Photo by HMCC-AA Publication Team
It has been about a month since we shared the 2020 Vision with all the HMCC churches. Once again, this is an endeavor that will require a tremendous amount of faith and prayer. Throughout history, whenever great things were accomplished, there were several traits consistently present:
2) Response from the people. Once the revelation is given, God’s people have a choice whether to respond in obedience and take steps of faith or to cower away and miss out on His blessings. This is why before making any decisions, we need to saturate things in prayer so that we can first, discern if the revelation is from God, but so that secondly, we can have the courage to respond in obedience.
3) Reliance upon God. As we make the resolution to live by faith and trust in God’s promises, we need to continue to rely upon God. Achieving a vision is not an easy task. In fact, it requires us to live life with purpose and perseverance. We will often times find ourselves losing heart and focus in achieving any goal or dream. This is why as we learn how to pray and depend on God, we will find strength to move forward with courage.
The 2020 Vision for all the HMCC churches has been progressively revealed to us throughout the years. God has been giving us the pieces of the puzzle, a little at a time. It was only by His grace, where we were able to connect the dots and realize what He wanted us to do.
As this revelation was given to us, we said, “yes” to God, even though at times, we felt inadequate and saw our shortcomings. This is part of living a life of faith – we do not look at the here and now, but we put our gaze upon God, who holds our future in His hands. The 2020 Vision will continually challenge us to live by faith and not by sight, so that the only person who will receive the glory, will be God.
There will be bumps along the way, but we can be confident that God will lead us. This is why we need to rely upon Him. As this vision will extend to the year 2020, we have to learn how to hold things loosely. Learning how to rely upon God means that we need to have a spirit of discernment. If God directs us elsewhere in the next few years, we need to be able to let God and follow God. If God presses us forward with even a greater increase in the vision, then we need to be faithful and obey.
Already, we have seen several missional initiatives start up in HMCC of Ann Arbor. I can’t wait for other great testimonies to come forth. Our view of God will always determine the size of our vision. I believe we serve a big God, therefore this vision is huge. What is impossible with man is possible with God. This is the quiet confidence that we have and we are anticipating greater things to come. Don’t forget the math: 1, 10, 100, 1000!