Even though my parents continually spoke greatness into me and were an example of loving parents, the dream-stealer, with a glimpse into my potential, was hard at work to destroy me. I scrambled through my teenage years believing the worst about myself - believing I was fat and ugly, believing I needed to work harder to be loved more, to please, or to be accepted. I felt I was the reason for divorce in my family. It's a familiar story for too many young people.
Now I know it was the devil, the dream-stealer, who came to steal the future that God had placed in my young heart. He works especially hard on young people or on people with new dreams in their hearts so that he can dash all hope and kill a dream-seed in its tender beginnings. He took my baby before I even had a chance to fight for it. He steals-- that's his personality-- he's a thief.
God-dreams will always find opposition, even before you realise that your amazing idea may be more than a whimsical thought. How many times has a great idea come to you and then instantly you thought, Ah, wouldn't that be great, but I could never...? When you hear the words "I could never..." know the enemy is planning your defeat rather than your victory, snuffing out a dream in its infancy.
When Jesus was born, the enemy of God put the desire in Herod to search for Him and have Him killed. Before Moses was born, this same dream-stealer made Pharaoh decree that all baby boys were to be killed. The devil recognises a God-dream long before we do.
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Let God Breathe Life Into Your Dream
You know a dream is from God when you can let go of it, but it won't let go of you. I am so thankful that God is outstandingly generous, and my dreams are fulfilled because of His grace to breathe life into the seeds of desire in my heart.
God breathed life into Adam; He breathed life into creation; and He wants to breathe life into the life that has been given to you. The life that God breathes is His supernatural presence to bring His favor and abundance into our natural life, It is the power to defeat the dream-stealer.
Jesus said that He came to bring us life, not death, and life to the full. He explained, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life [zoe], and that they might have it more abundantly" ( John 10:10 KJV). The word abundant is from a Greek word perissos, which means "superabundant in quantity" or "superior in quality," by implication, "excessive." In and through Christ, we have access to a life that is exceeding, abundantly above, more advantageous, very highly, beyond measure, more , superfluous, vehemently full of God's goodness. That's awesome!
You can live your whole life doing what is natural: get up in the morning, go to work, come home at the end of the day, go to sleep, and get up again the next day, only to do it all over again -- that's a natural life. But the supernatural life is being aware of the presence of God in all you do. The supernatural life happens when you let God breathe His life into yours. Jesus is the dimension to our natural, everyday life that causes us to do the supernatural things that demonstrate the glory of His presence in our lives.
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When you know grief so overwhelming that you feel you will drown in the depths of emotion, this is when you need to choose to worship the King -- there at your lowest point. This is where the sweet presence of God will wash over you, and our Father will breathe His breath into your life, allowing you to rise again and find His grace and favour to go on.
When you feel your world is in complete darkness, choose to praise Him in the midst of it. God's glorious light will invade the situation, and the reality is that dark and light cannot coexist. An explosion of praise chases the darkness away, and again His kiss -- the reality of why we need a Savior is revealed.
These are examples of what I call the heaven exchange, when God literally exchanges our weaknesses for His strength, our brokenness for His wholeness. He tells us, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9)
When you stand and choose to rejoice in the face of opposition, you are literally using the spiritual warfare weapons Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 10:4: "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary they have divine power to demolish strongholds." Psalm 66:3 says, " So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you."
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Dreams Versus Goals
There is a great difference between a dream and a goal. Goals are awesome. Goals are honorable; goals are godly; goals are noble. But with forward planning and discipline, goals are set to equip you to achieve them.
Let me challenge you with this thought: If you can figure out how you can do it, then it is not a dream. It's a goal. I tell you, I don't want to get to heaven and have God say, "Well done, my good and faithful planner." Just pulling off your plans is great, but I want to live in the faith realm, in the God Gap, the land of the miraculous!
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Things You Don't Want to Know About the Dream
It is hard work. Seeing our dreams come to pass is hard work. It takes focus. There are long hours, frustration, times of testing and stretching. When we are in the God Gap, it's scary; it doesn't feel comfortable, and it's not nice. It is not supposed to be comfortable! We need to learn to keep saying, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13 NKJV).
Sometimes when we we're in our God Gap it will seem unfair. Sometimes our God Gap will seem not like a dream bur rather our own little nightmare. There are comparisons and disappointments, We might feel we have been overlooked. There might be tragedy, which did not fit in to how we thought life would unfold. At a women's conference in 2001, one of my girl friends had just lost her five-month-old baby. And she came to the conference and cried her way through it. Do you know where she was living? In her God Gap. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV). Do you know where my friend was safest? In the God Gap. The Holy Spirit is working and moving to see her dream still realised. Her dream is not over, even though it felt like her life was over. But she had to walk through that tragedy. It will sometimes seem unfair, but God's timing is perfect. Psalm 31:14-15 says, " I will trust in you, O LORD.... My times are in your hands." It is lovely to pray all these Scriptures when our world is going great, but we need to sow them into our hearts for when our days are not going great so that we can confess them and state the Word of God over our circumstances.
Second Corinthians 1:20-22 says, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ. And so through him the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God." Not in our own strength but through Him is the "Amen" spoken to the glory of God. "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." And at the end of verse 24 it says, "Because it is by faith you stand firm." By faith! not always easy, but by faith.
Another thing to realise is that it's not all about you. I know, it's a shock! God wants us healed, whole, well, strong, so we can go and minister to the brokenhearted, the hurting, and the needy. Not so we can sing worship songs forever! My natural person would love to sing and worship for days, and it would really help, heal, and make me tender before the Father, but we need to know how to bring all we learn into the process of living life well! It's not all about me. We need to be consumed with the needs of others. Sometimes we can be so consumed with seeing our dreams come to pass, and we can become so focused on that, that our eyes don't even see the very thing God has put in our hand, and we miss it, we miss the whole experience of the journey -- being so consumed with the impossible, all that we don't have, that we forget that God has given us favour for each day, making the impossible possible.
One way to see your dreams come true is simply by making other people's dreams a reality. I love that. I love that in our worship and creative arts team I have been given the privilege of being able to help other people's dreams come true. It is hard work, and it comes at a cost. To get creative people; not just people, but creative people -- a different thing altogether -- working together in harmony like a well-oiled machine, under the oil of the Holy Spirit, comes at a cost. That's why heaven loves it. Unity is costly. It's all about Him, and when we understand it's all about Him and about taking others to Him, well, there's just no words to describe that sense of fulfillment.
that's a very very long extract from "The Kiss of Heaven - God's Favor to Empower Your Life Dream" by Darlene Zschech.
this is Spirit prompting... when you approach the TV area intending to channel surf cos there's nothing but the thoughts swirling around your head... and instead you pick up a book left there and start reading - and God speaks to you.
it's actually just for me to remember... when i'm off to London and the book is back home in S'pore. but if you read it... i hope you've been blessed by it =) .
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