Married to the Vision, Not the Strategy

Every builder I know has a moment where the thing that used to work just stops working. The marketing that filled your calendar goes quiet. The ministry program everybody loved gets thin. The plan you prayed over, the one you were sure about, starts to feel like pushing a car uphill.

And if you're anything like me, your first move is to push harder.

My friend Pastor Brad Sullivan came on the show this week and said something I haven't been able to shake. He's a third generation preacher, he took over the church his father founded, and he has walked through a rebrand, COVID, and losing his dad unexpectedly in the middle of it all. So when he talks about navigating change, he's not reading it out of a book.

Here's what he said.

You need to be absolutely wedded and married to the vision God gave you, but you don't have to be married to the strategies and the processes that get you to that vision.

Read that one more time, because I think a lot of us have it backwards.

When the Brook Dries Up

Brad took us to Elijah. During the drought, God sends him to a brook and provides for him there. Ravens bring him food. It's a miracle. And then the Bible says something interesting. The brook dried up.

God didn't tell Elijah to stand there and command the water to come back. He told him to get moving, because the next provision was somewhere else.

I laughed when Brad acted that part out, because I've been that guy. Standing over a dry brook, rebuking the dirt. Blessed God, this is how we've always done it. And as Brad put it, it ain't working no more, so you've got to do something different.

The brook drying up doesn't mean God left. It might just mean the season moved. Seasons come and seasons go, even in the same place.

So what would it look like to hold your vision with a closed fist and your strategy with an open hand?

Good Enough Can Be the Real Problem

I asked Brad what he'd say to somebody who's stuck, looking them dead in the eyes. I expected him to talk about hard seasons. He went somewhere else.

He said sometimes you get so good at what you're doing that you grow complacent and you lose the fire. When I was broke as a joke, living in my car, divorced, with big dreams and nothing to show for them, I had motivation. I knew I couldn't live like that forever. But sometimes you can have it good, and the good is good enough, and you grow cold without ever noticing.

Most people don't miss their dreams because they never had any. They lose focus on the original vision God gave them. The to-do list and the demands of every day will beat the vision right out of you if you let them.

Brad's answer was simple and it stepped on my toes a little. Get out of your feels. Get out of complaining. Stop blaming the circumstances and the people, look to God, and get the vision back out. And make it big, because God is big.

God Is Building Big Shoulders

I told Brad about a time I was praying for massive things while I had nothing. God made it clear that I was not yet the kind of person who could sustain what I was asking for. If He had snapped His fingers and dropped it all in my lap, the weight of it would have crushed me.

That's what transition does. God is using it to build big shoulders in us. It's why I keep saying God's part is the plans and provisions, and ours is the daily disciplines of becoming the person He's calling us to be. And I don't just mean your to-do list. I mean your relationship with Him and the renewing of your mind.

Which brings me to my favorite line of the whole conversation.

Wake Up, Be Faithful, Repeat

Brad's church has a saying he keeps threatening to put on a t-shirt. Wake up, be faithful, go to bed, and repeat.

It's simple, but it's profound. You put a string of faithful days together, and you're going to look back and see how far you've come. That's how Noah built an ark. Nobody builds one in a weekend.

Then he walked us through Joseph, and this is where it got me. Genesis 39 says Joseph was a successful man because God was with him. And that was when he had just been sold as a slave.

"The LORD was with Joseph, and he was a successful man." (Genesis 39:2, NKJV)

Brad looked at me and said, when you were broke as a joke in a car with big dreams, you didn't look successful, but you were succeeding, because God was with you.

Your circumstances don't make you successful. It's who's with you in those circumstances.

Joseph learned to manage resources in Potiphar's house. He learned to manage people in prison. Those were the exact two skills he'd need to run an empire. If he had stayed the favorite son in the coat of many colors, he'd have never developed what the palace was going to require.

So let me ask you. What if the place you're frustrated with right now is the classroom for the place you've been praying about? What skill is God building in you that you'd never have asked Him for?

Don't let your frustration over where you're not keep you from developing the skills for the bigger future God has for you. Stay married to the vision. Let the strategy change. And tomorrow, wake up and be faithful again.

Expand Your Capacity

In the BUILDER Blueprint this is the Expand Capacity step. God doesn't just hand us a bigger vision, He grows us into people who can carry it. The dry brook, the slave house, the prison, the season that feels like pushing a car uphill: those are often the places He is building the shoulders your future will need.

So here is your action step this week. Write the vision down again, the big one God gave you before the to-do list got loud. Then circle one strategy you've been holding with a closed fist and ask Him if it's time to open your hand.

For the whole conversation, listen to Married to the Vision, Not the Strategy with Pastor Brad Sullivan on The Jesse Wood Show, on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts. And if you want the full framework, get my book, The Purpose Driven Business Builder's Blueprint. Ready to stop getting in your own way? Start your mirror moment at builduntil.com/mirror.

Wake up, be faithful, go to bed, repeat. Let's build together.