This week’s post is an excerpt from a chapter in my new book, “The GlassMaker: Vision Restored.”   I’m so passionate about vision, that I wrote a book about it.   If you’re at Ground Zero, this is the post for you.  Read on and be inspired.

At ground zero, start with vision.

Imagine this; a nation is lost, broken and apart from God. Injustice and violence prevails.  One man, a prophet constantly looks at the strife and conflict.  In his hopelessness he believes that the law is paralyzed. He petitions God. The man is the prophet Habakkuk and the nation is Israel.   And if Habakkuk were alive today.  He’d be having what I would call a “Ground Zero” moment.

A “Ground Zero” moment, is when you’ve fallen so deep and so far down, that there is no where else to go but up. It’s where the rubber hits the road.  It’s the moment when you’ve stood all you can and you just can’t take it anymore.  It’s the do or die.  It’s when the battle has to turn, it’s the shake down, the crack down…the melt down.

Habakkuk cries to God, “Why do you make me look at injustice?  Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.  The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.” Habakkuk 1:3-4 NIV

God answers Habakkuk’s meltdown about the wickedness of His own people, assuring him that he would raise up the Babylonians as a punishment.  Later, Habakkuk melts a little more and  laments at the brutality of the Babylonians towards them. The terror of the Babylonians is so ferocious, and Habakkuk feels that the situation is so grave he wonders aloud to God,

“Will you let them get away with this forever?  Will they succeed forever in their heartless conquests?” Habakkuk 1:17 NLT

I’ve had moments like Habakkuk, wondering if life would be like this forever.  I’ve hit those Ground Zero moments and lying in a heap of emotional rubble wondered and waited for God to answer me.

Habakkuk is waiting too.   In hopelessness, despair, fear, and dread he is waiting expectantly for God to give him his answer. God gives a startling response to Habakkuk’s lament. 

“Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, That the one who reads it may run.  For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.  Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3

Write a vision.  When my face is cracked and on the ground, write a vision?  When I am buried beneath a load of brokenness and despair, write a vision?  When life has caved in and I am entombed in my shattered dreams, write a vision?  Yes, write the vision. 

In the midst of the most grave of circumstances, God instructs Habakkuk to write down the “future picture” of what he wants to do for His people.  God infinite in wisdom, chooses a mundane thing for a big impact.

Whenever we are at ground zero, there is always a future picture, it is God’s picture.  God still whispers vision amidst our tragedy and despair. Vision, the critical matter of life and death that God uses like jumper cables, to shock us back when we lie listless and unresponsive.  

Maintaining vision at the forefront of our lives is crucial; because vision is always the first thing that struggle will attack.  Michael Hyatt renowned speaker, blogs, “When times are tough, vision is the first casualty.”  Preserving personal vision is a vigilant and consistent battle that we will fight at various times in life, but in winning the war on mediocrity vision must be heavily guarded. 

 Be convinced of vision’s essentiality. God implies the necessity of vision as he commands Habakkuk to write down the future picture. It’s almost as if the vision that Habakkuk writes, prompted by God, is the guarantee to Habakkuk that God will intervene and that His intervention is to Israel’s advantage. God is so determined to give Israel a better future that he tells Habakkuk to record in this moment what He wants to do for his people in the next. Then he adds an invitation for Habakkuk to believe the future picture.

“Behold the proud, 

His soul is not upright in him;

But the just shall live by his faith.

 Habakkuk’s record of the future picture inspires hope in him, and his response is optimistic in spite of what it looks like now, 

Vision It is still the undeniable difference maker.  Seeing, embracing and writing vision is still the starting point for leaving behind devastating circumstances and ultimately seeing life beyond your Ground Zero.

What future picture has God given you for yourself,  your family,  your ministry,  your business?

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