Tag: dreams

Categories
Christian Living

Reach for the Stars and All of Your Dreams Will Come True

Reach for the Stars! Attain All of Your Dreams!
a shooting star symbolizing the saying reach for the stars

We hear these types of things, especially at the end of May during graduation ceremonies and other milestone markers in life. As a youth minister, I heard these “motivational” speeches given to students time and time again.

These statements sound good initially, but the more I think about them…
If you reach for the stars and were finally able to catch one… even a tiny one… it would burn your hand clean off!

And some of my dreams have been nightmares. I don’t want some of those dreams becoming reality – certainly not that dream of me sitting in a final exam in just my underwear nor the one where a monster in the woods is hunting me down to gobble me up.

Of course, we use these little clichés to try to motivate us to make a plan and achieve it. But what if it’s the wrong plan? What if I set my ladder of success up, but once I get to the top of the ladder, I find out that I leaned it against the wrong building?

My plan is to have a safe, comfortable life. But is that goal the same dream that God has for planned for me? I’m not sure that a safe, comfortable life is what God has called me to.

Another one of my plans is to have a happy, healthy family and to put them first. But God says He is supposed to be have priority over my family. When I put my family first, I can allow my desire for comfort and safety in my family to keep me from serving God and from doing what I should. When I do that, I am making my family the supreme love of my life. I am worshipping them, looking after them and their welfare first instead of worshipping and putting God first. When I put my family first, I am allowing my family to become my idol.

“Christ calls us to a higher mission than to find comfort and tranquility in this life. Love of family IS a law of God, but even this love can be self-serving and used as an excuse not to serve God or do his work” (Life Application Bible Notes).

As a youth minister, I would tell my students – to follow your school counselor’s plans for your life is wrong; To follow your friends’ plans for your life is wrong; Even to follow your parent’s plans for your life is wrong. (Sorry parents… but it is true.) These different people can definitely share much wisdom with you, but when God is calling us to His plan, we must leave all other plans behind… no matter whose it is. Our school counselor’s plan, our friends’ plan, our parents’ plan, even our own plan for our own life must be abandoned when these plans are not in-line with God’s plan.

God’s plan is that we not waste our lives on a safe, comfortable life of leisure, but rather that we boldly and courageously live for sharing His message with the world – and that will be uncomfortable in many ways and will even be unsafe in certain situations.

What plans do I need to abandon this week and leave behind so I can start following God’s plan?
How about you?

Categories
Christian Living

Dying Is Easier Than Living

a cemetery to symbolize that dying is easier than living Dying… Easier Than Living? That can’t be true, can it?
Dying is something that many people fear.
Death is personified as a frightening grim reaper.
So how can death be easier than life?

For a Christian, death is not only easier than living… it is better than living.

Death is better than living?
Paul tells us – To Live is Christ, And To Die is Gain.
He says – death is very much better than life because it means I get to go and be with Christ forever. But if God has me staying here, then I know I have work to do for Him… to share Christ with more people and disciple them.

But if we have to stay on in this “fallen world,” then there will be difficulties, there will be trials, there will be temptations. These things can make living seem like a difficult prospect.

Jesus tells us that in to become a follower of His, you must lose your life… you must die to self.

To lose my life for Christ means that I make a decision to refuse to reject and renounce Christ, even if that means that I might face the punishment of death. And honestly, in many ways it would be easier to die as a martyr than to live for Christ in the way that He expects and requires. “Going out in a blaze of glory” for Him could be noble and heroic. People would write about me and my faith. I would be inspiration for others. But living for Him day in and day out. Living for Him in the midst of the trials and temptations I face doesn’t seem particularly heroic, and it sure can seem tough.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Jesus demands loyalty to Him over our family. Not only does He demand loyalty over family, he also demands loyalty over self and over every part of our lives. The more we love this life and its rewards (leisure, power, popularity, financial security), the more we will discover how empty they really are. The best way to “find” real life, then, is to loosen our grasp on earthly rewards so that we can be free to follow Christ. We must risk pain, discomfort, conflict, and stress. We must acknowledge Christ’s claim over our plans, our dreams, & our careers.

Matthew Henry stated it this way:
“Now thus the terms are settled; if religion be worth any thing, it is worth every thing: and, therefore, all who believe the truth of it, will soon come up to the price of it; and they who make it their business and bliss, will make every thing else to yield to it. Those who do not like Christ on these terms, may leave him at their own peril.”

I believe that Jesus is worth every thing.
I believe He is worth my very life.