Dream bigger, Beloved.

Dream bigger, Beloved.

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.” – James Allen

Dream: An idea or vision that is created in your imagination.

We tend to under spiritualize our dreams and imaginations. Do you not know that God is the very one who gave us this extravagant gift! He places kingdom dreams inside of us, and entrusts us to carry them out. He puts His dreams and desires in our hearts. Do you realize how insane this is?! Jesus told us that we are His body. We are His body here on earth. It is through us that he accomplishes His glorious will! It is into you that the Father desires to infuse His dreams. 

 “Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:27

Dreaming is such a beautiful and terrifying thing to do. To combine your thoughts, desires and deepest longings, all twisted up into this mental photograph of what your life could be. What you could accomplish. Where you could go. But there is always something staring right back into our faces when we allow our hearts to be free to dream.

F E A R

We're afraid. Afraid we’ll fail, afraid our dreams might not come true. Afraid to step out out of tightly knitting comfort zones. We look at our life, who we are, at our lack of money and resources, and we stand frozen in fear. It’s risky. We’re filled with so much doubt. But fear is a filthy liar! Fear holds us back from accomplishing the very things the Father created for us to do! 

People tell us to dream smaller. Be realistic, safe.  “Go to college, get married and settle down with a job that will make you enough money to be finically stable.” That’s how our society tells us to live our lives. I’m not saying that these are bad things. But what if He created us for more then this status quo??? 

The entire bible is filled with story after story of people dreaming big dreams. Dreams that were so far beyond themselves, God would have to come through in order for them to happen. The entire New Testament is filled with page after page of Christ’s followers living crazy, radical, and adventurous lives! So what happened to the church, that we settled into such comfortable, easy, predicable life’s? When did we stop dreaming? We did we start settling? 

Last week, the teacher of our “Dangerous Jesus” class, packed all thirty plus of us CGA students into a small closed room and told us to sit down. In his hand he held a full water bottle, with the cap on. While talking to us, he used exaggerated hand motions, swinging the filled water bottle all around. He said that the water in the bottle represented the Holy Spirit inside of us. But we put limitations on Him, because we live our lives “with the cap on”. 

Then he opened the water bottle, and the whole atmosphere of the room changed. Suddenly he held in his hands a lot of power. 

It clicked inside of me, and I gained an even deeper freedom to dream big. Jesus is living inside of me! He has given me the Holy Spirit! I hold the Kingdom of God within me! I am a daughter of the King of Kings! This gives me every right to dream big, crazy, radical and insane dreams! Sometimes I just sit with Jesus and we dream together. I think I dream pretty big. But I just feel His joyful laugher wash over me, as he tells me “Dream bigger, beloved! …  Bigger! … Bigger still!”

So, I challenge you too, child of the most high God, 

Dream bigger.

Photo credit: Three Nails Photography.