Tag: dreams

CHECKMATE: The Military Tactic … II

31.01.2019

Author katiem

There will always be those who have not peeped into your vision but will speak on it as though they authored it. The ones that have never been privy to the master potter’s blueprint of your dream but esteem themselves as the expert in your field.

They dial, and set forth from their dwellings, in a guise to sympathise and encourage, but like a ferocious wolf in sheep’s clothing, when they console, they point fingers, attack, engage in acts designed to mutilate the core of your countenance and override the potter’s settings. They whisper “facts” about your circumstance but within the whisper, lay a hiss of venom designed to poison your dream. They hiss and spittle and injudiciously speculate that your impediment is aroused by karma and the sins of your past, or the deficiency of a masculine prayer life, or inability to break the generational curse.

We see this with Job’s friends who set out to console him but in the end, blamed him for his predicament. Zophar said to Job “…if you devote your heart to Him (God) and stretch out your hands to Him, if you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then, free of fault, you will lift up your face; you will stand firm and without fear” (Job 11:13–15). Job’s friends clearly spoke on things that were beyond their wisdom. But they were empowered to speak and override the settings to obscure God’s plans for Job, by Job himself, who also spoke before he fully understood the potter’s plan.  Job may have initially confronted the adversity with confidence, refusing to blame God for his adversity (Job 2), but one page later and the next several chapters forward, he began to speak prematurely and bleakly about his position.

We may not understand where we are and why things are as they appear to be, but there is wisdom in trusting that there is a potter directing us. An artisan who constantly remains at work, shaping our future such that it becomes brighter than we could ever fashioned for ourselves (Psalm 121:3–5; Jeremiah 18:3–7). Only the potter, the master architect knows the end from the beginning. When we speak from our current but temporary position, we speak as the fool that concludes the end of the book, having only read to page twenty-eight of a hundred.

Our location and position are never a surprise to God. He already knows the whole story. And hence, when Job and his friends spoke prematurely about matters which they had no knowledge of, God spoke and said, “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?” (Job 38:1–7; see also Job 40:2).

Waiting may be painful, but the end will leave you in reverence of the mysteries of the timekeeper. While waiting, do not allow those that do not understand the ways of God, nor His perfect plan for your life, to vocalise their opinions such that they echo and bind louder than His voice. The dilettantes will always be there. With no expertise, they will take one look at your situation, see the stone chosen by the master builder, and reject it without knowing the building with which the master builder chose it for (Matthew 21:42).

Just like Job, you may be exposed and where he was, or like Joseph, you may be waiting twenty-two years for the dream to come to pass, but do not despair. As with both Job and Joseph, God knows your exact position, and He knows how your story will end (Proverbs 20:24; Isaiah 46:10). It will be magnificent! Your situation now is the stone that looks counterproductive but will become the cornerstone of marvel to all those who see the power of God at work in you when the design is complete (Matthew 21:42). If you keep silent and trust that the master builder has a perfect plan for your life, you will come out on the other side as Job and Joseph did; simply triumphant! (Job 42 and Genesis 41–47).

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2019.

CHECKMATE: The Military Tactic …

30.01.2019

Author katiem

Sometimes the cacoethes loquendi of vocalising dreams to the myriad before the dream is decoded and inscribed and the blue print sketched to life, may be allegorised to the idiom of “the boy who cried wolf”.

Before the dream is sketched, during the time when it lingers in the mind, if vocalised, the masses only hear a utopian reciting of an imaginary cosmos echoing a mythical siren, and to the worst of ears, they only hear a cockalorum. In the Old Testament, Joseph was such a person, whose excitement and words preceded his dreams (Genesis 37). For this, his brothers despised him and called him a dreamer. The place for dreamers was slavery – a place where time and dreams collided, and in the collision, the dream annihilated and the dreamer jolted to reality. And so because Joseph spoke a dream before it was realised, his brothers sold him into slavery in order to kill the dream.

Sometimes there is a danger in impetuously announcing dreams before the orbit of the moon, the appointed time. The premature announcement of a dream aggravates the agnostics and the envious and triggers a chain reaction to suppress and sell the dreamer into a system of slavery – designed to purge, and bolster a dreamless state where hopelessness and oppression abound.

 

When Joseph told his family about his dream, including his father who loved him more than all his other children, they thought him foolish, mocked him, and rebuked him to cease dreaming (Genesis 37:10). Theologians esteem that Joseph announced his dream prematurely by twenty-two years! Before the great dream, it can be deduced that being the youngest of his brothers, only seventeen, he was often overlooked, not taken seriously, and ordered to run all the tedious errands. Thus, when he had the dream, it only seemed natural that he could not contain his excitement of one day soon, everyone bowing down to him.

From the page of Joseph, it is cultivated that sometimes it is advantageous to move in silence. Even the wise books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs attest to this and speak on the wisdom of silence. They contend that even fools are thought wise if they keep silent and hold their tongues, and in this wisdom, a power is ignited in knowing when to be silent and when to speak, and knowing when the right time clocks to announce one’s presence. (Ecclesiastes 3:7; Proverbs 17:27–28). Even so, those that move in silence are mocked that they have no vision because they produce no sound. But those that move in silence, build in silence. And when they build in silence, they attack in ambuscade and win through actions.

Success favours the wise, the wise favour silence, and silence shields against slavery. But should the dream slip, and prompt them to attack and play you like a pawn in a game of chess, do not despair nor heed their counsel, for one day, when the hour hand strikes the appointed time, you will have the last laugh as you yell, ‘checkmate’! When the clock strikes the appointed time, even those who cry wolf will be vindicated when the dream giver exposes the end.

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2019.

IMAGINATION: Escaping The System…

30.10.2018

Author katiem

We are only limited as far as we can dream. But can only dream as far as we can imagine. And can only imagine as far as we can escape reality. For what the eye sees, the brain can imagine. But what the brain imagines, conjures what the eye sees. What if there is more than what the eye can see? And what if the eye can only see as far as our surroundings?

When ruled by the eye, we live controlled by a system – one designed to keep us in the system, in a state of dependency. One where the thought of expanding never crosses our mind, and the thought of living a life that is more than paycheck to paycheck, an alien concept. A system where we are only fed enough to sustain us and keep us coming back and building empires for others, while our foundations remain impoverished.

In the system, our palates are watered down to accept what is before us. But what if there is more? What if the size of our imagination determines the size of our palate and the size of our palate, the extent of our hunger for more? When we lack imagination, even when there is more, we remain chained in the shackles of our mind and continue to create only what has been rationalised in the past. Take for instance the Israelites, they were used to depending on the Egyptian system and rationalised food. So, when God provided manna for them and told them to take as much as they needed, we are told that some gathered much, but there were those that still gathered only a little (Exodus 16:16–17).

How can we hunger for more when all our lives we have been told that what is before us is all there is to gather? How can we imagine when we have never truly seen? But what if there is one in whose image we are made? One in whom all creative power lies and is the intelligent design and creative source that can cause us to dream and create far beyond our wildest imagination? Of Him who says our eyes have not seen, our ears not heard, nor any human mind conceived, the things which He has in store for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9).

If we remove God from the box which we have encased Him in, we will find that there is more to be had. The creative source can do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that is a work within us (Ephesians 3:20–21). At the heart of the creative source’s plans for our lives, is such that we would become lenders, not borrowers, the head, not the tail; always the top dog and never the bottom dog (Deuteronomy 28:1 –13). What if there is more to be had, and the amount to be had simply dependant on the size of our imagination and our creative source? We all want more, but are we hungry enough, motivated enough, to dare to dream, imagine and hunt like a starving lion?

God’s desire for our lives is that we would increase our imagination and stretch wide without holding back (Isaiah 54:2–3). There is more to be had than that which we have seen and that which has already been done. When the Israelites saw the manna for the first time, they said: “What is it?” For they did not know what it was [they had not seen it before]” (Exodus 16:15). The Israelites might have thought that manna was the best that God had for them, but after the crossing of the Jordan river and the Passover, God had them eat something which they had not eaten before (Exodus 5:11– 2).

There is more to be had for those that are hungry for more and desperate for a change. There is more to be had for those who dare to dream bigger and wider than their eyes have seen or their minds have yet imagined. There is more to be had for those who believe in the bounty of God’s promises.

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2018.

SILENCE: And the vision board of dreams…

17.01.2018

Author katiem

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.