THE TEST OF VISION
QUESTION: Are Running with Your Husband’s Vision?
And the LORD answered me, and said,
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables,
that he may run that readeth it.(Hab.2:2)
Many a pastor’s wife will response to the question above by posing another question: What of my own vision? Yes, it is true that God has given you a vision. But that vision will thrive better if you first run with the vision of your husband and allow your own to be complementary to his own. When you as a pastor’s wife struggles and competes with the vision of your husband, you must have got it wrong somewhere along the line. It is just like Jesus giving your husband an instruction to carry out, and your husband saying that he has a better idea or he is busy with his own ministry!
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.(Eph.5:23)
Vision is never an assignment that may be done alone. In our reference scripture above, the LORD asked the visionary to write it plainly for the vision partners to run with it. As the pastor’s wife, you should be the first person to run with the vision of your husband. You are the chief vision partner, helper etc., that has to run with the vision. You have roles to play in the vision that God has given your husband, both at the level of interpretation and that of actualization.
VISION INTERPRETATION.
You are the closest person to your husband. When God gives him a vision, you are probably the first person it is to be shared with. Your support in the area of the interpretation of the vision goes a long way to determine whether or not the vision will see the light of the day. There are some steps you will take in the interpretation of the vision of your husband. You need at this stage to watch and pray along with him to understand and document what God has shown him in the vision concerning the following:
What and How?
What actually did God ask your husband to do and how is he to do it? This is at the core of the vision that God has given your husband. You must encourage your husband to get it clear in his mind what God has asked him to do. Many ministers of God miss it at this stage because although God told them what to do, they did not ask for how. Any assignment that God gave your husband must have been given also to another person; the difference is in how you are to do it. Let me give an example here. One day, I had a revelation in which God reprimanded me seriously for not really being involved in evangelism. The revelation was so vivid and was so fearful. Most people would have just started doing evangelism straightaway. But I prayed passionately that night and asked how He wanted me to do it. I asked that question because there are a thousand ways of doing evangelism, i.e., rural, campus, bus, market, prison etc. I prayed so passionately that night that I was sweating profusely. I’ve always told people that I had never prayed like that before and neither have I prayed with such intensity after.
The Holy Spirit then told me that night that my area of focus was to make gospel tracts available. That was what gave birth to Abiding Grace Tracts which has been a source of inspiring testimonies for our ministry. Getting the details has helped me to be focused on the very area that God wanted me to focus on in that area of ministry. Dear pastor’s wife, you need to encourage your husband to get the details of the assignment he has been given, so that you don’t continue to labour in another person’s territory. There are many that are doing what God asked them to do, but the wrong way.
Where?
Where did God locate the assignment that He has given your spouse. You need to also pray along with him about this because if you are not in your God-given location, your allocation will not be made available. You owe yourself the responsibility of encouraging your husband to get that detail from God. You must not be a pastor’s wife that will be discouraging her husband from leaving the city when God has made it clear that his place of assignment is in the village. There are ministers of God that are in the village living the kind of fulfilled life which many ministers of God in the city are not enjoying. ‘Where” also includes whether or not he should have his own ministry. Don’t be a pastor’s wife that will be encouraging your husband to become a general overseer when God is telling him that he should serve under a leader. Your family may only be labouring under closed heaven. It is not every minister of God that will be the general overseer of a ministry. There are so many pastors that are serving under bigger ministries that are more fulfilled and comfortable than many general overseers.
When?
There is always an appointed time for a vision. Your husband might have been clearly called by God to start a work for Him.If he moves before his time, it may appear as if God is absent in the work. When you move ahead of God, you actually have two options: you wait for Him until He catches up with you or you go back to where He is and wait for further instructions. If you chose the first option, you may actually wait until Jesus comes; He is the Almighty, you can’t dictate how He should do things to Him. The issue of timing is very important in the things of God. Hear this:
For the vision is yet for an appointed time,
but at the end it shall speak, and not lie:
though it tarry, wait for it;
because it will surely come, it will not tarry. (Hab.2:3)
In many cases, it may appear as if God called someone, but the leader under which he is serving is not ready to let go. If your husband is in such a situation, do you know that the period of waiting may be part of his training? It may be an opportunity for him to wait on God; that if indeed He called him, he should reveal it to his leader. Trust me, He will! If God has called your husband and he decides to or you encourage him to jump out of the ministry where he is served without proper exit, he may be planting instability into his own ministry in the future. If God has called him, encourage him to wait for the appointed time. At the appointed time, God will arrange some events that will make his leader to release him without stress and possibly even be ready to support him.
VISION ACTUALIZATION.
Dear pastor’s wife, your husband needs you at the point of actualization of vision too, just as you are needed to interpret the vision. The fact that your husband was given a vision does not mean that things will begin to happen immediately. There are a lot of ways your husband will need you at this stage. The problems that may be encountered at this stage will be largely dependent on how far the vision was well interpreted. For instance, if your husband did not interpret the timing of the vision properly, you may face unprecedented problems that may frustrate him out of ministry. If also he did not understand the question of location, he may be labouring in vain because the allocation that is supposed to be made available for the vision will not be released at the wrong location. It is the same with wrong interpretation of ‘what’ and ‘how’. There are many pastors who are, even with the encouragement of their spouse, in the wrong ministry. May be God has called your husband to be an evangelist but you have the feeling that he should be pastor over a church, like his friends, you may just discover that after he has gathered a considerable number of people, something will happen and it will scatter all the members, only for him to start all over again and the cycle will still be repeated.
In a situation where your husband is suffering due to wrong location, timing, “what” or “how”, he needs you. Once you pray and discover what the problem is, then you will need to support your husband in taking the right decision. Often, a pastor might have taken the wrong step and might have become so established in it that it will sound somehow to go back. If, for instance, he left his job prematurely without being divinely directed to do so, there is nothing wrong with taking up another job or engaging in an economic activity that will not affect the given assignment. This will fetch him some money to support his family until the ministry is ripe enough to support him full-time.
The problems being faced at the stage of vision actualization are those of understanding, encouragement and prayer. It takes a woman who has the mindset of running with her husband’s vision to provide such without frustrating the life of her husband.
Are You Running With The Vision Of Your Husband?
Dr. Mike Oluniyi.
