The Power Of Vision Order Printed Copy

Author: George Barna
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About the Book

"The Power of Vision" by George Barna explores the importance of having a clear, compelling vision for individuals and organizations. Barna argues that vision is essential for guiding decision-making, inspiring motivation, and achieving success in both personal and professional endeavors. Drawing on research and examples from various fields, the book offers practical advice and strategies for developing and implementing a powerful vision.

David Livingstone

"[I am] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary." With four theatrical words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"—words journalist Henry Morton Stanley rehearsed in advance—David Livingstone became immortal. Stanley stayed with Livingstone for five months and then went off to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone, in the meantime, got lost again—in a swamp literally up to his neck. Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer. Berlin Congress spurs African independent churches The whole civilized world wept. They gave him a 21-gun salute and a hero's funeral among the saints in Westminster Abbey. "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea," his tombstone reads, "David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade." He was Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Highway man At age 25, after a childhood spent working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill, followed by learning in class and on his own, Livingstone was captivated by an appeal for medical missionaries to China. As he trained, however, the door to China was slammed shut by the Opium War. Within six months, he met Robert Moffat, a veteran missionary of southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with "the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had been before." For ten years, Livingstone tried to be a conventional missionary in southern Africa. He opened a string of stations in "the regions beyond," where he settled down to station life, teaching school and superintending the garden. After four years of bachelor life, he married his "boss's" daughter, Mary Moffat. From the beginning, Livingstone showed signs of restlessness. After his only convert decided to return to polygamy, Livingstone felt more called than ever to explore. During his first term in South Africa, Livingstone made some of the most prodigious—and most dangerous—explorations of the nineteenth century. His object was to open a "Missionary Road"—"God's Highway," he also called it—1,500 miles north into the interior to bring "Christianity and civilization" to unreached peoples. Explorer for Christ On these early journeys, Livingstone's interpersonal quirks were already apparent. He had the singular inability to get along with other Westerners. He fought with missionaries, fellow explorers, assistants, and (later) his brother Charles. He held grudges for years. He had the temperament of a book-reading loner, emotionally inarticulate except when he exploded with Scottish rage. He held little patience for the attitudes of missionaries with "miserably contracted minds" who had absorbed "the colonial mentality" regarding the natives. When Livingstone spoke out against racial intolerance, white Afrikaners tried to drive him out, burning his station and stealing his animals. He also had problems with the London Missionary Society, who felt that his explorations were distracting him from his missionary work. Throughout his life, however, Livingstone always thought of himself as primarily a missionary, "not a dumpy sort of person with a Bible under his arms, [but someone] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary." Though alienated from the whites, the natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his curiosity. They also thought he might protect them or supply them with guns. More than most Europeans, Livingstone talked to them with respect, Scottish laird to African chief. Some explorers took as many as 150 porters when they traveled; Livingstone traveled with 30 or fewer. On an epic, three-year trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean (reputedly the first by a European) Livingstone was introduced to the 1,700-mile-long Zambezi. The river was also home to Victoria Falls, Livingstone's most awe-inspiring discovery. The scene was "so lovely," he later wrote, that it "must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight." Despite its beauty, the Zambezi was a river of human misery. It linked the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the main suppliers of slaves for Brazil, who in turn sold to Cuba and the United States. Though Livingstone was partially driven by a desire to create a British colony, his primary ambition was to expose the slave trade and cut it off at the source. The strongest weapon in this task, he believed, was Christian commercial civilization. He hoped to replace the "inefficient" slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods instead of people. The ill-fated Zambezi expedition After a brief heroic return to England, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to navigate 1,000 miles up the Zambezi in a brass-and-mahogany steamboat to establish a mission near Victoria Falls. The boat was state-of-the-art technology but proved too frail for the expedition. It leaked horribly after repeatedly running aground on sandbars. Livingstone pushed his men beyond human endurance. When they reached a 30-foot waterfall, he waved his hand, as if to wish it away, and said, "That's not supposed to be there." His wife, who had just given birth to her sixth child, died in 1862 beside the river, only one of several lives claimed on the voyage. Two years later, the British government, which had no interest in "forcing steamers up cataracts," recalled Livingstone and his mission party. A year later, he was on his way back to Africa again, this time leading an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and wealthy friends. "I would not consent to go simply as a geographer," he emphasized, but as biographer Tim Jeal wrote, "It would be hard to judge whether the search for the Nile's source or his desire to expose the slave trade was his dominant motive." The source of the Nile was the great geographical puzzle of the day. But more important to Livingstone was the possibility of proving that the Bible was true by tracing the African roots of Judaism and Christianity. For two years he simply disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information. He reported later that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen, but he was able to read the Bible straight through four times. Livingstone's disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart's a few generations later. When American journalist Henry Stanley found Livingstone, the news exploded in England and America. Papers carried special editions devoted to the famous meeting. In August 1872, in precarious health, Livingstone shook Stanley's hand and set out on his final journey. When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, called the "Dark Continent" and the "White Man's Graveyard." although the Portuguese, Dutch, and English were pushing into the interior, African maps had blank unexplored areas—no roads, no countries, no landmarks. Livingstone helped redraw the maps, exploring what are now a dozen countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). And he made the West aware of the continuing evil of African slavery, which led to its being eventually outlawed.

weakness may be your greatest strength

How well are you investing the weaknesses you’ve been given? Perhaps no one has ever asked you that question before. Perhaps it sounds nonsensical. After all, people invest assets in order to increase their value. They don’t invest liabilities . They try to eliminate or minimize or even cover up liabilities. It’s easy for us to see our strengths as assets. But most of us naturally consider our weaknesses as liabilities — deficiencies to minimize or cover up. But God, in his providence, gives us our weaknesses just as he gives us our strengths. In God’s economy, where the return on investment he most values is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), weaknesses become assets — we can even call them talents — to be stewarded, to be invested. It may even be that the most valuable asset God has given you to steward is not a strength, but a weakness. But if we’re to value weaknesses as assets, we need to see clearly where Scripture teaches this. The apostle Paul provides us with the clearest theology of the priceless value of weakness. I have found 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16 and, frankly, the entire book of 2 Corinthians, to be immensely helpful in understanding the indispensable role weakness plays in strengthening the faith and witness of individual Christians and the church as a whole. Paradoxical Power of Weakness Paul’s most famous statement on the paradoxical spiritual power of weakness appears in 2 Corinthians 12. He tells us of his ecstatic experience of being “caught up into paradise,” where he received overwhelming and ineffable revelations (2 Corinthians 12:1–4). But as a result, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7–10) In these few sentences, Paul completely reframes the way Christians are to view weaknesses, even deeply painful ones that can appear to hinder our calling and that the powers of darkness seek to exploit. What at first seems to us like an expensive liability turns out to be a valuable, God-given asset. Weakness and Sin Before we go further, we need to be clear that Paul does not include sin in his description of weakness here. The Greek word Paul uses is astheneia , the most common word for “weakness” in the New Testament. J.I. Packer, in his helpful study on 2 Corinthians, Weakness Is the Way , explains astheneia like this: The idea from first to last is of inadequacy. We talk about physical weakness [including sickness and disability] . . . intellectual weakness . . . personal weakness . . . a weak position when a person lacks needed resources and cannot move situations forward or influence events as desired . . . relational weakness when persons who should be leading and guiding fail to do so — weak parents, weak pastors, and so on. (13–14) But when Paul speaks of sin, he has more than inadequacy in mind. The Greek word for “sin” he typically uses is hamartia , which refers to something that incurs guilt before God. Hamartia happens when we think, act, or feel in ways that transgress what God forbids. “Weaknesses manifest God’s power in us in ways our strengths don’t.” Though Paul was aware that hamartia could lead to astheneia (1 Corinthians 11:27–30) and astheneia could lead to hamartia (Matthew 26:41), he clearly did not believe “weakness” was synonymous with “sin.” For he rebuked those who boasted that their sin displayed the power and immensity of God’s grace (Romans 6:1–2). But he “gladly” boasted of his weaknesses because they displayed the power and immensity of God’s grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). In sin, we turn from God to idols, which profanes God, destroys faith, and obscures God in the eyes of others. But weakness has the tendency to increase our conscious dependence on God, which glorifies him, strengthens our faith, and manifests his power in ways our strengths never do. And that’s the surprising value of our weaknesses: they manifest God’s power in us in ways our strengths don’t. That’s what Jesus meant when he told Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9) — “perfect” meaning complete or entirely accomplished . Our weaknesses are indispensable because God manifests the fullness of his power through them. Asset Disguised as a Liability At this point, you may be thinking, “Whatever Paul’s ‘thorn’ was, my weakness is not like that.” Right. That’s what we all think. I have a thorn-like weakness, known only to those closest to me. If I shared it with you, you might be surprised. It dogs me daily as I seek to carry out my family, vocational, and ministry responsibilities. It makes almost everything harder and regularly tempts me to exasperation. It’s not romantic, certainly not heroic. It humbles me in embarrassing, not noble, ways. And most painful to me, I can see how in certain ways it makes life harder for those I live and work with. Often it has seemed to me a liability. I’ve pleaded with the Lord, even in tears, to remove it or grant me more power to overcome it. But it’s still here. Paul also initially saw his weakness as a grievous liability and pleaded repeatedly to be delivered from it. But as soon as he understood Christ’s purposes in it, he saw it in a whole new light: a priceless asset disguised as a liability. And he gloried in the depths of God’s knowledge, wisdom, and omnipotent grace. “God, in his providence, gives us our weaknesses just as he gives us our strengths.” I have been slower than Paul in learning to see my thorn as an asset (and honestly, I’m still learning). But I see at least some of the ways this weakness has strengthened me. It has forced me to live daily in dependent faith on God’s grace. It has heightened my gratitude for those God has placed around me who have strengths where I’m weak. Beset with my own weakness, I am more prone to deal gently and patiently with others who struggle with weaknesses different from mine (Hebrews 5:2). And I can see now how it has seasoned much of what I’ve written over the years with certain insights I doubt would have come otherwise. In other words, I see ways God has manifested his power more completely through my perplexing weakness. The fact that we don’t know what Paul’s thorn was is evidence of God’s wisdom. If we did, we likely would compare our weaknesses to his and conclude that ours have no such spiritual value. And we would be wrong. Stewards of Surprising Talents Paul said that his weakness, his “thorn . . . in the flesh,” was “given” to him (2 Corinthians 12:7). Given by whom? Whatever role Satan played, in Paul’s mind he was secondary. Paul received this weakness, as well as “insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (2 Corinthians 12:10), as assets given to him by his Lord. And as a “[steward] of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1), he considered his weaknesses a crucial part of the portfolio his Master had entrusted to him. So, he determined to invest them well in order that his Master would see as much of a return as possible. If you’re familiar with Jesus’s parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), you might recognize that I’m drawing from its imagery. Jesus has given each of us different “talents” to steward, assets of immense kingdom value, “each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). And his expectation is that we will invest them well while we wait for his return. Some of these talents are strengths and abilities our Lord has given us. But some of them are our weaknesses, our inadequacies and limitations, which he’s also given to us. And he’s given us these weaknesses not only to increase in us the invaluable and shareable treasure of humility (2 Corinthians 12:7), but also to increase our strength in the most important aspects of our being: faith and love (2 Corinthians 12:10). But our weaknesses are not only given to us as individuals; they are also given to the church. Our limitations, as much as our abilities, are crucial to Christ’s design to equip his body so that it works properly and “builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16). Our weaknesses make us depend on one another in ways our strengths don’t (1 Corinthians 12:21–26). Which means they are given to the church for the same reason they are given to us individually: so that the church may grow strong in faith (1 Corinthians 2:3–5) and love (1 Corinthians 13) — two qualities that uniquely manifest Jesus’s reality and power to the world (John 13:35). Don’t Bury Your Weaknesses Someday, when our Master returns, he will ask us to give an account of the talents he’s entrusted to us. Some of those talents will be our weaknesses. We don’t want to tell him we buried any of them. It may even be that the most valuable talent in our investment portfolio turns out to be a weakness. Since “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2), we would be wise to examine how faithfully we are stewarding the talents of our weaknesses. So, how well are you investing the weaknesses you’ve been given?