We all have a dream. Some even place the dream on a vision board. And every day, we wake up to work on the dream and fight to keep it alive despite the perpetual voices of doubt and whispers of discouragement from ‘them’ and the many detours on the way.
But the greatest obstacle to our dream, is us. Regardless of how we fight ‘them’ to keep the dream alive, if we can’t fight ‘us’ then we sabotage and destroy our own dream. The dream can never be kept alive if the mind and the tongue are not in unity with the dream.
We can place the dream on our vision board, but if we fail to control the negative voices within, and worse still, if we allow those negative voices to speak, then we dredge a grave for the dream. The wise words in the Book of Proverbs say, “[B]e careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life” (Proverbs 4:23), and Proverbs 18:20–21 says, “From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
Because the tongue is as lethal as the mind, God took the drastic step of silencing the tongue of one man until his dream came to pass. That man was Zechariah. For many years, he fervently prayed for his dream. He had his vision board and every day he would do what he could and then ask God to do the rest. One day while he was in prayer fighting for his dream, God sent an angel to tell him that his prayer had been heard and he would receive that which he asked for. One would think that such news would have been received with great elation, but instead, Zechariah stood startled by all this and questioned how he could receive that which he asked for, given that he and his wife were both advanced in years (Luke 1:5–14).
Too many of us have dreams which if we were honest with ourselves, we would find that we really do not believe that the dreams will ever come true. The dreams remain a good idea on the vision board to make us feel better for ‘at least’ having a goal which we really do not believe can be achieved but nonetheless is there for all to see, that ‘at least’ we have a dream.
But God does not want us to be an ‘at least’ people. The dreams come from Him, and because He gives the dream to us, He promises to work on the dream with us until it becomes a reality (Philippians 1:6). And sometimes, in order to refrain us from sabotaging our dreams, He might silence us as He did with Zechariah until the fulfilment of the dream (Luke 1:20). The silence might be that uncomfortable place where you have no one and nothing to turn to, but God. But know that even in the silence, God is working with you on your dream and at the appointed time, it will come to pass.
©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2018.
