Before 2020 made its arrival, we heard about perfect vision.
However, what does it take to get and keep that 2020 vision, practically speaking?
The Lord’s answer to our good brother Habakkuk about vision has been read an innumerable amount of times and January isn’t over yet. As a result, we’ve been writing vision, speaking vision, having vision board parties, seminars, workshops and conference calls. We have accountability partners holding us to it and prayers of faith in expectancy of it coming into existence this year. We have ultimately declared that this is our year because of our 2020 vision.
Yet let me interrupt the regularly scheduled programming for a bit of truth.
If we’re not doing anything different this year, this month, or this moment than what we did before, nothing will change. Read that again. To expect change when nothing has changed is the conversational definition of insanity. And before you go there, it has nothing to do with the devil, so don’t go scapegoating him. Yes, I said it and I mean it.
We don’t take the responsibility as we should.
We are responsible for ourselves, our actions, reactions, responses and especially our thoughts, which is where it all begins
Joyce Meyer wrote a book entitled “Battlefield of the Mind.” If you’ve never read it, get a copy and get those pages to turning. It’s a very relevant discourse on the ways we war mentally and why. The book speaks to solutions that keep our minds from being part of the terrible thing wasted, with her own stories and scriptural support.
And well visionaries, here’s where the rubber meets the road. Referencing the core aspects of Habakkuk 2:2-3 being write, make and wait, understand the vision we write doesn’t matter. How plain we make the vision doesn’t matter. The length of time we wait for the vision to come to pass doesn’t matter. None of it matters if our minds aren’t in the right place.
What is the right place? Philippians 4:8 speaks to it, reminding us to think on what is lovely, just, pure, excellent, etc. First Corinthians 2:16 tells us we have the mind of Christ. However, in my opinion, the verse that speaks most to our minds being in the right place is Philippians 3:13.
The Common English Bible says “…I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me.” The Easy-to-Read Version puts it like this “But there is one thing I do: I forget what is in the past and try as hard as I can to reach the goal before me.”
What happened yesterday and even within the last minute is gone. It’s the past. It’s that which is behind us, spoken of in the Philippians 3:13 text. We can’t get it back or change it. The many mental attempts we make to do so is like running on a hamster’s wheel expecting to reach a destination. The only place we end up is where we were before — the same place we started.
We don’t make another move concerning our vision until we make the move to get our minds right! That’s the only way we’ll have 2020 vision. It’s the only way the 2020 vision we have will come to be. Otherwise, not only will our minds be a terrible thing wasted, but so will our time, energy and effort on a vision that won’t anymore come to pass than that hamster on his wheel running to a new destination.
Rae Karim, formerly chapel director at Christian Theological Seminary, is now pastor at First Christian Church of Honolulu. She can be reached at pastoraefcc@gmail.com.
