Good Dreams... God DreamsSample

GOOD DREAMS… GOD DREAMS

Delight Yourself… In the Lord

Day 1

I will never forget that night I finally decided to drop out of my third and final year of law school to chase a dream.  The wheels starting turning around midnight, right after I’d heard from yet another random patron for the thousandth time the line from the classic Billy Joel tune, Piano Man:  “Man… what are you doin’ here?”

By then, I had written some good songs, or so I thought.  I’d also been contacted several times by a renowned producer who’d encouraged me to make the move.  So the idea wasn’t too farfetched. 

When I got home around 2:00 a.m. and crawled into bed, I was exhausted.  It was going to be hard to make it to class in six hours.  "What am I doing here?"  I thought, staring at the ceiling.  

The next morning, instead of going to class, I rented a small U-Haul, loaded up my guitar and what little I owned, and began my journey east down I-40 to Nashville, Tennessee, leaving everything I’d ever known behind me. 

Crazy, huh?  I mean, what kind of responsible and rational person would do such a thing? 

I will never forget that feeling of FREEDOM as I drove over the Mississippi River Bridge and hit the Tennessee line.  I knew that I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do.  I felt His hand in all of it.  I sensed His presence as I sang along with Clint Black on the radio, "Oh, I'm leavin' here a better man." 

I was convinced His plan for my life was in motion, not that it isn’t always in motion, but I sensed it more than ever that day.  It was a feeling that I will never forget!

Twenty plus years later as I reminisce that day, I believe He was giving me a taste of His Goodness to enjoy that moment and to let me know that it was all going to work out for good.

But here’s the irony:  That feeling didn’t last!  It didn’t take a week before I awoke in the middle of the night and screamed, “What am I doing here?!” (I’m sure there was an expletive or two in there), believing I had to have been the most foolish person on the face of the earth. 

At that time in my life, outside of the basic story of Jesus, I didn’t know much about the details of the Bible. I'd memorized John 3:16 and maybe a couple of other popular verses, but that was pretty much the extent of my scriptural knowledge.

But I was a believer.  And I prayed.  And I believed with all I had that God was going to give me the desires of my heart, for I’d heard that quoted from some preacher behind a pulpit somewhere, and I was sticking to it.  It was my motto.  As long as I did my part and worked my tail off and had faith, I believed God would do His and make my dreams come true.

Boy, did I ever need a wake-up call!  Had I actually read my Bible, in particular, that scripture about God giving us the desires of our heart, I might have interpreted it a little differently.  But I had no time back then for Bible study.  I was on a mission.  I had a dream to fulfill.  

But it sure would have saved me a lot of heartache had I truly understood that God-breathed scripture for its worth.  Yes, it does in fact tell us that God will give us the desires of our heart.  But the sentence before it says this: “Delight yourself in the Lord!”

“Delight yourself in the Lord …and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

It only took me a dozen years to understand that when we delight ourselves in the Lord, our desires often change, sometimes completely, because our desires become HIS DESIRES FOR US.  Not temporary worldly desires that come and go with the winds of change, but an unquenchable desire to make an eternal difference in His Kingdom, that neither moth nor rust can ever corrupt.

To this day I’ve no doubt that God’s Spirit was with me in that U-Haul heading down I-40 with what felt like a strong Easterly breeze behind me.  It was as if He was cheering me on.  And to this day I believe He was.  But now I realize He wasn’t cheering me on to make it big on Music Row.  He was cheering me on because He knew all of the growing pains I was getting ready to go through—for my good. 

Maybe you’re dreaming big right now.  That’s awesome!  There is nothing wrong with dreaming big! DREAM BIG DREAMS!  But if you are a believer, I encourage you to make sure your dream is more than just a big good dream; I encourage you to make sure… that it’s a BIG God Dream!