The Death of a Dream
By: Pastor Eric Jackson
Tags: Inspiration, Spiritual Growth, Spirituality, Christianity, Christian Living

This is the story of my dream, the seed that God planted in my heart for what I am supposed to do with my life. This is also the story of how that dream died.

It starts out more exciting than anything you have ever experienced, God has given you a vision of who He can be through you, a dream of what you were made to do. You can see the destination. It doesn’t look very far away. Fulfillment, peace, satisfaction, and all validation are not only within your reach, but the Creator of the world has confirmed that you are to have it. Life is good.

You start driving towards your dream; it’s so close, so attainable. You have the way mapped out and it couldn’t look any better. It is pretty much a straight shot all the way there. There should be no problem getting there by nightfall. Suddenly you hear a voice from the passenger seat asks if He can drive. What harm can it do for God to take over? It’s smooth sailing; your dream is so close, what does it matter if God drives you there? You move yourself over to the passenger seat and assume you will coast the rest of the way there.

Slam! Your face nearly hits the dashboard from the abruptness of the stop. Before you know it you are left watching your dream through the back window. “Stop!” you cry, “you’re going the wrong way!” Your pleading gets louder and louder as you watch your dream shrink into the background. Finally God slowly turns His head and asks, “Am I not still good?”

You answer yes. You answer yes because you know it is the correct answer, but you don’t know if you believe it. He asks you again “Am I not still good?” Just then you realize that your dream has disappeared behind the rolling landscape and you now wouldn’t even be able to get back there if you tried. Your dream is dying. Again He asks, “Am I not still good?”

You cry. You sob, in fact. You say things you don’t understand and throw yourself around the car like a ragdoll. You spit. You yell and scream until you can’t anymore. Your dream is dead. Gone forever. As you stare out into the nothingness of the wasteland God brought you to He asks again, “Am I not still good?” It’s funny, but out in this wilderness and away from the familiar things that usually distract, you can focus on Him enough to see a kindness in His face you never noticed before. You find yourself answering yes, because you believe it.

You begin to feel excitement in this new land. As long as God brought you here, this is where you want to be. You allow yourself to think about what new adventures God has planned, and wait in anticipation for Him to reveal them to you. That’s when it happens. You sense a slight turn that you don’t think much of and quickly ignore. But soon it becomes undeniable. The centripetal force begins pulling you towards the middle of the car and after some time things start to look familiar out of the window as you ride.

He smiles as He sees the confusion and wonder on your face and He asks through a sly grin, “Am I not still good?” He has brought you to your dream. Only now it is from a completely different direction. You are coming into your dream with a brand new perspective. You can see things from an angle you would have never had seen if you had come the easy way.

What’s more is that the dream now owes you nothing. It does not need to give you fulfillment. It does not need to give you validation. It does not need to give you peace. God brought you to a wasteland so you had no choice but learn how to get all those things from Him, and Him alone. You sit frozen in awe. You are arriving at your dream. Everything you ever wanted. Yet somehow, after everything you have been through, you find it difficult to even look at it. In the midst of all the excitement, you can’t help but remain fixated on the one driving.

So often God plants a seed of a dream inside us. What I did not know about a seed, however, is that is has to die before life can grow from it. If you look at the story of Joseph, God gave him a dream. Immediately things went horribly wrong. Joseph went fast and furiously in the wrong direction away from his dream. Whether it was in a pit, as a slave, or in a prison, God seemed intent on killing the dream He gave Joseph.

Why? It was because until the dream died, it could not sprout the life God intended. So what if you are going through this? What if you were given a dream to be a giant-slaying king, and you are stuck with the lowliest of jobs, fighting for your life against lions and bears? Let it die. Take the road trip with God and allow Him to teach you to look to Him for all things. That is when life will grow from your dream and become more than you could ever imagine.