Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

Jim Collins, Good to Great

This insight from Jim Collins resonates deeply with me. In Good to Great, one of my favorite books by one of my favorite thinkers and leaders, Collins includes a picture of his research team at the beginning. The author places himself at the back, visually reflecting a key element of the book—humility in leaders.

Here at Deep Spirituality, it has been God’s vision and my dream to build a similar team. We are in the early stages, but I hope our work can have a fraction of the impact Mr. Collins and his team have had on the world. This is why you’ll see the word “we” from time to time in this and future Chemistry Lab newsletters. I weave our team’s conversations into the fabric of the writing to produce reflective pieces that expand on my own thinking. This collaborative approach will benefit you as the reader because it serves as an example of how to develop your own personal beliefs and deep convictions.

Last week in The Chemistry Lab, we discovered the chemistry of aging (and if you haven’t read that post yet, please give it a read. It will help anyone of any age reflect on the stages of life and move forward, inspired by God’s faith in who they can become). 

Fundamentally, the chemistry of aging seeks to teach us about the power of a visionary life:

Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Proverbs 29:18 KJ21

Most of the Deep Spirituality team members are millennials and Gen Z, and as we’ve been discussing this article together, we realized that the chemistry of aging is not just about our physical age. It’s about developing and sustaining a vision for our lives, which is what keeps us spiritually alive at every stage:

At every age, God still has work for us to do. He has a vision for us. It is our spiritual vision that keeps us strong, energized, and vital, no matter how old we are. Without this vision, we age prematurely. We should be flourishing, but we choose to retreat because something inside of us has perished…

“The Chemistry of Aging” 

At every stage of our lives, God is unfolding his vision for us. We just can’t always see it. We’re more likely to see what’s right in front of us—financial, emotional, relational, spiritual challenges, or perhaps parenting struggles, career or school setbacks, and maybe repeated experiences of trying and failing.

But the truth about God’s love and power is that they are perfected in our weaknesses. This is how he works out his vision for us, just as he explained to the apostle Paul:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

In fact, this theme of working through weakness is reflected time and time again in the Bible. The Scriptures are full of people who would never have believed they would play a significant role in God’s plan, but ultimately did.

• Moses was an 80-year-old man who had failed at leadership four decades earlier. But God still had a plan for him as he used those 40 years to make Moses ready.
• Amos was a regular guy working as a shepherd and sycamore tree farmer when God called him to be a prophet. 
• Ruth was a widow who lived in poverty. From a human point of view, her life was insignificant. She couldn’t see it at the time, but she would play a tremendous role in God’s larger plan as the great-great-grandmother of David.

Developing and sustaining God’s vision for our lives means ignoring age, talent, status, and the world’s view of who we are. It means ignoring our inadequacies and opening our eyes to God’s capacity to make us whomever he desires us to be. That vision and destiny don’t have to reach celebrity status to be significant to those whose lives he uses us to touch.

Traveling this path means asking two courageous questions:

1. What would I do for God if I knew I wouldn’t fail? Our answer to this question reveals the vision God has put on our hearts. (Nehemiah 2:12).
2. What could God be accomplishing through my life that I don’t see today? We won’t know the answer to this question now, but we need to believe that God is always at work, leading us to the destiny he prepared for us and the good works he wants us to do (Philippians 1:6, Ephesians 2:10). 

We’ve heard from many of you about “The Chemistry of Aging,” and your experiences mirror our own. Rather than moving on, we wanted to dig deeper—especially since most of us at Deep Spirituality are still working toward the vision breakthroughs we need.

As a result, we developed a spiritual vision test for ourselves and want to share it with you. Don’t worry—there’s no way to fail this test. It’s a way to reflect on our relationship with God. Are we allowing him to show us his vision? Are we willing to obey his vision like the apostle Paul?

“So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.”

Acts 26:19 NIV

So, there you have it, a collaborative conversation and invitation to join us in listening to and embracing God’s vision for our lives. This is how we can fulfill our destiny and help others discover and live their own.
Ready to discover God’s vision? Let’s get started!

Take the quiz