Editor’s Note: We continue our series of blogs for those who are reading the Bible with us cover-to-cover this year. Interspersed with our thoughts on our daily reading, we want to provide some tips about reading the Bible in general. Today we want to explore …
Vision Casting to Conquer Great Obstacles!
Deuteronomy 7:1-5 (ESV)
7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
When you know you are about to face some HUGE opposition to your mission, what do you say to your team? Moses, schooled for 40 years by God’s example, leads his people in preparation for the conquest of the Promised Land. It would not be easy, but God would help them win. How did he prepare the hearts of the nation? There are five telling tips to casting a great vision.
- Start by telling them victory is inevitable! (7.1-2a) Moses not only told them that God was going to give them victory, in the ESV the word “when” is repeated. In other words, “This is going to happen and when it does, this is what we do!”
- Be sure to explain what victory looks like! (7.2b) Defeat wasn’t enough on this mission from God. The soldiers were to “devote them to complete destruction.” The mission parameters were clear long before the first man stepped into the battle.
- Clearly define the non-negotiables! (7.2c) God knew that if these men were to allow their enemies to live, they would undermine their effort and bring certain disaster to the mission. Therefore, everyone knew that this was an “all or nothing” scenario.
- Warn them of the inherent dangers that lie ahead! (7.3) Surprisingly, the greatest dangers were not the battles, but from the spoils of victory. Here, the danger was in the common practice of taking the women of the conquered peoples as wives. Moses says that bringing someone into your home that has no passion for God is the same as inviting the enemy into the community to destroy it.
- Remove the temptation to tolerate evil! (7.5) While we respect the faith of others within our nation, Moses knew the dangers of idolaters and wanted no presence or possibility of spiritual drift to happen among God’s people in Old Testament Israel. A wise leader does all he or she can to minimize the dangers to the spiritual vibrancy of their team.
Vision casting “sees” the desired outcome and then “visualizes” it (helps the other person see it) for his or her team. All great obstacles are overcome by faith in God and seeing God’s desired outcome before it happens. Eagle leaders help others see what God wants and help them get there.
It is our hope that this background information helps a bit as you read on in the Bible. We will continue this series with our next installment on Wednesday when we talk about “Listening to the Promises of the Future Leader.”
For daily insights into the passage we are reading together each day, you can follow Dr. Smith on Twitter and on Facebook.
You can obtain more help from the FREE Bible reading schedule on our resource page. In His Image is a daily devotional that also follows our reading schedule and expresses the Biblical truth: “God Created You to Love You.” You can find this resource on the side bar of our website.
