The Biblical book of Proverbs is highly recognized for its profoundly wise sayings. One declaration says: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (a) [see end notes for Scriptures] This verse declares a vision is necessary for people to survive as interactive groups. So, what is a vision exactly? A vision is a uniting force.
When individuals do not maintain a unifying vision as a purpose for living together, they will eventually split, divide, and dissolve as a people. (b) So we ask – do people of faith pursue a vision?
Heavenly Visions
Visions provide viewpoints that can elevate an overall understanding of life and improve our pursuit of a better life. Some of the most common unifying visions are recognized as a marriage, a family, a business, a fellowship, a state, a nation, and a devotional faith in God. Visions are perceptions and views of life that we are able to ignore, see, accept, pursue, forget, allow to fade, and decline.
We can see visions in different ways. One way is for our inner eye to perceive a fresh product or to visualize a clearer method of accomplishing a task. Another way is for a new or different thought to drop into our mind that helps us perceive what we did not previously comprehend. We can also read about or hear someone articulate a vision that we accept and begin to pursue.
Visions generally have a refining quality that helps us revise earlier perceptions, overcome past difficulties, pursue improving adjustments, and labor through current complications. A vision can inspire new products, form a new service, or develop a better method of achieving a goal.
A vision can bring a variety of people from different cultures together and encourage interactions that elevate the quality of everyone’s life. Visions tend to lend strength to the weak among us by including them. When a vision is ignored, forgotten, or dismantled, the bonding strength in the joining deteriorates and can eventually experience a deathly end.
A heavenly vision provides a unifying purpose that can help everyone to work through hard times and the difficult activities of this temporal life. By following God’s inspiring lead and walking in His revealing light, we can overcome the good and evil activity of this life. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is such a vision.
A heavenly vision provides a unifying purpose that can help everyone.
Understanding The First Vision
Biblical faith involves more than believing. We can believe in anything, good or bad. Our belief can even influence our experience. Faith is described in Scripture as our agreeing response to what God is saying and desiring to do. This is illustrated in the verse “Faith without works is dead.” (c) Faith involves our willing response to God’s guidance. Without our follow-through, we just believe.
In the beginning of time and space, God created the expanding natural universe and our planet earth. (d) The first vision noted in Scripture is when God articulated His desire to make and form expressions of His “image and likeness.” (e) This earth is where the Eternal One would birth, grow, teach, and mature His family of offspring, as children that reflect and resemble His nature.
When God created the first human body out of the earth’s material, He infused it with His Spirit and breath gave this first person the ability to sense, interact, and communicate with both natural and spiritual realities. As the first being “became” (f) aware, his conscious soul began to develop.
Then God took from the first and formed another, so the two could live as a collective one. Their interaction would assist in the growth and development of God’s expanding family. (g) Every child born into this life has an infusion of the Spirit of God, which we tend to call the “spirit of life.” As a result, each child birthed into this temporal world is an expression of God and of man. (h)
Sadly, the first two chose to ignore our 
heavenly Father’s guidance and turned to focus on gaining wisdom from nature’s “good and evil.” (i) Their decision to ignore God’s vision for life created a rift in their fellowship with God and began confusing their connective vision. Failing to repent and be restored from deathly separation, they lost the enriching benefits of God’s Garden-like presence.
The chosen separation did not negate God’s desire to assist their development. He continued to come with insight about their “choices and attitudes.” (j) We are all good and bad examples of God’s vision, living as disjointed images and likenesses of His character, attitude, and personality (CAP).
Our families are small examples of God’s vision. Families illustrate His purpose for us as functional combinations with different abilities, perceptions, personalities, and maturity. Families are a result of the past, are joined in the present, and are involved in forming and fashioning our future.
Faith involves our willing response to God’s guidance.
A Visionary People
Jesus instructed us to “follow Me” (k) and interact with the Father “as you see me” interact. (l) The New Covenant vision of “Christ as God’s anointing presence with us” invites us into an active fellowship with God so we become better visuals of His loving, forgiving, and embracing nature.
While God has a vested interest in each person, He shows an interest in our function as “a people” gathered into fellowships, communities, and nations. Scripture notes God’s interest in national affairs by saying: “He removes kings and establishes kings,” (m) and “He makes the nations great, then destroys them.” [n] “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” (o)
God gathers people of faith into groups so we can encourage each other’s response to His guidance. He even establishes nationhood for “the sake of His people.” (p) God is involved in our function as nations, to establish larger witnesses of His purpose in our lives as His enlarging family. A unifying vision binds our differences into a common cause so that as a gathering we can do “greater works.” (q)
One of the most visible features of a heavenly vision is our love of God and of one another. Our love is a reflective expression of God’s love. (r) Ever since the natural days of Jesus, all who interact with God and with one another are called the “Body of Christ.” (s) His love however never ceases! (t)
The Old and New Testaments give details about the two times God unveiled His vision for people of faith, delivering them from enslavement, to live under His guidance as “a people.” We can draw insight from this history and learn how to be better expressions of God’s will and ways in our day.
God’s vision for our life as free people under His insightful guidance allows us to arise, gather, and function in groups free of many of this world’s enslaving systems. Scripture even tells of a third time that God would deliver people of faith from enslavements and gather them into a nation.
Stay tuned as we explore each of the three historical times God called people of faith to live under His guidance as a free people. We will note insights and similarities in each call to function as “My People.” Knowing our past can be very valuable, so we do not repeat its errors.
One of the most visible features of a heavenly vision is our love of God and of one another.
a) KJV-Proverbs 29:18; b) Matthew 12:25; c) James 2:17-18, 20, 26; d) Genesis 1:1-30; e) Genesis 1:26; f) Genesis 2:7; g) Genesis 2:18, 21-24; 4:1; Acts 17:22-27; h) Genesis 5:1-2; i) Genesis 3:6-7; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 2 Corinthians 11:3; j) Genesis 3:8-14; 4:6-7; k) Matthew 16:24; l) John 5:18; 13:15; m) Daniel 2:21, 37-38; Psalms 22:28; 47:8: n) Job 12:23; o) Acts 17:26; p) 2 Samuel 5:12: q) John 14:12; r) 1 John 4:7-8, 16; s) 1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 4:12; t) Lamentations 11:12; Psalm 107:1; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Keith Carroll, “The Relationship Guy”
Relational Gospel Founder
Created To Relate author