Vision
I’m sure you’ve heard this statement: “How can any intelligent person believe such-and-such?” But at the heart of it is an erroneous assumption: that faith is only held by the uneducated (as one of my college profs arrogantly stated) and that the intelligent always abandon faith as just another childhood fantasy.
Yet it isn’t just religious faith that the arrogant say this about. If you believe that “old money” globalists are running the world behind the scenes, you’re assumed to be either crazy or stupid. The same for many in the past who believed someday we could fly, or reach the moon, or nuke our food, or clone living things. The believers knew these things would all come to pass, but not because they had tangible proof of them. It was because they had vision.
What is vision? It’s stepping out of the boxes people try to put you in and dreaming of the impossible. It’s daring to question, standing against intimidation, and the conviction that there is more to life than our physical senses can tell us. And then it’s stepping out to act on that conviction.
Some people are not content with the status quo and set out on adventures with no firm destinations. It takes bravery and independence, which most people are unwilling to consider, preferring the safety of the group. To those who dare to ask for it, vision is given.
But given by whom? There are only two possible sources: God and Satan. Yes, vision is a spiritual attribute, not a function of intelligence or training. Vision uses the tools you give it. But the tools alone are lifeless; vision puts them to work. If you read the biographies of any number of inventors, you’ll see an amazing percentage of what they themselves attributed to a spiritual awakening or a gift; that is, not something that came from within their own minds. And there is a growing army of former “box dwellers” who are quite intelligent and have unquestioned academic knowledge. Their intelligence and training did not get them out of the box; it was vision, inspiration... a gift.
If you are among the majority who make that opening statement, consider the false assumption upon which your arrogance rests. It is peer pressure, not education, that drives spirituality out of people and enslaves them to the physical world alone. There is no honor in floating wherever the stream takes you, allowing the world to press you into its mold. How much intelligence does that take? You see, the truly intelligent are the strong and brave, the nonconformists, the dreamers.
But the intangible world is fraught with danger. Choose wisely the source of your inspiration. Satan will deceive you if you are unarmed and unprepared. Many today believe that “protection” is to be found in Hindu meditation, where the mind is emptied to get our inhibitions out of the way. But God has forbidden such methods, so the only inspiration to be obtained through occult meditation is satanic. Instead, we are to seek only God and read his Word until it flows through our veins and changes our minds: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is— his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2) “This world” isn’t just the physical, but also the spiritual. There is false, worldly spirituality, and then there is God.
To those who sell out completely to the One True God, vision is given-- vision that does not enslave but liberates. Satan’s ways will always trap you and turn you the wrong way. God has told us how to seek him, and how not to. True spiritual awakening can only happen his way.
So the spiritual people are not superstitious, or stupid, or ignorant. The unspiritual are not necessarily those things either, but they have no vision. They are blind. We can no more expect them to see what we see than we can expect a physically blind person to say what color a wall is. Those who have been blind from birth cannot imagine color, or anything else in the visual world. So it is with the unspiritual.
That being the case, we can offer them spiritual healing, but only God can make them see, and he’ll never force anyone to accept his healing power. People have to ask, but they can’t ask unless we tell them how. And we can’t tell them how unless we know it ourselves: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ”How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:14-15)
That’s why we’re here, fellow believers. To stand on the rooftops and broadcast The Way to those who cannot see. The blind are everywhere, the harvest is ripe. Don’t sit on the sidelines and watch others do all the work of the harvest-- get in the game.