Jesus welcomed the people, taught them about the Kingdom of God and healed those in need. Luke 9:11

Seeds of the Kingdom

Vision or Passion?

by Roger Pook

Forgetting the things behind and reaching forward to the things before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13b-14, MKJV

As a young believer 50 years ago I was told how important it was to ‘follow Jesus’, but I had very little idea of what that meant besides going regularly to Church, Bible studies and prayer meetings, and being a generally nice person. I found it very frustrating. Was this ‘as good as it gets’?

Of course, you’ve guessed the problem: no Holy Spirit, and no vision. Proverbs 29:18 springs to mind: ‘Where there is no vision…’ Praise God, later the Holy Spirit did fill me, and I got the beginnings of a vision to see people healed and restored by His power. Things were getting interesting.

However, the vision stayed as just a vision, occasionally coming to fruition in a church or home-group where there were opportunities to pray for others. There was still something missing.

The missing factor was passion to follow the vision. God then gave me an unquenchable desire to serve him in Eastern Europe. The thought of living and working anywhere else now fills me with alarm! – unless of course God changes the assignment. I am led by a passion to see people here healed and set free, and to teach others how to do this. Nothing else will satisfy this passion.

If you have no vision for your life apart from ‘being a Christian’, then maybe God has something better for you which you haven’t yet realised. Ask Him. And if you already have a vision, then praise God, but understand this: nothing will truly satisfy you unless you follow your vision with passion. There has to come a point where your only conceivable way of life is to pursue your vision to the exclusion of everything else. That is the only way to true fulfilment.

Prayer: Father, I know that you have a destiny for me here on earth. Please make the vision clear, and then give me the passion to follow that vision, come what may. Amen.

Roger Pook For 21 years Roger Pook and his wife Christine served in Central and Eastern Europe, based in Hungary at the Úr Rétje centre of Ellel Ministries. From there they travelled and ministered across the length and breadth of the former communist world. In 2018 Roger retired as Regional Director and they now live back in the UK, where Roger still serves on the Executive Leadership and as a trustee of The Christian Trust. They still travel for the Kingdom!

 

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