Wait, tension?
Yep.
While I first started exploring this concept, my squad mate and friend, Danielle, passed along this quote –
“Vision always precedes preparation. Initially your vision will exceed your competency. Within the context of that tension, God will go to work on you.”
Simply put: If I can make my dreams happen, I’m dreaming too small.
For most of my life, I feared tension. Instead, I prayed for peace and clarity… and therefore, settled for puny ideas. My goals were easily attainable within my own strength. I lived as if I didn’t need God.
The truth is universal …
We don’t need clarity, we need trust.
We need creativity, not conformity.
We need collaboration.
We need to stop playing small and realize that in Christ we are friends of God and He is calling us to dream bigger Kingdom dreams.
We have not, because we ask not.
Do you believe that?
We often maintain a poverty mindset that clings tightly to concepts of addition and subtraction (what I can get and what I can lose) because we cannot fathom the possibility of multiplication. God’s equations are always in our favor. He is for us and not against us. With him 5+2 does not equal 7… it looks more like 5+2 equals 5,000 R12. (Don’t understand the reference? Your homework is to look up Matthew 14:13-21!)
Where there is no risk, there is no reward.
The fear of failure leaves our bellies empty.
What would have happened if Noah didn’t build that ark? What if David hid in his tent instead of fetching his slingshot? What if the wise men didn’t follow the star? If Moses kept running and hiding? Or if Peter stayed in the boat? What if Jesus decided the cross was just too much to bear? You must see where I’m going with all of this…
Faith is the willingness to look foolish. (Read that list again… I mean, COME ON… how ludicrous to the onlooker…!)
Faith is utter dependence… living in abandon and communion, praying hard and expecting God to come through, or else you have nothing else.
While recently praying over my newest dreams, my great friend Jeff encouraged me, “Go after your Plan A and bury your Plan B.”
That’s exactly what I intend to do.
And yes, it’s terrifying… and exhilarating.
I cannot settle for anything less.
Where there is no tension, there is no momentum. I want my life to be a rubber band. Pulling, stretching, releasing, and launching forward into eternity. I want to be a guitar string, wound up to pitch, creating sweet music that invites others to incline their ear and sing along.
I know what the Father is calling me to next. I have sat with Him many early mornings and late nights. He is speaking and we are dreaming together. I cannot accomplish this one alone.
What about you? What buried dreams lie trembling in the ground, crying out for resurrection?
… Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
John 16:23-24
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
Matthew 21:21-22
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
1 John 5:14-15
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
James 1:5-6
