DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS HURT YOU
Dream your biggest dreams. Make plans to do great things. Shoot for the stars. Aspire to achieve the impossible. BUT, don’t let your dreams, plans, and aspirations ruin you. What? They better us, improve us, push us and make us better, not ruin us – Right? That’s the idea, but we need to be careful that our push for bigger and better does not hurt or destroy us. How could that be?
Don’t let your dreams make you bitter. We hope and wish for what could be, but sometimes our dreams are so far above where we are that we complain about what we have and become unthankful for that with which the Lord has blessed us.
Don’t let your dreams create hopelessness. One may see what could or ought to be, but also notice how far away that dream is and give up.
Don’t let your dreams make you feel insufficient. Dreams are great. Everyone should dream. But, your dreams can be so big that you feel small and useless and pass on doing what you can do.
Don’t let you dreams absorb all your time and energy. Always dreaming of what could be but never working to make what can be is a waste of time. “Plan the work and work the plan” is not “Plan, plan, plan, plan,” because then the plan never gets done.
Don’t let your dreams cause you to belittle others. Are your dreams better than someone else’s, at least in your opinion? What do you do? Put them down to make you and your idea look better.
Don’t let your dreams keep you from doing what is needed. A person can be so consumed by his dreams that he loses sight of needs and opportunities right in front of his eyes. For example, one may have dreams to be a missionary oversees one day, but he fails to see the lost neighbor next door, or the spiritually struggling saint down the pew.
Don’t let your dreams take the place of God’s plan. Do you remember Paul’s plan to go to Asia with the gospel when his path was changed by the Spirit and he wound up powerfully proclaiming the Gospel in Macedonia (Acts 16)?
Dream dreams, big dreams, but don’t let them ruin you. Keep them in focus. Keep them fresh. Keep them reachable. Keep them relevant. And above all, keep them within God’s direction.
~John
Thanks for this post! It’s what I needed to hear/read!