3 Encouraging Reminders from the Beloved Hymn “Be Thou My Vision”
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Have you noticed that as an adult you have to make a lot of decisions? Many of them come with great weight. Others such as what time to wake up or what to cook for dinner are less consequential but still important. Having to be the decider all the time is exhausting.
See the God inspired future you want for your family tree and work towards it. Whatever detracts from moving towards Jesus and wisdom, joy, peace, and love is a distraction from his plan.
So often we lack that clear vision because we are obsessed with the urgent. We rely solely on our own strength when we come to crossroads or when we have a need. This leads to aimless wandering. When we don’t know where we are going, we can easily get turned around, find ourselves far from the narrow way we started on, and we discover that our peace is replaced with anxiety.
Vision is what steadies us. It allows us to live faithful to our commitments because we are committed first to God, our leader, and second to others. When it’s time to pivot, it's not a matter of reaction, it's the Spirit's calm nudge that shows us the new way forward. When things get tough, we can calmly walk on the water because we see Jesus ahead pulling us closer to him as the storm goes on around us.
God’s vision is a litmus test for our actions. When we know what our aim is, we can rule out many things that would be contrary or distract us from the journey’s end. If the goal is to be a successful baker, we won’t be spending our time learning how to sew, rather we will find ourselves in the kitchen. If the goal is to care for the least of these, then we will find ourselves practicing generosity. If the goal is a unified marriage, we find ourselves learning how to serve one another in love as the Scripture teaches (1 Peter 4:10).
What is the goal that God has laid on your heart? What roles has he given you? How can you embody him in the places that you spend your time?
The answers to these questions can help us find wisdom and peace when making choices about the details of our lives. The good news is, if we desire something and it doesn’t impede you on your journey with Christ, then God is with you! Oftentimes there are many right ways to get to the places God is calling us. God honors the desires of our hearts and factors this into what he leads us towards (Psalm 37:4).
Sometimes we can think our vision is too small because it focuses on simple choices we make, day in and day out. We think to matter, we need to be accomplishing big splashy things with our lives! The digital age has only aggravated this human tendency. We now feel we have to be an influencer, famous, or successful to have done enough with our lives.
This isn’t God’s way and actually fame and fortune often lead to spiritual destruction. We see so many famous Christian leaders fall due to massive moral failures. It seems that being known to the world can be a quick way to see your soul entangled with chaos and death. We have to be wise in our pursuits.
God’s way focuses on love, service, humility, sacrifice, character, sharing the good news, self-control, generosity, worship, and more beautiful traits we see God point us to in his word. Our vision can be as simple as breaking generational patterns of divorce, anger, depression, addiction, and the list goes on. How we do that could be the faithful practice of things that go completely unseen by others, but have amazing eternal impact. Sometimes it’s getting counseling, treatment, being intentional in your marriage, choosing to work less to be more available in your home, and more.
Our goals or God given vision aren’t graded by their flashy-ness. They have to do with our desire to be faithful, to abide in Christ, as the song describes. It’s a daily recognition that we are his. That he is worthy of our praise. He is our treasure. Every faith step you take in life is precious to your Father. He loves you.
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