Do you have a vision for your life? What are you aiming for in your ministry? What are you aiming for in your relationships? What do you want to accomplish in life? Where do you want to be in five years? What will God do in your life in 2022?
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Transcription:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
It’s a new year and it’s time for new vision. Do you have a vision for your life? What are you aiming for in your ministry? What are you aiming for in your relationships? What do you wanna accomplish in life? Where do you want to be in five years today, we’re going to talk about the importance of vision in your ministry.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:25):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be say, welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Danielle King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:00):
Welcome. Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. We are talking about vision and I am joined by my brand new co-host and fellow evangelist, Daniel Patterson, Daniel, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me on. And we are going to be talking about vision. It is right at the beginning of a new year, 2022. And at the beginning of a new year is a good time to stop and to kind of start to think about what God has for you in the new year. A lot of people set new year’s solutions, and I, I think that the biblical form of new year’s resolutions is vision setting a vision for your life. So, so Daniel, if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. So if you aim at nothing in life, you’re gonna hit nothing. But if you aim at a specific target, God will help you to hit the target. And so there’s a verse in Habakkuk two verse two that talks about the importance of vision. Could you read for us that verse in, in, in let’s find out what God’s word says about setting vision? Yeah, so
Daniel Patterson (02:21):
It says in a Habakkuk 2:2 this then the Lord replied, write down the revelation or vision and make it plain on tablets so that a Herald may run with it
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:34):
And keep reading
Daniel Patterson (02:35):
For the revelation of awaits an important time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false though. It linger, wait for it. It will certain come and will not delay.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:46):
So it says to write the vision and make it plain, write the vision and make it plain that he who reads it may run with it. So, Daniel, talk to me a little bit. Why do you think it’s important to write down a vision?
Daniel Patterson (03:04):
So I graduated from victory Bible college just in this last spring. And one of the things they taught us and told us was that if you just think about it, then the likely chance that you do is very, very, but if you actually write it down, you actually remember, and the chances of you actually doing it are much higher. So whenever you write it down and it actually goes into your heart and you think about it a lot more compared to just thinking
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:31):
About it. So there’s actually a lot of power in, in writing it down. You know, I want you imagine in Archer, who’s shooting his, his bow. And so if he aims right at the center of his target, he can judge his success and failure, depending on how close he gets to the middle of the target. But just imagine if he aims his arrow at nothing in particular, you know, the arrow might hit a tree, it might hit a house. It might hit a, a passer by. And so some people, they, they shoot an arrow and then wherever it falls, they go and they just draw a circle around the area and see, see, look, I hit the middle of the target, but if you have a specific target in mind that you’ve written down and you aim your arrow at the target, then it allows you to lift your bow down side to side, to move it so that you can actually hit the target that you’re aiming at.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:27):
And the process of writing it down is setting the target. What area are you aiming your life at? And so in my life, the area that I’m aiming my life is to winning people to Jesus. I am called to be an evangelist. And so I set a goal when I was 15 years old, that I wanted to lead a million people to Jesus before I turned 30 years of age. And that goal became kind of the, the defining vision, the target for my life and every decision I made, I judged against that specific goal of leading a million people to Jesus. And, and so some opportunities came to me that helped me to achieve that goal. But then other opportunities came that would have distracted me. They, there were not necessarily bad things to do, but they wouldn’t helped me achieve that goal. And, and so just making that decision and writing it down, I wanna lead a million people to Jesus. Before I turn 30 years of age, it helped me to judge my success and help me to make the decisions that I had in life. And so in Proverbs chapter 29, verse eight 18, it says without a vision, the people per what, what do you think that verse means? Daniel?
Daniel Patterson (05:48):
So basically when you look at, you know, all, all the kingdoms and, and famous governments throughout history, where there was America, they had a vision to have a, a free Republic that the people had rights in. And they actually wrote the vision down in the 10 commandments. And because of it, it led to what we have today, a free democracy. And, and so whenever you have that vision, it helps lead to freedom for the people and it impacting other people. But whenever you don’t have a vision, it’s hard to, to build off anything. You don’t have a foundation when you don’t have a vision.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:20):
So if you’re listening to me today, I want you to begin to think about what God’s vision is for your life. You might even wanna pull out a piece of paper right now and begin to write down some of the, the visions that God has given for you. You know, putting a vision down on paper, earns it from a dream into a specific goal. And once you have that goal, it’s something that you can begin to aim towards and, and achieve in your life. Vision is God’s plan for your life. God gave you vision. So you wouldn’t have to live by only what you see. The Bible says that faith is the sub of things you hope to accomplish the evidence of things that you cannot see, even when other people maybe can’t see them. And you begin to write down your vision. You can see something in faith by faith.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:11):
You can see something using your faith even before other people can see it. And so vision is not the same sight. You know, sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart sight is the ability to see things as they are. Vision is the ability to see things as they could be. You know, Helen Keller, she was really famous. She was both deaf and blind, but she learned to communicate using sign language, but tactile sign language. She had communicate by touching people’s hands. And she was once asked, can you imagine something even worse than being born blind? And she said, the only thing worse than being born blind is being able to see and having no vision for your life. And so vision is seeing the future before it comes into being vision is a mental picture of your destiny.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:05):
Vision is the key to your future. And, and so we think about people in life that have great visions. Like for example Steve jobs, he was the one who invented the, the apple iPhone, and he had a vision or the iPhone before anyone else could see it. And he thought, I wonder if we could put a communication device together that would make phone calls that would allow you to listen to songs, and that could access the internet and put all those devices down into one device that would fit into a person’s pocket. And he managed to do it. He had a vision for an iPhone, and because of his vision, he got rich because everyone suddenly, when he, his vision came to fruition, they said, that’s some, that’s a gadget that I have to have. And, and so the same is true in ministry that your vision will create the future. It will create something that doesn’t exist. No one else can see it, but you can see it in your spirit. God gives us vision. And then by faith, we can be in working towards it. And what is on the inside can manifest in reality and, and everyone can see it. Daniel, what are some of the things that God has put in your heart that you would like to see God do in the future, in your life?
Daniel Patterson (09:30):
So one of the, one of the things that I know God’s called me as an evangelist, he is called me to preach a gospel to the nations. And I know that because he revealed it to me at 16 years of age. And, and because he’s revealed that to me, I’ve I, I’ve made a dream board putting pictures of crusades and stuff along those lines. And tell me,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:52):
Let’s stop there from a, tell me what is a dream board, what what’s a dream board. So
Daniel Patterson (09:57):
So I guess the Christian version of a dream board, cuz you’re gonna have a regular dream board. So it’s putting out through pictures and vision and in other things putting on a piece of paper or a board of what God’s called you to do. So if God’s called you to say, to be a youth, pastor you to pictures of maybe going on campuses and pictures of reaching kids in the church. But for me as an evangelist I’m putting pictures of pictures of crusades. So a dream board is putting into picture form of what God’s called you to do.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:34):
So you’re, you’re cutting out pictures of what it is. It’s basically creating a vision for your life. You’re, you’re putting that picture in front of you in whatever is your dominant focus is what will manifest into reality in your life. And, and so tell what did you put on your dream board that told you about your, your calling as an evangelist pictures? Did you put on there?
Daniel Patterson (10:58):
So there was a picture of Billy Graham who who’s my favorite Evangel. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:02):
Billy Graham, great Evangel. Yeah. You, you cut out a picture, Billy Graham
Daniel Patterson (11:05):
He’s preaching in a Soule, South Korea. Okay. And he’s preaching to a million people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:10):
So I’ve seen that picture. Yeah. It’s a huge crowd of people. So here, Billy Graham is preaching to a, a million people. What did that vision begin to do in your life?
Daniel Patterson (11:22):
So it inspires me to to reach towards that goal of being an evangelist. And it gives me hope, cuz obviously right now I’m not preaching to a million people, but whenever I, I, I look at it it gives me hope knowing that and believing that one day it’s gonna happen. So it gives me hope. And inspiration.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:41):
Do you think that there will come a time where you will have the opportunity to preach to a million people?
Daniel Patterson (11:45):
Yes. In Jesus name <laugh>.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:47):
I mean, that would be amazing, wouldn’t it? And, and to preach to a million people and see a million people get saved at and one time, you know, there’s, there’s a famous story about Reinhardt bonky. Kenneth Copeland found Reinhardt bonky when he was just in the beginning stages of his ministry. At that time, he was, he was doing crusades, but his biggest crusade was only in the, the 10 to 30,000 people range, which is for Reinhard was still a very small crusade. And Kenneth Copeland prophesied over Reinhard and said, the day will come where you will lead a million people to Jesus in a single prayer. And at that time to go from 30,000 in a crowd to a million, it seems impossible, but that prophecy can came to pass. And the day came at one of the big crusades in Legos, Nigeria, that Reinhard bonky actually led a million people to Jesus in a single prayer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:44):
And it came because of that prophecy, but really what a prophecy is, is it’s, it’s presenting a vision of the future of what God wants to, to do in the future. So vision is unique to our species. Only humans can enter the world of the imagination and create a future. This is the reason why humans have advanced over the centuries while animals live the same lives year after year animals, only what they can sense. You know, a dog, he, he can taste, he can touch, he can feel. But the unique ability that humans have is this ability to create vision in their, their mind. And then to begin to work towards that vision, we can actually dream beyond reality. We can work towards an invisible goal. We can harness the power of creative work creative vision and envision actually motivates us to work.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:43):
Really vision is, is the only motivation that we have for work. Why, why go to work well is because maybe you have a vision for earning money to buy a new car, or, or maybe you have a vision to, to get me married someday. You know that in order to get married, you’re gonna have to have some money in the bank. And, and, and so vision thinking about your future is what gives us the motivation to, to work hard. Vision is what motivates me in ministry to, to work hard, to, to lead people, to Jews, cuz I have a vision of thousands and even millions of people being in heaven with me. I don’t want them to go to hell. I have a vision of them joining with me in heaven. I have a vision of me being in heaven and people coming up and saying, thank you for helping to lead me to Jesus, thank you because of you I’m here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:29):
And so that vision gives me kind of the motivation to keep going. When, when things get tough and there are two types of vision that you can have for your life, there is a positive vision and there’s a negative vision. And your motivation for working is going to be grounded either in faith or in fear. So faith builds. Faith is a positive vision for your life. But fear think about it. Fear is actually a negative vision that Satan comes to try to give you for your life. And, and so Satan is the original terrorist. He uses terror and fear to try to influence people. So Satan has given people a vision in their life concerning COVID right now, what Satan’s vision it’s you’re gonna get sick. You’re going to die. And because of that fear, everyone in society has been so of COVID. But Jesus gives us a positive vision for our life. Jesus says, I give you healing. I give you health. I give you prosperity. And, and so he gives us faith. Talk to me a little bit, Daniel, about the difference between faith and fear. What do you think is the difference between faith and year?
Daniel Patterson (15:52):
Yeah, so we have a choice whenever as Christians, whenever we’re stepping into what God’s calls us to do, we can choose to have faith and believe what, what God’s called us to, or we can choose to believe in the fear. And so really we have a choice to believe in one of two options. And for me person leave, you might as well choose faith and believe and step out cuz either way, you’re gonna have to believe. And whenever you choose fear, you’re choosing to walk away from what God’s called you to do. You know, you can be saved, you can know Jesus and be on your way to heaven, but it says an Ephesians, you 10, that he, for us, what he called us to do before we were born. And so we have a choice to walk out the vision for our life or not. So faith
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:42):
Is believing that something good is going to happen to us if we do what’s right. So this is a positive vision of the future. And it’s very healthy to be motivated by faith, but fear, the opposite fear is the belief that something bad will happen to us. If we don’t do what’s right, and fear is binding and it’s it’s blinding. It actually causes us to, to do things out of, of obligation. And envision is so powerful. Like vision is the secret weapon of advertisers. Think about every advertisement. They don’t just show you the picture of a car. They show you the picture of you in a car with a beautiful girl driving fast down the road. They’re they’re trying to sell a vision of what your life could be like. If you buy a particular car in every advertiser, D does this, they try to, to show your young, successful, happy, sexy, and the advertiser wants you to see they.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:44):
They want you to see yourself using their product in order to, to be happy. And so they, they create a vision of what your life could be like with that product. And I think the same is, is true of God. God gives us a vision of what we could become with his help. And then as we begin to walk in that vision, then we begin to see it happen in our lives. And so there’s something called the law of dominant focus. Whatever you focus on is what’s going to develop in your life. Nowadays we have digital cameras, but in, in the old days, you know, they would take a picture and then you would develop the picture. It would be a, a negative. And, and then you would take the, the negatives and you’d develop it into a picture. And, and so if you take a picture of something, it, it can be a picture of a dog.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:42):
It can be a picture of a cat or a picture of a fish. Whatever you’re taking the picture of is what’s going to develop you when you take it. And so what you focus on in life is what will develop in your life. And so if you can’t see your future, you really don’t have a future. Vision is the power to change who you are and the power to change, where you’re going. Every great achievement in life actually began with a vision. And so my prayer is for you, who’s listening is that God would give you a great vision for your life in this coming year. What is your vision for your life? What is it that God is calling you to do in this new year? What, what goals, what resolutions are you going to set for this new year? What is 2022 going to bring in your life?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:36):
You know, what type of, of legacy do you want to create in your life? What, what do you want to be one year from now? What are some of the things that you want to, to see develop in, in your life? Just yesterday my wife and I sat down and started talking about some of our vision for our, our lives in this new year. And we broke it down into several different categories, the categories of faith, what goals do we wanna set for our lives in the area of faith? And one of the goals that we have is we wanna read the Bible. I want to be reading Bible stories to my kids every night before they go to bed. My wife said that she wants to spend more time worshiping. And then we’ve had a lot of stress and worry lately. And so one of my wife’s goals was she wants to shake off the cares of this world in this new year and, and to, to N not worry to, to live stress free. And so those are some of our, our goals in the area of faith, Daniel, what are some faith goals that you have for yourself in this coming year?
Daniel Patterson (20:42):
So one of them is the biggest thing is having a daily relationship with the Lord. So I wanna read the entire Bible this year. So I have a Bob reading plan, which breaks it down every single day. So I’m able to read it by the entire Bible by the end of the year. Another goal is just as I’m, as I’m here, is being prepared as an evangelist to, to go out and preach to the nations and, and being able to do behind the scenes stuff like websites and photography and fundraising and things like that. Another goal that I have this year is I wanna be able to either co co-partner with another evangelist or, or do a crusade for myself for the first time and, and bring people into the kingdom of God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:30):
All right. So then another area to set goals is family. We got faith, family, finances, friendship, fitness, fun, and then ministry. So family in, in our family, like one of the things we want is both of our kids to do daily piano practice. So that’s one of our family goals is that every single day that they would do piano practice and then that our kids would complete their chores and their homework every day that that’s a challenge sometimes as parents to get them to do that. And, and then in order to make that happen, we realize we need to have less screen time and we need to have more family time. And so we set a goal to, to have more walk games, bike rides, and, and outings as a family. So to take the kids away from the screen time and, and get them doing different activities.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:19):
And then finances we have some, some financial goals. And so you might wanna think about what are your financial goals for this year? What is it that, that you wanna do to you want to get out of debt? Do, do you want to make more money? Do you want to invest more money? And so some financial goals can help you make decisions for your life. Also friendship. What areas do you want to develop in as a friend fitness? What are some of your fitness goals? Well, Michael, I need to lose some weight. And so I’ve got that as a goal, very popular, new year’s resolution exercise more. Do you have any fitness goals? I
Daniel Patterson (22:56):
Tried to work out a few times a week, about four or five times a week, every morning.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:00):
That’s great. And then fun. My wife and I decide we should do at least one date every week. And so every Friday we’re gonna set aside time for us to have a and, and then ministry. We’ve got a variety of ministry goals. I’ve got a crusade coming up in Ethiopia and Zambia, and then we’re working on putting more crusades on the calendar. The goal is to do six to eight crusades every single year. So God gives us these visions for our life. And then we begin to work to, to implement them and to take steps towards completing the vision. And so right now, I want to pray for you and pray for the vision that God has given you for your life. I I’d encourage you find a sheet of paper, begin to write down some of your vision, some of your goals, some of the things that God has for you in your life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:53):
And, and then let me just pray for you, dear heavenly father, I pray for my friend. I pray that you would give them a great vision for their life. I pray that you give ’em a great vision for this coming year of what this year could become. And Lord, I pray, my friend would be focused on the faith side of vision, not the fear side of vision that they would respond to God’s vision for their life, not the devil’s vision for their life. We know that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus comes to give you life and life more abundantly. Lord, I pray that this coming year would be in amazing year in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:41):
Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of a out $1 for every person we’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcast and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (25:49):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
