Why don’t many of our dreams become reality? I’m sure some don’t because they were nothing more than unreasonable fantasies. When I was a child, I remember fantasizing about being a cowboy, as I wore my cowboy boots and rode my stick horse. It was fun to imagine, anyway. Some dreams don’t materialize simply because they are not meant to do so. Others are meant to be, but not in our imagined timetable. I had dreams of being an accountant, businessman, counselor—but vowed I would never be a clergyman! I grew up in a pastor’s home and did not want my family to endure what I had experienced. As it turned out, I loved God enough to allow Him to reshape my heart (through lots of tears and time), as we may use stakes and wire to reshape a young, misaligned tree. Through it all, I lived out a form of all I had dreamed by becoming the pastor I vowed I would never be! Other dreams are meant to be, but we do not take the initiative to strategize how to make it happen, then taking the steps to fulfill that dream.
One paradox of the Christian life is how God gives us gifts but then requires us to take the initiative to sacrifice some of our current comforts to step out and grow into actualizing God’s gift. God told the early Hebrews (Nu. 13:2) He would give them (Nu. 13:2) what the Bible called Canaan, or the Promised Land. He even brought them to the border of the Promised Land so they could see it. While they spied out the land and found it indeed was the land of plenty, they became spooked when they discovered giants living in that land. At that point, they were like a young tree that you try to reshape it to grow upright, but they were too stubborn to bend and trust God to give it to them. Consequently, their fear of the dreadful things that might happen and their stubborn hearts meant they would have to wander in the desert wilderness until all that generation died except two families, those of Joshua and Caleb. By backing away from the details, can you see God gave them their gift, but they never realized with the gift came battles against giants and fortified cities? God’s gift often requires us to take the initiative to fight while fully trusting God to empower us to be stronger than our giants.
As it turned out, the next generation took the initiative to fight while trusting God to go before them. God indeed brought down the walls of cities, gave them strategies to defeat their enemies and empower them to do what they feared could not be done. I want to point out, though, they still had to exhaust themselves with the labor of fighting to possess the gift God had promised them.
God has given you dreams to be fulfilled as you depend fully upon His power working in you. Paul reports how that was exactly what He had to do. He wrote for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me (Colossians 1:29, ESV). The words toil and struggle in the original Greek language referred to working as an Olympian exhausting himself to win the event, but while trusting in God’s power working in and through him. Please understand, coming to actualizing God’s gift to you is not for the faint of heart! He will do His part but also insists on you having serious personal stakes in the process.
It would be wonderful if, when we received salvation, God dropped into our mind the complete knowledge of God and instilled in us a delight in spending hours in prayer, reflection on His Word and a desire to share our faith. Instead, He gives us a free will to work out our salvation and the dream He has put into our heart. (Phil. 2:12b) Are you taking the required initiative to be all God has designed for you to be—and you also dream to be?