UnStrategy: When Sight Trumps Strategy
“God uses both careful deliberation and intuition to guide us.
There is an element of risk in each.
Our confidence is not in our own infallibility but in God’s sovereignty.”
A man named Watson Thornton was serving as a missionary in Japan when he decided to join the Japan Evangelistic Band, in 1903. He decided to travel to the town where the headquarters were located and introduce himself to its leader.
But just as he was about to get on the train, he felt a tug in his spirit that he took to be the leading of the Lord telling him to wait. He was puzzled but thought he should obey. When the next train rolled into the station, Watson started to board but again felt he should wait. When the same thing happened with the third train, Watson began to feel foolish.
Finally, the last train arrived, and once more Watson felt a check. “Don’t get on the train,” it seemed to say. Shaking his head, he thought, I guess I was wrong about this. Yet as he turned to go, he heard a voice call out his name. It was the mission leader he had intended to see. He came to ask whether Watson would consider joining the Japan Evangelistic Band. If Watson had ignored the impulse and boarded the train, he would have missed the meeting.
What was this impulse?
Watson believed it was the voice of the Lord.
Despite this, he felt unsure of himself.
His actions didn’t seem to make sense at the time.
It felt more like a matter of intuition than anything else.
You see we are living in the moment in history when you may have to trust
your sight, your gut, your intuition
versus your strategy.
The pivots, the shifts, the turns, and the opportunities to seize the moment are often inhibited and not even possible in our brains, because we have set course on our strategic plans that we put in motion a while back, and we’re determined to achieve despite a changing reality. And we’re seeing our plans crumble all around us.
So how do you plan in the midst of hyperbolic change? Can you trust your SIGHT as much as you trust your strategy?
Unstrategy is when you seize an opportunity, right now
to respond to a world that has changed in a way you never planned.
The change is so unprecedented, the future can’t be predicted based on the past,
and as a result, the strategic plan is dead.
Believers who trust in Spirit-guided intuition are not afraid to make a decision
in the moment when they sense God’s prompting.
It is worth the risk.
We are reminded in Acts 2:17‘In the last days,’ God says,
‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young men will see visions,and your old men will dream dreams.’
It doesn’t say you will create bulletproof strategic plans!
In Numbers 13, when Israel was poised on the border of Canaan, they did not need intuition to tell them where to go from there. Their problem was that their intuition sent them the wrong message. When they saw the size of the enemy, their gut reaction was: “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are”
Notice that this wasn’t just intuition. It was also the result of their research. Yet Caleb’s intuition sent the opposite message: “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it”. What made the difference?
I believe that Caleb’s intuitive sense was shaped by God’s promise.
God uses both careful deliberation and intuition to guide us.
There is an element of risk in each.
Our confidence is not in our own infallibility but in God’s sovereignty.
We know that if we belong to Jesus Christ, even when we get things wrong, all things work together for our good (Rom. 8:28). God’s ultimate plan for our lives cannot be thwarted, not even by our own missteps. But you have to trust your God-given sight.
To follow is to submit to groupthink and listen to the media, the masses and conform to the majority. But to lead is to lean into the unique revelation God may be giving you for your situation.
What do YOU see?
Intuition is that flash of insight that prompts us to act in the moment.
OUR SIGHT IS HEIGHTENED IN MOMENTS OF CRISIS,
YET WE GO LOOKING FOR THE SOLUTIONS
IN THE STRATEGIES WE HAVE SET
AND THE PLANS WE HAVE MADE
Your strategic plan will not be what defines your future forward movement.
Your sight will.
You see the future doesn’t just happen. Somebody creates it. You create it. You help shape the values and biblical truth from which the future will emerge. And it will emerge.
What do you see?
Where static strategy is stopped dead in its track – those with sight will be the leaders.
What is in your sightline? Set your strategy. But trust your sight.
Isaiah 43:19 reminds us:
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
What do you see?
Be confident that it is not only your strategy but your sight will be your compass as you walk into the future.
I believe in you.
Cathie