Each of us has desires in our heart, things we would love to accomplish. Maybe you have a dream to become an author or an artist. You could have a deep desire to be a preacher or to one day set up an orphanage on the other side of the world. When we have fully given our lives to Christ, the desires of our heart align with God’s desires for us. We often dream God’s dreams for us without even knowing it. In Psalm 37:3-5 it says ‘Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart’. When we are truly in a good place with God and we are delighting in Him and when He is our number one priority, then we start to see our dreams come true.
Let’s take a closer look at your dreams. What is it that you would love to see happen in your lifetime? If you could really achieve anything, what would it be? What inspires you? Who inspires you? When we answer these questions we then begin to tap into the real ‘desires of our heart’, the very desires that God longs to fulfill.
One thing that grieves me is when I hear people saying that they do not enjoy their career. A great amount of most people’s adult life is spent in the workplace and it is distressing to think that so many people are unhappy in their job. Many stay in an unhappy work situation because it is safe and pays the bills.
It is unfortunate that many people are locked into a ‘safe’ world where their real desires and dreams will never come true. That ‘safe’ place then becomes a prison and a place of confinement. Some of the most inspiring people I have met are those who are willing to follow their dreams. They are people who take positive steps into their desired future. I want to make a note here that these people are not ‘chasing fantasies’ they are individuals who truly follow their God inspired dreams. Proverbs 12:11 says ‘Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense’. Following a God given dream will take hard work. It will mean that you will have to ‘work the land’. Proverbs 28:19 states that those who chase fantasies will have their ‘fill of poverty’. It is very important that we discern the difference between a fantasy and a God given dream and desire. As you read on my hope is that your focus becomes clear and you get a real revelation of the dreams that God has placed inside your heart.
Fulfillment
The word ‘fulfillment’ is important to consider when looking at the dreams God has placed in your heart. The Collins dictionary states that to ‘fulfill’ is to ‘achieve one’s potential’.[i] When I think about potential I immediately picture a fast car parked in the driveway. Unless someone gets into the car, turns the key and takes the vehicle out onto the open road, its potential is still there but it is not fulfilling its potential. To really see the potential speed of a vehicle you would need to take it off the thirty mile an hour roads in the town and onto a test track. So many people are like a fast car parked in the driveway. They are not going anywhere and their potential remains untapped. Others are only travelling thirty miles an hour because the environment they are in limits their performance. I long to see Christians operating to their full potential and in order to do this they need to be positioned in the right environment. The achievement of your potential is linked with your dreams. Your dreams and fulfilling them are all connected with the way God has made you and his purposes for you. God is committed to you achieving your potential in life. Psalm 138:8 states ‘The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever- do not abandon the works of your hands.’ God has a purpose for you and a plan for your life, we are made by God’s hands for a specific reason.
In Psalm 139 we find David talking of how God ‘knit’ him together while he was in the womb and how ‘all the days ordained’ for his life had been written down. The intricacies of your personality, your gifts, talents and dreams were all planned by God from before you were born. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet to the nations and this call was on his life before he ever took his first breath. Ephesians 2:10 states, ‘For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.’ God has prepared great adventures for each of us to walk into and these were on his mind as you were being formed in the womb!
