Abide

Dreams by Michael Rad



Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart. – Ralph Waldo Emerson


Write down your top three dreams. Now write down what’s holding you back from them.
 
I have always been a doer.  One who is not afraid to do something, even if it was not yet perfect.  So many of the prompts in the 30 day challenge have been about overcoming the fear of taking on a challenge.  This fear has not plagued me to a great degree.  I think it is because I grwoing up with an alcoholic dad and a busy single mom, I was left to figure things out on my own.  I operated in this unknown realm from age 12 and got used to reading books on how to play ping pong, how to shoot a basketball, not that I ever was good at basketball, but from my early days I did research to learn how to do things.  It made lots of things really hard for me and I was amazed at how easily some people would simply ask others without shame and learn much faster that I saw that I did.
 
So my top three dreams are as follows:

I dream of loving and being loved by my family. 

I dream of inspiring others to growth. 

I dream of being philanthropic in substantially greater ways. 

Fear is an enemy of these dreams.  Fear that I will not be enough to make my dreams come true.  Resistance is an enemy.  Some of the resistance comes from my broken nature and how that nature rears its head when I focus on it, rather than on the love that God has for me.  I think that there is an accuser, an enemy to my soul, who will accuse me with true statements about my broken parts, my failures, my insecurities.  Some of what this enemy will say to me is true and other things are not so true.  But none the less, this accuser is in opposition to my dreams.
 
But the thing about all of these things about looking into oneself, is that my Christian experience with Jesus defines them in a unique fashion.  You see when a person believes that God loves them, and has provided a way to love them even though we all have parts we don't love, broken parts, parts of ourselves that give into sin, well the bible says that when you walk into that belief, that God loves me, and provides a path for me to be loved, in that place of faith and only in that place of faith, a new creation is made inside of your heart. 

I have experienced this new creation!

 It is this new creation that is divine and noble and holy and does not sin, even though we still carry our flawed flesh which is not perfect and does not always do the right things, it falls down occasionally.
 
This new creation, which is Jesus himself, the Holy Spirit, takes up residence in our hearts.  The mystery of the ages is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  So when we simply have faith in Jesus, he becomes formed in us and as we trust that new creation, listen to this new part of our hearts, it will not lead us astray.
 
And yet in Galatians, we find that if we begin to rest in our own actions for our goodness, for our reason for being acceptable to God, that we are severed from Christ, and have fallen from Grace.  Paul said to the Galatians, "how I long to be with you my little children until Christ is formed in you again".  What happened to the Galatians is that as they trusted in some rules to make them acceptable to God, they actually were cut off from God.  To only trust in Jesus, requires us to accept a humility that understands we cannot be loved without Jesus.  Without the cross of Christ paying the penalty that I deserve for my sins, I am not lovable.  But with faith in the effort of Jesus, I am totally lovable. 
 
In our culture, this is often offensive to people and I think it is because people like to rank their sins.  These being bad and these being understandable.  But God is so holy, the creator of the universe, that from His perspective, I do not think he sees much difference.  Lust and adultery to him are extremely close and yet we think they are far apart.  We think that we are more worthy than others and deserve more credit that others, which is why it is such an offense to being lumped into one lump, where we are all helpless before God without a savior.
 
So for me, self reliance only works as I abide in that place where my goodness comes from trusting Jesus.  Trusting that he loves me, that in fact he is crazy about me and as I walk in that trust, my dreams and more begin to happen.