God's Wisdom In A Nutshell

Hello,

While perusing the messages of various Pastors on YouTube, I came across some ministries that tout the advantage of having a vision board. Vision boards are places that people pin up the things that they want to acquire or achieve. For instance, One female minister/self help guru has an example vision board where she put up pictures of the car she wanted to drive, the money she envisioned landing in her wallet, a swimming pool she wanted for her backyard and various other things. Then she tells her viewers to sow a financial seed into a ministry as “seed in the ground” to have these vision board dreams come to fruition and she ends her sermon/self help vodcast telling her subscribers to pray about it.

Her verse of the year is:” Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”(Ephesians 3:20)

This verse is true, God can do anything- but absolute surrender to His will, not our own ideas is the key. We must surrender every aspect of our life to God and let Him lead us. He needs to lead our relationships, free time, spending, viewing, reading and listening habits. He needs to have control of our finances- tithing the first 10% of our income. We must give Him control of everything.

Making a vision board and placing materialistic things on it and then waiting for the Lord to fulfill our “wish list” is selfish at best. The kingdom of heaven is about Jesus and being used by Him to advance the Good News of health, healing, peace, prosperity and joy through a relationship with Jesus.

There is another verse of Scripture that this particular Christian self help guru misrepresents as well. She says that the bible says: write the vision and make it plain.  The actual Scripture states :“Then the Lord said, write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets, so that a herald may run with it.”(Habakkuk 2:2)

This verse has NOTHING to do with our own personal visions and imaginations, it has to do with the vision we have received from the Lord during our bible and prayer time. We need to be careful of what we are listening to or we will open a door to Satan. (See my posts on Eneagrams and the Law of Attraction)

When we pin things up on a vision board Satan sees them. Then he can go to work to help us achieve these things. I know of one famous person who wrote his goals down and then proceeded to work 365 days a year in order to achieve his desires. He achieved them and then was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. This man gave up family time, sleep and stressed himself out in order to achieve his goals. His selfish ambition could very well have decreased his immune system, setting himself up for cancer.

^“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”(Phil 2:3-4)

God says to rest at least one day a week. He also reveals that He is the source of every good and perfect thing and therefore we should seek Him first in order to receive every good and perfect gift from Him–not by our own effort.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”(John 10:10)

Satan also lures us in with these so called “wins” so that we believe that our imagination and visions are powerful- causing us to continue in the use of affirmations and visualizations rather than prayer.

You see, the Lord will not give us things out of season, meaning He usually doesn’t give us financial gain until we have developed a relationship with Him. We may earn much wealth by our own effort but unless the Lord directs us down a particular career path, God will not be the source of our newfound wealth. Think of a movie star or a popular young singer who became famous early on- the fame and the money causes destruction to their psyche. They end up depressed, addicted, lonely and have nothing to strive for in the world.

But if we develop a relationship with God- which should be the highest priority for our lives- we desire what God wants for us.

Be careful what these online pastors/self help gurus are teaching.  We all need motivation at times to get goals accomplished, but our highest goal should be a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. When we have come to the point when we determine God’s goals are more important than our ideas about our life- God can use us. We have now aligned our lives with Him and He will use us to be  a conduit to distribute healing power, financial gifts and love.

If a vision board is used at all it should contain Scripture we want to memorize in order to keep us meditating on the Words of God.

“Keep this book of the law always on your lips, meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it-  then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:8)

Food For Thought,

Lisa

“… people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”