Your complaint fuels your vision

I asked a question on the last post and want to explore this over the next few blogs .
How do we take hold of a cause to give our life to ?.Or perhaps better put how does the cause take hold of us ?

This is taken from Pastor Paul Scanlons book "Crossing Over".

Your complaint fuels your vision

Write down the vision and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.'Habakkuk2:2

This is probably one of the best known and most quoted verses in the Bible on the subject of vision. However, what is usually less known is the context within which it was spoken. These words from God to Habakkuk were part of a reply to some specific issues Habakkuk had been asking God about. Chapter one of the book records these. Basically they consist of two complaints which had become the focus of Habakkuk’s anger and frustration. His complaints were about injustice, lawlessness, the oppression of the poor and how the wicked seemed to be getting away with murder - often literally.

Habakkuk had a table thumping, finger wagging, voice raising complaint that he would not leave alone until he heard from God. He was in good company. His contemporary, Jeremiah had a similar complaint as did Nehemiah, Moses and Gideon. More recent history records that Abraham Lincoln had a complaint about slavery, Martin Luther King had a complaint about racism and human rights, Nelson Mandela had a complaint about apartheid and Mother Theresa a complaint about hunger and poverty – the list goes on. Each was so motivated by their complaint that they gave their lives to doing something about it, and this became their vision.

The principle I am therefore establishing is this: At the core of every visionary leader’s life is a deep dissatisfaction with how things are; at the root of every history maker’s calling is a complaint. That complaint is their cause, it is their fuel, drive and motivation to press through and accomplish their dream, however tough it gets along the way.

I want you to understand this important principle because in Christian teaching and preaching, our emphasis is usually on the vision, not the complaint it sprang from. We study vision, are keen to ask what a person’s vision is and work hard to ‘communicate the vision’ of our church, ministry or organisation.

However, unless that vision springs from a fundamental dissatisfaction with how things are, it lacks a cause. And without a cause, vision lacks a ‘Why?’ It lacks a reason.

People need a reason for being asked to sacrifice for the vision you are presenting, and that reason must be real, known and felt by all involved. They must feel the strength of the complaint which fuels the vision. And here lies the point of my title for this article: The vision you have will perish and die unless you stay in vital touch with the deep complaint that first motivated you to develop a vision of a better future and then go and do something about it.

Without a vision your people will perish

Without a complaint your vision will perish.

Be interested in your comments

What fuels your vision?

What steps do you take to keep you commited to your vision?

In looking back ,has the fulfilment of the vision grown in momentum or is there a continual pattern of stopping and starting ?


Next time -How do we know what our complaint is ,How is this found ,What is my complaint ?

Jeremy