Inspiration is found on the mountaintop, vision is found in the valley. I love church! I love the inspiration of a great worship song, an inspiring message. As much as I’m the biggest fan ever of the church worship service, it’s not the place I find vision. I find my vision in the valley.

What do you mean by valley?

THE VALLEY OF NEED!

The Dream Center and 25 other cities joined us a few days ago on a 24-hour outreach. That’s right! 24 straight hours. You learn a lot about yourself in 24 hours. You learn about overcoming your flesh, you learn about overcome self, and you learn about vision. Seeing a city at 3 am is a new way of experiencing life. People crashing up against a wall with no shelter, teenage runaways just trying to survive the night. This 24-hour outreach inspired our church and we found a renewed vision.

A bit shocking! Usually we think that when our hearts are broken it causes reflection. True, it does. At the same time, I have found that REFLECTION CAN LEAD TO POWERFUL ACTION. When confronted with need it puts our lives at a crossroads. Do we respond or let those images forever haunt us? This is why outreach produces vision. Great visionaries are not people who are the brightest but people who keep their eyes open.

Serving changes us because it exposes us to needs we’ve never seen, and therefore creates dreams in our heart that we never knew were there. The issue is not what your dream is. The issue is what is in your heart that you’ve never seen that only serving can reveal.

Please comment and share some of your stories about serving.

My new book “God’s Dream For You” just released. It is available at http://tinyurl.com/luf26a4