Out-of-Body Experience

For the Pioneers

I have always been pioneering – thinking, seeing, dreaming into the future. Sometimes I can see myself, see my family, in that place… a place of effectiveness on a grand scale, a spiritual standing ground, a place of impact or influence for the kingdom of God and in the marketplace. I can see it. 

And in those moments, those gifts of a moment, where the Lord has gifted me with a vision, I sometimes get too excited, to rambunctious, where impatience sets in. I begin to see a gap – from where I am now to where I will be then. 

And in that moment, in that gap, when you are at F on the map and God shows you L, it is far to easy to quickly scramble to create a plan to get there… when you see the result but have not yet been given the road map on getting from F to G and then from G to H.

The pioneering person can see the future so clearly at moments that it is as if you are having an out-of-body experience, and you must run to catch up with yourself. It can feel as though you have lost yourself to the future, and you must go on a quest to meet there.

But I have learned (and will probably learn some more) to not set off running to that place, even as beautiful as the vision may be, without first getting the road map from God. For, far too often, I have set off running only to find myself living somewhere in between where I was never intended to reside. God had L for me but I’m living in the land of J, even seemingly trapped, because I lacked the patience and fed the impulsivity to run ahead without getting God’s road map for the journey. And J was only ever meant to be a hotel stay, no place to reside.

And let’s think about those places, those in-between places… Think about the timing of a thing. When you land in a place really matters. For, at a certain time you will encounter different people and different circumstances then you might 20 minutes later… and all of these things matter. God uses people, He uses relationships, He uses circumstances to form us, to shape us, to develop us, to prepare us, even transform us, into the person we saw in the vision.

And the kind of relationships that we want – ones that are healthy, where iron sharpens iron – are found at a certain time in a certain place. Think about it: Meeting someone at 2 pm daylight is different than meeting someone at 2 am in the middle of the night. The people at those times will be different types of people. And what I truly want is to meet my 2 pm relationships, the circumstances with sunlight… I want to only step foot and tread ground where God tells me to and when. And so, I must trust Him for the entire journey.

The difference between who I am now and the person I see in the vision is transformation. And there are no short cuts for transformation. The Holy Spirit is the author and we must yield.

And so, when gifted with a vision, with the beauty of this thing, I must thank God for the vision. And I must temper my impatience to sit where I am until He tells me to go. And then, I must be willing to go at the pace He sets, even if its inching like a turtle rather than stampeding like a rhino.

For visions – grand, holy visions – are not ours. They are Gods. And for those visions to come to pass, we must do things God’s way. And so we must look to Him as the compass. We must stop in our tracks when we are lost and wait for our Father. We must temper the wild abandon that sets us off running, and tell our nervous systems to submit to the will of God and the direction of the Holy Spirit. 

For then we will reserve our energy and our focus and our gaze for the things God is focused on and gazing at. And we will see His purposes come to pass in our life, in our lifetime.

Pioneer, Fight the urge to run. You are here… you are now… for a reason. He will show you where to go and when. And when He says, “Go,” do it His way.