8 Steps to Draw Your Vision Out

So much spins around us that many of us rarely, if ever, contemplate our personal vision. May I give you an excuse to do so here? Imagination is incredibly important in this because it sees more possibilities than limitations. So, set all those voices aside which say “No” and “Yeah, but . . .” If you can imagine something, you can usually work out a way to do it.

A Drawing to Contemplate
Now, I hope the simplicity of this exercise is not below you, but, hey, maybe that would be a good thing. Use this drawing to help you contemplate your vision. And, no you don’t have to “draw good”. (Consider a pencil with eraser.)

1. On a landscape oriented paper draw a small head-and-shoulders profile on the left side looking right. Let’s say this is you. (You may want to adjust the nose, or something.) Leave plenty of room inside your head. I’m not implying anything by this. I just want you to have room for the next thing:
2. Draw a star inside your head. That star is an incredible idea, or inspiration inside of you. That is your vision. Nobody else may know that vision. Even you may have forgotten it is in there. Everybody looks at you and thinks many things, but they don’t know what’s inside you. That vision could just stay there unknown by anyone except you and God. You may be agreeing with the voices ingrained into you that it’s just impractical, or you can’t afford it, or you might fail and look like a fool. So, nothing will come of it because it is safe in the secret place of your head. Are you playing it safe?
3. Let’s say you are going to take a risk. Draw an arrow extending from you out a little ways in front of you to the right. At the end of that arrow draw the same star floating out ahead of you. Maybe you sketched some plans, maybe you wrote a poem, maybe you cut from a magazine a picture which looked like your idea. Whatever it was, it is now out there in the open. It has taken on a more material form than what was in your head.
4. Now draw to the right of the star floating out in the open another head and shoulders of a person looking at that floating star. What if someone you trusted could access your idea in some form? What if you could share with him, or her so that they would think of the possibilities of this idea?
5. Draw another arrow leading in an arch from the floating star to inside the friend’s head and draw the same star inside the friend’s head. Now you have two people percolating on the vision. They are collaborating. They are building the idea and discussing how it could work and they are getting excited. “Yes!” is happening. You have a comrade and that’s the beginning of a community where the idea is passed on to someone else. Together, you begin to work it out. It’s incredibly important to have other people that are of a kindred spirit in your life.
6. Now draw three other head-and-shoulder people on the other side of the friend. Draw arrows from the friend to the new friends and put the same star inside each of their heads. One person inspired by your vision leads to another and another. One person remembers someone who would like the idea, finds them and plants the idea in their minds too. They find somebody who wants to collaborate, and they find another guy who wants to collaborate and pretty soon the group has grown. But each one has to engage with someone else by sharing the idea.
7. Now, on the far right, draw arrows big enough to represent the whole group. Extend the arrows out to the right. The community of collaborators begins to realize that they have what it takes, and with a little grace, and a lot of imagination, they will be able to unite their forces, each person working on a different aspect perhaps, but eventually they work on the vision.
8. Now draw at the end of the big arrow an elaborate, decorated version of the star that was originally just in your mind.

The community that shares the vision creates it in the material world. The thing that was in your mind, unknown, intangible, eventually becomes a tangible, beautiful object, and maybe even has a little extra to it, because the people got together. This could be a crude picture of your progression. When you draw this for yourself you ought to sign and date it so that it is worth a lot of money hanging in the museum commemorating the beginnings of your historic work.

Partnering with God
This is a simple approach to the very model found in the story of beginnings with Adam and Eve, how God brought out the unknowable, shared it with their new minds and let them run with it. The Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians chapter 3, verse 9, “We are fellow workmen (fellow laborers) with God.”

In the book of Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10, we are described as God’s workmanship, God’s handiwork, made to do good work and live a good life which God prepared for us to do beforehand. We are like a poem, a sculpture, a beautiful work of art, which God has made; not just to sit here and be objects, but to actually do important things.

When we stop and contemplate our vision we begin to know ourselves as what God made us to be. Know that we are made with many options and that we can choose these freely. Know that we are able to work around challenges which seem to block us from doing what we were made to be. Know that we have many ways in which to show who we are.

What could you be passionate about, in your life? That is a likely candidate for what God wants you to do. What is your passion right now? What is your long-term passion? Contemplate that. Begin to imagine it. Describe it in detail: what it looks like; what it sounds like; what it smells like; how you will feel when you are accomplishing it. Your vision will begin to come out into the open and become a context for the choices you make in your life. That is a major way God works in you to give you good direction, especially as you dialogue with God about these passions. Integrate these dreams into your prayer life. Maybe they will motivate you to start a prayer discipline if you you haven’t already. And maybe doodling while you pray will help.

Mark Turner