True Confessions here. I love to dream. I’m not talking about the kind of dreams we have at night, nor even the prophetic kind or the dreams where God speaks to His people in visions and dreams. That’s a topic for another author who understands far more than I do, though I will go so far as to say that I believe God does use dreams and visions, as He said He would, to speak to people even today. Many people are coming to faith in Jesus in countries where they are not allowed to hear His name because He is speaking to them in dreams. So yeah, I definitely believe God can work this way. Actually, I believe God can do whatever He wants, but back to dreaming.
I think most of us are born with abilities that lead us to dream about our futures. When I was thirteen, I dreamed of being sixteen. When I was sixteen, I dreamed of being twenty-one. Mostly I dreamed of growing up and becoming a wife and a mom. I had no other pressing desires at that time. My dream was to have a family and God graciously granted that dream.
But partway through living that dream, I had another. I wanted to be a writer. And then I suddenly had the desire that writing for myself wasn’t enough. I wanted to be a published author. I’m not sure why I had that desire, but it grew into a stubborn pursuit of this new goal for twenty years.
A lot of us start out dreaming of the way our life should go. I envisioned certain things for mine, and some of them came true. Others…not yet. Still others turned into the exact opposite of what I dreamed. And I am sure the future holds more dreams and more wonder as to whether they will come to pass. I’ve lived long enough to know that some might, but others won’t.
The thing about life is that most of us don’t get to live our dreams. Not exactly as we dream them. And that might sound counterintuitive to God’s plans for His children, to give them a future and a hope, right? If we’re honest, I think a lot of us want God to want what we want. We see Him as a wish granter. So we dream and we pray and we wait for Him to give us what we long for.
But another thing I’ve learned along this road called life? God isn’t a magic genie who waits to grant our every wish. In fact, the opposite is true.
God wants us to give our dreams to Him. Going one step further, I believe we will never be truly happy in this life until we can come to the place where we can stop all of our restless striving and trade our dreams for His.
Sounds pretty impossible, doesn’t it?
And when we look at other people who seem to be living their dreams, we might think – what is she talking about? To some, perhaps I look like I’ve got the perfect life, the perfect career, the perfect family, and so on. But no one has it perfect as we walk this earthly journey. No one gets through it unscathed by disappointments and heartache and even anger that things did not go the way we’d planned/expected/hoped.
Perhaps this example will sound trite, and I hesitate to use it, but it is the best thing I can share that illustrates exchanging our dreams for God’s.
Remember that twenty-year dream of having a writing career? If you’ve followed my blogs or read my books long enough, you probably know that I almost quit trying within six months of selling my first series. But what I don’t share that often is that even at the point of a contract offer–when I was so close–I knew God wanted me to give the dream to Him.
I’d received the possibility of the offer, but it had to be approved by the president of the company. And I had no idea whether he would approve it or not. Time moves very slowly when we are waiting. And I am so not good at waiting!
But God is oh so patient, and He wasn’t done with this twenty-year lesson. During that last week of waiting, when I had no idea whether I was going to receive yet another rejection or move forward, I cried. And I prayed. Hard. Was this going to be the last straw, the “call it quits”, or see a long-held dream fulfilled?
I sat in the car in the garage that last day listening to Amy Grant singing “Sweet Will of God” on the car speakers. In my mind, I also kept hearing one of my critique partners talk about how important it was to be in the center of God’s will.
And I knew. I had to open my clenched anxious fists and offer the Wives of King David back to Him. If He did not want this dream for me, then I didn’t want it either. I wanted His will, not my own.
Perhaps a better word for it all would be surrender. And the thing is? I know from Scripture and from my personal life’s journey that God wants our absolute surrender. But most of us struggle with that thought. We don’t want to give Him everything.
Giving God permission to control our life, our future, our dreams is downright scary. And the truth is, we are all too proud to do so without the gentle coaxing of His Grace.
The thing I needed to learn was that God didn’t want my surrender, wasn’t asking for my dreams because He’s a killjoy. He just happens to have better dreams than I do. He can imagine far better for me than I can for myself.
I’m preaching to myself here, beloved, because while God did grant that dream of a writing career, there are quite a few things in my life He has not yet given. And I don’t know if He is going to ever give them to me. He might have a different path for me than I think I want to take. Actually, I do often tend to wrestle with His plans because I want my own way. Can you relate?
But I am slowly learning…very slowly, I’m afraid…to keep opening my hands. I still have things I wish for daily, sometimes hourly. I pray for things I know God wants, pray His word back to Him. Fervent praying is nearly second nature to me now. But I keep hearing “do you trust Me?” and waiting seems to be in the background of that question.
And then I start dreaming again, imagining what I want next in life, and I know God could grant it as He has things in the past. But I also know that He wants me to hand my dreams and desires to Him. They are so much safer in His hands than mine. And really, so am I.
When I fall on my knees and open my hands, and surrender the things I want most to Jesus, I’m giving Him permission to be in control of my life, rather than me trying to control its outcome. And those few times – because I’m still a work in progress – that I can really trust Him with the things that matter most to me, I can relax. I can rest in the fact that He loves me and is working all things for my good. I can find joy in knowing that I have a good, good Father who can take my dreams and do something with them that is exceeding, abundantly above all that I can possibly ask or imagine.
Can you give Him your dreams?
~Selah
#livegrace #lovetruth #dreamgiver
