Rick Warren - How to Act on a Vision from God

There are actually three parts when God gives you a vision.

There's the what, and there's the how, and there's the when.

And how god fulfills the vision is never the way

I thought. We have been in a time of great

uncertainty for two years twenty twenty twenty. We want in

many ways, we've been in limbo. You know. We just

couldn't get on. We couldn't get out. Every time we

thought it looks like the COVID's going down, we'd have

another flare up and stuff like that. And a lot

of pastors and a lot of ministry leaders have asked me, well,

a lot of them have been discouraged. And I've talked

so many pastors out of quitting in the last two

years as a pastor to pastor, and they'll call me

on this, and I said, you know what, some there

is a time for vision, and there's a time to

not have a vision. Wow. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes three,

there's a time and purpose for everything, you know, time

to time to dance and mourn, time to celebrate. Well,

there's a time to share a vision and there's a

time to not share vision. During the past two years,

it has not been a time to share vision because

you need to focus on the hurts of the people themselves.

People right now are burnt out. If you have a

car battery and you attach one light bulb to it,

it'll last a long time. If you attach two light

bulbs to it, it burn out in half the time.

Four light bulbs dies in a quarter of the time.

You don't have one light bulb draining you. You have

multiple things in your life that are going on, and

with chronic stress and chronic trauma, which this pandemic and

all the other things related to it have happened. People

don't realize that if they get up in the morning,

they've had a good night's sleep, and two hours into

the day they're going, man, I'm exhausted. Welcome to the

human race. Wow, that's the way everybody feels right now.

There is not a person listening to us on TB

and right now that has the same amount of energy

they had two years ago. Wow. That's just the nature

of trauma. It's the nature of chronic stress and chronic change.

People are up to here in change. Okay, So in

a time of uncertainty, we are not in a time

of stability. Things are changing rapidly all the time. First place,

let me just say a word about vision. Vision is

a responsibility of leader. The first rule. First job of

a leader is to clarify and communicate the vision of

the organization, the family, the ministry, the business, the church.

That's the first job of leadership. Communicate and clarify the vision.

But timing is as important a vision as having the vision.

A prematurely shared vision will be stillborn. A premature vision

can can die really quickly. I could give you examples

from forty two years in my own life of where

I shared something too soon, wow, and it died quickly

the time. There are actually three parts when God gives

you a vision. There's the what, and there's the how,

and there's the when. Okay, all three parts. You have

to wait for all three parts of the vision. So

if someone's lifting listening right now and they're going, what's

God's vision for my family, What's God's vision for my business,

What's God's vision for my church? What's God's vision for

my ministry? God always gives it in three parts. First,

he tells you what he's going to do. Okay, and

that's the fun part. You get the Oh, here's what

I'm going to do in your life. Then we run

out and try to accomplish it any way we think

is best and we fall flat on our faces and

we come back and we say, God, did I miss

the vision? Because now I came it A was right.

You just didn't wait for part two. And that's how

I'm going to fulfill the vision. And how God fulfills

the vision is never the way I thought. Wow, it's

never ever the way that I thought he was going

to do it. So God will give you a vision.

You get a movie project and you think this is

what God's vision is for. And then we go out

and we try to do it, but God's going wait,

wait a minute, wait for part two. I'm going to

do it. How is the difference? And then finally you

have to wait for the most important part, and that's

the win, and that's the timing. God's timing is perfect.

He's never too early, he's never too late. For the

last two years twenty twenty twenty twenty one, we have

been in God's waiting room. We've been the whole church

and the whole world. It's almost like you know when

your kids are younger and you say, okay, everybody's got

a bad attitude. Go to your room. Everybody, take a

time out. It's like God said, okay, world, your attitude sucks.

Go to your room, take a time out, and take

a time out. Now, when we come back together, when

this thing goes down, and when the things actually God

does not want us to simply resume the old ways

we did it. This is a chance for a reset,

got it. This is a chance for a reboot. God

doesn't say, let's just go back to do it the

way we used to do it. Every church would be

should be saying, okay, what is it we used to

do and then we stopped doing but we really shouldn't

start back up again. Okay, we need to stop because

God wants to do it. Behold, I do a new thing. Okay,

as Isaiah says, no old wine in the new wine

exactly exactly. You can't put new wine in old wine skits.

And so there are new systems, there are new programs,

there are new ministries. Studies have shown that about sixty

percent of the people who got laid off don't want

to go back to their old job. Fine, this is

an opportunity for you to get a reset in your

life in that way to get a new job, to

get a new job exactly, and to go after a

dream that you haven't you've been afraid to go after.

And TBN our mission is to use every available means

to reach as many individuals and families as possible with

the life changing gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for

helping make the Gospel of Grace go around the world.

Without you, we couldn't do it. God bless you.