The Steward of a Dream

Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?" says the LORD. "Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?" says your God. (Isa 66:9 NIV)

I will freely admit, my dreams are often a burden to me. If I am not careful my heart’s desires can trouble me greatly. I don’t think this is a rare experience, because I think this is only natural and common to those who dream, to those who are hungry. It is because our desires often seem so out of reach, we are tempted to give in to discouragement, despair, and unbelief. I keep dreaming, hoping, longing for something that seems too great, too high, and too far off. 

The greatest danger of seeking the desires of our heart is that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13: 12). “Can I reach my dreams? Or…. maybe it isn’t even worth the risk of enduring deferred hope and a sick heart. Maybe I will just settle for the safety and mediocrity of living a life that I was not designed to live. Maybe I will forget those silly dreams.” It is no wonder dreams are so quickly forsaken and forgotten. Bringing dreams to fulfillment is no easy task.  Like the burden and inconveniences of pregnancy, some find it easier to abort their dreams than to endure the burden of carrying the fetus to the day of fulfillment.

But what if our dreams, the deep desires of our hearts, are not ours? What if they do not belong to us? What if we are only stewards of them? We must remind ourselves that good dreams are not ours, they are from God and they belong to God. We are the birthing vessel of God’s dreams. What if He put something great in you? What if your heart’s desire was actually the longing of God? What if He had such great dreams that He longed to fulfill in you, that you might be the actor, the player, the vessel in His glorious story? If He has impregnated us with the greatness of His plans, His longings, His dreams, wouldn’t it be worth the inconvenience of the pregnancy that we might birth the fulfillment of His desires? We must not abort His dreams.

God is not the author of futility and frustration. He gives dreams to us because He hopes and believes that we will fulfill them. Rather, He believes that He can fulfill His dreams in us. God is a big dreamer. This is why our dreams seem so unreachable, because they are God’s dreams and only He can fulfill them through us. God impregnates us with His dreams, He watches over us during the burden of pregnancy, He brings us to the moment of birth and then He gives us the delivery. The number one reason our dreams fail is that we fail to continue to believe. We abort the fetus. And so God asks me, “John, I have given you a dream. It is my dream and purpose for you. I believe you will fulfill it. Will I not bring it to pass? Will I not bring it to delivery?” Lord, certainly you haven’t given this dream to me, this fetus that I carry, only to abandon it and me. Surely you will bring it to delivery!

You are the steward of God’s dream. If you keep carrying it, will He not bring it to delivery?