Vision and Leadership at Daystar Christian Center
Text: Habakkuk 2:2-3
Vision is the ability to see places, people and things not just the way they are but the way they could be.
Vision is the ability to see potential.
God uses our imagination, it’s a piece of equipment that God gave us, a part of the mind that translates impulses and ideas into pictures.
Our imagination is our opportunity to overcome our limitations. Whatever your limitations or challenges maybe, in the realm of your imagination, you can overcome them.
When God gave man dominion that dominion was definitely tied to man’s imagination.
God gave man dominion over the birds of the air, the fishes in the sea and all animals. How do you have dominion over a bird when you have no wings? How do you have dominion over the fishes in the ocean especially the whales? How do you have dominion over animals that are many times your weight? In your imagination, you overcome all of them.
It’s from the realm of imagination that man has created a vehicle that can fly in the sky even higher and faster than the birds and we create vehicles that can take us to space.
Your dominion starts in your imagination, that’s where you can overcome your challenges. That is where God gives you a vision.
We have discussed the story of Joseph in the Bible, how his circumstances were not favourable but God gave him a dream, God inserted a video clip inside his imagination that described his future and that vision came to pass.
I declare today in the name of Jesus Christ, you are not a victim, you are a victor.
I declare that no one will ever be able to stick the label “poor” on you anymore. You are prosperous in the name of Jesus Christ.
No sickness or disease will be able to hold you down, I declare in Jesus name, you enjoy perfect health. Amen
With the help of the imagination, we create the future, we create new realities. I learnt this principle of creation many years ago that all things are created twice. There is first a spiritual or mental creation and then there is a physical creation, so you actually cooperate with God to recreate the Earth, to create new realities on our planet.
When you yield your imagination to the Spirit of God, He will take spiritual realities, He will dip His brush in the paint of Heaven and paint pictures in the canvas of your imagination and whatever pictures dominate your mind, whether positive or negative, they will ultimately produce the material equivalent in your life.
Vision is powerful, it is life changing.
We engage the Holy Spirit, The Spirit of God, the third person in the trinity in our imagination when we pray. He hooks our imagination with God’s dimension and delivers in their new realities.
Jeremiah 33:3, John 5:19-20
I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that your imagination will not be ordinary anymore. In fact, in the name of Jesus Christ, knowing that the major battles we fight in life are fought in the realm of the mind and imagination, today I stand with you in faith to declare that the days of losing battles in your mind are over in the name of Jesus. The power of God will engage your mind, the power of God engages your imagination. I declare in Jesus name no curse, no limitation, no barrier will be able to survive your mind anymore. We shatter every limitation, we destroy every barrier in the name of Jesus.
Some barriers are created by tradition, some by culture and they make us unable to go beyond certain points in our thinking. I declare today, they are destroyed in the name of Jesus Christ. Be free in your heart and mind. Receive an enlargement in your capacity, receive new visions and dreams in the name of Jesus Christ.
Yes, I can see it, some of us are creating new products, new services, new families, Hallelujah! Some are creating new organizations, Thank you Lord Jesus, new positions, new promotions in life in the name of Jesus Christ. Some of us are creating new cities, Hallelujah! and some of us are creating new nations in the name of Jesus Christ.
Yes what you see is what you say, I speak it out in the name of Jesus Christ that I see a new Nigeria, a prosperous economy. Nigeria has a developed economy in the name of Jesus Christ. I see a new Africa, I believe we are cracking the code for Africa’s development in the name of Jesus. Oh, yes, and I see our whole world changed in the name of Jesus Christ.
Vision makes a leader, once you develop that capacity to sense potential, to sense what can be, to sense tomorrow, to see tomorrow then you can lead. Honestly, vision gives you magnetic power, you attract people.
One of the greatest puzzles for humans on this planet is the future, the future creates uncertainty, the future creates despair, the future for some people creates despondency, the future for some people creates confusion. When you are that one person that has seen the future and you can say confidently “I know where this is going, I know where we should go” people want to come behind you.
Vision makes a leader, you take vision away from a leader, there is nothing left. Taking vision away from a leader is like cutting the heart out of a human being, there is nothing left.
Jesus described the vision dynamics in leadership in Matthew 15 verse 14; “Forget them, they are blind men leading blind men, when a blind man leads a blind man they both end up in the ditch.” Wow. In other words. Jesus is saying if you have leadership that is blind spiritually that cannot see the future, that cannot see improvement, then you will end up in a ditch. Where there is no vision there is no leadership. The blind leading the blind, Jesus was just using that for illustration. He wasn’t talking specifically about physical blindness, He was talking about spiritual blindness. At least the person leading must be seeing, has got to be seeing and then look at the impact on everyone when the leader sees, when the leader has vision, it brings improvement on everybody’s life.
Jordan Bana, a Church Management Consultant, said many years ago, and I have never forgotten. He said; Vision is foresight based on insight with the benefit of hindsight. I’m sure you can see clearly what is common to those three words; foresight, insight and hindsight, is sight, the capacity to see. Foresight is the ability to see ahead into the future.
Insight is the capacity to see with your inner eyes in the first place, capacity to understand, capacity to recognize patterns, capacity to see the connecting lines, capacity to see the cause and the effect.
Then there is hindsight which is gaining wisdom from the past.
When you combine foresight with hindsight and insight, then you are able to center all of that into what you do today and by acting today in alignment with your vision, you literally create tomorrow.
Someone made a comment on Twitter; I was saying “what you sow is what you reap, before you envy anybody’s success look around for the seeds that they sowed” and then this person replied me and attached a flyer, the flyer of an event that we had during our fifth anniversary in year 2000. The program was called Success Celebration 2000. On the flyer were Bishop Oyedepo, Pastor Nike, Pastor Victor Adeyemi, my brother and myself and you know, we put the picture of somebody there taking a big step and we wrote “Take a giant leap forward”. So the person was saying “Sir, you took a giant Leap, see where we found ourselves now, it’s phenomenal”. You literally create the future when you plant the seeds that you have today. Many of us look too far, we are expecting something out of this world to come disrupt our world and change everything but the future is in our life already in seed form, so when you have vision, you know what to do today to make tomorrow exactly what it’s supposed to be.
Let me ask a question, as we discuss about us having vision, the question I want to ask is; The vision that you have or that you are developing or that you want to get, is it for you alone? Or does it include other people? This is very important. Self-centeredness destroys our capacity for vision or at the very least limits it, caps it.
Self-centeredness is dangerous to leadership because it limits the capacity for vision for the leader
Proverbs 11:24-25. There is one that scattereth and yet increaseth, there is one that withholds more than is necessary but it still results in poverty.
There is the possibility of poverty in the imagination.
1 Kings 3:11-12 (an illustration from Solomon).
God had said to Solomon ask me for anything and then Solomon said “I just want wisdom to be able to manage your people well, make life better for them”. Then God said to him “because you have asked this thing and have not asked long life for yourself nor asked riches for yourself not asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding and to discern justice. Behold I have done according to your words, see I have given you a wise and understanding heart so that there has not been anyone like you before you nor shall any like you arise after you.”
This is amazing, God is saying you didn’t ask for yourself, so I’ll give you what you asked for, capacity to lead to improve people’s life, then I will bless you even. Isn’t that amazing?
My encouragement today ultimately is this, it’s not enough for you to have vision only for yourself. Become a vision midwife, become someone that is helping other people to watch their visions, to fulfill their aspirations I’m telling you your vision will grow big, it will grow large, it’s going to be huge, It will enlarge your heart and when God sees the generosity of your heart, He is going to give you big dreams, big visions, and I’m sure you know vision is the key to provision. Break up that word “Provision” you have ‘Pro’ and you have ‘vision’. Pro means for or towards the vision. As he thinks in his heart so is he, you attract provision to the size of your vision. You will handle resources you never handled before, some of us are going to have staff we never imagined we would have because God is going to give us bigger dreams and visions.
Think for other families, think for your neighborhood, think for a city, think for your nation, think for our world.
Mathew 4:19 NLT.
Jesus called out to them, “come follow me and I will show you how to fish for people.”
These people that became the disciples of Jesus Christ that we hear about till today, they were people living for survival but you know what Jesus did? he moved them from survival to significance. He moved them to Global impact. In fact, he moved them to eternal impact. Think for other people, help people to birth their visions, help people to become people they never thought they would become by helping them to see how they can make impact they never thought that they could make.
That is what we are committed to doing at Daystar Christian Center, that is our calling, to raise role models in the society. We tell people in our church; Training is heavy duty, so we have some schools for those that have just joined Daystar, we have the membership school, the maturity school, the ministry school, we have the mission school, but let me talk about the ministry school and what we do there.
That’s the place where we help you realize you have a purpose and that your life is too small to be the purpose of your life. We help you realize you are loaded. You may never have realized it but you are too loaded to fail, you are loaded with potential. We run psychometric tests on you that will help you to identify what God has already put in you, the gifts, the talents, then we take you out to hospitals, to orphanages to go meet people that have problems that have needs because we help you realize that if you could just turn the attention off from yourself, if you could just place it on other people, identify their needs and then realize what God has put in you to meet those needs, that’s where your breakthrough is, that’s where the key to your significance is, helping to solve people’s problems. When people go through this dimension of our training it affects even their careers and businesses.
John 12:24-25 Jesus said; “Except a corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains the way it is, but if it dies it brings forth much fruit.”
Can you see that? “-if it dies…”
Sacrifice is the way to expansion of your capacity for vision. Take your eyes off of yourself. Listen to me all the people are like you. Whatever problem it is that you think you have, there are thousands, likely millions of other people that have the same problem.
Is it that you don’t have food to eat? There are lots of people, millions of people in our world that don’t have food to eat. If you just get to the turning point to become that person that will give people food to eat you will be amazed what will happen, the visions that will come and the capacity to attract opportunities and resources like never before.
Let’s take this lesson from Jesus Christ as we round this up today John 10:11-13 NLT;
“I am the good Shepherd, the good Shepherd sacrifices his life for the Sheep. A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming, he will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t the shepherd and so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. The hired hand runs away because he’s working only for the money and doesn’t really care for the sheep.”
I want to end on this note, if you are going to expand your capacity for vision and unleash your leadership potential, don’t be like Cain in the Bible when God asked him “Cain where is your brother?” He answered with the question, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Is he my business? I have enough problems to solve on my own”. Let’s break free from self-centeredness, let’s break free from that lack of care, lack of compassion, lack of empathy. It’s time to open our eyes and to make up our minds. Every human being was created an extension of God, created in the image of God, we must bridge the gap between their reality and their potential. Let’s call on God to use us to change people’s lives for the better, to destroy the limitations in other people’s lives.
Are you praying already? Please go ahead and pray right now. Go ahead and pray “Lord give me capacity to be a problem solver on this planet, give me capacity to add value to people’s lives. Use me to solve the problem of ignorance, to solve the problem of hunger, to solve the problem of poverty. Use me to solve problems of discrimination, use me to bridge the power gaps in our world right now, use me, use me, use me, yes Lord, give me new visions, give me new dreams.
Help me to be a Shepherd not a hireling, Oh, thank you Lord, thank you Lord in Jesus name we pray.
PRAYERS
Heavenly Father we are grateful, we thank you because Jesus gave us an assignment just before leaving this planet to go into all the world and teach them, disciple them, mentor them, lead them, thank you Lord, we receive that capacity right now to affect other people’s lives positively on a massive scale.
Lord we receive deliverance from self-centeredness right now. We ask that you destroy those limitations in our hearts and minds.
Heavenly Father activate the gifts, the talents you’ve given us through the power of your Spirit, to bring healing, restoration, breakthrough, deliverance to people’s lives because we are powerful problem solvers and today we receive grace to transform our families, our organizations, our cities and nations in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
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