This sermon is part one of the Vision Series given by Pastor Maurice Hicks Sr. at Made Whole Ministries in Jacksonville, FL on starting 7/5/2015.
[ai_playlist id=”3064″]
This sermon is part one of the Vision Series given by Pastor Maurice Hicks Sr. at Made Whole Ministries in Jacksonville, FL on starting 7/5/2015.
[ai_playlist id=”3064″]
Made Whole Ministries
Vision
07/05/2015
Pastor Maurice Hicks
We’re coming to lift Him up. I thank God that this is a message that we have. It’s about vision. Vision is something that you have to be able to see. You have to see it in your imagination. In the tower of babel when everybody was in one language. They would say we are going to create a tower that’s going to reach up to the heavens. Some man didn’t say this, but God said this. He said,” The people’s imagination is vain.
As long as they be in unity, there is nothing impossible that they cannot do.” They were going to build a tower up to heaven. They were going to do it. God said that they could do it. So He had to confuse the languages. So when people are in unity and in harmony together, there’s nothing that they can’t do. God had to confound their languages. When you can see something, then you can produce it. Vision is being able to see something before it manifests in the natural world. A vision is being able to see something that you cannot see with your natural eyes. God called Abraham to a nation to a land that he didn’t even know. He had to leave his family. They were idol worshippers. They used to make idols for a living. They were pagans.
God told him to leave his family and go to a land that he didn’t even know. Abraham by faith believed in God. God told him,” You’re going to be a father of many nations. I’m going to make a nation out of you. All the world will be blessed through you.” He started calling those things that be not as though they were. God told Abraham to look at the stars because that is how numerous his descendants were going to be.
God told Abraham to look down at the sand on the beach and asked Abraham if he could count the sand. He told Abraham the amount of sand is how numerous his descendants were going to be. So every time Abraham looked at night time he had something to anchor his faith into. He couldn’t see with his natural eyes. God gave him something to anchor his faith into. God gives everyone of us a vision. Image is everything. Unless you see yourself the way God see you, you won’t walk in your destiny. You will walk beneath your privilege. Gillian was hiding, but God called him a mighty man of valor. God called those things that be not as though they are. God saw what was going to happen. He knows the future. He told Abraham he was going to be a mighty man and the father of many nations. He didn’t even have any natural children. Abraham and Sarah tried to “help” God, right?
Every time Abraham saw somebody, God gave him a new name. He changed his name from Abram to Abraham. Abraham told people he was the father of many nations every time he met somebody. They must have laughed at this old man. They must have laughed at him and called him a fool behind his back, but yet, he looked up at night time and saw the stars. God told me my descendants shall be like the stars that won’t be numbered. When he looked in the daytime, he looked on the shore. He said that’s how my descendants are going to be. They are going to be mighty upon the earth. Everyone that is in the body of Christ and engrafted into the body of Christ, we’re God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled. Apostle Paul was an apostle to the gentiles. He saw something that the other Jewish people didn’t see. The Jewish people were caused to sleep and to slumber so that we could be engrafted in. He said he was going to rope the nation of Israel with jealousy for the people that were not. He was talking about us. We’re the spiritual descendants of Abraham. We are God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled. Abraham had and anchor for his faith every time so he was able to see stuff that other people couldn’t see. Vision is being able to see beyond what your eyes can see.
When God gives you a vision, a vision shall come to past. Everybody else will laugh at you and won’t believe in you, but the vision that God gave you, it shall come to past. Why? Your vision is too big to just bless you and your little family. Your vision has to be so big that it won’t manifest unless God intervenes on your behalf. Believing in your vision will cause a provision to come. Your vision will attract the provision to make it happen. You don’t have the finances to do it. You don’t know how it’s going to get done. God’s going to connect people to you that believe in you and see the anointing on your life and they are going to cause the finances to come to make it happen. You’ve got to believe God. You’re like an oddity because everybody else is going the opposite way.
They’re looking with the five senses of how I can make this thing happen. You don’t look that way. You look deep down inside your gut and your innermost being and you follow that inward witness and it’s almost like some people say I’m going to go this way to the left. That’s the right way to do it. That’s the easy way to do it. But you say to them that you can’t do it that way. You say to them that you have to believe God. Then you believe God and you are radical. You’re crazy. People think you’ve lost your mind. When you start walking in faith, and God says,” Oh, he’s trusting me. He’s going to give me the glory.” When he or she is successful, they’re going to say it’s because of God. To God be the glory because man didn’t do this. Then God says,” I can trust her. I can trust him.” Then as you walk in faith, and step out in faith, God’s going to cause the next piece of the puzzle to be manifested. People that don’t even know you, they’ll say,” I don’t even know why I’m doing this, but I believe in you. God put this on my heart to do this and I’m not even going to benefit, but I believe in you. “People want to know if there is a righteous cause for doing things. When they see a righteous cause, people want to be connected to that. When we talk about the twelve scribes, and how they would go into the promise land, and how they sent out twelve spies to see the land.
The twelve spies saw that the land was filled with milk and honey. There are only two spies that we remember. The other ten spies I bet you that you can’t tell me their name. I don’t know their name. Joshua and Caleb were people that were believing in God. They were saying what God said. Caleb was 80 years old, believed in God to give him his mountain. He knew he was old, but he was believing in God because he had a report of the Lord. He believed in the report of the Lord, they were the only ones that made it to the promised land. All the other ten spies died in the wilderness.
They went around the mountain until they died. God said that the generation would not enter into the promise land because of their unbelief. Vision is being able to see things that people can’t see. We went over a hundred miles an hour. We were surrounded by nothing but water. When we went fishing, we dropped out poles in the water. We didn’t have to cast. We were so deep down and there was fish all around. We were so far that we could not see anything but water. We saw the majesty of God. God created this earth. He separated the sea from the land. When we saw the majesty of God, we realized it was so awesome that God had to have created this. When we look beyond what our eyes can see, we can see the glory of God. That is what vision is. Vision is being able to see what your natural eyes can’t see. What you can’t see, and feel, and touch, and taste with your five senses.
Pastor Paul E Cho has one of the biggest churches in the world in Seoul, Korea. He has satellite churches connected. He only had a handful of people there. All of his congregation were poor. In Korea, the most important possession that most people had was their kimchi pot. A kimchi pot is a little aluminum pot that you do everything in. You cook, wash, bathe, and everything in it. When there came a time for offering, Pastor Cho was talking about giving and receiving. He assumed that because the people were poor, they weren’t able to give anything. God told him that he was not preaching His whole counsel and that when Pastor Cho wouldn’t teach them about giving so he wouldn’t block the people’s blessings. So he preached a powerful message on tithing and giving and receiving.
There was a woman who only had a kimchi pot. Do you know what she did? When offering time came, she put here kimchi pot in the offering. When Pastor Cho saw this, he wept. He told her to take her pot and keep it. She asked Pastor Cho if he believed the message that he was preaching. He told her yes and that he believed it. She asked Pastor Cho why he didn’t want her to give. That was all she had to give. She told him that was that best she had. He accepted her kimchi pot. The next week, he went up to a group of Christian Korean pastors and told them that he was going to get a bicycle. He told them that the bicycle would be an American bicycle with ten speeds and they laughed at him. They asked him where he saw his bicycle. He told them the bicycle was right there in his spirit and that God told him that he was going to get an American ten speed bicycle.
There was a Colonel that was leaving to the United States. He was American and he needed somebody to help him move. Pastor Paul E. Cho went and helped this man move. When they got everything loaded, the American man told Pastor Cho that he didn’t have enough room for the bicycle. He gave him the bicycle. When he went back to church, he rode his bicycle. They asked him how he got his bicycle. He told them that it was on the inside of him. He told them that it was pregnant on the inside of him and God made it manifest.
That’s what vision is. Being able to see what you can’t see in the natural. It’s stupid, crazy, and it doesn’t make sense. Your vision comes from the inside of you. Your unique background causes your vision to come to past. You are a unique individual. Every one of us, a snowflake. If you look at a snowflake through a microscope, you will know that no snowflake is the same. Every one of them is individual. With your unique talents and ability and the things that you went through in life, God causes those circumstances in your past in the vision just for you. God will cause the things you need for your vision to attract to you just like a magnet. If you can imagine it, it will materialize in the spiritual world first. You hear a word from God. God tells you that it’s yours and everybody else doesn’t believe it.
Everybody is not going to believe your vision. Your vision is unique to you. They may not believe in you, but God will have certain people connect to your vision that want to be connected to you.
Everybody wants to be successful. Everybody wants to do something positive. There are people that are talented, but they want to use their talent to help somebody that they see has the anointing of God on their life. Everybody wants to be connected to a just cause. So your vision shall manifest. It shall come to past. God will cause people who will supernaturally to see things and sew into your life and give you their time, money, their influence to make their vision come to past. Vision is important. Proverbs 29:18 says that without a vision the people perish. If you don’t have a vision, you are just going through happenstance. The wind is blowing and they got no kind of clue of what is going to happen in life. Que Sera, Sera. You got to have a vision, but it has to come from God.
You’ve got to have a purpose right. It gives you a reason to wake up in the morning. Have you noticed, some people don’t want to wake up in the morning because the job they have, they are not passionate about it? They wouldn’t do it if it was for free. If you find a job that you would do for free, even if you weren’t getting compensated for, then that is where your anointing is in. For example, your anointing is in doing hair. When you do hair, you can see stuff that other people can’t see. When you are passionate about something, God will reveal other things that he won’t show to other people.
If you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you shall be filled. When you hunger and thirst after something and you will do it even if you don’t get compensated for it. Even if it looks like your losing money and you connect to it. People will come knocking at your door. They will see the passion in it. They will see the love in it. You will have so many appointments that you will have to say that you are busy and for them to come back next month. That comes through you being passionate about what you are doing. God will give you revelation. You will see things that other people can’t see. That’s what your vision will call.
Joseph was a dreamer. Who gave him the dreams? God did. God gave him the vision. He always gave God the glory. When he was young and immature he got in his daddy’s face and his brother’s face and told them they were going to bow down to him. Sometimes you have to keep the vision to yourself. You can’t share with everybody else. Jesus told us not to cast our pearls before swine because they will trample over it. On Father’s day we preached about how there are many teachers, not many fathers. There are thousands of teachers, you have not many fathers.
Do you know why you don’t have many fathers? Everybody is not authorized to speak into your life. There are going to be certain people to speak into your life and you have to authorize them to do it. You have to give them the liberty. When we took D fishing, we caught a big bass. He listens. I taught him how to fish. He told me that he never learned how to cast a rod. We got out there at nighttime. We used a rubber piece of material to cast a so we wouldn’t break anybody’s car. If we used something heavy, then it slipped off of that line, and it would have broken and went onto someone’s car. We used a little rubber inner tube like a tire. He cast that. He didn’t know how to cast. When he went out there, he was casting like a pro. He’s teachable. I can teach him stuff. He has to authorize me to do that. If he doesn’t authorize me to do that, I can’t teach him anything.
The washing machine broke. I’ve been in electronics for 22 years plus 5 years after the Army. I knew how to troubleshoot. But I told D that we were going to troubleshoot the washing machine to find out why it’s broken. I really knew why it was broke, but I was seeing if he was teachable. I told him to go on YouTube. He went on YouTube and found the model. He bought a book on electronics. I knew electronics. I’ve been working on electronics half of my life in the electronic field. He got a multimeter. I gave it to him. It was like I gave him a million dollars. I told him to take the multimeter and that we would troubleshoot. He found out that the switch, when you open and close the door, was broken. It was not working. He checked it and found out that it didn’t have continuity and that there was a break in. The switch wasn’t working.
On Sunday D order the switch at about 8 o’clock. The switch costed 5 dollars post and pay. We got the cheapest switch they had. There was one for 9 dollars. He grabbed one for 5 dollars. When I came home Tuesday, he got the washer torn apart and that switch in it. When you’re teachable, and you believe in God for something, people will speak into your life. You’ll be able to do stuff that it would have taken you years to do, stumbling and bumping your head. When you’ve got a vision from God, and you share it with other people, there is something anointed inside of them. Just like Johnathan and David. There was something that is beautiful when it happens naturally.
You can’t make it happen. It’s beautiful and you connect to somebody in the spirit world. It’s automatic. It’s done by God. You are connected to that person, and then you authorize them to speak into your life. You get revelation knowledge from their life struggles. They make all types of failures and everything, but they’ll point your life to successes. You won’t have to make the mistakes. You will be successful at a rapid rate, because they see greatness in you. Some people want to be a rapper. They tried it and it didn’t work. Then all of a sudden they see Junior, and they will give their time and energy to help him. Why would they do that? Because they see greatness in him. They see the anointing of God on him. I don’t know what the anointing is. But I know what it isn’t. When I see it, I know the anointing. Your vision has to be so great that it has to bless somebody else.
If you just want to be successful just so you can be successful and ride around in a big car and a nice suit, then God isn’t in it. Your vision has to be from God and it has to be to bless somebody else. Successful people want to bless somebody else. They want their legacy to continue when they die. Successful people aren’t worried about getting their rent paid and their light bill paid. They are worried about having long life, and then when they die, passing on the knowledge and the mantle on to somebody else. They were born to pass the mantle onto somebody else. They don’t want just to die. God put this inside of me. That’s how God is. In the kingdom of God, there is increase. It produces after its own kind. In Psalms 112, that is a picture of a spiritually mature man or woman of God. Their seed should be mightily upon the earth. They are not even moved by evil tidings. They are trusting in God. They give. They are givers. They lend. They bless people.
Their children’s children are blessed. There is not even a question of whether or not their children are going to be blessed. They know they are going to be blessed because they are following those principles. They give God the glory. They live to bless other people. Vision is so important, that your vision empowers you.
We talked about the eagle last week. The storms of life are going to come to everybody. I don’t care who it is. Jesus said that there are many afflictions of the righteous, so all of us are going to go through storms. Persecution is going to come, but we’re not moved by them. This is only a momentary thing. These are light afflictions. Apostle Paul was stoned and left for dead. God told Paul that it wasn’t his time to go. God raised him back from the dead. Paul said that he knew a man who saw things when he looked into heaven that were unlawful to even talk about.
He was talking about himself when he was stoned and left for dead, but God wouldn’t let him die. Man could not kill him until it was his appointed time. He knew that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul knew that even though he wanted to be with Jesus, that it would be more expedient that he stayed and helped the people. He said he was going to pray and see that Christ be formed in the people and so it was for their benefit that he stay.
Even though the devil tried to kill him, he couldn’t kill him until it was his time. Later on he said,” I will finish the course.” Then he gave up the ghost and he died. He went through all those things. He was stoned. He was left for dead. He was shipwrecked. He was ignored. He really only had a couple of people that he could count on. Timothy, Titus, and Onesimus. He was shipwrecked and he was chained to a wall in prison. He was in the Roman jail. He didn’t have liberty. He did all of those things that the gospel might be spread to the gentiles. Apostle Paul knew that these light afflictions are only for a moment and they work a far more exceeding weight of glory. The devil can try to put something on me, but it won’t stick. It’s just like Teflon. When I was coming up, everybody had the metal pots and aluminum pots. You had to put a lot of grease on it to keep it from sticking. They came out with Teflon and then you could cook eggs without grease or anything.
Everybody thought it was just like new money. We are like that. The devil can try to bring stuff on us, but it won’t stick. It can’t stay. We have got to resist him. When we resist him, we submit ourselves to God, and then he will have to flee. The vision that God gave us, he cannot stop it from being fulfilled. We’ve got to obey God. The most important way that God keeps us on track as far as our vision, is through our spirit man. When we go and slip up and then it doesn’t feel right, everybody will say,” Man, go the easy way. Go to left and to the right.” Guess what? We stay straight ahead. We stay on the course. God told me to do it and I’m going to do it God’s way. God will have people strategically there to make sure that your vision comes to past. He’ll provide the resources. The cattle on a thousand hills were from God. So do you think that God can’t provide your resources?
He just wants to know that when you are successful that you will give him the glory. Then he will continue to work with you. Vision gives you a proper prospective. Vision looks at what could be if you follow God. Diamonds. Everybody loves diamonds. Marilyn Monroe. She was famous for singing ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’. Beauty may fade, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Diamonds are really attractive because they are polished and stoned and everything. You know how diamonds are formed? Through pressure. Then they are beautiful.
Joseph dreamed a dream. His brothers were dream killers. Vision is everything to a leader. It leads the leader. It causes you to have focus. It causes a fire down on the inside of you. It draws the leader forward.
1. Vision starts inside of you.
Minister Baldwin has a vision, but I can’t take her vision and run with it. It’s not my vision. Saul should have been out there leading the battle when Goliath threatened the people. Saul was supposed to be a warrior. He had all that armor. He should have been leading the battle, but he was in the back hiding out. David, the little ruddy boy, said.” I dare this uncircumcised Philistine to defy the armies of the Living God.” The anointing of God came on him, just like it did when the lion was trying to take his father’s sheep. The anointing and righteousness of God came upon him and he said,” I’m going to fight this guy.” So Saul tried to say,” Well, okay, young man, go ahead and take my armor.” David tried to put that armor on and it swallowed him up. David said,” I can’t fight in this. I’ll even prove it.. I will go with what I know. Trusting God. God gave me the power when the lion was coming. God gave me the power when the bear tried to take my daddy’s sheep. “Nobody saw him. He was on the back of a mountain. God saw it. God trained him to be a king.
Vision has to come from inside.
2. Vision draws on your natural gifts and desires.
Cecilia she’s good at teaching. When I met her she was teaching little kids. I wanted to be her helper. 33 years later I’m still helping. I’ve seen her work with kids with no effort. She’s passionate about it. She has an anointing on her life to do it. I’ve seen us in Walmart in Kmart. Little kids that don’t even know her, walk right up to her and hug her knee. They don’t bother me. But they come right up to her, and look at her. It’s the anointing that draws them. She has a passion about her. God knows that she is gifted in that area. She started a daycare when Curtis was born. She didn’t think anybody was good enough to take care of her grandbaby, so her friends found out about it. They brought their kids here. We were filled to capacity as far as the daycare, weren’t we? The vision has to look to your calling. If you want your vision to come to past, you have to partner with people that are like-minded. If it’s somewhere in the next level that you want to be, then you’re vision has to resignate with them and everyone else. It has to resemble the place you want to be. That’s called a mentor. That mentor will mentor you and pour into your life and make sure your vision comes to past as well. God will put you in that place if you follow him and believe in him. Somebody will connect to your vision and they have the power. They could write a check and have the finances to cause your vision to come to past.