I’m about to take you down the rabbit hole. Actually, into the post office, or some other shop that sells random things that you’d never find anywhere else. Seems that’s where my dreams are stored. Well, these ones anyway!
I have had some fun dreaming over the course of my life, daydream dreams! You know the kind… the ones you spend your adolescence crafting? Making into splendiferous castles in the clouds, enjoying afternoons and weekends, bus trips home from school, long hours agonising over minute details with your BFFs- the bits that you’re willing to share with them at least; because there are other bits that are just for you and God.
I had a midnight encounter recently that has been instructive, fascinating, enlightening and grounding.
I was in the Post Office, or some other kind of curio shop with a friend. There do seem to be more curios than post office items in an Aus Post Shop now-a-days… Anyhoo. There we are, looking at all the things. And I notice three items. They are items that I really, really want. Really, Really. Really. One is a set of seven porcelain Christmas tree ornaments and the other two are enormous snow globes that are also music boxes. The tree ornaments have all kinds of Anne of Green Gables scenes on them, and the snow globes are two different representations of the Christmas celebration scenes from ‘The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe’ by CS Lewis.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17 (NIV)
I turn them over, and the price stickers have big red amounts on them in the thousands of dollars. However, these original prices in red have been crossed out, and a new price has been written over it in black, one was $9 and the other two were $11 & $23. All these objects were marked down very firmly into my price range. They were also all affordable at the same time! Cut down in price from something I could never, ever have afforded, and here I could walk out with all three in the one transaction. Said friend is totally not interested in them, they hold no appeal for her whatsoever… (In the waking world, we’d be very politely fighting over them.)
They were so lovely it makes me wish they were real objects, but having heard what they represent, I wanted to let y’all know.
Talking with God about it, turns out some of the things that we are praying for, can have high, high prices attached to them if they happen outside of the timing or the pattern of God. If we are not careful about listening and watching with Him for these things, they have the potential to cost us dearly. I’m not talking about the financial cost (although that may be part of it), but instead the cost to self, the cost to our ability to follow through with our giftings or calling, the cost to our healing, the cost to the depth of our relationship with Him.
It was clear in the beautiful representations that He showed me in the dream, that these were things specifically for me because they were represented by things that I recognised as deeply embedded in my heart from childhood. Beautiful dreams, daydreams- whatever you want to call them, that He is saying are there, available, and definitely part of His plan.
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
It gave me such hope. Because, there are things that we may all be waiting for and have not seen the fruition of, that God is saying, I have these for you, but I don’t want them to cost you more than you should have to pay for them.
It shouldn’t cost us our sanity or our family to have our dream job. It shouldn’t cost us our safety or compromise who we are in Him to be in a relationship. There are many other costs that He is concerned about for us. Costs to our position as His sons and daughters; costs to our position as the Bride of Christ.
There is also another aspect to this that I have learned recently and that is; sometimes we don’t actually dream big enough for God. We stay content with something that’s too small, and He wants us to have something that’s far superior to what we think we need or want. I’ve been listening to Graham Cook again… (From Permission to Authorization)
Sometimes the cost to us from God’s perspective, is that there is more, more and more than we have been praying for! How’s that for a concept! So instead of giving us our little dreams, God wants to expand our horizons and give us something that’s the product of dreaming with Him on a far larger scale!
A good parent doesn’t want their child to miss out on the best possible experience available, and Our Father is the Best Possible Parent. What does this mean for the scope of our dreams, the possibilities to live ‘life to the full’…?
…how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11 (NIV)
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us Ephesians 3:20 (NIV)
I thought that my dreams were pretty big already. Maybe they weren’t big enough.
You know that nervous expectation, which feels like nausea, and you don’t know if you need to jump up and down or go and throw up? That’s how I feel when I think about this stuff.
There are some of us who need to know that this winter, this unnaturally long season of waiting is over, and ‘Christmas’ is come. (Even if it is Australia.) Also, like I learned from GC, there are others of us who have been dreaming too small. We need to dream bigger, until our dreams match His dreams for us!
Go dream!
God Bless You Very Much
Anita