What You See Is What You Get

//Kenneth W. Hagin

To be successful in life, we have to see with what I call the “inward eye.” Some people call it imagination; others call it dreaming. It’s being able to see something that is not in the natural realm. You could call it “dreaming with God.”

All of us can go outside and look from horizon to horizon at the vast expanse of the sky. But in looking at our own dreams and vision, many times our horizon is very narrow. We need to enlarge the horizons of our imagination until we are looking at more than we think we can do.

We all have great potential. And with God, we can accomplish more than we have ever dreamed. But unless we see that “more” on the inside, we will never reach our true potential. Many people never reach even a quarter of their potential. Why? Because they can’t see how it could come to pass.

To counter this kind of thinking, many coaches tell their athletes, “See yourself scoring the touchdown. See yourself making the big play.” They say this because a principle is involved: If we can see it on the inside, we can make it happen on the outside.

This holds true in every area of life. When Michelangelo looked at a block of marble, he didn’t see a large rock—he saw a finished sculpture. When a
painter sits in front of a blank canvas with his brushes, he already knows in his mind what he wants to paint on that canvas. When an engineer begins
working on a new car design, he sketches ideas that he has already conceived in his imagination.

Let me ask you, what do you continually see about yourself . . . about your future? It matters how you see yourself, because what you see is what you will be and do.

Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This verse is not talking about our natural eyesight. It is talking about vision, which can include our vision for life or what we anticipate for our future.

New Year Goal Setting My dad, Kenneth E. Hagin, often said, “I’d rather set my goals high and reach half of them than set them at nothing and get all of it.” As we embark on a new year, let’s set our goals high. I always told my son and daughter, “See yourself successful. With God, you can do and be anything you want to be.” Then let’s take the attitude that we cannot be defeated and we will not quit in reaching for our goals.

To receive monthly words of encouragement to help you maintain your vision for 2011, why not join the Message-of-the-Month Club? Yearly membership is $49. Call 1-866-312-0972 to sign up today.

Jonathan Swift said, “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” ¹ Many people see but don’t have vision. That’s because they are focusing on natural things and are not allowing the vision that comes from God’s Word to influence them.

Listening to others can sometimes hinder our vision. Some people like to talk about how they see things. But their experiences can hinder what God wants to do in our lives. In his book Winning 101, Van Crouch said, “Never, never, never let a person who is a copout, burnout, or dropout cause you to give up the dream that God has put in your heart.”²

Focusing on the past is another vision blocker. Helen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”³ Some people are still looking at yesterday’s sunset and can’t see the beauty of today’s sunrise.

Worry can also cloud our vision. In his book No More Excuses, Tony Evans says, “Worry is like fog. [But] . . . fog that can
cover up to seven city blocks contains less than one glassful of water.”⁴

If we look at the future through the eyes of worry and fear, we will always find something to keep us from fulfilling our vision. But when fear and worry are compressed down to their real substance, they’re not worth being concerned over.

Fulfilling our dreams and desires often boils down to our ability to see ourselves through God’s eyes. And as we meditate on His power and willingness to help us, we’ll realize that we don’t have to face life alone.

So instead of spending time thinking about the things that are against us, let’s focus our thoughts on what we already have. Let’s change the way we look at life. We must let God’s vision for us become real inside us. And we must imagine ourselves the way God designed us to be: overcomers and victors in Christ Jesus. When we get hold of that, nothing can stop us!

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^{1 http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/vision_is_ the_art_of_seeing_what_is_invisible_to/13910.html
2 Van Crouch, Winning 101 (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 1998), 69.
3 http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/30190.html
4 Tony Evans, No More Excuses: Be the Man God Made You to Be (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), 223.}