Hello everyone! I would like to apologize for the lack of updates! We have been very busy these past few weeks (not that that is a good excuse), but I am excited to write about something the Lord placed upon my heart when my team was in North Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan was honestly a country that I had no expectations for, so the Lord absolutely blew me away by the people there. We worked with a church, serving the homeless community there, ministering and teaching men at an alcohol and drugs rehab center, teaching English to students, and spending time in fellowship and prayer with the believers there. What a blessing our time was! I have learned so much from the people there and from the Lord in a short time.
More specifically, the Lord spoke to me through a question the pastor frequently asked.
It was our second day and our first time visiting the men’s rehab shelter. Before teaching, the pastor asked us to go around and to introduce ourselves. We gave our names and ages, but the pastor asked us to answer another question as well:
What’s your dream?
For just four words, they held so much weight for me in this moment. What is my dream? What do I truly want in my life and in my walk with God?
We went around the room, and my heart broke a bit. While a few men had beautiful answers to the question, there were a few men that didn’t have an answer. Their response to the question was, “I don’t have a dream”. What broke my heart about this question wasn’t so much the mens’ situations there, but because there are people all over the world from all walks of life who don’t have dreams that they want to pursue. Even in the Church.
I feel that a lot of people say, “I just want to follow God”, and I completely agree with that statement. My dream is to be obedient to Him and grow closer to Him every single day. But, the Lord is also active in giving us specific dreams and hopes as well. After all, He is the God of Hope! And He is still speaking to us today!
One phrase that has come up for me a lot on the race from the Lord has been “trust me”. But trusting God isn’t as passive as I thought it was before the race. It’s actually a really active thing. It’s hearing from the Lord, and moving forward in the direction He is calling you to, trusting that He will do what He has promised.
It was true for Abraham. God promised Him a son, but it was His faithfulness to God’s promise and years of obedience that made His promise into a reality. The Israelites were given a promise land, but it wasn’t until they took hold of that promise and confidently took the land the Lord had already given them that they actually received it. Jesus told the disciples that they would receive the Holy Spirit, but they were first told to wait and to not depart from Jerusalem until they were given what He promised.
What has the Lord promised you? If you don’t know, that’s totally okay! But I would encourage you to spend some time and ask Him. What are your giftings? What are your passions? And what strengths do you feel the Lord has given you?
As I’ve been on the race, the Lord has shown me that I have a passion for the Church and for discipleship. He has given me a heart for hospitality and service, and He has given this introvert a love for community. Because of all of these things, my dream is to one day have a base overseas to train disciples, to serve the Church as a place of rest and refuge, and for my house to be a house of prayer. I don’t know where. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I don’t even know what it will specifically look like. But I do believe that this is a dream the Lord has given me to pursue. So I will pursue it in whatever way He calls me to.
I write this dream out as a first step towards achieving it and as an encouragement to you. The pastor asked that question so often because He believed in a God of hopes and dreams, even for men walking out of a life of alcoholism and drug addiction. That same God is yours as well. And believe me, He is not limited by age (Abraham), by knowledge (Peter), or even by your past (Paul).
So, with all that being said, I have one question for you:
What’s your dream?
