Dreamsicle: Thawing out your frozen dreams

Got dreams?  Photo--wordpress.com

“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.”  Erma Bombeck

What happened to our dreams? As the One Month to Live authors suggests many of our dreams are like a popsicle in summer—a dreamsicle if you will. Perhaps they melted, slid off the stick, or got frozen out of shape in the blizzard of life.

Really, what happened to our dreams?

Are we living our dream?

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.”

That sort of translates to we are living to the full when we are living our dreams. But does anyone really get to live their dreams? OK, maybe a professional golfer, gymnast, or pianist makes it big and gets to do what they love all day long, but do the rest of us every get to live our dreams?

Do we know what our dreams are?

 Do we know what we want any more?

Does our day-to-day life reflect the pursuit of our dreams? This is the make it count moment for today, so let’s honestly consider this question without any spin doctoring whatsoever.

I think that I know what my dream is, but how do I know it’s what God wants me to do? How do I know if it’s from God?

Consider this as something of a litmus test. God will not give you a desire that goes against his word. He won’t give you an unwholesome or unholy desire. God knows the plans that he has for you and they are for good. So if your dream is to be the world’s greatest bank robber, you might need to set that one aside and ask God to reveal his purpose for you.

Here’s a second part to this simple test. Does your dream require faith? We can’t please God without faith. Expect God to give you a dream, a living purpose, a desire in your heart that requires faith.

Does your dream come from the core of your being—from the heart of the one that God made in his own image?

When our dreams match the God-given purpose that each of us have within us what a harmony we find in our lives. That doesn’t mean that the obstacles disappear. It means that we can’t wait to tackle the next obstacle, and the next, and the next. Why? Because we are certain that we are moving in the right direction.

Here is the make it count moment for today. How do you distinguish between your selfish desires and those things that God has placed in your heart? How does God reinforce his plans and dreams for you? Knowing God’s purpose for your life—the dream you were placed on this earth to live—how would you live differently in your last 30 days?

We are meant to live the dreams of our lives—the dreams that God has given us. What utopia! But there is more to the story of our lives. There is a minefield in this world that has been emplaced by Satan himself. Yes, there is evil in this world. Yes, we have a sinful human nature.

Jesus warned us that the thief’s purpose is to steal, and kill, and destroy.

Jesus said that he came to give us life to the full.

If we are alive, we are at war.

That does not mean that we cannot live our dreams and fulfill our purpose and be the person that God made us to be. In fact, we may do even greater things because we know we have an adversary.

We see a concept in the Bible that tells us that God has already accomplished something, but we have yet to realize it. Paul frequently laced his letters with these thoughts. God has accomplished what he set out to do with us, but we still live this life facing the struggles of sin, temptation, evil, and yes—Satan.

We should fear none of these. Our victory is in Jesus. We win!

The struggle in this life remains. We pursue our God-given dreams in a world in which good and evil coexist. By nature, this cannot be a peaceful coexistence. We are at war, and that’s not such a bad thing. Consider the thoughts of John Stuart Mill, English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873).

 War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Our God-given dreams are as much worth fighting for as independence, throwing off tyranny, preventing genocide, or any of the rallying cries which have been a part of the so called just wars of this world.

Many a denomination has denounced war over the past centuries, but we must realize that we pursue our dreams on a battlefield. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. The counsel of Paul to the church at Ephesus remains valid today.

Time for a gut check. Are we ready, willing, and able to pursue our God-given dreams on this battlefield in which we current live?

Here are Chris and Kerry’s make it last for life challenges.

1.       What’s in your dream box?

2.       What would you attempt for God if you knew that you couldn’t fail?

3.       Write down a description of one of your dreams that you believe is from God. How has it floated to the top in your life? How does it require faith? Does it serve others?

4.       Pray today that God reveals one thing that you can do today to further the pursuit of your God-given dream.

To enrich this journey even more, try these day 7 provocations.