Stepping Out On Faith

A few weeks ago I read this wonderful book called the Dream Giver.  This may sound petty but I resonated so much with this book.  The whole premise of the book was how the Dream Giver (God) puts a dream in your heart and the first half of the book goes through a typical man that has a dream by God and all the struggles he has to go through to achieve that dream.

The reason why I fell in love with this bok is because God has put so many dreams in my heart.  And so many of them are so big that I do not know how I am going to achieve them.  I actually think this is a lot of people.  When God gives you a dream you can choose to follow it or you can choose to sit on it.

For those of us that choose to follow our God given dream, we often think that it is going to be a cake walk filled with calla lilies and dandelions along the way.  But so often our dream is filled with weeds and thorns.  We prick our selves, we trip, fall, perhaps even break some limbs, and it is in that moment that we have a decision to make.

Are we going to continue to trust God and the dream that He put in our heart? Or are we going to turn back and go back to a life that we loathe and fill unfulfilled in?

I have come to learn that following a God given dream is very hard.  You may expect for family and friends to understand you but they don’t.  They think you are absolutely crazy and want you to return back to THEIR sense of normal.

After all who stepped out on a random dream and actually succeeded?  I ask myself this question all the time.  But the answer is a lot of people.  As I asked myself this question I watched Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen this week.  Both had some of the same ideals when it came to their dream.

Joyce was ostracized by her church because she was a female, many people did not support her and probably did not feel that she would be where she is today.  Joel, was often compared to his father, he was told after his father died that the church would fail.  

So often we see people in the here and now and see them being successful and we forget that behind their smile was a struggle.  Nothing really comes easy to people who step out on their faith to pursue a dream.  There were probably a thousands no’s to the one yes.  But that one yes is what made all the difference.  And even more so, the fact that they continued to follow their dream through the no’s makes their faith even stronger.

I think it takes a lot of faith in God for people to tell you, “you are nuts, your are following a pipe dream, or there is no market for what you are doing.”  All these things sound impossible, and for others who have tried it may be.

So what do you have that is different from so many people who have came before you and will come after you and have failed.  You have faith in God.  You have faith that God can do what He says He can do.  And even though you may not know how, even though you may not know when, and even though you may kick and scream on the trip there.  You still have faith that it will happen for you.

Stepping out on faith takes more than just saying it.  It is living it.  It is going in the direction that God has told you to go even when the direction seems impossible or never treaded on before.  Sometimes stepping out on faith means a huge risk.  Just like in the book the Dream Giver, it means going through being broke, scorned, ridiculed, misunderstood, lost, and a wavering of faith.

You may think “Am I insane?”  “ Did I hear God right?” or “ What makes me so special that God would choose me?”

At the end of the day you have to accept there may be no audible answers to your question.  You may go day in and day out and see no visible change in your situation.  Things may be falling apart all around you, but despite this you have to believe that out there somewhere God is sending down angels and they are endlessly working trying to make your dream come true.

Believing and not seeing is having faith.  The word faith sounds very nice when it means that it doesn't put you at a discomfort.  But when it does, it is very hard to keep.  But like the ending of that book.  Through everything, you have to trust that God is going to work out whatever He put in your heart.

To get the book the Dream Giver Click Below


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