It’s a startling thing to find yourself in the middle of a dream, and then to come to the realization that you aren’t dreaming at all. Such has been the last month and a half of pursuing this music ministry full time. I never dreamed I’d be doing this. No, that’s not true… I ALWAYS dreamed I’d be doing this. I never BELIEVED my dream would actually become reality. But, lo and behold, here I am, doing it. Not wishing I were doing it, not hoping I’ll do it, not regretting that I didn’t do it. I’m doing it (or perhaps more accurately, it’s being done, and here I am in the middle of it).
It’s a humbling, and not altogether comfortable feeling to see your thoughts of what is possible effectively dwarfed in comparison to what is actually possible. It’s rather like being one of the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a raging storm with Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat. I have no idea what their intention was in waking Jesus up. Perhaps they wanted Him to pray a blessing over them before they died. Perhaps they were angry at Him for displaying such peace in the midst of turmoil (I have been known to do this to people with more faith than I have in the midst of adversity), or maybe they just wanted Him to witness His immanent death along with the rest of them. In any case, what they got was far more than what they expected. I’m sure at that moment God had firmly placed a desire in their hearts that the storm would be miraculously calmed, but I doubt they believed it was possible because when Jesus stood up, and gave the storm a proper tongue-lashing they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. After Jesus’ rebuke, the storm effectively blushed, cowered, and then slinked-off to wherever humiliated storms go when they’ve been disciplined, and the disciples stood there in fear and awe (mostly fear) wondering who this was. This was Jesus. The carpenter. The rabbi. The miracle-worker. Their friend, of course, but now they saw Him as so much more. He was the One. The only one who could shatter their perceptions about what is believable with what’s possible. The One who can calm a storm with a word. And when they recognized him as the One who was able to transport them from the realm of belief to the realm of possibility, they came to the end of themselves and asked that fearful question, “Who is this…?”
I have been asking the same question lately. How is it that my family and I now find ourselves in the middle of what’s possible, only to realize our expectations for God’s provision were way to small. And, so it is with great reluctance that I must admit (along with a chorus of every awful Disney Movie ever made), that dreams do indeed come true.
Now, I had no intention of this post becoming another sappy cliche about daring to live out your dreams, or believing that anything is possible, but it seems to be true (On a side note, it’s interesting to me how a cliche becomes a cliche. Most cliche’s were at one time powerful, fresh statements of truth. It’s just that through overuse, or insensitive use, they have been robbed of their power. Such is the job of a writer. To take a truth that has become cliche, and to rephrase it in a way that breathes power back into it, all the while hoping that your work doesn’t eventually become cliche itself, Therein lies the rub. I digress.). The simple truth I am learning is that God places desires in our hearts to fulfill them, not to tease us. He doesn’t always fulfill the desire the way we imagine, and He may choose to withhold our desires from us until we developed the necessary character to be able to use His gifts responsibly, but His desire is to fulfill our desires, namely because He’s the one that gave us the desire in the first place.
That nagging desire burning a hole in your heart may just be there for a reason. Follow it…
k.