Dreams

Joe Beam spoke at church yesterday about dreams. He challenged the congregation to evaluate their dreams and their courage. Do we have God inspired dreams? And do we have the courage to follow them? What is God pressing on our hearts to accomplish...are we willing to go the distance to get it done?

I would say my dream is very abstract, there are a lot of components to what I want to do, what I want my life to mean. I'm not sure how to define it, how to pull it all together, but over the last 24 hours I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Problem one: all of the things I let distract my focus. I don't think if God revealed my dream to me I would be able to see it for the fog of distraction. So step one right now is de-fog. I laid a lot of things at the foot of the cross yesterday, realizing I cannot accomplish anything for God if I'm caught up trying to obtain the things I hope to get out of this life. That being said, I'm already having a hard time not going back for them! I need to be willing to sacrifice all of my wants and desires for God's greater purpose - I'm finding some things are easier to give up than others. My prayer right now is that I will not only have the courage, but the strength and the follow through to really be willing to lay all of those things at God's feet and trust Him with them.

Problem two: making sense of all the "dreams" I have, differentiating between dreams and wishes, Ashley dreams and God dreams, and immediate dreams and long term dreams. There are a lot of things I would love to get involved with and make a difference in - foster care, female inmates (women and teens), orphans, third-world healthcare, homeless care, and hospice care...so how do I pick a focus, how do I chose which I am the best suited for? Can I combine some and still be effective? I think what I've found is that the core of my dream is taking God's love to people who are starving for it. Leeland has a new song called "Love is on the Move" that really convicted me Friday when I heard it for the first time. What am I doing to take God's love on the move? How am I taking His love to those who need it the most? Nothing...because I'm too worried about my own personal wants and desires. I've got to re-focus and completely shift the way I look at the world. I want my life to be about sharing God's love and not about fulfilliing my own desires. Now all I'm left with is..how do I do it? The strength and self-control has to come from God, I know that..but it's going to take some work on my part too.

For the time being, I'm taking it one day at a time, one moment at a time, one decision at a time because I know I can't wake up this morning expecting to have accomplished it all.