June 1994, 19 years old, enjoying my honeymoon sipping cocktails on a beach in Montego Bay with my new bride Karie, the love of my life. Not even old enough to drink at our own wedding, we thought we had it all figured out! Looking back now, the only one who had anything figured out was God, and He was busy planting seeds in our hearts that would soon sprout into a love for each other, for our God and for Jamaica.

This is the first blog post in this series on the topic of our ministry in Jamaica. So I’m going to be honest, I’m struggling… I’ve got this idea in my head about Jamaica. God put it there, and it won’t go away. Now that wouldn’t be a bad thing, to be thinking about Jamaica all the time, warm water and white sandy beaches, lol… But it’s much more than that. It’s a dream, it’s a vision, a vision that God put there for a purpose, His purpose. Only sometimes, you can spend a lot of time wandering around in the wilderness, trying to figure out what that purpose is.

So the Lord says “Mark, I want you to teach my people, how to walk in the wilderness.” Now I have plenty of stories of amazing things the Lord has done in my life, stories of provision, and deliverance and blessing. Yet while these stories are entertaining and faith inspiring, they are not what the Lord would have me to write about today. No, instead he wants to use me to inspire your faith with the one thing I have no qualifications for…. showing you how to bring this vision into reality with God’s help.

Now I say I have no qualifications for this task, but let me rephrase that. What I mean by that, is that for the past eight years, I’ve tried everything in my power, in my strength and ability, to bring this project in Jamaica into fruition. Yet in all my trying, my efforts have only fallen short. But you see, that’s the point, of learning to walk in the wilderness. That’s lesson number one. My wife and I call it, “walking around the mountain.” it took 40 years of walking around the wilderness, for the people of Israel to finally trust God. Most of us spend all of our time thinking, “God why won’t you bless me, why aren’t you doing what you said you would do?” For the past eight years, I’ve been walking around the backside of the desert trying to answer these very questions, in regards to our place in Jamaica.

So now what? Where do we go from here. Well God has a plan, and He wants to use me, and you to bring that plan to pass. He seems to believe, that you will be blessed, and gain much wisdom from the experiences, sufferings and challenges that arise, as I step out in faith, and trust in his ability and power to accomplish that which I cannot do on my own.

Now honestly, I have to say sometimes I think He’s a little crazy. I question more tan I should especially considering that something happens to a man, when he spends time wandering around on the backside of the desert talking to God. He gets to know God. He learns to trust God. He learns to obey God. So here we go…

Write The Vision

I will stand my watch
And set myself on the rampart,
And watch to see what He will say to me,
And what I will answer when I am corrected.

Then the LORD answered me and said:

“Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry.

Hab 2:1-3

When God puts something on your heart, it can be all to easy to jump right in and shoot from the cuff so to speak. In other words to get ahead of Him, thinking that you have it all figured out. In this passage from Habakkuk, God gives us some important instructions, “Write the vision, and make it plain on paper, that he may run who reads it.”

Why is this so important? Because God knows that we won’t be successful, in any venture, unless we fully understand the scope and depth of his plans for us. The only way that we can be successful in the kingdom of God is to fully understand God’s will, purpose and what role we play in the plan that He has orchestrated from the beginning of time. After all the kingdom of God doesn’t operate based upon our ability or our own strength, but His. So for us to expect God to move on our behalf, when we’re doing all the work, when we’re holding all the cards, seems pretty foolish.

Think of this like writing a business plan, only it’s not our plan, it’s God’s plan. Every successful business begins with a good plan. That plan forces the entrepreneur, to think through every important aspect of how that business will operate. What is the product? How will it be sold? To whom will it be sold?

If God is laid something on your heart, whether it be a ministry, a person, or just something that you know you have to do, then write the vision. If you can’t put this thing clearly into words, then I would say to you, stop and seek the Lord. Because to go forward without a clear understanding of the vision, of God’s plan, is to step out from under the cloud of His protection.

So stay tuned. In the next few posts, we’ll be talking about writing that vision and making it plain for all to see.