Every Monday morning at Adventures in Missions, the staff meets together to worship. It’s one of my favorite things about AIM…that they begin each week meeting with the Lord, singing songs and praying for one another.
(photo credit: Justin Marshall)
This week during worship, the Lord spoke to us about the dreams He’s placed in our hearts. These dreams were meant to be pursued, but are sometimes cast off and forgotten.
There’s a dream of mine that I’ve let die. Sure, I’m still going through the motions to pursue it, but I’ve lost a passion for it.
When I first signed up for CGA back in February, my dream was to lead a Passport trip. I wanted to take a group of young people on a journey where their limits would be tested, and the love of God would overwhelm them. Talking about that dream gave me life, gave me passion, gave me hope. But somewhere in the past few months, talking about my dream has begun to leave me feeling defeated, inadequate, and unworthy. The spark was gone.
But just as Ezekiel was commanded to speak life into the dry bones (Ezekiel 37) so does God desire for us to speak life back into the dreams and passions He’s placed in our hearts.
Yesterday morning during worship, it was time for me to speak life back into my dream. So I did. And as I prayed, I felt the hope return. God was so quick to respond, so faithful to breath life and passion back into my heart.
One of the girls in my house came over to me after worship and shared a picture that the Lord had given her for me.
“I saw the ranch you worked at this summer. There was a barn behind you, and you were standing on a dirt road. Next to you was a pasture, surrounded by a wooden fence. On the other side of the fence were the Rocky Mountains. I heard God say that He wants to take you out of the pasture.”
Too often we look at our dreams in the same way we gaze at the mountains. We enjoy them from within the safety of the pasture. We marvel, thanking God for them and claiming them as our own. But when the time comes to leave the familiar and journey into our calling, we seem stuck. We forget why it’s worth leaving. Why pursue that dream after all? Isn’t it more comfortable here? What if I get hurt? What if I don’t know the way? What if I’m not good enough? We let fear and doubt rob our dream of the life it had. We forget how passionate we had once been about “climbing the mountain.”
But how wonderful is the journey into the mountains? How grand is the view from the top?
Yesterday God renewed my desire to journey into the mountains, to lead a team overseas and serve them, knowing that God will equip me in all the ways that I need. And when I find myself somewhere down the road, caught up in a moment with my team, knowing it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be and never wanting it to end, I’ll look back at that time in the pasture.
I’ll look back and know that there is nothing more beautiful than beholding a dream God’s given you as it unfolds in your life and comes to be.
Will you let God take you out of the pasture? Will you settle for the view from the bottom or behold the view from the top?
