God's Dreams...

A few years ago I was sitting in my living room reading my Bible when I came across Hebrews 11:13. It says: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth."

The writer is referring to people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham who followed God, believed His promises, and then died without "stepping into" the reality of those promises.

I stopped and wondered to myself what our modern day equivalent of that word "promise" would be. (Obviously we use the word promise, but we typically use it in a slightly different way.)

What I came up with was the realization that one of the ways we use the word "dream" today is probably very similar to the use of the word "promise" in this passage.

For example: "my dream is to start a _______...", or "It's my dream to do _______ for God"; for me personally, my dreams were to be a worship leader and a recording artist.

Hmm. That presented a bit of a problem. See, If I died before seeing those dreams (promises) fulfilled, that meant they wouldn't be fulfilled. It's really hard to lead worship or write and record music when you're dead.

That was the moment I was hit with the thought that has changed the way I think about almost everything:

If my dreams can only be fulfilled with me in the picture, they're probably my dreams and not God's dreams.

Ouch.

In that moment I was confronted with the choice to either ignore the revelation that was staring me in the face, or to let God change the way I thought and lived.

My present day self is eternally grateful to my past self for choosing the latter.

From that day on, God has been helping me to see His version of the dreams He's put into me.

What does that look like? Well, Instead of my dream being to lead worship, my new dream is to see God worshipped, and instead of dreaming of being a recording artist, my dream is to see great music being made that glorifies God. I want to be ready to do whatever he puts in front of me that will help those things be accomplished, no matter how significant or insignificant the role may be.

The cool thing is, those versions of my dreams can be fulfilled whether I'm in the picture or not.