When I discover a noteworthy truth, I like to paraphrase it and write myself into it. The exercise helps me swallow the passage and critically apply its lesson. It also helps guide my prayers. This week, Oswald Chambers’ devotional, Vision in Reality called for such a rewrite. I am sharing my journal entry with you today (italicized words are Oswald’s).
July 14, 2015
When God gives a vision, it is not some unreachable daydream but a future reality. It is not a castle in the air but what God wants me 
to become. The vision is impossible for me to attain on my own, but anything is possible for God.
God gives me the vision, then He takes me down into the valley of humiliation to batter me and better me like iron into the shape of that vision. I should expect the valley after a vision. I’m in need of transformation. I should expect the valley to be long. Transformation is a process. I should expect the valley to be a trial. Change is not easy. I must not faint or give way there, but know that every vision will be made real if I have patience like Abraham waiting on his promised son and Joseph waiting for fulfillment of visions of his youth.
Visions are callings and callings are commands and all God’s commands are promises because He has promised to help me obey His commands (2Peter 1:3-5). Therefore visions are promises too! If visions are promises, I can trust God
to bring the vision given me to fruition. God can be trusted to keep His promises (Hebrew 10:23).
I must let Him put me on His wheel and whirl me as He likes. Then as surely as He is God and I am me, I will turn out exactly in accordance with His vision. I will look back at my valley path, dust stirred from sprinting and wrestling and stumbling and see that He transformed me there. Indeed, that Valley of Trouble itself will be transformed into a gateway of hope (Hosea 1:15). 
Then I will be able to declare with confidence Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 15:10. It takes faith to think like this- or rather it takes faith to think the way that gets me to the point of thinking like this. Lord, increase my faith.
I cannot batter myself into the shape God revealed to me; for apart from Him I can do nothing (John 15:5). Nor can I batter myself into the shape of my own choosing; I cannot chase my own vision and expect joy (John 15:11). I must first give up my own vision for my life to become His vision. This way is hard, but I will press on. Deep down I have long known that I cannot be satisfied by anything other than living out God’s plan for me. The temptation to want comfort or safety or ease or recognition will compete for my attention, but now that I have asked for a vision and my request has been answered, I am more certain than ever that if I try to be satisfied on a lower level, He will never let me.
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