This speaks right into my heart today…
Any vision worth pursuing will demand sacrifice and risk. You will be called upon to give up the actual good for the potential best. You will find it necessary to leave what is comfortable and familiar in order to embrace that which is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. And all the while, you will be haunted by the fear that this thing you are investing so much of yourself in may not work out at all.
There are so many unknowns associated with a vision. There are dozens of opportunities for things to go wrong. There is no guaranteed return on your investment. Sacrifice and risk-taking are unavoidable.
But to allow the cost and uncertainties to cause you to shrink back in your commitment or cause you to move out tenuously is to invite failure. Besides that, no one will follow you. Uncertainty in a leader is always magnified in the heart of the follower. John Maxwell says it this way: ‘People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. People buy into the vision after the leader buys into it.'”
Vision requires courage and confidence. It requires launching out as if you were absolutely assured of the outcome. Vision requires the commitment of a parachutist. You don’t ‘sort of’ parachute. You are either in the plane or in the air. You either do it or you don’t. THe tendency is to approach a vision the same way a first time ice skater takes to the ice: cautiously, and never more than an arm’s length from the railing.” – Andy Stanley, Visioneering, p. 125-126
