Awaken Your God-Given Dreams

The Dream Thwarter

Chapter Two

The Dream Thwarter

If God Wants Me to Dream, Then Why Do My Plans Fail?

One of favorite pastimes is looking at home and decor magazines. I just love looking at the clean spaces, well-planned layouts and intricate details surrounding the houses in these glossy pages. I would swoon at well-trimmed gardens and relaxing verandas.

I'd imagine myself sipping coffee in the patio while watching the sunset or reading a book during a rainy day. How nice it would be to have my own library filled with books and a home office on the second floor with a view of the street or the garden!

I wanted everything that those magazines have to sell - a happy and relaxing life in a beautiful country home.

I allowed myself to dream and to plan for that house. I worked hard, really hard, to achieve that dream. I am already saving a substantial amount of money to finance that desire.

I thought that I had everything together. This is it. I am on my way to achieving my dream!

But I was wrong.

In the middle of 2014, my life was completely changed. I lost my job, my freelance clients stopped coming and my business froze.

It's as if everything suddenly came to a halt.

I just can't help but ask God why.

The Divine Kontrabida

In the Philippines (a country with an intense love for soap operas), we call the antagonist of the story a kontrabida.

In a usual soap, the kontrabida is the mother who does not want her son to marry the heroine because her family is not wealthy. Or the kontrabida could be the stepsisters who mistreat the orphan girl. Or the possessive ex-lover who just can't move on and stands in between the two star-crossed lovers.

In the same way, there are moments in our lives when God seems to be the Kontrabida to our dreams. He thwarts our plans and puts our dreams on hold. He gets in between us and our "dreams".

In the Old Testament, it took the Israelites 40 years to reach the Promised Land - a journey that would have normally taken only 11 days to finish during that time1.

Why would God lead the Israelites out of Egypt and give them a wonderful promise - a dream - of a "land flowing with milk and honey", only to have them travel (and get lost!) for 40 years in the desert?

Why does it seem that when you are already on your way to reaching your dream, God suddenly stops you in your track and prolongs the journey? Doesn't He want you to succeed and be happy?

The Blessing of the Wilderness

"Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty days, to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart." ~Deuteronomy 8:2

Have you ever experienced a wilderness in your life? A time when the life you knew suddenly fell apart?

Perhaps you did not pass an exam that would have been the key to your profession. Perhaps you had been passed on for promotion. Perhaps you were not able to seal that business deal. Perhaps your application for a scholarship was declined.

God places long trails on the way so He can deal with what is in your heart. John Eldredge puts it this way:

"God must take away the heaven we create, or it will become our hell."

If we continue on our current path when our heart is still not right, we may miss "greater" opportunities that God has in store for us.

God sometimes has to take on the role of the Kontrabida, but He is not the enemy.

Small Desires

God wants us to desire and to dream, but He also wants us to realize whether our desires are good for us or not.

There are desires in your heart that are not put there by God. As far as dreams go, you cannot always follow your heart.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"

~ Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is prone to the lies and schemes of the enemy. If we are not truly in tune with the true desires of our heart, we would get blinded by smaller desires: wealth, fame, security, sexual ecstasy, shopping, travel, food, sports, and entertainment.

"Desire takes us to God," Gil Baile mused. "Unfortunately, our desire is not hardwired to God."

Earthly creatures as we are, we are prone to crave for things that we see (mostly planted by media). We dream of a bigger house. We dream of a great vacation. We dream of a relaxed life. And we work towards this kind of future.

I call these lesser dreams.

My dream house was a lesser dream, but I was already spending almost all of my hours trying to achieve that dream.

It has become my sole focus. It drove me to work harder.

God must take away the heaven I create or it will become my hell.

If I continue striving for that dream, committing more hours of my life for that purpose, I will miss out on other "bigger" dreams that God has in store for me. I will begin to trade these God-given dreams for a lesser dream.

You may dream of owning a beach house, spending your days sipping pink drinks under the shade of a coconut tree. Or you may dream of packing all your belongings in a suitcase, travelling all over the world. Or owning an enterprise so large, you won't have to work any day of your life.

Are these bad dreams?

I do not think so.

But the real question is: Is that all you ever wanted to achieve that you put all your hours solely to that dream?