If God is your partner make your plans big.— D. L. Moody
Dreaming BIG has always been challenging for me.
Truth be told, I have always longed for smaller things. By that I mean that I hungered for “a normal life” whatever that is. I wanted peaceful and quiet and to be as far away from the chaos and loneliness of my childhood as I could get.
For that reason I didn’t want to be rich or famous. I wanted this “white picket” idea of home and family. I thought if I had that—then I would be happy enough—and I could weather anything.
That just wasn’t in Jesus’ plans. Not for me anyway.
Instead, my life has been this crazy kind of patchwork quilt, with a little of this kind of crisis and a little of that kind of disaster, until I wasn’t sure anymore of anything God was doing—or what He wanted from me and my messy existance.
I could never seem to make sense out of the facts that sometimes God was so near I could almost hear Him breathing, and yet so many of my “heart’s desires” remained just that, only wisps of desires with very little substance to them.
Learning to fly without a net.
Ravi Zacharias said, “There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny.”
The author of my destiny?
Sorry, that label never seemed to fit my journey. If God was writing my destiny then I sure was hoping for some serious rewrites!
I’m not complaining.
(Not really.)
I have actually seen God do many miraculous things, so I know for a FACT—miracles happen!
I just viewed my destiny in light of MY desires.
Honestly, I was secretly scared that if God was writing my destiny, I might end up in some bug infested jungle somewhere!
It never occurred to me that God might actually have been the One responsible for putting those “white picket desires” into my heart in the first place.
But my heart kept asking, “If my heart’s desires are good, and God is the author, then why aren’t they happening? Why do I wait, and wait, and wait, and life takes one tumble after another until I feel so beat up I wonder if any of it is worth it?
I mean, why keep on?
God knows what He’s doing.
It sounds so silly to say that. Of course He knows what He’s doing, duh!
But surrendering a dream cuts deep into the heart of who we are. We all have a vision of who we think we are and what our life is about, and nothing… nothing tests that, like the death of a dream!
God knows us—who we are and what needs to change, so He delays. We wait. He prunes. We cry. We doubt. He reassures us. He comforts us. We rejoice. He delays…
Get the picture?
In the journey, in the process, our dreams and desires change and reform. Our carnal dreams become Kingdom visions! As our relationship with Jesus matures so do our dreams and desires.
Let me say it like this:
When our deepest heart’s desires marry up with His perfect heart’s desires—His will is done on earth as it is in heaven!
So have you come to this place?
This “place” where the dream you’ve been waiting for, and pining for, has finally died?
It’s a very tough place; a wilderness that we are meant to cross—not perish in.
Life rarely goes the way we think it should, and often, God takes us down paths that “feel” so wrong…
But they’re not.
Surrender—that’s what God wants. Complete and total surrender.
And trust—complete and total trust.
When we arrive there?
Then, we are finally ready to possess and walk out this destiny of ours, while we cling to God’s hand, and look to Him alone for everything we need.
Now we travel hand in hand with God, carrying our transformed dreams, with His blessing in our heart.
Now there is kingdom purpose and MUCH fruit.
Women With Destiny 