How to create a vision after hearing God for the future

This blog is driven by a fundamental assertion that God answers the questions that we ask. If you open yourself to ask God new questions, you will get new answers.When it comes to what we should be doing with our lives, most of us ask the question, "God what do you want me to do?"Last week, I wrote that when you examine a specific area of your life, a better question to ask is, "God what does my future look like in this area of my life?" Rather than asking what you should be doing, you are asking where you are going.Steven Covey says, "Start with the end in mind." This way of asking God about the future is an expression of this.I was recently talking to a friend who works in business and missions, and he talked about how he wasn't sure about what he was supposed to be doing in his current role. I asked him, "Do you know what success looks like? Have you asked God what your business/ministry will look like in six months or a year?" He said, "No, I have just been asking God what I am supposed to do."Asking God what you are supposed to do isn't a bad question, and it's important to ask. But it's helpful to first ask where you are headed. The clarity that you get by knowing where you are going will allow you to more accurately understand what you should do.Business and leadership books call this "vision." It's the idea that you should have a clear picture of success if you are going to make a plan. By asking God what the future looks like, you tap into the power of vision.The question, however, is what do you with what you are hearing from God? How do you effectively turn your time of prayer into a vision for the future? Here's how to do that:

1. Boundaries - Go through what you heard the Lord say and create two to three boundaries around your future. For instance, if you are praying about a new company start-up idea that you have, and you get a picture of a team of people working on the project (vs. you doing it on your own), you could write the boundary: "Multiple employees."
2. Creativity - Once you have written down your boundaries, create a picture of the future that stays within the boundaries that you created. Perhaps God showed you that there will be multiple employees, but you don't have clarity on their roles. Write down their roles. Use the muscle of creativity to fill in the blanks of what God didn't say. Don't be afraid to imagine and be creative, as long as you stay within the bounds of what you felt God saying.

As you go through this process of creating boundaries and expressing creativity, you will begin to formulate a picture of the future in partnership with God.Once you have this picture, you can go on to step three in the process of creating God-sized goals, which we will talk about in next week's blog post.Do you have a story of God speaking to you about the future?