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. He is the host of the Winner's Minute, which is seen locally in the Minneapolis area on KMSP Channel 9 at 6:44 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. He is also the host of the Winner's Way broadcast and author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.

Between 1970 and 1980, Mac was involved in varying capacities in the general aviation industry, including ownership of a successful air cargo business serving the Midwestern United States. A business acquisition brought the Hammonds to Minneapolis, where they ultimately founded Living Word in 1980 with 12 people in attendance. Today, after 40 years, that group of twelve people has grown into a church body of more than 10,000 members.

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