Accepting God's Dreams

“Accepting God’s Dreams”

Luke 1:1-20

Everyone has dreams of what they would like to be from the moment they are old enough to know what dreams are. They begin to envision themselves in fireman red, police blue, and even doctor white. For others, its behind the wheel at NASCAR or dunking the basketball in the NBA.

As we get older, dreams take on more and more shape. Realities begin to give possibilities to our dreams—graduations happen, colleges are attended, and the car is purchased.

But what about God’s dreams for you? Jeremiah 1:4-5 declares:

“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ⁵ ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’”[1]

God too has dreams for us. His Word and His history have shown that His dreams are far greater than our dreams. They take us higher than we could ever go ourselves.

Take Zechariah and Elizabeth for example. Here is a couple that the Bible says were serving God “blamelessly.” All of their life they had a dream—they wanted to have a child of their own. No doubt there were visions of raising children that would carry on the family name or business. Perhaps dreams of laughing together and sharing memories together. However, all of those dreams were unfulfilled. Elizabeth was not able to have children up to the point of our story and her dreams weren’t fulfilled. Then God came and gave her and Zechariah His dream for their lives. Their story teaches us some things about God’s dreams for our lives:

First, God’s dreams will most often take our dreams and infuse them supernaturally.

Psalm 37:5 states:

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.[2]

God’s dreams for our lives are often “better” dreams that we have for ourselves. This is often because the dreams we have for our lives are a result of how He has created us—our talents, our interests, and our passion. Even those times that God steers us in an entirely different direction than what we saw coming, we later find that the building blocks of those dreams were put there by God and they have been there for a long time.

Also, we find that His dreams are not able to be accomplished by us alone. It has been said that something that we can accomplish on our own is not vision…it’s a daydream. However, if we feel a sense of awe and intimidation at the dream that stands before us knowing that unless God helps us there is no way we can accomplish it, there’s a really good chance that we are walking towards the vision God has for us.

Zechariah and Elizabeth teach us the key to fulfilling God’s dreams in our lives—faith. All God asked for them to do was believe that the dream He had for them COULD be accomplished. Many have looked at Zechariah’s nine months of silence as a judgment from God. But if you look closer, you will see instead that it was a helpful sign from God that He was with them and that He could accomplish His dream through them.

Today, will we relinquish our dreams and embrace the larger and more fulfilling dreams of God for our lives. If so, know that God is not looking for ability; He is not looking for suggestions. God is looking for your availability and He is looking for your faith. Trust Him to make His dreams a reality in your life.

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[1]The New Revised Standard Version, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.
[2]Holy Bible, New Living Translation, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1996.