© 2006 Donna L. Watkins - Bluebird Cove Walk To Our Door
Do you take time for dreaming? Like this squirrel who knows how to chill out on the cool concrete garden bench, you need time to get away to where the birds gather ... to dream!
Dreams are of God. When you dream you go beyond human limitations and today's realities. You see beyond what you can accomplish and begin to imagine what God can accomplish through you.
Don't expect anybody to give much credence to your dreams. Remember Joseph's brothers who mocked him and even sold him as a slave because they were sick of hearing about his dreams. Those who don't dream will always minimize those who do.
Dreams that stretch you to the point of discomfort are more God than you. He wants to be involved. Actually, a better mindset on it would be that He wants you to be involved in His dream. Sometimes we leave dreams behind because we don't see how WE can make them happen. As usual when it comes to God things, "it's not about me."
What has God allowed you to see? He won't lift you up and plant you in the middle of the dream, and you won't be able to make it happen with your own abilities, so dreaming isn't always comfortable even for the dreamers. The nation of Israel had a dream of getting out of slavery. Don't you imagine as the taskmasters loaded more and more work on them that they pictured being able to walk away from their heavily-laden lives and start over afresh someplace else?
Their dream came true when God sent Moses to deliver them ... but they had to walk through the wilderness to get to their dream. Many of them grumbled and complained and dreamed of the food they had to eat back in Egypt. Their stomachs made their minds willing to give up freedom for a bigger meal. After all the hardships they'd lived with in Egypt, you would've thought they'd have more stamina to make the trip, but human nature wants life easy and memories of "how it used to be" are very altered in our minds from the reality of it all.
To make your dreams come true, you will have to refuse to turn back. You'll need to go the distance and many times with God only revealing one step at a time. Most of the nation of Israel never stopped complaining and they never entered into their dream. It took them 40 years in the desert because they grumbled. It was only a 40-day walk through that wilderness to the Promised Land.
How many times have we allowed grumbling to steal our dreams and visions? How much of our lives have we handed over to be stamped "Not Fulfilled." Regardless of what advertising and the media want you to believe, life isn't handed to you on a silver platter no matter how much money you have. We are here to work our way through, but it can be done in joy and peace and with God's favor upon us. Joseph went through the betrayal by Potiphar's wife and imprisonment, but his dream carried him to be ruler of Egypt. He trusted God to fulfill it but always kept his eyes on it.
Dreams hold the joys of today and the hopes of tomorrow. Protect them and feed them with The Word. Don't set your time table to them. Let God reveal the timing.
The Word For You Today had these three things to remember about dreams:
1) Dreams are specific, not general; personal, not public
2) Dreams are usually outside the realm of the expected
3) Dreams separate winners from losers. Dreamers are always a minority.
What are the dreams that God has shown you? Have you tried to make them happen and given up? Renew them and relive them in your mind, and then let God show you what the step for today is. Not how to make it all happen ... but what needs to be done now.
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