Throughout Scripture, God approaches different people with the same message: “I know you have plans and you have this idea about how you’re going to pull off life, but I have something else for you.”
God told each of them that he knew how to make them thrive.
First Samuel 16 contains the beginning of the story of David, a teenager who had his own ideas of how his life would unfold. I’m sure he dreamed of bigger and better things than just tending his father’s livestock. He didn’t long to sit in a pasture his whole life and count sheep: “One, two, three, four — yep, they’re all here.”
Can you imagine the downtime as he sat on a hill and watched his sheep feed? Any time a guy has downtime, he dreams. He’s thinking, One day, I’m going to be in a better place and have a cool job and people are going to respect me. David learned how to hunt. He learned how to use a sling. He learned how to play a harp and sing.
Like all of us, David had dreams. Maybe one shepherd down the road was the talk of the town because he had three times more sheep, and David always had to hear about the guy and his awesome farm. He had to hear the stories of his older brothers’ exploits. He got tired of the “Isn’t he cute?” pat on the head, even when he was trying to say something serious.
David had to think, One day I’ll own the sheep on a thousand hills. People will all come to me and ask, “How did you do it? How did you take thirty sheep and turn them into this massive flock?”
We’re always crafting our acceptance speeches before we’ve ever done a thing. I talk to teenagers every day who are starting a band and want to know how they can make it to the next level. When I ask questions, I usually hear, “Well, we actually haven’t had a rehearsal yet.”
“OK. Do you have any songs?”
“Uh, we’ve written a few lines.”
“Uh-huh. Have you guys even met? Do you know the members of the band yet?” They’re planning their Grammy speech before they’ve tuned a guitar.
As I thought about David, a question popped into my mind. What do our dreams sound like to God?
I imagined God listening to David’s thoughts and dreams, knowing that David loved him and had a heart for him. The more I learned David’s story, I could just hear God whispering to him in a breezy pasture: “I know you have dreams and plans, which is awesome. But my dream for you will not even fit in your head. In fact, I can’t even tell you everything yet.”
The Bible reveals that God shares tiny snippets with David as they walk together. “Here’s what we’re going to do. There’s a valley with a ten-foot giant down there, and I have a special job for you. I’m going to get your dad to send you down there to get lunch, because you’d freak out if I told you my plans. But don’t worry. I’ve been setting up this moment your whole life.”
Josh Mix is one of our guitar players in Casting Crowns. He was twenty-two years old when he joined the band. He never auditioned once. He just served in our church, used his talents, played his songs, and worked with a bunch of teenagers, some who can play and some who can’t carry a note. He did all the grunt work that goes with it, plugging in cords and amps and foot pedals and conducting sound checks and rehearsals and practices. He had no idea I was watching everything he did.
He walked in one day, and I said, “Hey, Hector Cervantes is leaving the band. I want you to be the new guitar player.”
His mouth fell open. “Are you serious?” he said. “Let me pray about it . . . Um, amen. Yeah, I’m in. What do you want me to do?”
That’s how God arranges our lives. He lets us chase our little sparks of inspiration until he’s ready to move us in his perfect timing. All along, he orchestrates our lives to where he can speak through his Word, his Holy Spirit, and our circumstances to confirm what he wants.
When David faced Goliath, he didn’t have a landmark conversation to recall so he could say, “God told me I was going to win.” Rather, God had orchestrated David’s circumstances to give him confidence in his present challenge. He had emboldened David through encounters with a lion and a bear, and David was able to recount those victories when facing Goliath.
“I brought you through those moments,” God said, “and I’ll bring you through this.”
So what does David say to prepare for Goliath? “God brought me through that. He’ll bring me through this.”
God does the same with us.
As I thought about God maneuvering David’s life and giving David his dream for him, I imagined God saying, “Here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s go down here and take care of this little problem with the giant and get the army back on track. Um, it’s going to be a little rough with the king for a while, maybe a spear thrown at your head. You may have to go on the lam and bounce from cave to cave for a bit. But I’ll be there with you.”
Even with all of the challenges and hardships in God’s dream for David, David’s own dreams could not compare.
David’s dreams were probably in a box. I’m pretty sure he never thought, I’m going to behead a ten-foot giant in front of the entire army and then become king of Israel to establish a royal line through which the Savior of the human race will come.
David’s dreams probably included a big livestock operation or maybe a career writing songs and leading worship at synagogue. God looked at David and saw something else. He saw the genealogy of Jesus.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had dreams too. Can you see her scurrying to clean the house and help her mom cook supper while she thought about her friends? She was engaged to be married to Joseph and had dreams of keeping her own home and livestock. Perhaps she imagined a woodworking business for Joseph.
“Everybody talks about Joseph. We’re going to have kids and grow old together. Maybe we’ll even have a son, which would be awesome because Joseph is the best carpenter around. People come from miles around to ask him to build stuff for them and to see his work. He has a piece of furniture in every house in this town, and the idea of teaching his boy how to do this and passing on his business is amazing. It could be Joseph and Son Builders, Inc.”
God sat back and listened to her little heart dream away.
“That’s a great dream, Mary. But just like David, who’s a little bit connected to this picture too, your dream is in a box. You have one box where you keep what you think you can do. You have another box where you keep what you think I can do. I have a better dream for you. We’re on the same page about Joseph. I think he’s a fine fellow. But I’ve been watching your life and preparing you for what I’m about to do in you, and you didn’t even know it. If I had told you when you were a kid that you were going to be the mother of one called Jesus, we wouldn’t be able to fit your head in your house. You wouldn’t have been able to handle any of this.
“Here’s my dream for you: I’m going to save the world like I promised in the stories you’ve heard from your dad and his dad and his dad. It’s time. The Messiah is coming. I want the perfect mom to raise him. And I want that mom to be you.”
That conversation, in words to the same effect, happened through the angel Gabriel.
God didn’t explain away all the details. He didn’t curb the difficulties. He didn’t even say, “It’ll be a little awkward with Joseph for a while. You’ll hit some rough patches. And childbirth is still going to hurt.” But he dreamed much bigger for her than she ever dreamed.
God is not finished working in his world. God is not finished with you.
How we face the future and how we make decisions are based on what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves. We can say God is in control, but our lives often suggest that we don’t totally buy it. We can say that God forgives sin and wipes it away forever, but we still live under guilt.
God wants to use the Romans 12:1 – 2 Effect on us. He wants to renew our minds and redefine our ideas of who he is and who we are in him. We believe about him only what we’ve seen. We have fuzzy notions of him and partially believe what we’ve read, heard, and sung about him. But we’d be amazed to realize how much of our faith is still not ours.
I discovered this in how we pray for people. When somebody else is dangerously sick, we pray for “God’s will,” not for healing, because we’re afraid the person won’t pull through and we don’t want to stick out our necks in public. But if it’s my brother or dad, I’m not praying for “God’s will.” That’s my family, and I’m begging God to heal him! Our just-in-case prayers tell us something about our view of God.
David, who is called a man after God’s own heart, asks God to search him and know his heart (Psalm 139:23). He basically says, “I don’t even know my own heart. I don’t know why I do the things I do, and I don’t understand my motives.”
I have to dig deep into my roots so God can show me who he is and who I am in him. He has to redefine what saved me and keeps me saved. He has to redefine real fruit. I let him redefine wrong ideas about him and about me. I let him search me and know my heart. I let him have his way.
Despite my shortcomings, God has been patient and kind, long-suffering and forgiving. Even when I take the wrong turn, he turns it around for my good. Love from other people doesn’t work that way. School doesn’t work that way. Best friends don’t even work that way.
I’ve let the world tell me what forgiveness means. I’ve let the media define what skills mean “success.” I’ve let the SAT or ACT define for me how smart I am. This label that people hung around me when I was sent to learning disabled classes convinced me that I couldn’t get on stage in front of anybody. God had to work on me awhile to get a lot of gunk out of my head, and it’s still in there whispering even as I sing in front of thousands of people.
So I got in his Word and I got on my knees and I got to know God. I learned how to put all my weight on him. I dug my roots deep into his Word and obeyed his nudges to reach out to others. I let the Lord work out of me what he had worked into me. I learned how to share his love with the truth. I committed my life to know him and make him known.
All the while, God bided his time and worked out his dream for me. All the while, he taught me to thrive.
Point to Remember
God orchestrates his dreams for us despite our lesser goals and our mistakes.