Quit Dreaming & Find What You Do Best

That's an interesting title isn't it?

Here's another excerpt from the Everence Toolkit. Volume 40, #1; Jan/Feb 2013

International speaker, filmmaker and author Phil Cooke thinks the admonition to follow your dreams should stop...He says that unless people have the necessary talent, education and commitment, they often live a life of delusion following a dream they can't achieve...Rather, Cooke believes people should seek what they were born to do...Discover what that is by recognizing the tasks people ask you to do because they see your talent in an area.

My first reaction to the phrase, "quit dreaming", was "WHAT?!" But as I kept reading I thought he had made some sense. Many thoughts are rattling around in my brain; hopefully I can make sense out of a couple...

1 - Pastor Brent shared a sermon at First MB today on the plans we make for our lives. Primarily GOD'S PLANS for our lives. Two points: ALL of us are called to do good works and God has SPECIFIC good works in mind for EACH of us to complete. In my mind, this means that we all can't do anything we want to, but instead, need to figure out what God wants us to do.

Ephesians 2:8-10 ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Jeremiah 29:11 ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.


2 - Haven't you thought or said (or heard another parent say) something like this to your children, "You can be anything you want to be. You can do anything you set your mind to. You just have to work hard enough and you can do it." But is that really true? Aren't there limitations? And I think that's what Cooke is getting at in the opening paragraph. If we tell are kids they can do and be anything and then they don't achieve what they have in their minds to do, then perhaps we are setting them up for "a life of delusion following a dream they can't achieve." That doesn't mean I squash every dream, but that I help them to discover who God has created them to be - unique, here NOW for a reason, with specific purpose(s).

I guess I hope I can instill in my kids the truth that God has a plan for their lives and somehow teach them and encourage them to really seek out God's voice and leading throughout their lives, so that in the end their dreams end up being in line with the calling God has on their lives and their sense of purpose is strong and their source is the Lord. (I think that may have been a run-on sentence!) And that we do all those things for ourselves as well!

~Tiffany