For you are my lamp, O LORD, and my God lightens my darkness. ~ II Samuel 22:29 (ESV)
READING: II Samuel 22:21-51
I’m flying home after a long trip, hoping for a safe arrival along with my fellow passengers. Every time a plane crashes, locating the flight recorders is the single most important goal after rescuing the survivors. These boxes record the technical information from the plane as well as the conversations among those responsible for ensuring that the plane arrives safely at its destination. These boxes are necessary in order to piece together the answers to one simple question: “What happened?”
We have all seen ministry leaders attempt to get their vision off the runway and on its way to a wonderful destination. Some leaders excitedly lay out their vision to their friends and fellow-workers only to watch it struggle to gain altitude. Sometimes they do manage to get it into the air only to watch it crash suddenly. At other times, the plane barely leaves the jet way. Unfortunately, I’ve been that leader more than I want to admit. When these kinds of things occur, the question on every person’s mind is the same as in a plane crash, “What happened?”
While there are many contributing factors in such failed starts and crashes, most of the factors can be divided into two broad categories, either faulty visioning or failed execution. Moving past the typical finger pointing and blame game, rarely do we examine the first category by pondering “Maybe we had the wrong vision in the first place,” or “Perhaps our vision was cloudy.” Sometimes a failed flight is the result of a vision that is out of sync with God’s vision.
Dear Heavenly Father, Help us to gain insight and wisdom even from our well-intentioned mistakes so that our labor and passion are ever attuned with Your vision. Amen.
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