VisioneeringSample

“Connected to the Source”

Several years ago, Sandra and several of her friends felt a burden for the young women in our church. Sandra asked if they could pursue beginning a women’s ministry built around the idea of older women mentoring younger women.

I thought it was a great idea. So I began asking her questions about how she was going to go about setting up this ministry.

She didn’t have answers to any of these questions, but she did have a great response for me. She said, “We would like to take a year to pray and plan.”

A year? They wanted to wait an entire year before launching the women’s ministry? In church work, this is unheard of. Customarily, you start before you are ready. You publicize it before you have staffed it. Then you spend years complaining about how nobody is committed anymore.

But for twelve months Sandra and her team prayed and planned. At the end of the year they went public with their plans. And from day one it was evident that God had given them a strategy. I sat back in amazement as this team mobilized and trained the older women in our congregation. Then with what had to be divine guidance, they paired younger women with older ones. We heard story after story of how the women they put together were a perfect match.

God knew how to launch a women’s ministry in our church. He just needed somebody to step up to the plate and wait for the right pitch.

A divine vision is not dependent upon us making something happen. It is dependent upon God making something happen. Jesus explained it to his disciples in terms of branches abiding in the vine in order to bear fruit.

To which we are tempted to respond, “Now, wait, certainly I can do something.” True. But nothing of any eternal consequence. And yet God’s vision for your life or mine is chock-full of eternal consequence.

When left to our own ingenuity, we can foul up a vision in short order. But God’s work, done in God’s way, in God’s time, is always successful. And it comes off in such a way as to point back toward the source: God.

Think about what it would look like for you to stay connected to God so you can carry out his vision according to his plan.