Have you ever had a dream so big that it scared you? Have you ever had goals so big that they were intimidating? Do you feel like you are called to something so spectacular that you wonder if it was meant for someone else? Sister, I can assure you that you are not alone.
I can't tell you how many times I've sat across from a girl who was pouring her heart out to me about her dreams and fears. One of my friends who wants to be a women's minster comes to mind. She told me that she was so excited but at the same time so scared for what the Lord has planned for her life. God had put the desire in her heart. His calling in her life was so clear, but she wondered how it could ever come to be. How could God make something so big out of someone as small as her?
I can't help but think about how many times I've felt this in my own life. I know what God wants me to do, but I wonder how I will get there. I know that His purpose for my life will involve moving far from my little home town that I've become so comfortable in and learning skills that I just don't think a mostly untalented girl like me could ever possess. But there is one thing that I know to be truer than true in my life and in the lives of my sisters in Christ that I love so deeply: I can't walk down this road before me without the Lord guiding my steps.
Take heart, dear sister, God has already begun a glorious work in your life!
Have faith.
Jeremiah 29:11 assures us that God has plans to give us a hope for a future, but that doesn't make His plan any less scary! Esther was a normal woman who became the queen. Mary was a normal girl who found favor with God. Since the beginning of human history, God has been in the business of using His daughters to accomplish His work. So if you feel like God has big plans for your life, you are 100 percent right. And you are in good company! We're all too familiar with the truth that nothing good comes easily, though.Even though we were never promised that life would be easy, God is faithful to the promises that He makes. He did promise us that He has plans for our lives and that we were made for a purpose. God calls each of us to do some work for His kingdom. There is no calling that He has given to you that He will not see through. Have faith and be cheerful. God's got this!
Have courage.
Just like nothing good comes easily, nothing big comes without obstacles. Maybe you want to be a doctor, and despite working diligently towards that goal, you do not get into medical school on your first try. Maybe you want to be a teacher, but you have that one supervisor who sees the worst in everybody. Maybe you want to be a go on a semester mission trip, but you just can't seem to raise enough funds despite your best efforts. Have courage, dear sister. God has not left you. He never will. God's plans for our lives rarely involve a straight path to victory. In fact, it never involves a leisurely stroll on a well-paved path. You see, God's plans for our lives are complete ones. They are not limited to what God will accomplish through us. They extend (and are mostly dictated by) who we will be in that glorious mountaintop moment.
Through the trials that we face on the way to the dreams God has given us, God is perfecting our faith. Each setback that we overcome, every heartache that we face, when we turn to Him in those moments, He reigns victorious over our circumstances. He is still in control and He won't drop you halfway along the road.
Praise him in the hallway.
Sometimes, God doesn't open the doors we think He should. Every time He doesn't He is doing us a huge solid. It may not seem like God is on our side when we are standing there with what seems like the perfect opportunity right in front of our eyes, but just out of our reach. It is a whole lot easier to get angry with Him than it is to trust that He is still for us. I once read an article where a woman was talking about how upset she was when she didn't land her dream position at a job halfway across the country, but a few years later, she landed that same dream position at a job just down the road from her town. Sometimes we so desperately want to look at God with hot tears in our eyes and say, "That was it. That was my chance. Why did you let me down?"
God just smiles and shakes His head at us as if to say, "Just wait, dear child. There is something far better on its way." His timing is certainly not our timing, but He is always faithful. We need to remember to praise Him and His faithfulness in every situation. When we are waiting for Him to open a door, we have a great opportunity to bring Him glory with our hearts.
Remember who the real rock star is
At the end of the day, God has not given you big dreams so you can bring yourself glory. God has given you these big, monstrous dreams for His glory. And if your dreams aren't so big that the thought of trying to go them alone absolutely terrifies you, then you might need to consider who you see getting the glory in them. God is the rock star in all of our lives and He is the one who should get the praise in our victories.
Because God is the one who triumphs in our triumphs, we all may dream different dreams and His plan may look different in each of our lives, but the goal is the same: our dreams have been given to us to bring God glory. Whether that means that you will be the next great missionary or you will be the best soccer mom there's every been or you will be the CEO of a crazy successful company, the dreams God gives us are so that He may be glorified in all of our lives' moments. God hasn't given us our dreams so they can be an E! News special about our rise to success, they were made to be the glorious story of how God takes little people who can't do things on our own and uses us to accomplish big things.
So if your dreams are so big that they terrify you, you're at a good starting place. This road that God is taking you on won't be easy, but it will be wonderful! There will be triumphs and setbacks. There will be wins and losses. There will be times when people think that you'll never get there. Shoot, there will be times when you think you'll never get there. But that's the beauty of these big, scary, wonderful things that we call our biggest dreams: we'll never be able to reach them without God.
He's even bigger and even more wonderful than we could ever dream of and His plans for our lives are always good.
