18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Introduction
You know the magic word in America today is the word “success.” Everybody is interested in it. Everyone wants to buy books written about it. Everybody wants to hear speeches being made about it. We are success oriented, and I think the church ought to be interested in success as well. In fact I’m persuaded that the church ought to be the most successful, growing, progressive, and exciting institution in the whole community. I agree with the philosophy of Ethel Waters that says, “God don’t sponsor no flops.”
God is not interested in his church as being dull, dead, and dying. He is interested in his church being alive, progressive, advancing, growing, dynamic, and doing great things for him. And believing that, I want to share with you what I believe to be seven scriptural secrets to spiritual success. These are some things that we can do and we ought to do as a church to continue to grow and to continue to do a successful work for God. The seven scriptural secrets to spiritual success are these:
1. Bold vision. First of all, there must be a bold vision. There must come in the life of the church and in the lives of individuals a vision from God. There must come a dream as to what can be, and what ought to be done for God in the community and in the world. Until people catch a vision of something wonderful and magnificent that ought to be done and can be done, then nothing much will be done.
The secret of the greatest church builder who ever lived—the apostle Paul—was the fact that he had a vision from God. He had that vision on the road to Damascus when he met Jesus face to face and Jesus said to him, “Paul, you are a chosen vessel; and I have ordained that you are going to carry the message of redemption, life, and forgiveness to the Gentiles, the kings, and to the Israelite nation.” And the apostle Paul lived his life and did his magnificent work under the compulsion of a vision and a dream that had been given to him by God. He came to the end of his ministry and he stood before Agrippa to give his testimony and he told about how God had spoken to him in that vision on the road to Damascus. He said, “King Agrippa, I have been faithful to that heavenly vision.”
I believe that until there comes a vision in the hearts and lives of people in the church, they will never grow, they will never progress, they will never be dynamic, and they will never succeed as they ought to. Vision is to a church what water is to a fish, what breath is to a man, and what conquest is to an army. What we need in our church today is people who think big, people who dream big, people who plan, and people who with the help and grace of God, carry out those plans.
I like the philosophy of D. L. Moody, who scribbled in the margin of his Bible adjacent to the experience of Jesus feeding the 5,000, “If God be your partner, make no little plans.” Surely he understood that the secret to a successful church is people who have a dream and a vision from God.
2. Burning enthusiasm. Next to a vision from God, there is also a need to have a burning enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm comes from two words, en and theous, meaning “God within us.” It carries with it the idea of excitement, energy, and urgency. Enthusiastic people get excited, get involved, and put some energy behind the work of God. Every successful person of God has been a person of enthusiasm.
The disciples remembered that it was written of Jesus, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up” (John 2:17). The word zeal means “enthusiasm.” The word eaten means “to consume or to devour.” It means “to burn hot within,” and they were simply saying that Jesus had a burning enthusiasm for God and his work. One of the reasons Jesus was so successful was the fact that he had this enthusiasm and it was contagious. The people around him caught it and they realized that his heart was on fire for God.
The apostle Paul often talked about his life before he was converted, and he said he was very zealous against the church. He sought to destroy it, and to do everything he could to abolish Christianity. When he became a Christian, he brought that same enthusiasm into Christianity. He was excited, and he had a sense of urgency. It was because he poured his whole soul into it that Paul did such a magnificent work for God.
This enthusiasm that ought to characterize the church and the people of God always comes from that vision from God—that vision of what can be done and what ought to be done. The Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). If there is no vision of the future, there is no motivation in the present. If there is no faith in tomorrow, there is no power today. But if we have a dream, and if we have a vision of something out there that ought to be done and can be done, then that pours into us an enthusiasm, an energy, and an excitement about getting it done.
Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the moon, returned to Earth and had a nervous breakdown. And he explained what happened in part this way. He said, “When there are no more goals, depression sets in.” It is as true in a church as it is in the life of an individual that when a church gets to the place where it no longer has a dream, where it no longer has a goal, or where it no longer has a sense of mission, then there is a dullness, a deadness, and a depression in that church that settles over everything. And whenever and wherever you find a dull, dead, depressed church, you will find a pastor, a staff, some deacons, and a congregation that have lost their sense of mission. They have lost their vision, and they have lost their sense of mission from God. With that loss of vision and enthusiasm, deadness settles over the congregation. We must guard ourselves against that.[1]
Someone has said, “There are many Christians who are not only like salt that is lost is savor, but they are like pepper that has lost its pep.” We’ve got to make sure that whatever else we lose, we don’t ever lose our pep and our enthusiasm that comes from a sense of vision and mission from God. We’ve got to be like that mother skunk who was walking by the paper mill one day. How many of you have ever been by a paper mill? If you have, you’ll get the drift of what I am about to say. The baby skunk looked up at the mother and said, “Mother, what is that smell?” She replied, “I don’t know, but whatever it is we’ve got to get some of it.”
That’s the way it is with enthusiasm. Friend, we’ve got to have some enthusiasm in the work of God. We’ve got to get excited and energetic and have a sense of urgency about what’s going on here if we are going to succeed.
3. Daring faith. Along with vision and that sense of enthusiasm there must also be daring faith. Faith, according to the book of Hebrews, is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. I’ve read that verse a lot of times and didn’t really understand what it meant. But faith is nothing more than confident assurance in God. It is believing that God is, that God is at work, and that whatever God wants us to do and calls upon us to do, he will enable us to do. Faith is that confident assurance that causes people to launch out and to attempt great things for God.
Now there is a difference between faith and positive thinking. I believe in positive thinking. I like to be around people who are positive thinkers. There is also a difference between faith and optimism. I believe in optimism and I like to be around optimistic people. But positive thinking and optimism are oftentimes grounded in man himself. Faith is grounded in God. To be a positive thinker may mean that I simply believe in my own potential and my own ability and what I can do. But when I have faith, it means that I believe in more than my potential and more than my ability. I believe in God’s potential and in God’s ability and we must link our vision and our enthusiasm with faith in what God can do.
Let me give you a good illustration about believing in God and what he can do. The apostle Paul was on his way to Rome and the ship he was on was caught in a storm. For many days the ship was tossed back and forth, and up and down. The sky was so dark that they could not see the moon or the stars at night. They couldn’t even see the sun in the daytime. They cast off all the cargo and all the tackle of the ship, and finally they came to a place where they said, “All hope is gone.” All of these experienced sailors were convinced that they were going to sink and all be drowned. The ship was going to be destroyed. Just when they had all lost hope, the apostle Paul woke up and he said to them, “Men, be of good cheer, for last night an angel of the Lord appeared to me and said everything is going to be okay. No person is going to lose his life. The ship is going to be destroyed, but we shall all be saved. Men, be of good cheer. I believe God.” And it was Paul’s confidence—not in the ship, nor in the sailors or himself—but his confidence in God that allowed him to be assured in the midst of that storm.
Faith is confident assurance in spite of the circumstances that are going on around you. Faith is an indispensable element in the Christian life. If a man doesn’t have faith, he will never board the ship. If a person doesn’t have faith, he’ll always be afraid to get too far away from the shore. He’ll keep thinking about the storm that may come. He’ll keep thinking, “This ship is going to sink.” He’ll keep thinking, “We are all going to drown.” But if he believes that God has led him, that God energizes the whole universe, and that God can do great and mighty things, he’ll lose that fear and he’ll be ready to launch out and sail forward for God. There must be this kind of faith in our life. When you have faith in God, you never get to the place where those sailors did, where they had lost all hope.
[2]I told our prayer meeting crowds a few months ago about when I was driving down the road one day and I saw a church sign. It was arrow pointing off in the distance that said, “The Little Hope Baptist Church.” I thought, “My soul, I would hate to be the pastor there. If I were pastor the first thing I would do is get them to change their name. I would say, “Brethren we need to change the name of this church to The Big Hope, or The Great Hope, or The Glorious Hope, or The Coming Hope, or the Magnificent Hope, or the Everlasting Hope, or The Eternal Hope—anything except The Little Hope Baptist Church!”
When we believe in a God who made this universe, we are never at the place where we have little hope. Our confidence is in him. And when you have that kind of faith and that kind of assurance, the church can go forward and do magnificent things. There are some people who have such little faith that they say, “I must see in order to believe.” In the church the reverse is most often true. You must believe in order to see. [3]You must launch out in the ship before you can ever see the rescuing power of God.
We entered into the building program of our Family Life Center, and by the time that program was finished, the building was complete and our people had given $325,000 to the building in cash. It was already in hand. I was walking in the mall one day and met a man from another church and they were considering a building project like ours. We got into a conversation about it and I asked him, “Would you believe that we are just about to get into our building and our people have already given $325,000?” He said, “Man, if we had $325,000 we would go build a building.” I said, “Friend, go build the building and you’ll get $325,000.”
You see the faith comes first and if you’ll launch out trusting God, believing God, and expecting that God will do great and mighty things, God never disappoints the faith and the trust and the confidence of his people if he has led them and he has directed them in what they are to do. Along with our vision and enthusiasm, there must be that kind of faith.
4. Hard work. Then the fourth thing is hard work. The apostle Paul was a great church builder. Yes, he was a man of vision, enthusiasm, and faith, but Paul also worked hard. In fact, he said on one occasion, “Yet I laboured more abundantly than they all” (1 Corinthians 15:10). That’s interesting, isn’t it? You know Paul had a lot of gifts. One of them was a keen mind. He was a sharp thinker. He had to have a thick hide since he received criticism all the time. He had a bold faith and a huge heart. But Paul realized that none of those things would substitute for hard work.
Though none of those things will substitute for hard work, I want you to know that hard work will make up for almost any other deficiency you have. God has never intended that his kingdom be built except that people be willing to work. He uses people who are willing to put their energy and their efforts behind what needed to be done. You don’t build great churches by wearing out the seats of your pants. You build them by wearing out shoe leather and automobile tires. You build them by working, by laboring, by doing more than you’ve ever done before. [4]
Sometime ago, one of our staff members was talking with a neighboring pastor who was trying to rationalize the fact that our church was growing and his was not. And he said, “Well, you people get a lot of walk-ins.” When I heard that my answer was, “We don’t get a lot of walk-ins. People come to our church because we get out there and knock on doors and we visit.”
Our people are talking and our people are excited. Many times people pass his church, and they pass a lot of churches to come here. I believe it can be attributed to the fact that our people are working hard, and whenever and wherever there is success in any realm, somebody is working hard at the task. And I believe that God expects us to work hard and to labor diligently. I’m like the golfer who was asked on one occasion, “Isn’t there a lot of luck to golf?” The golfer replied, “Certainly, but I’ve discovered the more I practice the luckier I get.” And I’ve discovered the harder we work, the more we visit, the more effort and energy we put into the building of the kingdom of God, the more God chooses to bless it. The harder we work, the “luckier” we get and that a spiritual principle as well as a general life principle. Work hard.[5]
5. Workable strategy. And there is another principle—you have to have workable strategy. The apostle Paul didn’t go about his work haphazardly. He had a plan. He had a strategy. He usually would go to the synagogue, to the people who already believed in the Bible, and he would show them how it said in the Bible that the Messiah was to come, die, be buried, and be resurrected. And then he would show them through the scriptures that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. From that synagogue he would draw a handful of believers and he would teach them the word of God. He would train them in the scriptures, motivate them, and send them out to multiply in the town and in the whole area. That was his strategy, and that is the basis to building a church.
I discovered that there are two or three basic yet strategic things that we need to stick with. They are the secret to having successful work for the kingdom of God. One of them is great and marvelous music like we have that stirs the hearts of people. Exciting music ought to be a part of worship in the church.
Then there needs to be biblical preaching. I talked with C. L. Culpepper, one of our missionaries who served in China. He was a part of the great Shandong revivals—the revivals that swept over China just before the Communists came. They saw miracles and things that equaled what happened in the book of Acts, and God was getting his church ready for the great persecution that was going to come under the Communists. I talked with that great missionary who had seen all of it, and I asked, “Dr. Culpepper, if you were a young preacher and you wanted to build a dynamic, living, evangelistic church, what would you do?” He replied, “I would preach the Bible, for people are hungry for the word of God.”
A lady visited our church one day. I called her up and welcomed her here. She said, “Oh, I enjoyed the service. How I enjoyed hearing you preach the Bible. Do you do that often?” I replied, “Every Sunday.” She said, “Oh, I need that. I really need that.” That lady and her whole family are a part of this church now, and I believe the secret is in the fact that we are preaching and teaching the word of God.
Someone once said, “There are two questions. Number one is, ‘Does God speak?’ And the second question is, ‘What does he say?’” That’s what people are interested in. If the Bible isn’t true, and if the Bible isn’t preached, then we are out of business. I believe that if we can have an exciting worship service, if the word of God can be preached, and if we can have a Sunday school that is reaching out and ministering in the name of Christ, then we can build the kind of work that God wants us to build.
I believe every day more and more in the Sunday school. I believe that it is the way to get the job done. The Sunday school is strategic about small groups of people meeting together to know and minister to one another, and to study the Bible and pray together. If we take that seriously and we do the work the way we ought to do it—praying, working, and teaching the word of God—God will bless that. That’s the strategy for today. And that’s the secret of a great church.
6. Loving fellowship. In addition to vision, enthusiasm, faith, hard work, and workable strategy, then there needs to be a loving fellowship. Years ago a young man moved to Chicago and his landlady noticed that every Sunday morning he would get up really early, get on the streetcar, and go all the way across town to attend the church of D. L. Moody. Finally one day she asked him, “Why do you get up so early and travel so far to go to church? You pass a lot of churches to get there.” He answered, “Lady, they love a fellow over there.” And wherever there is a church with a loving fellowship, you’ll find it growing.
We live in a cold world and people are lonely. They are drawn by the warmth of love, and I believe the greatest evidence on earth of the living resurrected Lord is a church with a loving fellowship. It is a church where the people enjoy one another and genuinely care about one another. It is a church where people minister to one another, and where the spirit of Christ’s love can be felt. When you have that kind of fellowship, the church is going to grow.
7. Divine power. The last thing that is a part of this spiritual success is the dynamic power of God. Jesus said on one occasion, “Without me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). A few weeks ago we had an ice storm here in Tyler and a lot of people lost their electrical power. Some lost it for a few hours, and some for two or three days. Some of you found yourself having to heat your house with a fireplace and light your house with a kerosene lamp. One of our ladies told me, “My husband and I were sitting in the living room one night with that kerosene lamp, and I looked up at the ceiling at that beautiful and expensive chandelier and said, ‘That is the most worthless thing in the world.’” We discovered that there are a lot of worthless things—like can openers, chandeliers, stoves, and razors—when there is no power to make them run.
One of our ladies called up her husband and said, “The power is off. There is no heat in the house.” He said, “Well, honey, go plug in the electric blanket so at least the bed will be warm.” And she did it. They lay in that bed for hours wondering what was wrong. They discovered that it is not enough to have the electric blanket, it is not enough to have it plugged in and it is not enough to have the dial set right. There has got to be power and energy coming from somewhere.
It is not enough for us to have vision. It is not enough to have enthusiasm. It is not enough to have faith. It is not enough to work hard. It is not enough to have a workable strategy. It is not enough for any of these things unless there is energy flowing through it all. And that is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, “Without me you can do nothing.” The power is off.[6]
You can have all the gadgets that you want, plug them in all you please, twist all the dials you desire, and nothing will happen unless there is power. That is why we’ve got to pray and lay hold to the power of God and let him bless.
Through the years there have been people who dreamed big, thought big, planned big, and got excited. They believed that in spite of the circumstances, God was going to see them through the storm. They worked hard. They loved one another. They ministered and they prayed and God blessed it. I believe that God will do it again and again and again. And he’ll do it in a greater way than it’s ever been done before. I’m asking you to give yourself to these spiritual principles and let God do something magnificent. This church ought to be the most dynamic, alive, progressive, growing place in town. God wants it that way and we need to make it possible by giving ourselves to him.
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