Your B.I.G. Dreams

Well, today is the first day of the rest of your life, right? Let’s invest the remainder wisely.

If you are reading these words, know this, we have already been, and will continue to be praying for you, our readers. No hollow promises or lip service. No good intentions unfulfilled. You can absolutely count on it.

Now let’s talk about what I want you to consider right this minute. But do me a favor, in the busyness of your day, please find a way to engage your heart, otherwise, with your mind alone, you will miss what I am saying – guaranteed. Reading this would then just be another mental exercise, part of the blur of another seemingly average day filled with too much information. Hearts engage!

You have deep within you a desire to make a difference – a positive, meaningful impact with your life – to matter – because God put it there. And you do matter, simply because God loves you and created you. He has plans, great plans for you. Even if you don’t fulfill them you are still precious to Him. Unfortunately, though, most of us find it far trickier than God ever intended to recognize His specific plans for our lives. There are many reasons for this, but at the top of the list is bad doctrine from popular culture and even from many Christian leaders, that overly influence our thinking.

“Vision” is often made into this well meaning but me-centric kind of an exercise. We are made to believe that we can sit down when we feel like it and then we can toss out a few prayers and we write down our vision and goals systematically, try to be a good Christian along the way and all is well. This stinks because part of that is helpful, but part is mixed with poison that produces serious problems in our lives.

Think back for a moment. Regardless of your particular childhood, the ‘ideal’ household handled things something like this. Mom and Dad would sit down with little Johnny at some point and say “Johnny, don’t let anyone tell you any different. You can do anything you put your mind to.” And wow did that help Johnny, for real. It seemed to brighten up his future so much. It freed him to think bigger thoughts and dream bigger dreams which are both great. He wasn’t going to be held back from accomplishing significant things like so many others. This is a sincere desire to help Johnny.

But this is deadly, half-baked thinking. The subtle deception woven into this well-traveled philosophy leaves out that the Bible tells us:

Eph. 2:10 “We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (NIV)

So while it’s possible to decide to do whatever you want and ask God to bless it, that leaves out the other important part – the fact that God has prepared some things in advance for you to do. Many sincere Christians waste so much time and energy on ‘other’ works and asking God to bless those (and He does to a point) – it is truly staggering.

There is no place for you and me like the will of God.

Now please don’t be offended when I tell you that we do this with our kids, because we are all childlike still, at least hopefully in our walk of faith with God. One of our family values, which we stress in our regular family meetings, is that Hubbells have B.I.G. Dreams. But we ain’t talkin’ about the kind we so often hear about in our culture and even in many churches, yet they are incredible dreams. Here is the nature of B.I.G. Dreams:

B – Beyond Human Ability

I – Inspired by God

G – Generation Serving [the kind that when we complete them it may be said of us “_________(your name) fulfilled the purpose of God in his or her generation”] -just as it was said of David.

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Rick Hubbell is a writer, speaker & seasoned consultant who knows how to build ministries and also businesses built on God-inspired ideas. A former full-time pastor, he is committed to the role of local church and also deeply involved in the marketplace – a bridge-builder between the two. His passion is for the Kingdom of God and its King. Rick’s company, Ti-MC (The Innovative Marketplace Christian) provides concrete “how to” information for Kingdom-minded professionals. Rick lives with his wife and 3 children in Idaho. To contact him for speaking or consulting: e: [email protected], p: 408-828-7430, visit his blog: www.ti-mc.com/blog.