Your dreams are important. Your dreams have great value because your destiny is locked up inside your dreams. To unlock a dream and go after your destiny requires courage even in the most determined of men.
Going after a dream means risk, work, sweat, tenacity, pain, turmoil, faith, and even failure. But only when you commit fully to your dreams, will you embrace your destiny. You know the joy of achievement only when you’ve been willing to accept the risk of failure.
The key to understand is, your dreams are not just for you. They are for everyone around you. The Kingdom of Heaven is based on a vision that God has for all humanity. Your dreams are one part of God’s Kingdom being established on earth. Your dreams are for you, for the people on this earth now and in the future, and all for expanding God’s kingdom.
A powerful dream can change everything. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously declared on August 28, 1963, “I have a dream…” Spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., his passion and courage energized a generation, created a cultural shift in the United States, and continues shaking the world today.
We grow to the size of the dreams we are courageous enough to pursue. Pursuing dreams makes us bigger than we thought we could become. Or we shrink to the size of the wishful fantasies that fear allows. Living in fear always makes us smaller than what God designed us to be.
What is your dream? Your dream is that internal vision of a preferred future—an inner picture that is unquenchable, one for which there is no compromise. It is the texture and fabric of your mindset. It is what makes you say, “This is why I am on the earth, what I was made for.” It is that story you can see in your heart that is worth whatever it takes to accomplish.
Once you know your God-given dream, put a date on it. Then stretch for that date. WORK! As you’re moving forward, obstacles will appear. Even men who attempt a life without obstacles or without a fight may stand silently in the shadows, but adversity still finds them. If you’re never criticized, your dreams are too small.
All dreams come with the same price tag: work and pain. Be ready to invest the sweat, effort, time, and discipline. It’s worth it. As my dad said, “Dreams are the substance of every great achievement.”
Many men have dreams—but few actually do something about them. Your dreams won’t just find you. They won’t just happen. You have to make a real effort, set a concrete goal.
You have to set yourself on fire. Your dream must be something that pushes you, that wakes you up and gives you energy in the morning. Something that makes you come alive.
This is all part of preparation. Most men miss seizing opportunity because they won’t pay the price for pain of preparation. We’re all at risk for being caught unprepared. The late, great boxer Muhammad Ali said: “The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”
Most people look for opportunity but don’t prepareto be ready when the opportunity arrives. Opportunity comes to us all. Most failures aren’t because of a lack of opportunity. Failures happen because opportunity tends to surprise us when we’re unprepared.
The oft-quoted Hall of Fame player and coach John Wooden said, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.” CMN Leader Robert Barriger says it this way: “Preparation is proof you expect something to happen.”
Have the courage to define your dream, set yourself on fire about it, start the painful preparations to make it happen, and start lighting the world on fire!
GET READY. Your dream is alive in 2019!
Day 7 - Your dreams can change everything
