What is your vision? Part 1 "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I don't know maybe a fashion designer, or an artist, or a missionary." At the age of nine, those were the answers I provided to my parents when they asked me the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. At the age of nine, I stated all the career paths I felt would fit me. I knew nothing about what it meant to actually have those jobs, but to me the sky was the limit. However, even with no limitations, I saw no vision. Recently, I have been thinking of my vision for about two and a half years now. When I returned home from my undergraduate studies , everything around me caused me to question, contemplate, and examine it. I wanted to make sure who I was and if I was authentic and not counterfeited by my environment or the world I once knew as home. I began to pray to be spirit-led and that's when I began to buckle under my feet. Tests of my words were brought against me left and right. I was being pushed and pulled left and right and my flesh and spirit fought constantly. Then one day, I sat down and began to write. I wrote in order to counsel myself and come to a conclusion about certain tendencies. Below is the first blog I ever wrote, before I knew the context in which it would be used.
Nowadays, I find myself more emotional than ever. I remember a time when I would wonder and ask myself when it was the last time I cried. Now I cry every chance I get. Why do we cry? Pain or happiness;one must experience one of these two feelings in order to cry. There are other emotions under the umbrella of those two categories. However, it's either pain or it’s happiness. Lately for me, it has been pain. Pain that I may be going the wrong way. Have you ever gotten lost before? When you get lost it is so uncomfortable and depending on where you are, it can even be frightening. You look left, right, up, down and around in search of anything familiar to help you figure out where you are. I get lost driving a lot, sometimes even with a GPS or with directions someone gave me. Every time I find myself in unfamiliar territory, I panic slightly and question where it all went wrong before turning back. That thought scares me ;the thought that I may have gone the wrong way and might have to turn back around. Now, a drive that was only supposed to be thirty minutes has turned into an hour. What if I had gone the wrong way for so long that I created a new destination? What if the detour has now become the destination? I have studied architecture in school for about seven years. Now that I'm reaching the apex of my student career towards graduation, there is a great amount of uncertainty. What if I got lost and just gave in to the new journey rather than finding the original destination? Sometimes you may feel as if you went the wrong way and even in the midst of triumph, you still feel defeated.
So how can you discern if you are on the right path towards success? I took the time to look up what the Bible says about success. The best example I found were the wise words given to Solomon by David. When King David was about to die, he gave his son, Solomon, the following advice: “Do what the LORD your God commands and follow his teachings. Obey everything written in the Law of Moses. Then you will be a success, no matter what you do or where you go.” (1 Kings 2:3 CEV)In order to find success in our purpose, we must ask ourselves a series of questions. This will be able to get you as close as possible to your desires and help you discover if you are on the right path to the right destination. So how can I find success in my vision? Vision is the ability to see beyond what others can see. For example, let’s take a trip. Have you ever had a moment where you closed your eyes and the images you pictured began to form a story? You see yourself doing something. You see yourself in full contentment. There is a passion in what you are doing. There is a smile on your face as you get excited by the image. You may only see a glimpse, but it’s enough to know you want to be there. Then you open your eyes and what felt like hours turns out to only have been a short minute. You have just lived within your vision. You experienced what could be. Vision isn’t just sight, but it’s a story that is written for you; it is cast, narrated, and experienced by you. World renowned motivational speaker Eric Thomas stated vision as "seeing something I was not, before I was." Vision is the ability to see beyond what your natural eyes can see. It is an image, video, or thought that you receive about your future. Vision is like a snap shot. It is only seen by you. You are only able to receive small snippets of the overall picture. Your vision only shows up on your newsfeed. In Hebrew, vision translates to “chazah” and means more than just seeing with the natural eye. Chazah means prophetic vision that comes from hearing God. The ancient Aramaic meaning of chazah is "the seeing ear" or "the hearing eye.” Therefore, use your eyes to hear, because vision isn’t the ability to look out, but to look in. When you hear something it isn’t how you react to it; it’s how you respond. -Barry D. I have seen so many things and I neither responded, nor reacted to them. Things will not come into fruition until you respond to them. When Samuel was called by God, he responded, but to the wrong person. He said, “Here I am.” What an attentive servant to Eli he was. He answered ready for direction “Here I am.” As good as that may be, he reacted to what his natural eyes could see. His conscious mind only knew of being heedful towards Eli. Sometimes we see a vision and immediately tell ourselves, “Here I am. I can do this.” However, our quick response leaves no room for the speaker to answer back. Our response to situations dictate our actions toward them. There is more to just seeing your vision, but how can you enter into a future that has not yet come? Finally, the third time Samuel responded, “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” When you look inside, what is it that you hear? How might you respond.