Theme of the Week: Godly Men Have A Vision for Life
Bible Verse: “And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Genesis 15:5 ESV
Scripture Reading: Genesis 12:1-20
There’s no historian worth his salt who would disagree that Jesus was the most impactful man in the history of the world. I don’t care if you’re atheist, Buddhist, or something between, there’s no question, Jesus is the most impactful because he had and worked a vision. And yet when he died, Jesus looked like a complete failure.
Think about it. He went to the cross and all the people who had followed him and his teachings abandoned him. They denied even knowing him! His closest friends were gone. He died alone, in the most public and humiliating way possible, next to common thieves. In the immediate sense, he died a loser.
But Jesus wasn’t playing for the immediate. He wasn’t playing for just his thirty-three years on earth. He had a long-term vision. He had in mind people like you and me, who would hear about him thousands of years later. He was doing what he had to do to connect you and me to God, and he knew he had to go through pain and loss in the short term so we could have something in the long term.
There is, however, a bit of a paradox when it comes to vision: vision is about the long term, but it needs to start now. At the risk of sounding like a cheesy motivational speaker (I promise, there’ll be no walking on hot coals or tips for how to buy houses with no money down), there is no better time than now.
I think one of the biggest lies the enemy circulates among men with a dream is that they’re too young (tell that to Mark Zuckerberg or that little kid David with the sling) or too old (tell that to Ray Kroc, who was selling milk shake machines until at fifty-one he switched career paths; or Charles Flint, who founded IBM when he was sixty-one; or Abraham, who had a child and began a nation at an age when other guys just want to read the paper and gum their Cream of Wheat).
If you listen to the voices of those who don’t understand dreams and visions that come to men of all ages, then your one shot at this life will not be well lived. The right time, the sweet spot, is right now.
Taken from The Five Marks of a Man: Finding Your Path to Courageous Manhood by Brian Tome. Copyright ©2018 by Brian Tome. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI. bakerpublishinggroup.com.
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