These are the quotes I noted while reading Visioneering: Your Guide for Discovering and Maintaining Personal Vision by Andy Stanley:
- Where definitions fall short, a story often achieves clarity.
- Taking the necessary steps to ensure that what you believe can be, will be, is a process that captures the essence of visioneering.
- Visioneering is the course one follows to make dreams a reality. It is the process whereby ideas and convictions take on substance.
- Everybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose. Those are the ones with vision.
- Vision gives significance to the otherwise meaningless details of our lives.
- But take the minutia of this very day, drop it into the cauldron of a God-ordained vision, stir them around, and suddenly there is purpose!
Vision weaves 4 things into daily life
- Passion
- Vision is always accompanied by strong emotion. And he clearer the vision, the stronger the emotion.
- Motivation
- Vision provides motivation. The mundane begins to matter.
- Vision-driven people are motivated people
- Direction
- Maybe the most practical advantage of vision is it sets a direction for our lives. It serves as a road map.
- Purpose
- Vision translates into purpose.
The Divine Element
- Honoring God involves discovering his picture or vision of what our lives could and should be. Glorifying God involves discovering what we could and should accomplish.
- “I am God’s workmanship.”
- You are the outcome of something God has envisioned.
- You cannot wring enough life or meaning out of secular accomplishment to satisfy your soul. The hole you are trying to fill has an eternal and spiritual dimension that only matters of eternity and spirituality can satisfy.
- Visions are born in the soul of one who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be.
- Vision carries with it a sense of conviction. Anyone with a vision will tell you this is not merely something that could be done. This is something that should be done.
- A God-ordained vision will begin as a concern.
- Not every good idea is vision material.
- One of the most difficult aspects of visioneering is distinguishing between good ideas and God ideas. We all have good ideas.
- The difference between a dreamer and visionary – dreamers dream about things being different, visionaries envision themselves making a difference.
- There is a tendency to confuse success with the rewards of success.
- Focusing on what’s around you diminishes your ability to focus on what’s before you.
- A divine visions necessitates divine intervention. What God originates, He orchestrates. How is never a problem for God.
- Faith is not a vehicle by which we can coerce God into something against His will. It is simply an expression of confidence in the person and character of God.
- God-inspired visions ultimately lead back to God.
- Success often leads to self-sufficiency. Rare is the successful individual who has not lost sight of what he would be without God.
- Faith focuses us on our inadequacy and his adequacy. Mature faith is able to maintain that perspective even when faith becomes sight.
- Emotional commitments are only as strong as the emotion.
- What could be and should be won’t be until God allows it to be.
- A clear explanation of the problem engages the mind. The solution will engage the imagination. But a compelling reason will engage the heart.
- Words are powerful. They are life-shaping. We can use them for good or evil. To build or destroy. To point people in a God-honoring direction or to send them down a path of regret.
- You will be called upon to give up the actual good for the potential best.
- Uncertainty in a leader is always magnified in the heart of the follower.
- “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision” – John Maxwell
- To worship is to ascribe worth to something.
- The reason physical sacrifice often results in spiritual renewal goes back to a principle Jesus taught in the gospel of Matthew. As your treasure goes, so goes your heart.
- From God’s perspective, there are no spiritual versus nonspiritual components of your life. He makes no distinction. There is no secular decision of your life. You are a spiritual being. Therefore everything you are involved in has spiritual overtones.
- Nehemiah understood the delicate balance between walking by faith and leading strategically.
- Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision.
- A vision is what could and should be
- A plan is a guess as to the best way to accomplish the vision
- Visions are refined, they don’t change. Plans are revised, they rarely stay the same.
- Remember, your initial plans are just that: yours and initial (meaning suitable for refining)
- “Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.” – Abraham Lincoln
- It’s okay to have problems. It is not okay to ignore them.
- “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.” – Albert Schweitzer
- There is a difference between having position and having influence.
- Position is optional. Influence in essential.
- It is the alignment between a person’s conviction and his behavior that makes his life persuasive. Herein is the key to sustained influence. (moral authority)
- As a leader you must be willing to do the right thing even if it jeopardizes your vision.
- The point is, you. Must maintain your moral authority at all costs, even if it costs you your vision.
- Character is simply the will to do what is right, as God defines right.
- An audience can disagree with a position, but they can’t disagree with the reality of a conviction lived out.
- Moral authority is fragile and can be lost with a single decision.
- There will always be people who won’t believe what you believe,. But don’t give them grounds to doubt that you believe what you claim to believe.
- I am doing great work and I cannot come down.
- To accomplish the important things you must learn to say no to some good things.
- You don’t want to wake up one day and realize you have spent your time rather than invested it. When distractions come, remember:
- You are doing great work, you don’t have time to come down.
- Success will silence your critics.
- The significance of your calling rules our the option of retreat.
- Peace is one part of the light we have been called to set out. Peace you maintain as you pursue your vision may be more important than the fulfillment of your vision.
- From God’s point of view, your vision may simply be an opportunity to showcase your peace.
- Don’t sacrifice your relationships for the sake of a business or a ministry or, for that matter, for any other vision.
- We are not much of a light on a hill if we sacrifice people and purity for the sake of achieving our cision.
- Your relationships may be the thing that give your otherwise secular visions divine potential.
- For the Christian, character involves doing what’s right, as God defines right, regardless of the cost.
- A shortcut usually demands a compromise of integrity. The ironic thing about these seemingly insignificant compromises is that they both accelerate our progress and undermine our success. The compromise of integrity carves the heart out of our celebration once we get there.
- Spiritual maturity is measured by how readily we respond to the person of God rather than the promises of God.
- There is no autopilot in the enterprise of visioneering.
- What is unmanageable generally becomes manageable.
- Develop a healthy intolerance for those things that have the potential to impede your progress toward what could be ad should be-those things God has put in your heart to do.