When Your View Doesn’t Match Your Vision

When your view doesn’t match your vision.

I heard that statement in a sermon recently and immediately wrote it down. It puts language to something every leader and every believer eventually feels.

There are seasons when what you see does not line up with what you believe God has shown you.

Your view is what is right in front of you.
Your vision is what God has placed in your heart.

And the two do not always match.

Right now, you may see slow progress, limited resources, unanswered prayers, or a ministry that feels different from what you hoped. But somewhere in your past, God stirred something in you. A burden. A calling. A picture of what could be. Living in that tension can wear on a leader if he is not careful.

Few biblical narratives illustrate this better than Joseph in Genesis 37.

Joseph was seventeen years old when God gave him dreams. In one dream, the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to his sheaf. In another, the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. It was a glimpse of future authority and influence. It was vision.

But his view was very different.

Genesis 37:19 records his brothers’ reaction when they saw him coming: “Then they said to one another, ‘Look, this dreamer is coming!’”

Dreamer. It was not a compliment. It was sarcasm. Dismissal. Contempt.

Joseph had a vision from God. His brothers had a pit.

Before long, the dreamer was stripped of his coat, thrown into a cistern, and eventually sold into slavery. If you freeze the story in chapter 37, nothing about Joseph’s view matched his vision. There is no throne. There is no leadership. There is only betrayal and bondage.

Imagine what it must have felt like to sit at the bottom of that pit. The last thing Joseph saw before being lowered down was the faces of his own brothers. The last thing he heard may have been their mocking laughter.

This is where many of us live at times, somewhere between the vision and the fulfillment. The danger in that space is allowing the pit to make you question the promise.

This is where many of us live at times, somewhere between the vision and the fulfillment. Click To Tweet

Joseph could have concluded that he misunderstood God. He could have allowed his view to shrink his vision. But Scripture never records him abandoning what God had revealed. Instead, he remained faithful in slavery. Faithful in Potiphar’s house. Faithful even in prison.

His view changed many times. His vision did not.

Hebrews 11:1 reminds us, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is what sustains you when the present reality does not yet resemble the future God has spoken into your heart.

Seeds do not look like forests.
Pits do not look like palaces.
Prisons do not look like platforms.

But God often does His deepest work in the unseen chapters.

In my own life, I have learned that what feels like delay is often development. What feels like confinement is often preparation. The leadership lessons Joseph learned in obscurity were the very tools he would need in authority.

If your view does not match your vision right now, consider Joseph in Genesis 37. The world may call you a dreamer. Circumstances may seem to contradict what God once impressed on your heart. The pit may feel deeper than you expected.

Do not let the pit silence the promise.

Stay faithful in what is in front of you. Do the next right thing. Lead well in the small assignment. Serve with integrity when no one is applauding.

There will come a day when your view and your vision align. When you look back and realize that even in the pit, God was positioning you.

Your view may not match your vision. But that does not mean the vision is wrong. It may simply mean God is still writing the story.

On a side note, the sermon where I heard this statement was preached by my son. I love learning from my kids.