Yep. It’s official. I’ve moved into a sorority house. Last month, when my roommate was engaged, I started looking for a new place to live…and landed in a house with 3 other girls. The funny thing is, every night I’ve been there, there has been a bevy of psuedo-roomies…an out-of-town friend from England needing a place to stay for a week, a friend in-between leases, a married/pregnant friend in town for the weekend. We’re considering switching out our large oak front door with a revolving door. It would at least make moving in an easier job for our transient roomies. All to say, with all these girls (each from different cultures and places in life), there has been one clear conversation that continues to be brought up, again and again (usually over breakfast with 5 others sitting around).
DREAMS.
You’ve got dreams. I’ve got dreams. Some of these dreams are God-breathed. Some of them are…well, ME-breathed. It’s sometimes painful to realize, but I know that if a dream is not a God-dream, then it’s not a good dream. I guess it’s one of the reasons that I broke off an engagement with a good godly man 4 years ago. I won’t tell the whole story here…but suffice to say: He was a good man. But he wasn’t GOD’s man for ME.
So in the middle of these estrogen-laden, dream-weaving conversations, a friend started talking about how she’s seen God work in her life…she said, “He changed my idea of Him, then my idea of me…and now? Only now is He changing my circumstances.”
I started to think about this…sometimes we don’t get our dreams right away because God loves us. Sounds crazy, eh? He withholds something that we think is part of our core (and it is) because He is GOOD?
The deal is, our dreams ARE pivotal to us living out our created purpose. But the biggest dream for our lives is not being married or having kids or a successful business or ministry…or even enough money to pay the bills. These are GOOD dreams. Even GOD dreams. But. The BIGGEST dream for our lives is knowing God. Period.
To believe God is WHO He says He is, to trust Him, to LOVE Him, this is the grandest fairytale we could dream of stepping into. Tag-team that with understanding who we are IN that story…we are the recipients of that Love, of that Grace, of that Goodness. We are the Princes and Princesses in His story. It’s a story about Him. About His glory. But He INCLUDES us. The God of the Universe includes us in His story. Even as I wrote that my eyes teared up…I am so completely unworthy my friends! But HE. HE INCLUDES ME.
I am done. I have no other need. He is Present. He loves me.
I am un-done. HE loves me?
And only after we start to get this does He allow some of these dreams to come to pass. Had they come earlier, they would swallow us. They would eat at our souls. We would be shadows of our true selves our whole lives. We were CREATED to be in relationship with Him. Outside of this relationship, everything else pales.
So today. Where are you? I feel like I make the rounds of these 3 spaces, time and time again. I continuously have to be reminded of Who He Is. And in the same breath, who I am IN Him, TO Him. And occasionally, He lets me play at doing something for Him, so I feel included in His Story. He’s pretty great eh? I can’t believe we get to worship Him. I can’t believe we get to KNOW Him. Praying for your dreams to be released to you today…but moreso, that you see His Goodness…His story. We are just nuts about you at Going Beyond…we pray for you all the time. And we wanna know where you are today! Take a minute and tell us your favorite thing about God…that you’re pressing in to believe…and we promise to pray for you in return!
You are STUNNING!
annetta
