Visions to Life – Step 2: Timing is Everything
Updated: Jan 28, 2021
One of the most frustrating concepts in my business is “waiting on God’s timing.”
I’m always hearing ‘strike while it’s hot’ and ‘there’s never going to be a time like now’ and ‘do it before someone else’s does’.
I recognize some of this as hyped up sales talk, but it could also be God speaking through someone else to me, right?
It’s a mystery to me…the concept that there’s a time to grow and a time to act. I’ve seen it play out over and over in my business. Sometimes I feel like I made the right decision, sometimes I bombed the timing and failed miserably.
I’ve started businesses that I shouldn’t have just because one day I woke up and had a vision. The same has happened to me with marketing campaigns and releasing new products. I’ve let visions of the future deter my current daily duties, taking me off track.
But even amidst the mystery of God’s timing, I do know that one concept is fact: action before preparation usually spells disaster.
We entrepreneurs want to shoot first and ask questions later. We want to live the dream that if you build it, they will come. We don’t like writing business plans. We want to throw up the vision on our team and hope they got it and have it done by next week.
But this isn’t how God wants us to react as Godpreneurs.
In the case of what we were born to do, God wants to prepare us for what he knows lies ahead. We may urgently feel the need to act on a business idea or a new email blast that seems foolish to wait on, but God has bigger plans we don’t understand.
The Bible says,
"For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose". Philippians 2:13 NIV
God’s timing is perfect, and our visions are simply a small part of His bigger vision. This is why God wants to work INSIDE of us, to prepare us to act on what we were born to do. And when we’re ready, that’s when He’s ready for us to act…it will be on His timetable.
God’s timing can be hard to hear for you, right? I know, that’s the struggle. This is the biggest thing I hear about from entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. You think that once the vision is clear, we must be ready, otherwise, why would we have the vision?
All I have to say is don’t be impatient. We shouldn’t move before God leads. We accept his training and his timing. Meanwhile, what we were born to do, though it may burn inside of us, will enable us to endure the wait, because we know it’s worth it to get it right.
We know that having a vision will come BEFORE the preparation. LeBron James had the vision of being the best in the world BEFORE his preparation. It was the vision that gave him the strength to endure the preparation: all the practicing and hard work.
Visions will always be bigger than us. That’s the point! Within that tension is where we always want to live because then we know God is always working on us.
Godpreneur Rule #29: Our visions are meant to prepare us, they aren’t to be acted on. The preparation will lead to the vision coming to life.