Contending for the Focused Life: Vision - Contending For The Focused Life

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

So, what is your B vision?

I want you to write this down.

What is it you want to be for 2017?

What are things in your life that you're going to pray about in the days ahead?

What do you want to be?

Some of you are, your mouth is way bigger than your ears.

And it might be that this year God wants you to learn to listen a little bit better to your spouse, to listen a little bit better at work, and learn some things.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Okay, so open uh we're gonna open tonight talking about vision.

So if you're taking notes, it's in your app.

If you do the app, all my notes are in the app.

You can look that up if you want to.

If not, I'm calling this contending for the focus life vision.

So on Sunday, I talked about contending for the focus life.

I guess we could call it part one.

This is sort of part two vision.

I want to start with a story.

In 1963, MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz presented an hypothesis to the New York Academy of Science.

Lorenz theorized that a minor event like the flapping of a butterfly's wing in Brazil could conceivably alter wind currents sufficiently enough to cause a tornado in Texas.

His theory grew wings in the academic community, and it became to the general public what we call now today the butterfly effect.

The genesis of the theory was a prototype computer program that Lorenz designed to stimulate and forecast weather systems.

On the day of his accidental discovery, Lorenz was in a hurry to get to a meeting.

And instead of entering 0.506127, the number he had used in his earlier trials, he rounded to the nearest thousandth.506.

Lorenz figured that such a slight change of one thousandth of 1% would be inconsequential.

He figured wrong.

When he returned to the lab later that day, he found a radical difference in simulated weather conditions.

According to Lorenz, the numerical difference between the original number and the rounded number was the equivalent of a puff of wind, but the net difference was the equivalent of a catastrophic weather event.

Lorenz came to a simple yet profound conclusion, jot this down.

This is my point tonight.

Minuscule changes in input can make a macroscopic difference in output.

Let me say it again.

A minuscule change in input can make a macroscopic difference in output.

Men and women, that's true in science and that's true in life.

One decision, one change, one risk, one idea, you don't have to make a hundred changes.

All that does is divide your energy by 100 and results in about 1% chance of success.

Rather, to be a hundred percent committed to one change in your life with wholehearted effort can potentially bring a hundred percent difference in the rest of your life.

I want to talk about vision.

I want to talk about courage first, though.

It takes courage to change.

It takes courage to make a difference in your life.

Courage doesn't wait until the plan is perfectly formed.

Courage doesn't wait until everyone is on board with your plan.

Courage waits for one thing, the green light from God.

If God is speaking to you about a vision, that small vision can bring macroscopic changes to the rest of your life.

And so when I'm speaking tonight about vision, I'm talking about contending for a focused life.

We call it the book of Acts, Acts of the Apostles, because they acted.

So we're talking about an action plan for the year for your lives and beginning to learn how to focus your life.

I'm telling you, you can do anything if you have a focused life.

You can do very little, no matter how talented or gifted you are, if you're scattered all over the place.

So here's my thesis.

My thesis is this God has a vision for your life, but have you discovered it?

My thesis is everyone has been put on this earth with a mission from God.

Everyone has been given a mission from God, but very, very few ever discover it.

So look in your Bibles at Proverbs 29, 18.

Proverbs 29, 18.

Each night we're going to talk about contending in different forms, in different ways.

Marcus and I are going to be speaking each night, and we're going to these build on each other.

So this is, I feel like this was the foundation I wanted to lay for the other nights.

And by Friday, it'll all kind of all come full circle, and you'll understand where we're going as we look at the rest of our year.

But Proverbs 29, 18, many of you are familiar with this.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Most people perish because they have no vision for their life.

To perish, the way I'm going to describe perish is to waste your life.

To squander your destiny.

Do you know you have a destiny?

There's a destiny on your life.

And most people never discover it, and most people squander their destiny, their destiny that God has for them.

John Piper speaks of a wasted life.

Wasting our life on trivial pursuits.

Living just for ourselves and never discovering God's purpose for our lives.

Mike Bickle speaks of squandering your destiny.

I would call it self-centered trivial pursuits.

And as I said to you on Sunday, I'm the king.

I'm the president of trivial pursuits.

And as I'm describing, you'll understand this more as we move along, but what I'm describing here is that I'm in pursuit of a be that leads to a do, but it has to be set up in my life to such a degree that I go after my heart.

Most goal setting has to do with outward behavior, right?

And then that's great.

That's fantastic.

But what about goal setting that's actually targeting your character?

Because who you are is the great quote.

Emerson said that what you, I can't hear what you're saying because what you're doing shouts so loudly.

It was something like that.

John Ortberg would give another title to this idea of squandering our destiny.

He writes, everybody, every human being on earth has a mission.

We were all put here for a purpose.

And everybody has, listen to this, a shadow mission.

I'd never heard this until today when I was doing some research.

Everybody has a shadow mission.

Our lives and the lives of the groups we're a part of can drift into the pursuit of something unworthy and dark.

To give into our shadow mission is or should be our greatest fear.

And I'll explain that shadow mission in a moment.

But if we don't choose to pursue God's vision, we will go after a shadow mission, a shadow vision that takes us off course.

Victor Frankel, former concentration camp survival and world-renowned psychologist, said, what forms a person more is what one believes about the future even more than how much they've suffered in the past.

So he had been in a concentration camp, and after he came out of the concentration camp, he began to study concentration camp survivors and why some succeeded and many spun out into bitterness and even suicide.

He did a study and he found the biggest determining factor was that person's view of the future, not the past.

Because the past was the same.

The past had been the same.

Some led to suicide and just a demoralized life and spun out of control.

But many went on to be very, very successful.

Victor Frankel in particular.

Victor Frankel's the one who said that the one thing the Nazis could never take away from him was his attitude.

They stole everything else he had.

They stole his dignity, his self-respect, all that we consider valuable was stolen in those concentration camps.

But the one determining factor in Victor Frankel's life that he discovered, and I think it led to him being the world-renowned psychologist that he was, was that no one could determine what he thought about himself and the attitude that he took, even to those who were the perpetrators of great harm in his life.

Well, then when he did the research on concentration camp survivors, he found the key difference, there was only one, was a view of a vision for their life.

They had all had the same past.

Do you have a vision?

Has God spoken to you a vision?

Do you have a vision for your life?

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

To go nowhere is to perish.

Perish is to squander our destiny.

Aimless living is a wasted life.

Howard Hendricks, anybody familiar with Howard Hendrix?

Howard Hendrix, the great Dallas Theological Seminary professor, I kind of grew up with in my campus crusade days, said this.

Survey was done of people over 80.

Now I've heard some said over 90 years old.

The way I heard it was over 80 years old.

A thousand men and women over 80 years old were asked the question if you had your life to live over again, what would you do different?

Three things were summed up in this survey.

Number one, risk more.

Number one, risk more.

They wish they had risked more.

Number two, reflect more.

Reflect on their life more.

Number three, do more that counts for eternity.

I heard that when I was a missionary in Japan in the 80s, and it really had an impact on my life.

Especially the first one.

Risk more, taking risk.

Develop a clear vision for your life, men and women.

To contend for a focused life means you're gonna have to fight.

It means you're gonna have to battle for it.

A vision for your life is your time, your energy, and your resources.

That's where we get the word disciple.

A disciplined life, a focused life.

In the Holt family.

So I'm gonna give you a little bit of background on us is the Holtz and how we've kind of raised our kids.

We have always, Liz and I have very rarely, if ever, even talked about discipline with our kids.

I don't even think it has come up in years, discipline.

Because my feeling is discipline is only the lack of discipline is a lack of vision.

But if you have a vision, you'll be disciplined.

And so we've tried over the years to give our kids lots of opportunity to be exposed to sports, music, short-term mission trips, church.

We want our kids leading at church.

So we we we always invite them into usually children's ministry, stuff like that, to lead stuff, to serve any way they can.

I have to tell you a funny story.

Isaac's not here.

He's probably he might be watching this, but we don't do live streaming anymore.

That's the reason you're here.

You know how many people ask me, are you gonna live stream?

And I said, We don't do that.

And they go, Well, I I'm gonna miss, I know.

You won't come if we live stream.

So we had just moved to out to um powers with uh Mountain Springs Church.

We've been there about six months, and you can see back then we were frontage right there at uh at Powers.

I mean, Powers and Woodman.

We were we were frontage for Woodman.

And Liz came in one day and she said, Steve, do you know where Isaac is when he comes early to church?

I said, Yeah, he's he's helping the guys with the coffee.

He said, Every one of those people are smokers.

And I said, Yeah, I know that.

She goes, Well, I saw him from Woodman when I was driving in, right in the middle, hanging out with this cup of coffee and everybody smoking cigs.

That's not a very good example for the pastor's son to be in there.

And I said, I think it's awesome.

Because the church is open to all people.

They'll get over there, hang up with cigarettes at some point.

So anyway, we've exposed our kids to a lot of things at church.

But leadership opportunities, sports, music, outdoors, that because here's the deal, guys.

If you get a vision, you'll get discipline.

If you've got a mission and you've got and you've got a passion for something, you get discipline.

When our kids have wanted to play the piano and learn to play the piano, nobody's had to say, discipline your life to play the piano.

If they don't want to play the piano, then by all means, don't play the piano.

We've had teachers, piano teachers, beg Liz to take one of our kids, two of our kids, I think, out of piano because they were horrible.

They had no vision for it.

And then we have others that just they just love the competition, they love being in that.

Men and women, when we get a passion and a vision for something in our life, discipline follows.

Recently we had a uh, well, it was about a year ago, I had a young woman come to me about some stuff in her life, um, issues of some moral things.

And I said to her, I said, honey, here's the deal for you.

The deal is not that you need to clean up yourself and your morality.

I mean, that's true, and you know that.

The issue is you need a vision for your life.

You need a vision for your character, you need a vision for your heart.

How are you gonna love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Well, I don't know.

I said, Well, let's get a vision for that.

And so God's been turning her life around.

She's got a vision, she's got a mission, but you have to contend for it, you gotta battle for it, you gotta fight for it.

It's a struggle.

And I got my first vision when I was 14, giving my age away.

But in 1972, I watched the Olympics, and I saw gymnastics.

I never never noticed gymnastics before, but I saw it for the first time, and and I just thought, man, I want to do that.

I want to do that rings and that high bar stuff, and I want to do backhand springs.

And I well, I didn't know what that meant, but I had a vision, right?

And so for those four years, I set my goal on that vision.

Nobody had to ask me to discipline my life, it just came.

And then when I got saved at 18, you know, University of Georgia, I remember, I don't know if it was the guy who shared the gospel, the four spiritual laws, or if it was just the people I was hanging around.

But the word that really gripped my heart was adventure.

And somebody introduced me to biography, and I read every biography of Christian missionaries and stuff that I could get my hand on.

From Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret to C.T.

Stud by Norman Grubb to all the other novels about Jay Hudson Taylor, like three or four or five of them of his journeys in China, Billy Graham, stuff on Billy Graham.

And I just had I had a vision and a mission to be a missionary.

It was like it was just embedded there.

And so, men and women, God's got a vision for every one of us in this room.

He's got a passion that he's put in you.

For some of you, you're a biologist, and for some of you are mechanics, and some of you are in your retirement years.

Some of you are thinking about your future, you're not sure what God's got for you, but God has a vision and he's got a mission.

I like what the New American Standard Bible says.

Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.

The opposite of unrestrained is to be restrained.

And so a man with a vision gets suddenly restrained.

I think there's two great obstacles to vision.

The first is boredom, and the second is fear.

The first is boredom, and the second is fear.

All addictions come from boredom, a lack of vision, a lack of purpose for your life.

The reason men get involved in affairs is not primarily because of lust, but primarily out of boredom.

Soren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher, said this: quote, boredom is the root of all evil, the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Boredom is the root of all evil.

I love that.

And the second greatest obstacle is fear.

Fear of comparing yourself to others, fear of failure, fear that if you go after this vision, if you go after this mission, you might not get there, you might not make it.

And so fear erodes a resolute heart.

Fear paralyzes faith.

Fear destroys incentive.

And I believe the only cure for fear and boredom is a vision.

Having a vision for your life.

So that's my desire.

Our desire this week is that you get that vision, that one or two things that God has been knocking at the door of your heart that He wants to change, that He wants to transform within you.

So I think there's two parts.

Let me give you two parts to vision.

Number one is B.

The B, I'm gonna call it the B vision.

The B vision is a vision for your heart and a vision for your character.

A vision for your heart, for your character.

When I got saved, what really captured my heart was this idea that the enemy, Satan, comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I came, you might have life and might have it abundantly.

I loved John 10.10.

Still love John 10.

John 10.10 is still my probably one of my favorite verses.

And then soon in that first year, it was I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of Man who delivered himself up for me.

And that's what's right here on this pulpit.

And so, and so this idea of my character being transformed, I wanted God to free me of selfishness.

Such a selfish person.

In many ways, I feel like I still am.

But if you'd have seen me back then, you say, Well, you've made some progress.

You've made some progress.

But a vision for Your selfishness, a vision for your lack of love, a vision for your lying spirit.

Some of you lie, some of you uh exaggerate a lot because of the shame that's in your life.

It's it's getting a vision for those things that are obstacles to the love of God in our hearts.

And some of us are struggling with lust, we're struggling with pornography, it's a it's an issue, it's right there, it's right in our faces, guys.

The statistics would say that like seven out of ten in this room, you men struggle, and and and it's rising among women too.

Well, there's there's something there that God wants you to get a vision for to break the power in those areas of our life.

Secondly, I'll call it a do mission.

So a be vision and a do mission.

I believe vision is character within, and I'm using mission to be your vocation or what you do.

Your mission, what you do.

So it's a be and it's a do.

To have a vision for your vocation, a vision for the mission God has given you.

And some of you are still struggling about it, you don't know what that is.

Um, what that vocation is, and I'm glad you're here because that's what we're going to talk about is how do we start to discover that in our lives.

Saint Teresa said, Satan is terribly afraid of resolute souls.

Everything depends on two convictions, either you will or you won't.

Either you will or you won't.

Either it's my will be done or thy will be done.

And as we begin to ask God to give us a vision for our character and a mission for what we do with our lives, that energy and that strength and that power can only come from Him.

That's what being a wholehearted disciple is.

Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

St.

Thomas said, Sanctity consists in nothing else than a firm resolution, the heroic act of abandoning oneself to God.

So here's what it is, guys.

Vision is the big picture, the picture of what you want to be and to do with your life.

That's what vision is.

Vision is the big picture of what you want God to do in your heart.

So in the coming days, I'm going to talk about loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And I'm going to give you a diagram that I think is where we set goals for our lives.

Heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Heart is passion.

I'm kind of giving it away a little bit right now, but heart is your passions.

Soul is your identity.

Mind is your strength.

And then your strength.

So no, mind is your faculties mentally, of course.

Forget my term.

I'll have that by next by tomorrow night.

But then strength is your energy.

And energy is time, resources, and money.

Time, resources, and money.

We're going to talk about that because as God begins to get a hold of our life, the greatest man who ever lived gave us the greatest command ever given that we might experience the greatest life ever possibly to be lived.

And that's to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So this idea of managing our time, this is the most important thing in our life.

How we spend our time, the relational aspects of our relationship with others and our relationship with God.

It's a humility and faithfulness coming forth from our character and even into what we do.

Listen to this.

Money is power, but time is life.

Money is power, but time is life.

It's life itself.

If we squander our time, we squander our destiny.

God wants you to grow in humility and love.

So I'll give you an example of a goal I've set.

I want to grow in prayer.

I want to grow in energetic, focused worship and prayer.

I'm not satisfied with where I'm at.

So I have to schedule the time for worship and prayer.

Now, every one of you guys know that come to the road, I do prayer walks, you know, three, four, five days a week.

And so there's a certain, there's a certain amount of energy and passion and power that comes from that.

But I want to grow in that inner room of prayer.

And so starting on January 18th, so that's Wednesday a week, Marcus and I are kind of doing this together over at Jericho Center at noon, from noon to 1 every Wednesday for the rest of the year.

We're going to go into the prayer room at the Jericho Center at Every Home for Christ, which is a walk away from here, and we're going to worship and pray for revival in the Rockies, revival in Colorado Springs.

I don't know any other way to grow but to set a schedule and just grow in it.

And it'll probably be really, it won't be at first what it will become later as we grow together.

You're invited to that.

Noon to one.

Every Wednesday, noon to one, every Wednesday at the Jericho Center, praying for revival in the Rockies, revival in our city, awakening in our city, revival in our churches, awakening in our city.

So what is your B vision?

I want you to write this down.

What is it you want to be for 2017?

What are things in your life that you're going to pray about in the days ahead?

What do you want to be?

Some of you are, your mouth is way bigger than your ears.

And it might be that this year God wants you to learn to listen a little bit better to your spouse or listen a little bit better at work and learn some things.

Some of you have never learned to read, really love books.

So get all in.

We're ordering 50 more.

We're going to get the books in and buy the book.

And if you don't want to wait for that, and it'll be a few days, then order it yourself.

I don't care.

But get all in.

Start reading.

But you're going to have to do that.

That's part of your character and your growth.

Well, then, secondly, do.

What's God calling you to do?

Some of you are fearful of sharing your faith.

It just freaks you out.

And we're going to do another evangelism training sometime in the next few months.

You want to go to that.

You want to be a part of that.

Some of you at work, you're lazy.

You're just a lazy bum at work.

You show up late for meetings.

You're distracted.

You're not focused.

And God is going to call you this year to be focused because you're giving God the glory.

And you're saying, you know, I'm doing this job for God.

I'm not doing it for my boss.

I'm playing for an audience of one, not an audience of a board of directors.

I'm doing it for the Lord.

And so because of that, you become restrained.

In other words, you you quit perishing, you quit squandering because you've got a vision for you're doing it for the Lord.

Does that make sense?

So I want to give you four things, and then we'll we'll conclude with this.

Contending for a focused life has four components.

Number one is a vision, a life vision, a be vision.

What you're going to be.

It's about your character, it's about your heart for God, it's about people, it's about relationships.

Write it down.

Get out your journal and write it down.

What do you want to be?

What's God saying to you?

I want you to go into prayer.

In the morning, before you go to work, go into prayer.

Take what you've heard tonight.

God, what are you saying to me tonight when you get home?

Instead of the recorded national championship game of Alabama and Clemson.

You know?

By the way, I just want to say to all you here.

Any football fans in here?

You guys are awesome.

You're here.

Man, thank you, John.

You're here.

I can't believe it.

If most of you were born south of the Mason-Dixon line, you would not be here.

Let me just tell you, everybody in the South is watching that game.

But a life vision is what's God calling you to be?

Number two, vocationally, a life mission.

Some of you are called to be pastors.

Some of you are called to be lawyers.

Some of you are, my sons and daughters have grappled, I've watched them all grapple with this.

To give God the glory through what they do.

What's God giving you a passion for?

What do you love to do?

They can bring glory to God.

Number three, and this is really crucial, an action plan.

You need an action plan, measurable goals.

What are the specific activities to reach your goals?

So if vibrant prayer, a heart vibrant in prayer is your vision, then you need to start setting aside time for prayer.

Or get around people who've got it and let their anointing rub off on you.

Marcus understands the prayer room better than I do.

And so I'm going to get around Marcus.

We're going to do it together.

We're going to invite some of you to come.

We're going to grow together.

We're going to have a passionate war room.

If you want vibrant prayer, I'll tell you where vibrant prayer happens, is our war room.

So you should sign up, go online and click in and get signed up and take that hour.

And I'm telling you, it'll fly by.

And you'll say, well, I can't.

I'm going to sit in that room and pray.

No.

You're going to be pumped out of your mind when you go in there.

Because everybody's praying.

It's really wild in our prayer room.

It's really fun.

My daughter, Charity, is going to lead the worship from 8 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

on Sunday morning.

And she's 11.

It's going to be awesome.

And I'm going to be there.

Yes.

And so we get your kids in there.

Get your kids around that.

But if you don't have an action plan, it will not happen.

Maybe it's some for some of you've got to go back to school and get a degree.

God's calling you.

You're going to need a degree, and you've got to have an action plan.

Start thinking about how you're going to get that degree and go for it.

And you know, the PBJ, the little prayer Bible, and journal.

Some of you have never really had a set time in God's Word.

Well, determine.

Write it in your journal.

I'm going to get up at 5 a.m.

or I'm going to get up at 6 a.m.

I'm going to do it at 7 p.m.

Whatever you set aside that time in a place where you're going to do it and open God's Word and read that chapter and do PB and J, Prayer Bible Journal.

And you just try for 15 minutes.

And watch what God will do.

He'll transform your life through just that short, small time.

So number four, schedule a time of doing it.

I guess I've already kind of covered that.

But setting a schedule for living it out, time management.

Write out your schedule for the week.

Find someone who'll help you be accountable.

Relationship time, rest time, study time, all of that needs, you need to remember, listen, 70%, if you do this 70% of the time, that is a home run.

How many would you say, how many of you in this room would say, in this year you found yourself pretty lethargic, and you'd say, you've kind of been a lazy bum at times?

Raise your hand.

And I'm raising mine first.

I realized it in July.

In July, I realized that my weight and my age was catching up.

And so Ryan and I started talking.

And we decided we're going to compete to get our fat index down.

Any call BFI?

So we signed up at Villa.

I hadn't worked out in years.

And I had I got my BFI, and Ryan got his BFI, and we're in competition right now.

That's another reason why I'm fasting and praying this week.

Truth be known.

I'm going to win.

I was born to win at all that I do.

All of you are born to win at all you do.

For God's glory, not for fame.

And not uh, I don't care about looking in the mirror, but I'll tell you the energy level has just shot up.

I'm not taking any supplements now or anything, and I've lost 14 pounds.

It's been awesome.

It's been really fun.

So God may have those kind of things for you, and I don't do it all the time.

I don't do it very well.

And yesterday, since I knew I was going to fast for five days, I chowed down yesterday, I can tell you that right now.

One step at a time.

So that's our challenge in 2017 is to take one step at a time.

That's all.

That's all God requires of us, is one step at a time.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.