Dreams Continued

Boy this is a great chapter. I'd like to share a little more from Wide Awake by Erwin McManus. It starts with the story of Joseph. He tells his jealous older brothers of the dreams he has had. One was that wheat bowed down to him which made them resent him even more. Another was that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. That really made them angry. But those were the dreams God gave Joseph. Enter Erwin:

"God gives God-sized dreams to people with God-shaped hearts. I think Joseph made a terrible mistake telling his brothers. His immaturity created a relational divide and provoked huge jealousy. But that doesn't discount that God was the one giving Joseph the dream. Part of the way God works in us is he begins to give us dreams of the lives we could live or the people we could become if we would trust him and live courageously. While his brothers despised Joseph and did everything they could to destroy his dreams, we find in his story the reminder that once you have a dream from God and refuse to relinquish it, that dream is going to come to pass no matter what opposition you face.

Sometimes the life God dreams
for us takes a lifetime to come to pass.
Great lives that are born out of great dreams
often come through great sacrifice and great suffering.

Our dreams, the ones God places inside us, are a foretaste of our destiny. God will never sacrifice who you are for what you can accomplish.

The way you begin to live out your God-given dreams is to become the person God desires you to be.

There's more to you than you know. There's more available to you than you can imagine. There's an extraordinary life awaiting you if you would trust me.

You cannot even begin to live the dream God has for you until you stop caring about only yourself."

Don't you just love that? Erwin has such a way with communicating the heart of God to us, smack dab between the eyes. Love the challenge, love the confirmation. Blessings to you this star-spangled 4th of July!

Dreams

Before I get to dreams, we have walls! Last night Mark and one of his friends took out our mow strip. That means all the concrete is out except for the slab with Mark's hand and foot prints from when he was 18 mos. old. I'm anxious to get the pile out of the backyard. Jim (our contractor) put up walls yesterday. Yeah!

So, dreams. I was reading my Wide Awake book by Erwin McManus yesterday and came across a story that grabbed and inspired me. The story was about Erwin, age 19, getting a ride to work the day after his car broke down. His aunt pulled over, rather than take the exit ramp. Erwin got out, and headed across the freeway. He saw a UPS truck coming and knew he could outrun it. He sprinted. He didn't see the Monte Carlo passing the truck on the left. He heard screeching brakes, jumped in the air to clear the car, tucked and rolled, hit the windshield and hit the asphalt. He layed there paralyzed from the waist down. The ambulance drivers argued about who would take him, as he was on the county/city line and each ambulance represented one jurisdiction. They asked him where he wanted to go and he said the cheapest hospital, so they took him to county.

In the emergency room, they x-rayed him, poked him and determined more tests were necessary. At one point he had to go to the bathroom and asked if someone could get him there. They told him, no, they couldn't move him and gave him a 'kidney-shaped thing'. He's very private and asked if everyone would give him privacy. They pulled the curtain and waited on the other side. He asked if they would leave the room, they did. After yelling for them to also shut the door, he layed there thinking "I'm not going to go in this thing." He rocked and rocked until he fell off the very high gurney onto the cold floor. He didn't feel anything from the waist down, so that was good. He dragged himself down hallways to the bathroom, and no one noticed him. He pulled himself onto the toilet and sat there. Then he realized he couldn't get up. (Here's his story from that point on).

"So I sat there for a while, and then I started pushing on the toilet, and then I stood up, and I walked out.

I never fully understood what happened that day except to realize that long before I was looking for God, he was looking out for me.

I've looked back and wondered many times, if I hadn't been so stubborn, so determined, so desperate to go to the bathroom on my own terms, how long would I have lain on that bed? Now, I'm not saying that everyone who is lying on a bed or sitting in a wheelchair could get up and walk, but I am saying this: sometimes the limitations you are willing to accept establish the boundaries of your existence.

The doctors couldn't see me getting out of that bed, and I couldn't see myself staying in that bed. You ever notice that sometimes your desire to accomplish something can pull you through? Ever notice that people who refuse to give up seem to succeed the most? Ever notice that people who expect great things seem most likely to accomplish great things? If your dreams are supposed to be bigger than your life, then your life will always be limited by the size of your dreams.

Sometimes getting up and walking is more about your head than your legs."

How inspiring is that? Limited by our heads. Yep. Dream Big! God bless you on this sunny Thursday.

Undeveloped Resources

After I finished The Cross and the Switchblade yesterday, I picked up Wide Awake. I'm barely into it, but already I'm encouraged. Erwin said something about believing all these years that people are the most under-used, under-developed resource on this planet. I have to agree.

I looked back at a previous post I wrote about potential. I almost used that as my title today. That blog was focused more on people within the church, but it goes much further than that. You don't have to be a Christian to do great things with your life. There are many humanitarians helping thousands or millions of people. You just have to have a dream and be willing to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality.

What are your dreams? Did you have a dream you gave up on? Pick it back up. Dreams are meant to be used to motivate us to doing great things. They're too precious and valuable to be laid down and abandoned. Their purpose is to spur you on to living out your purpose. Dream big and live fully. God bless you on this clear, beautiful, awesome day.