Sixteen years ago I made a collage, which represented my life vision/mission statement. Included on it were the biggest, most epic dreams in my heart.
Ambitious dreams, no doubt, but at twenty-one anything was possible. Right?! Then life happened. I got married, had babies (five of them), and bought a house. You know, those sorts of things. I would get tastes of the fiery dreams in my heart from time to time, but mostly I forgot about the collage.
Occasionally during a move or spring cleaning, I'd find it again and kind of have a good-natured laugh at myself for being so young and naive to dream such big dreams. I mean, how cute and all, but who really has time for music, missons, journeys unlimited, and evangelizing nations when you're a mom, whose life is mostly cooking, cleaning, and saying "no" a zillion times!
I obviously had no idea the pressures life would present to me over the next few years. Those dreams were clearly impossible now. Or were they? Recently, I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to find this old collage and put it on the wall of my prayer room (aka my closet) to look at it and pray over it regularly. Then God began to speak to me. "You may have forgotten about this, but I never did. I love these dreams. These were my dreams too. They are beautiful. They are possible. It's not too late. I take these seriously. You are just getting started. Come on, keep dreaming BIGGER." I was totally undone to realize all this time Jesus was cheering me on.
Lately, He has been proving to me what I thought was clearly impossible was COMPLETELY possible with Him! I decided to step out in faith and do a School of Worship with YWAM Tyler. Amazingly, with five kids in tow, I had the privilege of being part of a traveling team on an outreach across America for a month. Guess what I got to do? Yep, you guessed it: the dreams! Music, leading worship, evangelizing cities, and sharing God's love with people from many different nations filled my days. I also recently had the privilege of participating on outreach trips to New Orleans and Atlanta where I got to live my dream of doing open air worship on some pretty crazy streets and taking His love to the boldest of sinners. Impossible? Not for my God!
Perhaps you sense a big dream in your heart as well. Maybe you just need to get out on a mission trip to sense the next thing God has in store for you. Our Discipleship Training School (DTS) is a great place to start.