2018 was a hard, hard year for a lot of people. As I scrolled my newsfeed in the days leading up to 2019, I recognized that for many throughout the body of Christ this was year full of difficulties and trials. For many, it was tough. I know it was for me.
As tough as it was, this year was the beginning of something beautiful. This was also a year of refinement and if you look deep within, you may find, like me, that you’re walking into 2019 a whole lot stronger than you walked into 2018. Maybe there were some tough lessons you learned, but they made you wiser. There were some battles you faced but you grew in endurance and character.
At the start of 2017, I felt God begin to speak to me about my dreams. I felt God asking me to enter the place of dreaming with him again. I journaled my dreams. I prayed into my dreams. I didn’t understand at the time that my world would come crashing down in the next two years. I didn’t know that I would be shaken to my core. I didn’t know that the process of dreaming with God would put me through such a fight and threaten my ability to dream at all. I didn’t know I would watch dreams shatter and break before me, leaving me to question…why did God ask me to dream at all?
At the start of 2019, I hear God beckoning me to dream anyways. I feel him asking me to dream despite broken pieces. To dream in spite of a broken heart. To dream in spite of puzzles and mysteries. To dream without answers and to dream past pain. Dreaming requires that I trust him. Dreaming requires that I allow him to be in control. Dreaming requires that I take him at his word that he is good and that he is working all things together for my good.
Dreaming requires that I don’t allow the past to redefine how I see the future. Dreams sometimes shatter but our hope doesn’t have to.
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isa. 43:18-19)
The former things…the past pain, the past disappointments, the prayers that haven’t been answered…yet, or not in the way you wanted, your expectations for how things should have been…those things do not define your future.
No matter the wilderness you found yourself in, in 2018, believe that God is making a way.
And dream anyways.
