I used to be a person who dreamed big. Signing your first book contract when you are only twenty does that to you. Suddenly nothing seems impossible when God shows up in your life and does something you never imagined He would do.
I’ve been known to sign books, “Dream big, God does!” before scribbling my name. Two of my books tackle the topic of dreaming big. Several years ago if you would have asked me about dreaming big, I could have talked on the subject for hours.
But then life happened. Speaking contracts got cancelled because people with bigger names were willing to show up. Editors started to pass on a few of my book proposals. Things got complicated and some of my dreams were crushed in the process.
In order to cope I adjusted my expectations not realizing I was shrinking the size of my dreams and, by default, my God. I figured I didn’t need big dreams. A small, quiet, life could please God too. Or so I thought.
On Tuesday night I started reading Do You Know Who I Am? By Angela Thomas. In each chapter she poses a question women ask and responds with a question God asks us.
Throughout the pages of chapter one, Angela begins to unpack the truth that we are all made to dream big dreams because God is worthy of the glory that will come from the fulfillment of those dreams.
She teaches on the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) and the three men who were entrusted with some of their master’s money while he was away. It’s an analogy for the gifts God has given us and how we use them on this side of eternity.
The first two turn a profit and when the master returns they are able to give him double what was entrusted to them. Sadly, the third man buried his talent and had only what the master had given him.
That parable is familiar to me. In fact, I’ve taught it several times. But Angela wrote something about that last man that caught me by the throat and shook me hard.
“The servant reported that instead of multiplying his possession, he had just kept the talent safe, but that was not the master’s intent. God wants the glory from your talents and mine” (p. 16).
Safe. That word defined my new approach to life. I didn’t want to dream big dreams and be disappointed. So I started dreaming safe dreams instead. Instead of dreaming about how God might want to use me, I began to believe that His biggest works in my life were all in my past.
Somehow I had come to believe that God’s plan for the rest of my life would be mild and quiet. Vanilla. There was to be no more risk, no more pain, no more dreaming big.
The scariest part of all of this is that I didn’t realize my thinking had changed.
I panicked as I read Angela’s book. As I began processing what she was saying I understood that I was shouting at heaven saying, “Do You know I’m afraid to dream big?”
For the first time in a long time I also understood that God was lovingly answering my shouting with a question of His own: Do you know I AM worthy?
Suddenly, my world was turned on its side. My safe plans for my life suddenly looked bland. They didn’t include multiplying anything God had given me. Instead, they were consumed with ways I could keep the things God had entrusted to me safe.
Safe. There is nothing safe about faith. You can’t follow wholeheartedly after God by making precise measurements and calculations.
At some point you have to take a risk. We all reach a point of no return. Each of us must decide if we are going to trust God or if we are going to play it safe.
Tuesday night, as my mind raced long after I shut Angela’s book and turned out the light, I decided that safe was going to become a thing of my past.
My future is going to be all about glorifying the One who is worthy.
What about you?
