She Dreams: Live The Life You Were Created ForSample

Our key character in the Book of Exodus knew a thing or two about make-or-break moments. With the knowledge that he was an outsider living a privileged Egyptian life, the now-grown Moses visited his people, the enslaved Israelites forced to work under harsh conditions, and he broke. His heart sank and anger rose as He witnessed an Egyptian slave driver beating a Hebrew. So he intervened, and his actions had consequences that drastically altered his life’s story. 

Moses’ adopted royal family, the same ones who raised him and cared for him, now sought to end his life for his betrayal and murder. In one act, everything changed for Moses. 

For a man who just murdered an Egyptian, I highly doubt Moses felt great about his days ahead. I suspect he felt like his past mistakes crushed any hopes or dreams that he once had. He was now a criminal on the run without any hope of returning to Egypt with open arms from Pharaoh or the royal family. Life would never be the same for him ever again.

Our past experiences can leave us, like Moses, feeling doubtful about our future hopes and dreams. We can be left broken and overwhelmed. Whether by the poor choices we made or the consequences of another’s actions, we can feel defeated by our situation, unable to see how everything wrong could be made right.

Yet God in His goodness, mercy, and power isn’t ever going to allow our past to disqualify us from our dreams, no matter how big or small they may be. The painful experiences we have under our belts aren’t, in fact, the breaking of us but very well could be the making of us. They could be what lead us to the Father. They could be what cause us to cry out to the Dream Giver for help and healing. Our painful experiences of the past don’t ever need to be swept under the rug and forgotten. We can bring them to the light. We can sift through them and find gems—lessons we wouldn’t have learned otherwise. We can acknowledge how they have shaped us without allowing them to sink us.