THE POWER OF VISION

VISION

                    Vision is the foresight with insight based on hindsight

               Nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without the force of vision.  The greatest gift ever given to man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision.  Sight is the function of the eyes but vision is the function of the heart. Sight is necessary for the present but vision is crucial for the future. When you are able to see a preferred and a possible future, you have in essence captured a vision. When you see God’s intimate plans for your future, you have ultimately seen your vision

                 If you are ever going to achieve much in 2014, then you have to be able to visualize the end of 2014 in your mind just as you have desired and decided. The principle of vision states that, “whatever you see, you can be”, and “whatever you can visualize, you can actualize”. In a world where the sight of economies, governments, and society at large is utterly discouraging, disheartening and depressing; one must have the capacity to see beyond the present if he wishes to have the faith to believe in the future. There is always more to what the eyes could see, we need our hearts to see God’s perfect picture.

                 Vision protects us against the present predicaments of this transient world in which we live; it’s our only hope against the storms of today. Vision is a source of inspiration in the face of present frustrations. If the picture of the divine future we saw, is not what we see in the present, then what we see in the present is temporal.

Thomas Edison envisaged a world with lights though he himself lived in the dark. It was his vision of a brighter world that inspired him to invent the light bulb, though he was seeing candles with his eyes yet he could see light bulb with his heart. Vision is everything. Graham Bell is no different, he was deaf in one ear but he invented the telephone. With vision, his present predicament never became a permanent impediment to achieving his dreams. To succeed, you must see beyond present realities, you must see future eventualities.

                 Possess vision and you become untouchable and unstoppable by the challenges of life.  The old sage of Israel, King Solomon said that due to the lack of vision, people’s lives are destroyed. He was saying in essence, when a people cannot envision a better tomorrow, they abuse and misuse today.  Without the image and the knowledge of a preferred future; today will lose its essence, time its purpose, activity will lack meaning and energy will have no direction.

                Today matters! Capture the picture of that divine future! See that book launch! See yourself receiving that award! See yourself at that matriculation or better still at that graduation. See yourself becoming whatever you were created to become. See the end of this year and then begin it! Have no bifurcated thinking I said; see it and then begin it. Because if you want to seize it, you MUST see it!

EXCUSES

EXCUSES

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing”.

 Abraham Lincoln.

Imagine you are engaged to be married. The wedding is just weeks away. All the preparations have been made, everything has been bought, and all the invitations have gone out. Your anticipation and excitement are at a fever pitch. And then all of a sudden your fiancée dies. What would you do? That’s an experience that makes a person want to quit or give up in life.

This actually is a true story; a man was engaged to be married to a very lovely young woman. All the wedding preparations were in place, and everything was in order; they were simply waiting for the wedding day to arrive. Then in a matter of days, the fiancée suddenly took sick and died. The grieving groom went through severe depression. He even considered suicide, he felt ashamed. How was he going to face his friends and family? How could he emerge from such tragedy?

He almost didn’t. His emotional depression became so severe that he was placed in an insane asylum where he received treatment. After few weeks, he began to come around and after two months was released, having come back from the brink. He buried his sweetheart and went on with his life. Eventually he married and raised a family. This man is ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

But he never left the valley of misfortunes, he had four sons; Robert, Edward, Willie and Thomas. His second son Edward died as a result of tuberculosis. At the age 12, Willie the third son also passed away. At the age of 18, the last born Thomas died of a heart failure.

He has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as the greatest president of America.  Abraham Lincoln led America through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis, the American Civil War. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the national government and modernized the economy. He was a great lawyer, and the only president of America with a patent.

His life has cancelled every excuse you may have for not pursuing your dreams. He was born in a poor family, never had any formal education, he was neither extremely handsome nor had any extraordinary physical features. His mother died at the age of 9 and grew up with a step mother.  He was broken-hearted, and many times in his life he was all alone and all by himself. Politically, he failed a lot of times; professionally, he lost a lot of legal cases. But he rose to become all he could ever become.

No excuse is a good excuse enough to give up! Please get up! Sit up! Achieve that dream today!

DECISIONS

            Your Destiny is at the mercy of your decisions.

The president of a very successful bank was interviewed by a famous journalist.The journalist wanted to unravel the secret of the bank’s consistent success in spite of economic recessions. The journalist asked, “Please Sir, I am curious to know, what has kept your bank insured against these economic maelstroms, whiles all others plummet , your bank seems to be consistently rising without strain? “Good Decisions” the president of the bank answered without hesitation.

 The journalist with a tone of curiosity probed further, “How were you able to make good decisions in these tumultuous times, when no business analysis or prediction is reliable? How did you make such informed decisions?”  Proudly but calmly the man replied, “experience”.

 About this time,the journalist was feeling exasperated, an interview which promised to be a long one is becoming acutely short, and with an unsatisfied look, asked impatiently, “ and how did you get experience, and from where or from whom? Could you please tell us?” The man sensing the anxiety of the journalist paused for a while, smiled and then humbly replied “bad decisions”.

Decisions! They are responsible for every success story, and they are able to change any business history; they either make or unmake you. Actually, life is the sum total of the decisions we make every day. Wherever you are today, you arrived here by the decisions of yesterday. What we call life; is essentially a series of decisions. Your life in 2014 will not be different; it will not be free of decisions, rather, it will be full of decisions.

Most people fail in life because they never actually make the deliberate decision to succeed. Others by their actions and inactions only decide not to fail, however, success is achieved by choice and not by chance, it is not a privilege to those who just desire it but the right to those who decide it. You must choose the path failures won’t take or the decisions they would not make. Good decisions are a success recipe; they work every time and everywhere.

Regrettably, failures have this common disease, the cancer of indecision. Cancer because it’s fatal, indecision kills enthusiasm and zeal than anything in life. Indecisive people never decide to decide, and therefore they never ever decide, whether it's their spiritual, academic, business or social life.  Indecisive people live by default; they live by the motion of the wind and are led by the direction of the crowd, they do whatever they see others do and they become what others often become; failures. There is nothing as useless to your pursuit of success as indecision; it has no profit. 

Deliberate decision is a product of the will, and your will is what gives power and momentum to the rest of your body. Where there is a will, there always will be a way; potentials will be released, strength will be regenerated, passion recharged, energy revamped, the intellect refocused and goal realized.

Avoid default decisions and make deliberate decisions! This year, make every moment count by deliberately deciding on every minute! Decide that this year will be bigger, better and brighter!

Decide today for today matters!

Prayer: Father, grant me the wisdom and the grace to make right decisions in every facet of my life, informed decisions from your Word, which will lead me to your prepared destiny for my life. Amen