In the beginning, what God is doing in you will be hidden like roots that break free from the seed capsule. David was hidden among his brothers for 16 years, then the word of promise was spoken over him which lead to another 14-15 years of him being hunted, chased, and tormented by Saul. Jesus was hidden in Nazareth among his relatives for 30 years before he began his ministry–the dream that had captured his life. Every dreamer will be hidden for a season. Embrace the hiddenness and let your roots go deep.
Even after the shoots emerge from the soil, there is still a long period of time and difficulty ahead. Crazy weather, insects, and disease all will challenge the shoot.
There are things worse than difficulty.
Oddly enough, you actually want the process of living your life out of dreams to be long and difficult. I’m not talking about becoming some sort of ‘dream martyr’ where one goes out looking to make things difficult. That’s stupid. The difficulty is built into life. Jesus promised that in this life there would be trouble.
What I’m talking about is having a dream or vision that is bigger than any difficulty, bigger than any amount of trouble.
When things take time and can withstand difficulty, it means they are valuable. If it’s easy and quick, then you can be sure that there won’t be much in the way of value attached to the endeavor.
If your life dream is taking lots of time and can’t be snuffed out by the difficulty of life, you can be sure that there is gold attached to it.
Why it always feels close.
When you get a dream or a vision for your life, it almost always seems like it’s going to be easy. It almost always seems like it’s going to take no time at all–like it may even happen next week, but then life sets in, and we are left wondering if the dream was real at all. We can feel abandoned, like we didn’t really hear God at all.
This kind of disappointment is the number one enemy of seeing the God-dream in your heart emerge into fruitfulness.
The reason that it seems like it will be easy and take very little time is actually pretty simple–God, who is eternal, and lives outside of time, steps into time, comes near, and places the future into your heart. It feels easy because the master of the universe was near you in that moment. It feels immediate, because in that moment of conception, God brought your future into the present. You saw the picture. You saw the tree. You could even smell the faint sweetness of the fruit that was hanging on the tree, but what he deposited was a seed.
Don’t lose heart!
