What's Holding You Back? {Trading Our Dreams For God's}

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We live in a world where possibilities are endless.
We live in a world where dreams can become reality.
Where we are told to chase our desires. 
We are told we can become whatever we want. We are told to ignore the naysayers. 
We are told to find that one thing thing that lights you up and chase it down...no matter what.

Is that wrong? Is pursuing your dreams wrong? Is chasing your hopes and desires a sin?

No, perusing your dreams is not inherently wrong. God gives us dreams and hopes. 

But that's where the issue arises. The problem comes when we put our hopes, our dreams, our plans in front of his.

We chase our dreams of becoming an amazing whatever and never even consider what God's dreams might be for our life.

I mean...take King David for instance. Did he dream of becoming king? I highly doubt it. He was the youngest of a bunch of kids...kind of the runt in ways. He always had to look after the family sheep. Even when everybody else got to do better things.

I bet David had some dreams. I bet he wanted to prove to his brothers that he was something big, that he could accomplish stuff too.

But I bet he never dreamed of becoming King of Israel...I bet when Samuel came and anointed him as King he was pretty surprised.

But since he gave up his own plans, hopes, and dreams for God's he got something way better than what he was planning for. He became King of Israel and from his came Christ...the savior of the world.

Now, I know that is on a grand scale but it's not the only time it's ever happened. Take Mary the mother of Jesus...she exchanged her dreams of having a nice happy, little family for God's dreams of giving birth to the Christ child.

God's in the business of exchanging our dreams for his. 

The only problem is we have to let him.

Yes, it's that simple-but at the same time it's not. We have to give our dreams to God and let him exchange them for his.

It's hard because in the moment of the trade we don't know what God's dream is for us. And for some odd reason, kin to humanity, we always seem to want to hold onto what is ours, even when we know we're getting something far better. 

We want to cling to our dreams. We don't want to give them up.

Last year for instance, I wanted to do well in our academic Mock Trial season. I wanted it so badly.

I've written about it before, you know the story. You know that my team lost at our first competition.

My dream was to win...but God's dream for me was far different. He wanted us to lose that round. Looking back I wouldn't trade that season for anything. I learned so many valuable lessons from that year that I doubt I would have learned had we moved on.

Even though it wasn't my dream to lose, it was God's perfect plan.

Now, that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. It did and that's what I'm trying to say. We want to hold on to our dreams so badly because we're afraid of a possible let down, the possible pain. God's never promises that his plans will be painless but he does promise that they will be the best. He never promises that the road will be smooth but he promises that it'll lead to him.

At this point, I'm honestly just preaching to myself and praying it's encourage you as well.
I need to remember this stuff. I need to remember that God's dreams are better than mine...in spite of how bumpy the path may be.
Please hear this, I don't have this all together. 
Too many times lately, I have let myself be crushed by dreams that never came true.
But that's just the thing, those crushed dreams...they were mine. Not God's. 
And that's why they fell.
God's dreams are far better than ours.

So, next time we want to pursue a dream...we need to take a moment and pause and ask God if this is his dream for us.
Are we trying to make our dreams a reality or God's?
Are we trying to become whatever we want to be or what God want's us to become?
Are we trying to chase down what lights us fire or what lights God on fire?
If the answer is about "us" than we need to stop, we need to trade. 
We need trade the good dreams for the amazing ones.
We need trade the dreams contrived by a finite being for the ones dreamt by an eternal God who has our best interest in mind.
We need trade the imperfect dreams for the perfect ones.

So dear friend, what's holding you back from exchanging your dreams for His?
Let go, let God, and be amazed.