SoulShift #3: Seen to Unseen

This third soul shift is to move from merely trusting in what we see to trusting in what we cannot see. Often this is called having eyes of faith, and has a great example in Elisha and his servant who were surrounded by both the seen army of Aram and the unseen protection of the host of the Lord (2 Kings 6).

For me, this shift caused me to reflect on leadership. Bob Whitesel categorizes leaders into three types: strategic, tactical, and operational. In short, strategic leaders are the vision setters. Tactical leaders plan to get the vision accomplished. Operational leaders are the boots on the ground that get the job done. It is easy to see that a good strategic leader should have eyes of faith, but truly, all leaders need to see the unseen.

I am a tactical leader, so it is easy for me to receive the vision, evaluate our resources, and then make a plan. However, a pragmatic person may forget that God offers his power as a resource. Here is a simple example. I was told we needed to be able to send electronic reports. My thought was that the best way for us to do this was to use secure PDFs, however, the church does not own Adobe Acrobat. A copy of the program would cost us $119, but instead I found a free PDF maker, and figured we could secure the report by attaching in a secure Word file. It is an extra step, but it does not cost us any money. My senior pastor said if this process is too complex or takes too long, we can just purchase a copy of Acrobat. Why didn’t I initially suggest that we purchase Acrobat? It is an expensive program for the minimal use we will have with it. We also just passed the budget, and did not plan on purchasing a new program this year. My eyes saw what we had, the seen. The senior pastor saw the unseen; if this was something we needed, God would provide for us to have it.

Seeing the unseen give me courage in evangelism, and opens more doors for what I may be called to do after seminary.

My reflections as I read through SoulShift by Steve DeNeff and David Drury.