God’s Vision, Your Unique RoleSample

As a Christian, Jesus Christ ought to be the foundation of your life or your soul’s sole passion. If your foundation is sound, you can build upon it. The next step for the Christ-follower is to construct the ground floor of his or her life—the mission of life. The ultimate mission of life is to bring honor and glory to God. How that works itself out in the individual Christian’s life can look different. But every follower of Jesus must intentionally put together a vision for life. Your soul vision is like the superstructure of an intentional life.

Let’s first consider some faulty visions one might consider pursuing.

Length of Life: A long life gives you a longer time to accomplish your vision, but life lacks a longevity guarantee, and even an abundance of years does not guarantee a worthy vision.

Abundance of Possessions: A definition of the future shaped merely by the abundance of possessions blurs lofty life vision. The wealthy experience a different kind of misery, but it is misery indeed.

Form of Appearance: A vision that sets its sights on beautiful appearance doesn’t validate life. While fine clothing allows others to admire you, an enviable wardrobe doesn’t help you view yourself rightly.

Breadth of Power: Gaining influence and keeping control drives power mongers but is not a worthy vision for life. Your vast connections can make life for others, but they cannot reliably make life for yourself.

Size of Budget: Increasing the budget by a certain percentage each year often becomes a force for living. What a defective gauge of effectiveness! Budgets, like fast money, are imaginary, ephemeral figures.

Rate of Growth: Goals can motivate and facilitate action toward evaluation of accomplishment, but there is no point establishing rates of growth without a valid, ultimate umbrella vision for personal, family, and vocational life.

Pace of Life: Some equate motion with meaning and mistake activity for purpose. A fast pace in a tough race without direction doesn’t bring you the gold medal. You may win at work with busyness but lose life in the process.

Are you tempted to orient your life around one of these faulty visions?