Dream Awakener

  The promised land 
  Originally uploaded by Hampos.

In my first post on this series, I talked about the importance of dreaming.  This post I want to take a quick look at how to discover our God-given dreams. 

DISCOVERING YOUR GOD-GIVEN DREAM
There isn’t just one way to discover your dream. You don’t have to look through Scripture too long before you recognize that God works in many different ways in helping people discover their dreams. With Moses, it was through a burning bush, for Caleb it was claiming God’s promises, for David it came from the desire in his heart, and Nehemiah and Ezra were just broken about the desperate conditions of their people. God gives different visions to different people through a wide variety of ways.

What has God put on your heart? When someone cuts you, what do you bleed? What are you passionate about? God has given you a certain set of gifts, natural abilities and passions. He has also given you a particular personality and specific experiences, all of which help you in the discovery of your God given dream.

One common pitfall to avoid when discovering your dream is thinking that there are spiritual vocations and non-spiritual vocations. If we have given our lives to follow Christ, then all of life is spiritual.

Today there is a huge need for people to answer the call of Jesus as teachers, engineers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, actors, writers, singers, senators and domestic engineers. God wants us to live out our calling in the world. Jesus’ prayer for his followers and those who would come after them was "May they live in the world, but not be of it."

Do you remember the story of Midas? Everything he touched turned to gold. We are to live out Jesus’ dream for our life in the world, being the hands of God in the market place of life, so that all becomes clean and pure as gold. For all of life is sacred and all vocations are spiritual.

First we discover our dream, then the real test comes – living it out. How do I live it out? I have discovered that there is a big difference between a God given dream and a fantasy. How can I tell the difference? By what I do or don’t do. Solomon puts it this way, "No matter how much a lazy person may want something, he will never get it. A hard worker will get everything he wants." (Prov. 13:4 GN)

I need to do more than just fantasize; I need to put feet to my dream. But how can I do it in a way where I am fully dependent on God, yet actively involved?  That is the topic of the next post.