A Young  Foolish Dreamer

What do we do when we have a dream that surpasses all understanding?  When we walk with God he has the tendency of taking someone who has “loser” written all over them and making them into someone that defies the laws of success.  God, being God, is just as excited about our future identity that he shares tidbits with us.  What do we sometimes do with that info though?

Alejandra has done such a great job the last few weeks on this challenge.  Last week she talked about how an identity crisis maybe be what is needed in order to find our purpose, click to read. This week I would like to pick up where she left off and talk about learning to dream quietly. What does “dreaming quietly” mean? Maybe you’re wondering how one dreaming quietly and the Love Yourself Challenge go together?  Part of loving ourselves has a lot to do with how we handle the entrusted destiny God has given us.

If you are like Joseph from Genesis, and me, you may get really excited once you get a glimpse of where God is taking, so you open your mouth to the wrong person.  This was a lesson I needed to absorb as God was showing me things about myself.  I learned the hard way that not everyone has my best interest at heart when they hear where I believed God was taking me.  On more than one occasion God spoke something to me and I called friends and family members—not to gloat—but to have someone to celebrate with.  Sadly many time it turned around to them question how God was going to do things, why he choice me and question the weight of what I believed.

In Genesis 37 it talks about a 17 year old young man by the name of Joseph who was one of 11—10 older and 1 younger—boys to Jacob.  God gave him a dream that he was going to be given a great position of importance that his 11 brothers were going to be bowing down to him.  Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how many of you would share with your 10 older brothers that you had dream of them bowing to you, but again he was a teenager lacking a lot of wisdom.

Not only did Joseph lack wisdom but he had a death wish because God gave him a second dream and he went straight to his brothers again.  This time, in his dream his father and step-mother were bowing to him as well.   His brothers already hated him from the first dream but this second dream made them want to kill him.  Their jealousy and hatred for him could not be hid any longer.

Have you ever had a sibling, friend or co-worker scowl at a dream, or desire you had out of resentment or disbelief?  I know that my inability to dream quietly cause friction, jealousy and animosity of others towards me.  They mistook my excitement as boasting or conceit—I may have had both but I won’t admit that to them.

P.S. exposing our dreams too quickly to the wrong people just opens the door to unnecessary struggles.

To Share, or Not to Share?

Last week we spoke about how an identity crisis can guide you into your destiny. It can cause you to have an encounter with God where He, your creator, tells you what you were created for.  Over 18 years ago I remember when someone told me something and I didn’t believe them.  I can write about how other people wronged me by their unbelief but if I need to be real, I was on the other side of it at one point.  Let me tell you what happened.

Over 18 years ago, one early Sunday morning, my husband ,Sam and I were getting ready for church.  He was in the shower and soon called me to him.  He asked me how I would feel if our current church were to ask him to take the youth pastor’s position.  Now our church was going through some hard times because our senior pastor died unexpectedly and the loss caused the church to go through a lot of painful changes.  The church was about to embark on a split that would pin friend against friend.

The position of youth pastor had been held by his own youth pastor who had practically raised him.  This man had mentored hundreds of kids and created a name for himself–in the inner city of the Bronx–that would leave the next man always under the shadow of his success.  There was absolutely no indication that our church was looking at him as a replacement.  It may not be a big dream for some; however under the circumstances it was too farfetched and ridiculous that I could not help but question my husband’s view of himself. The idea doesn’t seem that farfetched now because of the road we took since.  I could not help but laugh at him and the whole idea then.

When I looked at him I could only see my young husband who was going to college for film media not pastoral care.  He loved God but marriage showed me that he was not mature in the things of God.  He struggled with very bad habits and had no solid devotional time, while I had two years of Bible College under my belt and a solid devotional life.  I dismissed him with a laugh in my spirit because I didn’t think that a church of almost 900 people would replace a youth pastor of over 15 years, with an inexperienced 22 year old—who didn’t even go to bible college.  I know that was mean and I was totally wrong, but I judged his ability by my standards not God’s.  I did not see what Sam saw or what God saw and I discouraged the thought.  I dismissed his dream because it wasn’t my own.

Others do the same thing, they hold you to their judgmental, finite standards and only value of you by their blurry lenses of your life.

Loving Yourself and Dreaming Quietly?

How does loving yourself and dreaming quietly, go hand in hand? Well there are a few reasons why God gives us a sneak peak into our destiny?

1. I believe that God does it so we don’t allow our current life circumstances to dictate to us where we are going. At times we are so discouraged because we hate the life we have.  We wake up in the morning and it’s the same thing over and over again, with no end in sight of the pain or hopelessness.  This glimpse gives us a push to live for the destiny and not settle for the present struggles.
2. When we love ourselves we are willing to remove whatever it is in our lives that keeps us from our destiny. When someone is called to be a soldier in the army, there is a different mentality that they take on.  They remove things in their life that would keep them from fighting in a war.  That is why they train at Boot Camp.  They completely remove themselves from family and friends so they can train without getting themselves entangled in the affairs of everyday life.  The structure of being a soldier would take longer if a recruit had to go home after a day of training.  When God gives you a dream to do something for him, we must be willing to remove things that will weaken or delay our destiny.  When Joseph was given those dreams, his arrogance and lack of wisdom caused him to be completely removed from his family through enslavement and imprisonment.  It was in those 13 years that God trained him and reshaped him so that he could be the man in his dreams.
3. When we learn to love ourselves we learn to fight any thoughts that contradict the person God is creating us to be. Those thoughts of insecurity, incompetence, inadequacy is swallowed up by the truth that with God, we are right where we need to be; also he orchestrated our steps and uses our failures to bring us to our dream.

When we love ourselves we dare to dream bigger.  Alejandra said she heard it said that we need to dream so big that without God it would be impossible. When we do this, we know, we would have to rely on him to make it come true.  But what is the result of dreaming big, so big it’s impossible…very few will believe it.  For this reason we must learn to dream quietly.

Weekly Challenge:

This week I would like for you to pick a dream and for the next 7 days pick one thing that you need to do to be ready for your dream whether it be humbling yourself, quietly reviewing where God is taking you, removing things or people that are delaying your dream.

If you need help, feel free to respond below or email us on the side for additional help.  Also follow us on Facebook or on Instagram @throughthewinters.