Surrendering Your Dream

We all have dreams - that special vision that we want for our life.  God even says in His Word that "without a vision, we would perish". (Proverbs 29:18)  But it is important that the vision we have is from Him.

Psalm 37:4 is a very popular Scripture quoted by many and is actually one of my favorites.  I have often noticed though how it is misunderstood by some.  We have a promise that the Lord shall give us the desires of our heart.  Many take this Scripture as meaning that they can have whatever they want, but they forget about the first part of that Scripture that says to delight thyself in the Lord.

Psalm 37:4 "Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give ye the desires of thy heart."

Delighting ourself in the Lord is putting him first and making Him most important in our life.  Once we do that, we will begin finding out what His desires are for us.  Our desires and his become one and the same.

Matthew 6:33 tells us to "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added unto you".

Seeking God first and foremost, then the rest of our life will fall into place, piece by piece.  Before pursuing a dream, talk to Him about it first.  We can have all kinds of plans and dreams for our life, but it's God's purpose that is going to prevail. (Proverbs 19:21)

You see, we can have many desires in our  heart, but some of them might not be what God wants for  us.  The whole key to this verse is IF we are delighting ourself in the Lord, what desires that He has for us will also become our desires as well.  The closer our relationship becomes with God by spending time with Him in prayer and reading His Word, He will begin showing us what He wants for our life and because we are developing a deep desire to want to please Him, his desires become ours.  Our desires become one and the same with His.

This is what He means when He says he will give us the desires of our heart.  It means He will place those desires there in our heart. And the desires that we have that are not His will, He will gradually change/remove them.

God wants us to dream but in our dreaming, He does not want us to exclude Him.  Many of us have had big dreams from the beginning of our upbringing.  Now what God wants us to do is to surrender all those dreams to Him, because we can't be led by Him if we are chasing after dreams of our own making.  And even if a dream is from God, we still won't see it fulfilled until we give it to Him.

God puts dreams in our heart to give us a vision and inspiration and to guide us to the right path.  This is why we have to make sure that the dreams we have are not from the flesh.  The only way to be sure is to lay them all at His feet and let them die.  The ones that are not from him will be buried forever but the ones that are for Him will be given new life!

We don't want to waste our time chasing after something that God is not blessing and will never materialize, do we? We want to live with confidence that our hopes, dreams and expectations are based on God-given certainty that He is behind them!

Dying to our dreams is not fun! It's painful!  Especially if our identity is wrapped up in them. Surrendering all is difficult but we will find that the rewards are great!

Keep in mind though that just because we are asked to surrender some things to God does not always mean we've done anything wrong or are out of His will.  We may be right in the center of it. The dream we have may be one that God has for us but needs surrendered for the purpose of making that dream be for Him where before it was for us.  We want what feels good and right for us when with God, He wants  us to do what we do for His glory, not ours.

Surrendering all our dreams to God, we will begin to see which were born of His Spirit. Pursuing the ones that weren't will only lead to misery, frustration and unfulfillment.

Prayer:

Thank you Lord, that the plan You have for my life far exceeds anything I could imagine and have ever planned for myself. Thank you for delivering me through the trials and struggles and bringing me to this point in my life to be immersed in Your blessings. Lord, give me the grace and humility to never take these blessings and this life for granted. Guide me into hopes and dreams that are in line with Your will.  Help me to train the eyes of my heart so that I might see these blessings and let Your will be done fully.  Help me to discipline myself to wait eagerly on You and to focus on You and the longed-for outcome.  I will remain hopeful and expectant as I wait with perseverance on You. (Romans 8:25)  Just as I am one with You, so let my dreams and desires be one with Yours as well. (John 17:23)  In Jesus Name. Amen.

Surrendering My Dreams To Him,
Connie Schmoll