Vision

“ This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth.” 1 Tim. 2:4

• What happens when God’s vision is not followed?

People are scattered like sheep without a shepherd when God’s Vision is not followed. If there’s divergence in vision, there’s division. If there’s a one-man vision, it smells cultist and dictatorial. If there’s no man’s vision but a common focus on God’s vision, there’s unity. Many long to see revivals in churches. They want the church to revive because they presuppose that it is dead.Why is it that many of our churches are “dead”, not blessed and Spirit-led? What should be done to remediate?

A church whose vision is not Evangelism will go through much pain. God’s church is Christ’s bride and its mission is to bear children of God. One of the reasons why God established the church was to be God’s voice to the world and a breeding place for evangelism.

“God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Eph. 3:10

• Man’s vision for the church

Many books have been written and many elders tried giving answers to the ailments infecting our churches. The Evangelical church will argue that the church should be more structured in order to put things in order. The Pentecostal church will argue that more emphasis should be laid on the manifestation of the Spirit. Others will argue that there should be more bible study programs or prayers and fastings. While most of these arguments have their degrees of truths, they still miss God’s vision for the church. Christ’s primary command was to “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” This has been the early church’s mission and the goal of the apostles. The Spirit powerfully equipped believers in the Book of Acts in order to accomplish Christ’s vision. The church was functioning well and had everything in common because the vision was the same.

• Consequences of not following God’s vision

 ^“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Proverbs 29:18

Adam Clarke quoted from the Vulgate and translated this verse as such: “Where Divine revelation, and the faithful preaching of the sacred testimonies, are neither reverenced nor attended, the ruin of that land is at no great distance“.
Matthew Henry: “The people are made naked, stripped of their ornaments and so exposed to shame, stripped of their armour and so exposed to danger. How bare does a place look without Bibles and ministers, and what an easy prey is it to the enemy of souls”

Contextually, if God’s divine revelation was not taught to the nation of Israel, the people would have perished. If the Gospel is not preached in our time, it will have double impact. Obviously, non-believers of the God of the bible will perish due lack of knowledge of the Savior. Secondly, believers will not be accomplishing God’s will. A lake which does not give water becomes a marshland. It eventually dies by its own water and rots by the organisms within. So it is when the gospel is not preached.

Many of our churches are sick and Christians are disorientated in their callings. They have been in the church for years and are still unaware of their calling, they do not know what God called them to do. This idleness has double impact – this christian does not grow in maturity and the church is not blessed by his/her ministry/spiritual gift. Even if there are many theologians and gifted leaders in our churches, it is a pity that they cannot work together! Why is that? Simply because they do not have the same vision  – Christ vision.

• The blessings when God’s vision is followed

Evangelism not only allows people to come to salvation but it is also a sanctifying process for Christians.

When you evangelize:

1. You see how much work there is to do and you don’t have time for gossiping or get involve in futile arguments. There’s no room for idleness.

2. You realize your feebleness and how much you need to pray.

3. You grow in your faith and reading God’s Word is your daily bread.

4. You develop Christ’s character. Your pride is destroyed and you become a humble servant. Instead of criticizing or hating, you love and forgive.

5. You will be able to identify precisely what are your spiritual gifts and ministry. It reveals concealed issues and regulates things which were not functioning well in the body of Christ. Evangelism is the vitality of the church and it provokes each and everyone to take his/her responsibilities regarding that divine Vision.

6. You are able to develop strong bonds with other Christians who have different callings since they share the same vision. The differences are no longer seen as problems but assets. Instead of division, there’s unity of faith.

7. You’re being obedient to Christ’s command.

• What is my church’s vision?

If you want to know if your church is one who has Christ’s vision, ask where most budget is allocated. Where the money goes, there the heart is and so the vision of the leaders. A self-centered church choke itself by its activities. Members are entertained but not built up in their faith. This is a tragedy and undoubtedly the devil’s tactic. The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made (Genesis 3:1) and its strategy is still to deceive by feeding leaders with half truths. I will not venture to say that our churches are not doing evangelism, my concern  is that evangelism became a church program and not the vision. The early church had one vision – evangelism. Other activities derived from it. Our loyalty should first be to Christ. We will never be able to justify our idleness before the Judgement seat of Christ because our church leaders failed us.

In 1982, Keith Green said:

There are over 2,700,000,000 people who have never heard the Gospel at all, and there are only 5,000 to 7,000 missionaries worldwide, working directly with these totally unreached groups of people.¹ That means there is approximately one missionary for every 450,000 of these people! There are over 16,000 different and distinct cultures and people-groups – even whole countries, where not one single church is in existence.² There are 7,010 distinct living languages, and 5,199 of them still have no Bible or Scripture translations available in their own language!³ Do these figures move you at all? Does it matter to you that an estimated 80,000 unsaved people die every day (approximately 3,333 every hour…55 people every single minute!) to face the judgment seat of Christ?⁴

Right now worldwide there are only 85,000 workers on the mission field – working mainly among those who have heard the gospel before.⁵ This figure includes missionaries from all over the world of every nationality. When you compare this number with the amount of Americans selling Avon or Amway products, it is staggering. Just in America alone there are 435,000 Avon sales-people⁶ (with 1,280,000 worldwide), and over 750,000 Amway products distributors,⁷ (with over a million worldwide)! Do you realize that these two companies combined have 14 times more representatives in the United States alone than the Church of Jesus Christ has in the whole world outside of America?

And what about the Christian representatives we do have in the world? Only 9% of the world’s population speaks English, and yet 94% of all ordained preachers in the whole world minister to the 9% who speak English. And 96% of all Christian finances are spent in the United States on 6% of the world’s population. Only 4% of all Christian money is spent on missionary efforts to reach the other 94% of the world’s population! There are over 1,000,000 full-time Christian workers in the United States; while one half of the world’s population (3 major groups – Moslem, Hindu, and Chinese), 2,200,000,000 people, have only 2,417 full-time Christian workers.⁸ As you can see by these figures, something is definitely wrong. While we in America have approximately one worker for every 230 people – those who have never heard the Gospel even once have one worker for every 450,000 souls! Please forgive us, Jesus, for being too timid to obey You and reach out into all the world like You have commanded us to!

The harvest is great and we do not have enough time (Matt. 9:37-38). Oswald Smith said: “No one has the right to hear the Gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heart it once“.  If we do not go and preach the gospel ,we need to have a specific calling for it (Keith Green).

If you had 20 children to feed and plenty of food to feed them all with, do you think it would be right to give 3 of the children 10 meals, 7 children only 1 meal, and the remaining nothing – causing them to die of starvation? Keith Green

• Concluding Words

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and He said His sheep listen to His voice and follow Him. My wife is not expected to follow blindly my spiritual leadership. If I fail to lead her in Christ’s ways, her loyalty to Christ prevails. Let us be careful of not falling in the trap of being so loyal to our church to the point of losing sight of Christ’s will. It is not because we serve in the church that we’re necessarily serving Christ. Jesus said that many will argue that they prophesied in His name and casted out devils but Jesus did not acknowledge their deeds. These deeds were either carnal or devilish. Sometimes God puts a halt in our life to enable us to reconsider His vision – Evangelism and Discipleship. Our strategies and wisdom cannot outpower the work of the Spirit in Evangelism. If we want a quality-member church instead of a mega-church filled up with fake believers, the leadership’s vision must focus on Christ’s vision.

Many church leaders try to fit evangelism in its program and its allotted budget is often sacrificed for other noble causes. There will always be people in need and at the same time always people heading to hell. Better going to heaven with an empty stomach, without an eye or foot than having everything and perishing eternally in hell.

God’s vision is not earthly but eternal. Our churches are powerful entities that have been commissioned by God to be a lighthouse. However,many of them have been burdened by Christians leaders by worldly things. It is right time to release churches from these entanglements and let them flourish as it did in the apostles’ time. What differentiated the goats from the sheep resided simply in what they did and did not do.