The Need for Vision

Intro:

Last time, we look at Jesus at the Garden in Gethsemane, one of His most intimate moments with God. And we saw how Jesus remained steadfast in His determination to finish the mission God had laid out for Him. His Father had set before Him a specific mission, a purpose, that directed every action and moment of His life.

After His resurrection, Jesus gave the Church a simple mission, found in Matthew 28:18-20. It's widely known as the Great Commission and it gives a purpose and direction for the Church as a whole. It gives them an identity. READ MATTHEW 28:18-20.

Pretty simple, right? The Church is to go and make disciples, baptize them, i.e. bring them into the Church, and train them as Christ Followers. But let's look at what Paul encounters as he is pursuing this direction, this mission, this vision from God.



Part I.

Let's take a look at Acts 16 starting in verse 6 and running through verse 10. READ ACTS 16:6-10. Paul and Silas started out with a great idea. They knew the Commission that Jesus had given the Church and so they decided to take the Message to Asia. It seemed like a great plan that lined up with the vision and purpose of the church. Right idea, wrong place.

See, as they traveled over land towards Asia, the Holy Spirit told them not to go there at this time. So Paul turns towards Bithynia, but again, the Spirit of Jesus stopped them from going. Imagine Paul, traveling along, simply wanting to spread the Message, and finding that every idea he got turned out to be the wrong one. I imagine him telling Timothy, "I thought we were supposed to go to Asia but lets go to Bithynia!" And they get close and Paul says, "Wait Timothy, it's not Bithynia either. On to Troas!" And they end up in Troas, that place where we go when we have no idea where else to go.

Alot of us are in that spot right now. We thought God said go this way only to have ourselves stopped. So we go that way only to have ourselves stopped again. So we resign ourselves to going to Troas to wait and see what's going on. And where we're supposed to be heading next. We all have our Troas, this place we go when we have no where else to go. And that's where it gets interesting...



Part II.

READ ACTS 16:9. Paul is in Troas, no clue as to where to head next. And what happens? He has a vision. A dream. No we all have dreams. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night after having a dream. And you run to your parents or your spouse and tell them, "Look, I just had a dream that laid out my vision, my mission, my identity. I'm supposed to go out west, buy a farm, and become a potato farmer!" At that point, whoever you just told would probably look at you and say, "That's great. Now go back to bed and have a different dream..."

This idea of God giving Paul a vision, a dream that explains his next steps goes against every grain and fiber in our body. We want plans, outlines, step-by-step programs that lay out the next year, two years, or five years. Paul tried that. He laid out the plan for his second journey that was supposed to head to Asia. But that turned out to be the wrong plan. And he ended up in Troas for it. Waiting and watching for God.

So Paul goes to bed and God gives him this vision, this dream, of a Macedonian man saying, "Come here and help us!" And the passage wraps up with Paul telling his ministry partners of this dream and they "concluded" and "decided" to go to Macedonia at once. Now that word "decided" translates in a way that means they reasoned, they intellectually concluded. So they rationally concluded this was the plan from a very irrational starting place - the dream. How ironic is that?!



Closing

Too many of us not only here at eXodus but in the Church at large seem to be stuck in Troas with no sense of where to go from here. We keep plugging away trying to do good things but we don't know if this is what God has placed in our souls as our vision.

Like Paul, we keep taking the Message to new places that need it but it seems like God steps in and turns us in a different direction at the last moment before we reach our destination. So for the next few weeks, we're going to be look at vision, purpose, direction, identity. We saw at the beginning how the Church has one mission - go and make disciples, Christ Followers. But we fit into this bigger puzzle differently with unique purposes. Like a mosaic, we all fit in differently to the bigger image.

You have a specific vision, dream, and purpose in this life. Let's find it.