During my years at Bible College, I was ‘volunteering’ at Hillsong conference resource centre. Opening night I was chosen to stay watch at the resource stand while the rest of the team attended the service. As they were leaving our team leader said, “I just found 5 boxes of books that need price tags put on them, I’ll leave that with you? Thanks!”. So I got the old school clicky price tag gun thing and spent 1.5hrs alone in the freezing cold *click* *swipe* *stack* *click* *swipe* *stack* while the rest of the team enjoyed amazing worship, beautiful opening items and brilliant preaching …. I was getting a bit of an attitude. *click* *swipe* *stack*… Then Holy Spirit showed me a moment I had forgotten. It was a preschool me, shopping with my mum, dancing to some awesome early 90’s in store music (rocking the John Farnham PARTY!!), jumping from black tile to the next black tile when I saw something. My world froze in awe. A shop attendant using a price gun. I was captivated. *click* *swipe* *stack* That looked like the coolest job I had ever seen in my life. “I WANT TO DO THAT!!”. It started a little bit of a childhood obsession with being a shop assistant. I would pretend to scan groceries as I helped mum pack them into cupboards, I rummaged through our recycling to stock my pretend shop which I manned diligently for hours with zero patrons. I would collect receipts and shopping bags (I don’t really know why…). In high school I got a retail job but no ticketing guns in sight. I didn’t care, that dream had been filed and forgotten. And then this moment. Sitting at that ice cold resource stand my Jesus whispered to my heart “I am faithful with your dreams, even when you are forgetful.”
The “hindsight of heaven” is a curious thing (okay, I just made that up… but I like it!). The journey of our lives feels like a whole lot of ‘not yet’ and closed doors, but with time and hindsight it’s a beautiful weaving of hopes, dreams and becoming who He created us to be. Just when we least expect it, when we have given up all hope in our skills, our positioning, our anything and only have hope in Him we SUDDENLY find doors opening, and dreams unfolding. The Psalmist puts it like this:
“Make God the utmost delight and pleasure of your life, and he will provide for you what you desire the most.” Psalm 37:4 (TPT) I was reminded of this during a church service recently. Singing a song titled “life”, its lyrics saying “Take my hands, take my breath, take my dreams and I will lift my eyes, lift my faith, lift my voice and worship You”. A declaration of making God the utmost delight and pleasure of your life. A song about pouring out the precious dreams of your heart on the altar and surrendering your life to Him. As we sung those words Holy Spirit showed me another moment from my life, almost decade ago. Standing in that exact spot, making that same declaration in my heart – handing over my dreams to Jesus. I had been wrestling with Holy Spirit for months. His question was simple: “What if that dream in your heart to be a mother is not about you bearing children, what if it’s about being a mother to the generations?”. After months of back and forth, thinking I was okay with this then discovering I really wasn’t, I finally reached a moment of complete surrender. That Friday night, standing behind a generation of young people, that single girl in her mid 20’s poured out the most precious dream of her heart on the altar. For some reason it came as a surprise to me that this was not a moment of brokenness, rather one of launching, of catalyst, as Holy Spirt took what I had poured out and lit that altar up. I was entrusted with our kids ministry, was able to establish SRE (scripture in schools) in schools that had none – and now we even have chaplains in some of those schools! As well as the children and young people I have been privileged to disciple, walk along side and help them meet Jesus.That moment changed my life forever. My heart is now and will forever be completely for the next generation. My children are not the completion of that desire, they are a chapter in it. As I opened my eyes from this memory, the sight of those young people worshiping Jesus that night morphed through misty tears into the sight of my children dancing with Jesus. The real life manifestation of the deepest dream in my heart. Our God wants to light up your dreams. He wants “His kingdom come” in your dreams. He was there when you dreamt them and He wants to weave those dreams into your life. He wants His light to shine through your dreams, from the flippant desires of your child heart to the deepest longings drowned in decades of disappointment. You’ve got to pour it out for Him to light it up. The journey will look different to your plan, and the fulfillment might look different to what you expect. We usually forget to account for his exceedingly abundantly above and beyond after all.
LIGHT UP YOUR DREAMS
