[By Kaila – Ignite Staff]
I really struggled as I sat down to write today, because my assigned topic is an area I’m still growing in. I’m a work in progress. I feel inadequate to tell someone else how to heal in areas that I personally experience lack in. What areas are those? Hoping. Dreaming.
Life has taught me not to hope, not to dream. Although it was unintentional, I was raised to believe that lacking joy, lacking emotion, and expecting the worst to happen was logical, rational, wise, and reasonable. I think this stemmed from my family facing one crisis after another during my childhood, teen, and adult years, most of which were simply a result living on a cursed earth and not due to anyone’s sins.
As I went into college, I felt very called into a profession I didn’t want to go into. I obeyed the Lord but never grew to enjoy the field during college. Bam – there was yet another blow to my ability to hope and dream. I have walked believing that God didn’t intend for me to hope or to be a dreamer, just an obedient person. So, obedient I was.
My hope as I left college was to go into full-time missions. I was speaking with various missions organizations that were happily feeding me information about using my career in closed countries to share the Gospel or telling me about teaching English in closed countries. That was my dream – career missions in a country where Christians aren’t allowed to go as missionaries.
Then, God said no. He said grad school. I wept the day my grad school acceptance came in – tears of brokenness over realizing that my dream wasn’t going to happen. I tried to keep hopes and dreams alive as I attended grad school thinking that maybe God was going to use this career path to launch me overseas instead.
As I graduated, the answer came again. “No. Work full-time in your field.” By this point, my ability to hope and dream were hanging on by a mere thread.
As I moved out of academia and into my career, I began to face turmoil in my workplaces. Long hours, unfair bosses, under-payment, and carrying the heavy burdens of management positions in ungodly work environments further reinforced my mindset that I should not hope or dream. Coupled with everything I had already faced in life, it was too much. I broke.
I gave up ALL hope that I would ever enjoy my career. I gave up ALL hope that I could ever have bosses who would support me. I gave up dreaming about missions. I gave up believing that I would ever be happy again. I began to live in full survival mode. Every day, every hour became about getting through the day so I could go home and sleep. I fell into depression and anxiety that I could not be freed from no matter how hard I tried. I was crying almost every day. I was hating people. I was isolating myself. I sought medical and professional help, but with only minor, temporary improvements.
Fast-forward, a couple of years to today as I sat with my pastor discussing the fact that although God is calling me to hope and dream again, I’m no longer sure what that looks like. God has spent my time living in Hawaii tearing down the lies, the shame, the fears that have crippled my ability to hope and dream. I learned to be content in my career and found that God enabled me to enjoy doing my job every day when I asked for His help and made the choice to stop hating what He had called me to do. Now, He’s telling me it’s time to move forward. The labels are being removed and I have to start walking this out. “How?!” has been my heart’s cry. I took my question to my pastor. Today, he shared with me what God had shown him for me and I want to share that with all of you, because I believe it is incredibly valuable.
- Be in God’s will and pray in accordance to His will. God doesn’t give us what we want just because we ask for it. He gives us things in accordance with His will because He knows that it what is best for us. 1 John 5:14 says “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” James 4:2-3 says “…Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong–you want only what will give you pleasure.”
- Hopes and dreams must start from the Word of God. Knowing Scripture is necessary to having the foundation necessary for hopes and dreams to be built upon. If you don’t have a committed, consistent time for devotions and prayer, start there. If you seek Him, He’ll reveal Himself. Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
- Leave the past behind. Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Whatever your upbringing, life experiences, hurts, disappointments, etc. may have been, leave them with God and choose to move forward. Don’t stay stuck in the past.
- Hope can be hard to hold on to when there’s no evidence that it could happen. But, that doesn’t mean you should stop hoping. Hold on to hope even when it’s hard to imagine.
- Hoping stems from trusting that I have a good Father in heaven Who truly loves me and wants THE BEST for me. Inability to hope and dream is largely due to not being able to see God as my loving Father. (Funny enough, God has already been talking to me about seeing Him as my loving Father, then He confirmed it again today through my pastor who didn’t know God had been telling me that.) James 1:17 teaches us that “Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.” We have to BELIEVE we have a good heavenly Father.
- Dreams are built on hope and trust in God. When I trust God and hope in Him, I am enabled to take leaps of faith as He reveals His plans to me. The fact that I sat in the office today and had this conversation with my pastor is me putting hope and faith into action. I made the step of faith to open up and remove a barrier of isolation to get help, with the HOPE that I can heal and become someone I had never seen modeled before coming to our church.
- I’m going to be writing down dreams that God has given me, as well as silly personal dreams. Why? Because that’s a step of faith to say that I CHOOSE hope, dreams, and trust in my heavenly Father.
Maybe like me, life has been tough for you. Maybe like me you’ve consistently seen God say “no” or “wait” to nearly every dream you’ve presented to Him. Maybe you’re in a season of depression and anxiety like I was where traditional medical methods are helping only to a point but you still feel a need for breakthrough. I get it. I really do. I also KNOW that God doesn’t want either one of us living that way any longer. I know He wants to bring healing. I am DETERMINED to move forward, to claim the hopes, dreams, promises, and all that God has for me. I challenge you to join me in pursuit of hopes and dreams. Take these seven actions steps with me. I’m not fully healed yet. I’m a work in progress. I am confident, though, that I will get there and I’m looking forward to sharing the updates with you in the future about what God does. Please share with me how He works in you as you take these action steps too!
Ignite Faya 
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