Vision Quest – God At The Center

*Some call it a quiet time. We call it a Vision Quest. This is a simple Bible study to help you along your journey of discovering God’s purpose for your life.

It is easy to let our life be centered on the wrong things. We need to identify what we center our hearts and minds on and then let God change the way we think.

What do you center your life around?

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

Luke 6:45

God looks at the heart because it reveals why we say what we say and do what we do.

The things we say reveal what is on our hearts and mind. The way we communicate and respond with our family, friends and peers exposes the kind of person we are. The way we think and feel is shown through the kind of impact we have on others.

How do the things you say affect those around you? (Do they make others distant from you, hurt those around you, encourage, or inspire?)

What are your conversations influenced by? (Emotions, past pains, circumstances, or God)?

Do you take the time to go to God with what is on your heart or do you let it stay evil?  (Evil = bitter, negative, unbelieving, doubtful, hopeless, etc.)

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

God shows us what we become when we don’t deal with our hearts -> we will follow our evil desires instead of him.

When we are not close to God, we go to these sins to find comfort instead of choosing to deal with the pain/hurts we have in our hearts/mind. We can’t be close to God when we choose sin.

Which sin do you run to or desire to run to even if you don’t do it?

What is on your heart that you are avoiding?

Choose God to be the center of your thought life

 “Your thoughts and plans are treasures to me, O God! I cherish each and every one of them! How grand in scope! How many in number!

If I could count each one of them, they would be more than all the grains of sand on earth. Their number is inconceivable! Even when I wake up, I am still near to You.”

Psalm 139: 17-18

God does not think the way we do. When God thinks about us, his thoughts always have a purpose behind them. His thoughts about us are grand and great in number.

Difficult life circumstances can affect our moods each day, but instead of focusing on these things we can trust that God has something greater planned for us. No matter how stuck we can get in our head, we can find comfort that God sees something greater in you and will always be right there for you.

Do you think about how God sees you?

How often do you think about God when you feel stuck in guilt or negativity?

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1-2

God is able to change who we are from the “inside out”. When we let God be our center we can move away from the negativity we normally go to and become the best we were meant to be.

It is easy to fit into the everyday norm of life. We all put ourselves into a group or culture and it is easy to get stuck in it. But there is a way out by fixing our attention on God and letting him influence our life through the bible.

What is your everyday routine?

What do you find hard to change?

How often do you pray to let God influence you instead of your emotions, life, or past?

Challenge:

Identify what you focus on most. Is it your past, the things you have failed in, life circumstances, or is it God? Find a scripture for each thought to see how God looks at these things. Pray for God to change your mind to believe in the scriptures and not your thoughts or emotions.