More Than Your Wildest Dreams

“May God our Father and our Lord Jesus bring us to you very soon. And may the Lord make your love for one another and for all people grow and overflow, just as our love for you overflows. May he, as a result, make your hearts strong, blameless, and holy as you stand before God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes again with all his holy people. Amen.” – 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13.

In the movie Billy Elliott, a young boy loves to dance. But he has a major obstacle: his father disapproves. Billy has a long, arduous road to travel, but his dream keeps him going despite his challenges. This wonderful movie will encourage anyone who has a dream to keep reaching for it and inspire those who have stopped dreaming to once again imagine what could be.

Our lives, like that of Billy Elliott, are full of obstacles—people and circumstances that try to tell us our dreams are impossible, unrealistic, or, as in Billy’s case, that there is something or someone trying to keep us from fulfilling them. 

When we dream, how big do we dream? How large can our aspirations be? There is a certain fear within a dream and a bigger fear of trusting God with our dreams. We worry that our expectations are too high, that our dream could never happen, or that this dream of ours is too big for us. One of the most common fears as Christians is that our dreams might not lie within the parameters of God’s plan for our lives.

God’s hope and plan for us are pretty simple to figure out. For those who resonate with formulas, here it is: add your whole life, your loves, your passions, and your interests together with what God said He wants us to be about, and that’s your answer: basically that is to love God and love people. Does your dream fall within that?

Loving God is surrendering everything in your life for His glory, and the beauty of loving people is that it could take shape in so many different ways. That is where your dream lies. Within fulfilling the great commandment; loving God and dreaming big for His glory and the love of His people.

God longs for His children to dream. He longs for us to set aside time with Him to wish and wonder about what life could be. I fear that many Christians have lost the art of dreaming with God out of a misunderstanding of His heart. While God most definitely has a will for our lives, He also longs for us to dream with Him so that His desires become our own. While He most definitely has perfect plans for us, He longs for us to want His plans so that we might co-labor with Him. Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” 

Discussion Questions:

1. What are your dreams? 
2. What dreams do you feel will never come true? Why? 
3. What dreams are you sure will come true? Why?