– We need to see people in the right way; do you see them as an annoyance or a distraction or do you allow yourself to be distracted and see it as an opportunity from God.

– If you look at Jesus, throughout the gospels you see him interrupted by people and he saw it as an opportunity

– People are there to help us grow in our understanding of God

– Mark 9:23

– When things come up do we see it as an impossible challenge or do we see it as a opportunity for God to do a miracle and show his power

3. You and me

– When it comes to looking at the future we often thing ” Lord open the doors in front of me for me to walk through”. But that’s often how God works, he mounds us and shapes us to be the key to open the door, he wants to work on us first before we get to the next chapter in our lives.

– Often we’re upset or annoyed by God because we prayed and he didn’t come through in the way we wanted, so we walk through life with blocks of offence, because we want God to be our personal magician. But God is a God of relationship and wants us to lean on and trust him in times of difficulty. We need to make sure we don’t have these blocks of offence.

– All of us get offended by other people, have people who let us down or hurt us by what they said. But we have a choice in how we react to that, if we don’t let go of the offences caused by others it will block our view of the future, we’ll be less resilient and will limit our capacity of what God will do in our life.

– We have a choice to live offended or do we choose to forgive and live free. Our inability to forgive will limit the capacity of what God wants to do in our life.

The bible says, where there is no vision the people perish. When it comes to looking at the future as a church there are 2 points to think about:

1. The vision must be vast, something we can only do with God, if we could do it ourselves then it’s just a project.

2. Vision is a verb and must have action with it, we have to act first before we see the results.